-Hiris-
Night had fallen, and Kuro and Jarou were in position for their defense. Kuro was looking up at the night sky, pondering the ring of stars far above him, waiting in silence for the Necromancer, Hiris, to make his move. They’d been waiting nearly an hour before they heard movement. Jarou, who had been pacing to keep himself warm, snapped his attention to the direction it had come from. The second alley from the main road. There, he could barely make out a man, peeking around the building and observing the two Hunters.
Jarou wondered, and began mentally preparing to summon his weapon. They were positioned near the half-way point between the main house and surrounding buildings. They’d hoped to drag the Necromancer out towards them so they could fight without worrying too much about damaging the buildings or disturbing the peace. It was a gamble on whether or not standing out in the open was a good idea for that goal. In Jarou’s experience, Necromancers were either very straightforward and charged ahead when confronted with combat, or they were crafty, and would sneak around and avoid direct confrontation.
He smiled as the man stepped out from the alley. Still engulfed in shadow, the man was hard to make out. Jarou could tell he was wearing a long, black cloak that covered his entire figure from head to toe. A staple for anyone wanting to sneak around at night. The man’s hands became illuminated by a faint, barely visible blue light, as he reached inside his cloak, pulling out a sword. So he wasn’t a pure magic user like some of his kind. Jarou always enjoyed fights that were more about throwing powerful magic, rather than trying to stab each other. They just felt more engaging to him. That’s not to say he didn’t enjoy some high quality swordplay, but he did have a clear preference.
Jarou had been primarily facing off against Demons and his fellow Half-Demons recently, so fighting a Human that couldn’t use Demon Sheath felt novel to him. The sound and motion of a sword being unsheathed had a certain feeling to it that he liked more than the electric and of Demon Sheath being used. He’d thought about carrying around a sword on his belt for that reason, but being able to summon your weapon at will was simply too convenient to pass up.
As Hiris began a cautious approach, Jarou checked on Kuro. The younger Hunter was still looking up at the sky, but Jarou knew him well enough to know he was paying attention to his surroundings.
“They really just sent a couple of kids?” Hiris said, his hoarse voice had a tone that made it obvious to Jarou that this man had no idea who or what he was up against. “No matter, I’ll make quick work of the two of you.” The man, probably in his early twenties, raised his hands in front of himself, clasped together around the hilt of his sword. Small blue circles flashed on the back of his hands, with two more appearing quickly a couple inches away, and the aether he’d been channeling dissipated into whatever spell he just cast. Jarou guessed that was him giving commands to his Restless, which he probably had on standby somewhere nearby.
Jarou had some respect for Necromancers, managing the restless souls of the dead seemed like it could get tedious very quickly. Each one needed to be given specific commands, or they would just attack and destroy indiscriminately, and it took a fair amount of mental strength and endurance to maintain commands to stay put.
Hiris pulled his cloak off, dropping it to the floor and revealing a rather average frame dressed in white and gold robes. Jarou thought to himself as he summoned his sword in a flash of red light. He’d only ever practiced against people with enchanted clothing, never truly fought them to the death, and in practice he’d never been able to fully wear down the enchantments’ aether supply. This opponent could prove to be a fair challenge.
Hiris smiled wickedly as he leveled his sword at Jarou, before pointing it to Kuro and springing forward to attack. Jarou stepped and blocked his overhead swing from below. Just as their swords clashed, no less than six Restless ran out from between the nearby buildings. Jarou looked back to Kuro briefly, who simply nodded, summoned his weapon, and went to fight the Restless. Just as planned.
“I’ll be your opponent,” Jarou stated, parrying Hiris’s blade in a circular movement as he stood up straight. Silently, he added
Hiris exhaled, and strong wind began blowing around them, creating a makeshift curtain from the dust. Jarou just barely made out a small gap forming in the dust cloud, and narrowly dodged a razor-sharp blade of wind that nicked his jacket at chest height. Jarou hated fighting talented sentem users. Sentem blades may not be the strongest of the common elements used for slashing, but they’re difficult to see, making them very dangerous. Kuro had recently been learning from Ari, incorporating Sen’ari attacks into his fighting style. As much as it annoyed Jarou, that had given him practice at detecting and avoiding the blades.
Jarou sucked in a small amount of aether and energy, amplifying his physical senses, and allowing him to sense changes in the surrounding aether. He didn’t quite go all the way to Acceleration, but he’d still be able to move and perceive his opponents moves slightly faster. Maintaining his aether sense made it difficult to use magic of his own, however, so he decided he would need to change the field conditions quickly.
Sensing another wind blade forming behind him, Jarou stepped forward and feinted a swing. This blade shot out aimed at his lower back and hips, making it awkward to dodge. In the split second between the blade being formed and the expected collision time, Jarou casted a quick and messy command into the ground, forming a pillar of stone just wide enough for him and his opponent to stand on. He swung again, this time for real, at Hiris’s side. The swing connected, and as Jarou expected it hit an anum barrier. Feeling the barrier through his sword, Jarou thought it seemed weaker than he’d expected. Different possibilities went through his mind as to why this may be. Perhaps the crystals weren’t recharged before he left. Or perhaps Hiris used the aether stores to fuel his magic as well as the clothing’s enchantments. That seemed quite possible to Jarou, seeing as this man was currently maintaining a command line to a minimum of six Restless, an impressive vortex of sentem magic, and casting his own offensive spells all at the same time.
Jarou slowly expanded his stone pillar, giving the two more room to fight, in between dodging incoming wind blades. He was able to get a few good hits against Hiris’s barrier, the Necromancer clearly favored his magic abilities over his swordplay - or perhaps he was simply confident in relying on his protective shield. Jarou let his mind wander as he fought and dodged, wondering how Kuro was faring in his battle against the Restless. He wasn’t able to see well past the curtain, and would have to focus to properly make out his partner’s condition.
Kuro was playing with his food a little. In truth, six Restless at once was a lot to handle, especially when they were as well coordinated as they were. This Hiris guy seemed to actually be quite the talented Necromancer.
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Early in his battle, Kuro had gotten hit once in the shoulder and leg. The leg wound was no more than a small cut, but his shoulder had gotten a good proper stabbing. He’d been stabbed by a Restless once before, but he still wasn’t prepared for how odd the sensation was. It was cold, as though a lance of ice had pierced into his body and began freezing his flesh and blood. But in reality, they’d barely broken the skin a little, and instead there was a weird discoloration on the wound where the ghost had sucked a bit of aether out. That’s what caused the freezing feeling, Nared told him once. It was the feeling of having the aether that helped form your body sapped away, leaving a void of energy where there would usually be an abundance.
After a few minutes of letting the Restless attack him all at once, Kuro finally felt he understood their attack patterns well enough to begin taking them out. His initial problem was that he would just charge at one, not expecting to be hit by the ones around it so accurately. These Restless actually covered for each other, and moved as a group with one another preventing him from focusing on a single one.
He could simply use a burst of Acceleration and defeat them all quickly and easily, but where was the fun in that?
He backflipped to dodge a fierce attack from one that attacked him from behind, flipping over a stream of their weird ghost fire magic. He landed on his feet in a crouch, and had intentionally pointed himself to the one that should attack next. It wielded a phantom greatsword that it swung around faster and with more ease than he managed with a normal sidesword, which when swung extended its already ridiculous reach with the ghostly flames. He sprung forward, baiting it into swinging at him.
The Restless brought the sword down in an overhead swing, and Kuro knocked himself forward and to the right with a good blast of sentem magic, placing himself at the monster’s left side. The thing looked like it had armor on, but that’s simply because the person they used to be usually wore armor. It was just as easy to cut through the phantom armor as it was a Restless with no clothing on. Which Kuro had seen, once. It was an odd experience.
He brought around his scythe in a small spin, cutting up and through the ghost’s back. He didn’t have one of those fancy scythes that had Return to Dust enchanted on it permanently, so this simply stunned the Restless. That gave him more than enough time to manually cast the spell, and the phantom disappeared in a puff of dust.
One down, five to go.
The next Restless in the rotation was already in motion to attack him. This one used a rapier, and quite effectively too. This is the one that hit him in the shoulder earlier. It lunged swiftly and efficiently, and each of its strikes had its range extended by the ghost flames as well. Kuro had to move quickly to keep up with dodging the attacks, and even ended up parrying several of them as well when he couldn’t get out of the way fast enough.
The next one would attack before this barrage ended, meaning Kuro would have to dodge both of them at once briefly. As he dodged, he silently swapped his scythe out for his spear, and his focus was split between dodging and applying Return to Dust to the spear’s tip for a moment.
When he heard the Restless to the left move, he knew it was time. Just as it created phantom ice spikes that covered the floor, which paradoxically had the same flames sprouting from them, he jumped, augmenting his jump height with wind. He threw his spear, ensuring he attached a line of energy to it so he could summon it back immediately. The spear pierced the Restless with the rapier with ease and embedded itself into the ground. The Restless disappeared completely before the spear hit the ground.
Next was the ice spikes Restless. Still in the air, tenuously maintaining his height with a combination of sentem and gravia, he summoned the spear back to him and reapplied the Return to Dust spell. He then did a dramatic jump, diving towards the Restless spear-first, piercing through it effortlessly and landing in the cloud of dust it created. He stood, and switched his spear out for his sword.
Three down, only three more.
The next two attack in unison, as they had while Kuro figured out how the bunch fought. He effortlessly dodged the swings of their swords, backpedalling until he neared one of the buildings. He jumped backwards, landing with his feet on the wall, and jumped up over them, and swung his sword through both phantoms’ heads. With them stunned, he quickly exorcised them with Return to Dust.
With one more, he faced them head on, walking towards them. They shot out several streams of their ghostly flames, covering all the directions he could dodge. With no other Restless to worry about, he simply focused and created a barrier with anur, as strong as he could manage. He realized he didn’t need to put so much power into the barrier as he did, as the flames barely pushed on it at all. He continued walking forward, pushing the barrier forward and the flames back as he walked. Once in range, the flames stopped, and he cast one final Return to Dust.
Satisfied, he looked over to where Jarou was fighting. He couldn’t see the combatants well behind the vortex, but he could see movement and sparks from swords clashing. He stretched, and leisurely walked towards the vortex.
Jarou was getting the hang of fighting Hiris, and didn’t need to rely so much on his aether sense to tell when a blade of wind was coming, or what direction.
Hiris suddenly pulled back after blocking a swing from Jarou, and something about him changed. “Well that’s a surprise,” He said, “How did that little pipsqueak manage to defeat all six of my Restless?”
“You shouldn’t underestimate any member of the Tsumi, regardless of age,” Jarou said, moving to attack again.
“It’s not a problem,” Hiris said, blocking Jarou’s attack before hitting him with a barrage of wind slashes.
How was he able to do so many, so suddenly?
Then it clicked. With the Restless all defeated, Hiris no longer needed to maintain his control of them. That would be a wealth of aether and mental focus he was using elsewhere he could suddenly bring back to his main fight.
The slashes hadn’t wounded Jarou too terribly, though they stung immensely, and they’d launched him back a few feet to the other side of the vortex. His jacket was basically a tattered rag with how many cuts and rips it had sustained, and he took it off, tossing it to the ground. Perhaps Jarou should take this battle a little more seriously.
Just as he began his Acceleration, the barrier formed by the wind vortex wavered, then stopped completely. The dust was still suspended in the air, as though another gust of wind was holding it in place against the first one. Hiris looked around, shocked. Suddenly, Kuro burst through the cloud of dust behind and above him, and delivered a healthy swing to Hiris’s head as he fell to the ground.
The attack knocked Hiris off balance, causing him to stumble, and while it didn’t go through the barrier, the attack landed with a loud Kuro quickly attacked again, taking advantage of his opponent being staggered, and the barrier shattered.
Hiris backed off, and the vortex began spinning again, but in the opposite direction. He was visibly panicking, and it was clear he wished to escape. “How did you…” He stammered out, observing the vortex Kuro created, which was picking up in intensity. He looked back to the Hunters, and gritted his teeth.
“I’m not getting paid enough for this,” he said, brandishing his sword in front of him, ready to continue the fight. Jarou realized Hiris would be able to fight with yet more intensity, now that not only were his Restless gone, so was his vortex he was maintaining.
Kuro went on the offensive first, dodging several wind strikes, and skillfully matching Hiris’s swordplay. Just as Jarou went on to attack, Hiris began summoning these strange, blue and black flames that seemed to have a similar composition to Restless. The way Kuro gave them an extra-wide berth clued Jarou into the fact they are probably very dangerous, and decided he would do the same.
After Jarou got in close, Hiris began applying the flame to his sword, which seemed to extend its reach considerably. Jarou clashed with him for a moment, before he rebuffed the red-haired hunter with a small combustion of the black-blue flame separate from his sword. The same would happen with Kuro. They took turns, repeating this exchange for a few minutes, wearing Hiris down greatly.
After a time, when Hiris was beginning to slow down from the exhaustion of consistently fending off at least one Hunter, casting his black flame magic, and throwing wind slashes at the disengaged Hunter, Jarou got himself positioned behind the Necromancer. Kuro was nearing the end of their typical exchange, and just as Hiris was about to have the dark-haired Hunter rebuffed, Jarou stabbed him through the back. His sword pierced cleanly through Hiris’s heart, exiting his body on the other side. The man dropped his sword, which clattered noisily on the ground, and died standing.
Kuro placed a hand on the man’s face, and returned him to dust. The two worked silently to gather up the corrupted Dust into a vial. Once it was all gathered, Jarou dismissed the stone platform, and Kuro dismissed his wind vortex. Leaving them in an empty street, newly decorated with Hiris’s blood, and over where Kuro fought the Restless, burn marks.
Exhausted, the two silently decided they would clean up after checking on the Yun’anum family.
