Millennial Mage

Tala slammed into the ground with enough force to embed herself a foot or two down into it.

She would have landed face first, but she managed to fight her way around in a tight roll, falling on her back instead.

A cloud of dirt exploded out away from her, even as the breath was driven from her lungs.

Her threefold sight showed Rane flattened on the ground nearby, having had enough control to diffuse his own impactful energy without taking the ground-shaking blow.

He had landed on his face, however, and he had been driven all the way down, unable to stop his own motion.

That didn’t bode well. That meant that whatever had affected them had imparted kinetic energy that he couldn’t steal or absorb for once.

The quagmire of power and authority roiling around them was cloying and suffocating at the same time even as she sucked in a gasping breath, more on reflex than out of necessity, which was good, because her armor prevented it from being more than shallow inhale.

Still, she wasn’t going to be taken lightly. Tala shoved outward with her will even as she struggled to her feet in the vibration-loosened soil.

She looked up to see the chicken-legged house bearing down on them, the manic old woman practically frothing at the mouth from within the front window.

Tala didn’t hesitate. This wasn’t a time for half-measures or hesitation. Once she drove the moving house thing back, she could try talking with the clearly delusional old woman.

It was time to show the real state of things. It was time for the woman to realize that this interaction would happen on Tala’s—and Rane’s—terms, their first showing not withstanding.

A portal opened to the holding place within her sanctum and a flurry of siege-orbs shot out, each cracking the air as they targeted various potential weak points in the house and on the crazy old woman.

The aura that Tala had been trying to pin down suddenly solidified, becoming easy to distinguish… it was yellow, barely tinted toward green.

What? That can’t be right.

Even so, the color deepened—without changing tint—around each of her flying siege orbs, the area somehow seeming oversaturated with the sickly yellow hue.

As for her siege orbs?

With a small pop of something that was almost magic, each seemed to be transformed into a fleshy eye in less than a blink of time, even as they continued on their gravitationally empowered arcs.

Her authority over them was utterly shattered at the same time. The shift in what they were broke Tala’s workings too, but that hardly mattered. Their targets were set, for all the good it would do.

Even so, the eyes rotated in the air to regard Tala for the briefest moment, each shooting a scorching beam out to slam into her armored form.

The attacks were more physical than she’d expected, along with the energy brought along for the strikes.

While the heat forced Tala to bleed it off with her mastery over her iron and the white steel, the impacts tossed her backward, despite all that she did to remain in place. The strikes would never have breached her defenses even with far longer exposure, but that hadn’t seemed to be their aim.

They might have been able to hurt her if given enough time—though it would likely have taken long minutes—but less than a second later, the eyes splattered, each against its intended target.

As one slapped the old woman in the head—causing her to jerk back and curse—Tala felt grateful to have at least gained them a little bit of a distraction.

She decided that something odd was going on here, and it might be a good idea to try to solve things with words, or at least to see if they could.

“We aren’t here for you!” Rane’s voice boomed out before Tala could act on her choice.

I love how in sync we are sometimes.

The old woman’s voice came back, seemingly originating from everywhere at once, “Don’t care. Die, scourge!”

Well… that was rather definitive…

At the same time, as if accompanying her voice, the soup of authority and power came crashing back down on Tala once again.

She simply couldn’t keep it at bay, despite easily overpowering the contesting authority wherever she clashed with it directly.

It simply flowed around her efforts, encroaching wherever she wasn’t focused with a speed that would put a charging horse to shame.

Tala was a body-builder, trying to hold up the rain.

-Well, this is frustrating.- Alat conveyed grinding teeth that she didn’t have, as she tried to help Tala throw off the wet blanket of an aura that was continually pressing in.

Rane’s attempts to shoot himself forward kept being stifled by similarly flowing attacks against his authority. As such, he had quickly determined to take a different tact and simply charged forward with quick, powerful strides, Force already in hand.

Then, the house was upon them.

Rane and Force somehow passed through the house before a large bit of wood on the back side whipped out, smacking him on the back of the head and sending him tumbling once more.

How did that even connect? She grimaced internally. Did it? Or did his magic move him out of the way?

-I think it moved him? I don’t recall hearing an impact, but there is a lot of noise coming from that old house…-

Tala didn’t feel like having a house step on her, so she jumped to the side, lashing out with Flow even as the chicken-foot came down hard, making the ground shake all around her.

As it turned out, however, the chicken-foot that she hit was an illusion… an illusion that had been perfectly replicated all the way through so that it appeared real even to Tala’s threefold sight.

It had been real enough to shake the ground too, somehow…

Regardless, Flow went through without any resistance, and then Tala was stomped into the ground with the literal weight of a house on her back.

She hadn’t even seen the leg coming before it caught her.

Rust this.

She didn’t have the aura authority to flicker away, but she did have Kit.

A portal opened below her, and she dropped through. As soon as she was fully in her sanctum, the portal closed and another opened before her, spitting her out above the offending house.

She was done playing.

This crazy lady wanted to fight to the death? Tala would give her what she wanted.

Tala opened her mouth—and a new portal within it—and let out the last burst of compressed air from her sanctum lung.

Pointing down as it was, the line of power couldn’t extend as far as usual before igniting, so Tala specifically reduced the power that the containment scripts in her mouth imparted.

As such, the roaring explosion started directly above the house, showering over it, like a flood of flesh-eating insects crashing over a corpse.

The entire thing eroded in that single short breath.

It seemed like the brief, furious battle was over.

Except that Tala had been watching closely.

She opened a new portal across her back, sucking in more air as quickly as she was able, creating enough force that her descent slowed to an almost lazy drift downward.

As to what she’d seen?

-That old hag wasn’t real?-

Oh, she’s real, she just wasn’t there. Somehow. Any luck finding out what she is?

-How’d you know I was looking?-

Because I really wished I’d had time to go through Master Grediv’s books so we might understand what this is. It’s clearly taking two Paragons to engage it so…?

-Ahh, how nice it is to be us.-

Indeed. So?

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-Baba Yaga. It is unknown if there is more than one or not, as none have ever been captured or killed. She is a Refined level threat from the Paragon book. Not human or arcane… not really, though she is closer to them than us. Immortal, but she seems to like to eat children. She is theorized to be the ancestor or creator of the bog hags.-Nôv(el)B\\jnn

Tala felt her entire body flash cold before a raging heat bloomed up from within her soul. Eating children as a general rule was bad enough, but something else had struck closer to home. Bog hags…

Alat didn’t let Tala sidetrack her. -She is an absolute master of authority. Apparently a boon was used in the past—by a grieving parent—to wish her dead. The god-beast could not fulfill the request and the boon was used for something else.- Alat conveyed a poignant pause, even while not wasting the time to actually give such. -The god-beast was Anatalis.-

Rust again. But something within Tala didn’t care.

-She uses illusions and… Reality curses apparently? Some believe she is the origin of dasgannach, but Master Grediv recorded that he didn’t put much credence to the theory.-

Please keep the information to just what I need to know, Alat.

-Right, sorry. No gate, but she’ll have several enslaved to her will. That’s one of the reasons for her… tastes in eating. One theory is even that bog hags that successfully eat enough children become Baba Yaga, but that hasn’t ever been proven. Regardless, those souls are the source of her power, but she can draw from her environment as well. I’ve conveyed all this to Enar, and through him to Rane.-

Thank you.

There was a massive crash, drawing Tala’s attention.

Rane was fighting back and forth with an old woman wielding a large… pestle?

It looked like a massive grinding stick for processing herbs for use in alchemy and other recipes.

It was somehow turning Force aside, despite the obviously Paragon level magic behind each of Rane’s precise, powerful strikes.

-Last thing, There is a note: Kill if possible, but don’t trade lives. She is notorious for tricking her enemies into doing so, only for their friends to find that they’ve been slain killing an incredibly convincing illusion.-

Noted.

And without further delay, Tala reacted.

She could feel the roiling authority around her, making it almost impossible to even feel Rane’s within the mess, despite their soulbond.

Magic was everywhere, but Rane’s gate stood out like a bonfire… much like the forty-four other souls that gushed forth power from two hilltops away, retreating into the distance.

Get Terry out here. Tell him what he needs to know. This thing needs to die if we can swing it. He shouldn’t throw his life away, but we’ll bring him back if he dies.

-Will do.-

It had been less than a minute since the clash had begun, and Tala was rusting furious.

Even as Tala’s foot touched down on the top of one of the higher hills nearby, a portal opened and Terry flickered out, already gone again, only to appear farther away, moving as fast as Tala had ever seen him move.

But for some reason, he was swerving away from the direction of the gates that Tala could sense retreating toward the northwest.

What is he…?

Terry stopped mid-run, turning around and screeching in obvious warning back toward Tala.

She processed the warning even as the authority of the outer layer of her armor was violated and she noticed the attack.

A club of unyielding stone smashed into the side of her armored head, sending her flipping feet-over-head as the Baba Yaga screeched from behind, where she’d been standing, “Never take me! I will be free, free I tell you! You won’t take my snacks, nor my power, nor my house! No! Mine, mine, mine!”

The gates that Tala had sensed in the distance flickered and vanished. Eight other gates seemingly revealed to the due west.

Tala groaned internally even as she vaulted back to her feet. The creature wasn’t hurting her or Rane, even if she was able to move them about, but they couldn’t even find her.

The repetition of ‘mine’ did remind her of the dasgannach, but it had a different flavor to it than what Tala knew so intrinsically. Though, without her own intimate understanding of dasgannach, she had to admit that they’d have seemed very close to the same.

“-Jump!-”

Tala did so without thought but as she did so, Alat’s voice cracked out within her head. Only then did Tala realize that the instruction to jump had been one she heard with her ears, rather than within her mind. -No! That was—-

WHACK!

Tala went sailing through the air yet again, but she was done being a plaything.

She rolled with the hit, almost instantly facing back the way she’d come.

Her mouth and helmet opened once again—along with the portal—and a cone of dissolution washed out in fire and destruction. Obliterating the entirehilltop that she’d been standing on.

Baba Yaga’s cackling laugh came from all around her, but there was a hitch to it as the overwhelming dissolution in the air disrupted the workings that were creating the sound.

The working that had been attached to Tala at the time of the hit.

She’s creating illusions anchored to us?

-That would make tracking her through the illusions all but impossible.-

Tala screamed internally in frustration. Misdirection layered overtop of deception.

In every clash, Tala was overpowering her opponent, but she was not only failing to harm the crazy old woman whom she was fighting, she was losing due to tricks and misdirections and other frustrating twists.

She was being moved about almost as effectively as a puppet might have been.

It was no wonder that this Baba Yaga was still around, even if there was only one of her.

The only thing that she was absolutely certain wasn’t an illusion was the fact that the creature’s power was in the Refined range. She was sure of that for two reasons.

First, Master Grediv had stated such confidently within his book, not as a statement of the creature’s ‘current’ power but as a definitive fact of its existence.

Second, if it had matched her in advancement, she had no doubt that she’d already be dead.

No wonder this thing was in the ‘Paragon’ book… She swallowed reflexively, realizing that creatures like this filled that book. There was also the fact that if they hadn’t advanced in the Lunar Hunt…

Though, if they hadn’t, other things would have been different, so they might not have run into the Baba Yaga at all.

…But she was distracting herself, and Rane was fighting illusions… illusions that would still harm him—or at least move him about, bone-armor and all—if he didn’t treat them as real.

Ideas?

-How crazy are you willing to be?-

I don’t want to die or kill my husband.

-That’s fair. Gravity increase to keep yourself in more locked positions, then flail the surroundings with various weaponry to kill anything whether you can see it or not?-

That is… destructive, but I don’t think it would work. It’s too limited in area of affect.

-Fair. Pulses of dissolution breath?-

Similar issue, but less chance of success.

-Void-Flow, whipping in arcs around us?-

That’s not… reckless?

-Do you need plans to be reckless?

No, but you… never mind.

-If you want to be reckless, we could always call on Lisa to come out and help?-

That would be reckless, because I doubt he could help, and he might just be killed. If he is able to help us, we’d likely be in his debt.

-Yeah, I would not recommend that. What about a dissolution aura? You’ve only done something like that a couple of times before, but it should be useful.-

Oh… yeah. That could be useful. It was going to be… difficult on her though.

She landed once more, retracting her armor and sending a large portion of her elk-leathers into her sanctum for safe-keeping long with Flow, her through-spike, and what few accessories she’d had on her belt. She then forcibly inverted the magics embedded in the outer layers of her skin all across her body. She severed the elk leathers, willing for the part within the sanctum to be the ‘real’ portion, and what remained behind were simply clothes, much as she’d done for Fannas in the past.

I hope he and Kannis are doing alright… But it was hardly the time for such things.

She focused on those closest to nerve clusters first, so there was only a single burst of pain—like ripping all her skin off at once—and then she didn’t have the ability to feel pain, so it got better… except for the memory.

As a Paragon, the power flowing through her natural magics—momentarily held as inverted versions of themselves through her authority and pure will-power—was now flowing off of her in every direction, the very ground beneath her bloody feet turning to powder and starting to blaze.

I’d say this is going to hurt, but…

-Yeah, I’m glad you don’t have nerves too.-

Power and fire exploded outward, away from her, the detonating air carrying the dissolution power ever outward, obliterating her clothing and everything around herself in a wave of magic-destroying power.

A renewed cackle from the Baba Yaga cut off in a hiss of anger so loud it was easily heard over the roar of the flame… even with Tala’s ears already gone.

Tala caught the briefest glimpse of an old woman shooting away from her toward a nearby chicken-legged house even as the magics around them were utterly eroded, seemingly exposing them to Tala’s sight.

The Baba Yaga’s face looked like it had been melted or partly burned, the wound fresh.

Tala had done that.

She immediately opened a portal into her refilled sanctum lung, shooting a blazing lance after the Baba Yaga.

A quarter of the house vanished in a roaring explosion to match the inferno around Tala, herself, but then the creature and her house were gone, and not due to Tala’s efforts, unfortunately.

Feeling a bit manic, Tala barely held back a cackle of her own, her nose melting off in the dissolution and heat. I removed my nose to spite her face.

-And… you’re done.- Alat forcibly cut off the flow of power to the inverted spellforms.

A moment later, power shunted to Tala’s healing spell-work—inside and out—and new flesh blossomed into being, covering Tala with horrible itching as all her nerves regrew and reconnected at once.

The dissolution continued to roll outward, some clinging to the very real Baba Yaga house as it fled across the plains.

Tala also detected flickers of dimensional energy in hot pursuit.

A moment later, it shed the last vestiges of Tala’s magic and vanished into the rolling hill-country.

Well, rust her, and good riddance. Tala then promptly collapsed to her knees, gasping for breath that she shouldn’t need.

-Oh, wow. Your body did not like that. We should do something to make it stronger.-

Tala responded with something between a growl and a groan, not dignifying the joke with more than that.

Terry was pursuing the Baba Yaga, and she found herself curious if he would succeed where seemingly Paragons had been failing for generations.

Best of luck, Terry. I believe in you.