Chapter 122: Shared Strength
"They escaped," Nino reported, easily keeping pace with the Swordmaster of Destruction. This was likely to be because the Swordmaster was still carrying Entropy, who was apparently unconscious, and a struggling Sarph.
"Unfortunate," the massive blue warrior rumbled in his dehydrated voice. "Slow them down. If I make it to the Fissure first, I can ambush them,"
Nino nodded and kept pace until they reached a large cave, where the route split. The Swordmaster took the right fork, and Nino span, watching the entrance. The four wizards would be only minutes behind.
With a flick of her wrist and a flashing grey magic circle, she threw a wire of steel fibre across the room, before slinging the other end to the far wall so that it formed a tightrope. A second wire joined the first, stretched perpendicularly across the cave. Nino threw more wires in every direction, crisscrossing the cave like a spiderweb, each so thin that they could barely be seen.
Balanced on the central strings like a spider, Nino watched the entrance and waited, barely even breathing.
She would protect her mistress. Even if it cost her life.
It was only a couple of minutes before the four wizards in pursuit caught up. Having been warned by Erik, who had heard Nino breathing, the group paused at the threshold of the cave, locking eyes with the woman who seemed to be standing on thin air. Not knowing what to look for, the millimetre-thick wires she had filled the room with were invisible to their eyes.
"So are you going to fight us this time?" Calvin seemed annoyed.
"Maybe," Nino noncommittally replied.
"Rush her," Erik growled. Calvin and Kit nodded, and Grace bobbed her head. "Wha - wait!" Pierce protested, but Erik and Calvin charged, Grace following, and Pierce pursued with arms outstretched. Kit, though, hung back, eyeing Nino suspiciously. "There's something familiar about her," he observed.
Nino raised her hand, and suddenly all four wizards were pulled by an invisible force to the nearby walls. Erik and Pierce to the left, and Grace and Calvin to the right.
"What the hell?" Erik demanded, finding his arms pinned.
"What is this?" Calvin echoed.
"My trap. Now just stay there and no one has to get hurt," Nino eyed them warily.
Grace squinted. "There's little . . wires or something. They're almost invisible,"
"You're tying us up? Again? Really?" the brown-haired blacksmith demanded. "I'd fold my arms if I could move them!"
"Poison Dragon's . . wait, no, I'd hit myself," Erik realised. The wires were less than a millimetre thick but felt as strong as diamond.
"You won't interfere in my mistress' plans," Nino declared, scrutinising them.
"Kit? Help?" Pierce suggested, but the Yokai was already analysing the magic bindings. "There's no knots or locks. I can't get you out,"
Grace was too busy focusing; she had to perfectly isolate the space that her body was occupying and use her spatial magic. And suddenly, she rippled and vanished from the restraints.
Nino started, looking at the empty space. "Huh?" she eloquently questioned.
"Reality Dragon's Roar!" Grace started, launching herself from the roof of the cave wall and preparing an attack - but her chest caught something invisible in mid-air, which she bounced off, sending her attack wide. Nino smiled as Grace screamed, feeling a line of pain blossom across her chest, and, spinning her arms, she bent gravity and caught herself in mid-air. Grace suddenly bit her lip, feeling blood in her hand, and saw a gash of red across her palm.
"This entire cave is full of my wires," Nino shook her head. "You could call me a spider, and your friends are bugs caught in my web. Do you really think you can fight me in my territory? Your Spatial Magic won't help you,"
Grace scanned her surroundings. The wires were all but invisible. She could see faint, intermittent twinkles of light, but picking out the shapes would be impossible. And, with all these invisible dangers, so was jumping through space within the cave like she normally would. She looked at the bloody scratches on her chest and hand, still hanging in midair. They didn't hurt much, but she was losing blood. Too many cuts from touching those wires and eventually she'd pass out from blood loss.
There was a flash of light, and Grace suddenly jerked sideways, barely dodging a metal spike that came out of nowhere. Nino snorted, wielding a metal spike on the end of a wire. "Good reflexes," the maid observed, retracting her weapon and darting through the air, effortlessly weaving through her spiderweb of deadly wires. Grace grimaced and took aim. "Reality Dragon's Roar!"
The blast passed around the wires, not damaging them but not being stopped by then, and caught Nino's flank, sending her flying - until she caught an invisible wire, swung around it like a trapeze performer and went flying upwards, where, once again, she cast the metal spike at Grace. The Dragon Slayer barely registered it as a flash of light, and then she was stabbed in the shoulder. It was only a few centimetres off being a fatal blow. Nino tugged her wire, and the spike came rushing back, Grace's blood forming a trail in the air. Stunned by the pain, Grace lost her levitation and crashed to the ground, bouncing off wires and taking fresh lacerations to her arms and legs before hitting the ground in a heap.
Pierce gritted his teeth, watching Grace fight. "She needs help," Wirh a violent motion, he struggled furiously against the bonds. The razor-sharp wires cut into his skin, leaving red lines, but he ignored the pain.
Erik, however, couldn't ignore what his friend was doing to himself. "Pierce! Just, stop, okay?" he demanded.
"I can't stop!" Pierce shouted at him. "I have to protect her, I - I can't fail!"
"Grace can take care of herself," Erik assured him.
"No, she couldn't!" Pierce was working himself into a frenzy of protectiveness and fury. "She was dead! We were all dead! We were dead and it was my fault and I have to be better so that won't happen again!" Suddenly, there was a wash of heat from Pierce's hand. The two men's eyes swivelled downwards to Pierce's guild mark. His hand was swarthed in blue flames.
"This again, huh?" Pierce recalled a few weeks ago, when this same unknown power had helped him to defeat Asakura in the Grand Magic Games. It had let him combine Take Overs. Squinting, he noticed that the cords weren't burning. They were metal, they had to be fireproof . .
Pierce quickly ran through his Take Overs. None of them would get him out of this situation alone. But maybe together . . "Take Over! Pokemon Soul!" he commanded, his body forming into white and grey metal. "Take Over! Stygimoloch Soul!" The power of his dinosaur friend coursed through his body, the metal becoming hard and knobbly, horns emerging around his head and his skull thickening.
And he slammed his doubly reinforced head into the wall, leaving a dent.
Erik watched in morbid fascination as Pierce beat against the wall, again and again, realising suddenly that he was trying to loosen the wires. If he couldn't cut through them, he could give himself room and make them loose enough to climb out.
But Nino wasn't having any of it. "No," she commanded, flicking her wrist, and the wires tightened once again, pinning Pierce once more.
"No! No!" Pierce roared, his anger and frustration starting to overwhelm him.
"Give up!" Nino shouted over him. "You won't escape! I'll hold you here for as long as I have to. You won't harm my mistress!"
"DON'T YOU DARE HURT MY BROTHER!" And suddenly a flaming blue uppercut struck Nino's cheek, sending her flying upwards and into her own web, where she narrowly caught herself.
"Oh, no way," Calvin gasped. "What the heck?" Erik agreed.
Grace stood with her left arm raised and a fierce scowl that exposed her fangs. She had shifted into her Dragon Force form, with semicircular horns that joined at the tips emerging through her hair, which paled to a shade of very light grey, a short, scaled tail that ended in a blade with a wicked curve, and her left arm was coated in the scales and claws of a dragon. But the same blue flame that covered her brother had engulfed her like a second skin, washing out of her eyes and cloaking her left arm like a gauntlet.
"What? But - the wires!" Nino protested. Grace had been on the far side of the cave, there should have been a dozen wires separating them.
The flaming Dragon Slayer spat a chunk of dissipating ethernano out from her fangs. "You can't cut through a dragon's scales," she hissed. "Your wires aren't that sharp,"
Nino growled and flicked her wrist, and suddenly the metal spike was back, dancing on the end of a wire towards Grace. "You've left yourself vulnerable, then!" she roared in response.
With a wave, the greenette caught the projectile in a shimmer of bent space, sending it flying in a different direction. Nino grimaced, twisting her wrist, and the projectile bent back around and targeted Grace again. She spun, opening a second rift, which the spike flew into again and was suddenly lancing towards the point between the maid's eyes.
Nino fumed and redirected the projectile again, but Grace was done. "Enough!" she snapped and closed her fists, closing her bends in space and ripping the wires apart. No longer connected to its owner, the spike sunk to the ground.
Nino screamed, the sudden feedback temporarily stunning her. Grace bared her fangs in a smile, knowing this was her chance. "Reality Dragon's Transdimensional Flaming Gatling!" she roared, opening a dozen rifts simultaneously and enveloping her enemy in a flurry of burning punches from every direction.
Crying out, Nino fell to the ground as, all around them, the wires in the room vanished into flashes of ethernano. Breathing heavily, Grace grinned.
"Are you alright?" Pierce immediately demanded, shrinking back into his normal form and making for Grace, then pausing, realising she was still engulfed in mysterious flame.
"Hold on. It's not over," the greyette warned him, striding forwards. Nino had hit the ground in a kneeling slump, her hair fallen over her face, obscuring her expression. One hand was rigidly supporting her, the other was splayed and useless.
"Do you surrender?" Grace asked, walking closer and leaving fiery blue footprints.
Suddenly the metal spike flew across the floor and into Nino's open hand, and, as though she were a machine that had been turned back on, the maid looked up with an unearthly light in her eyes and lunged, wielding the spike in her suddenly-functional right hand, aiming to drive it into Grace's heart.
With her scaly left hand, Grace caught the blow. The point of the spike hit the armour on her palm, and the blue fire roared, scorching Nino's hand. For a second they struggled, and the fire coating the rest of Grace's body died down, coalescing in her hand. "That's enough!" she roared, throwing the energy outwards in a massive fireball that threw Nino against the far wall, leaving flickering blue embers on the rock around her.
Gritting her teeth and struggling against her own magic, Grace suddenly exhaled, her horns, scales and tail vanishing into the ethernano.
Instantly, Pierce swooped in and caught her, Erik only a second behind. "Are you alright?" the Tamer asked. "That was incredible," the other Dragon commended her.
"I'm fine," Grace pushed them both away, looking dazed but standing on her own feet.
"How did you do that?" Calvin asked. "With the fire? Both of you?"
"I don't really know," Pierce admitted. "That's only the second time for me, it seems to happen when I get really worked up about something. Was that your first time?" he asked Grace.
"Yeah . . it was awesome, though," the greenette grinned.
"It sure was," Erik nodded his approval.
The four of them briefly regarded Nino. "I don't think she's getting up any time soon," the blacksmith offered.
"No reason to hang around, then. Are you good to keep going?" Pierce asked Grace, gesturing to the two possible exits.
"Sure, but which way did they -" Grace didn't even finish her sentence before Erik gestured to the right-hand fork. "That way. I hear voices,"
His sister briefly exposed her fangs in a smile. "Then what are we waiting for?"
But, as they left, Kit paused and sniffed Nino. "Something's still bugging me about all this," he admitted to the group. "It's like the answer's right there, and I'm just missing one little piece,"
"Keep thinking," Pierce assured him. "It'll come to you,"
-[CoT]-
The Phoenixes finally emerged into another cavern, this one far more vast. Indeed, it was more like a massive underground ravine, completely closed off to sunlight, than a mere cave.
They immediately noticed a few things; first of all, green light permeated the fissure. The source of this was a lightning-shaped gash in the wall of the cave some metres away and on the far side, glowing with green magic. Nearby it was some kind of apparatus, seeming reminiscent of a magical cannon but full of glass panes and mirrors. In the corner, Sarph and Entropy were both unconscious, the former bound. Entropy was softly snoring.
And in the centre of the cave, facing them, was a massive humanoid figure, clad in blue armour. He stared down at the four wizards, menace in his orange eyepieces.
"I guess we're fighting him now," Pierce drew to a halt, Erik, Grace and Calvin flanking him. "The Swordmaster of Destruction, huh?" Erik smiled. "I don't know about this," Calvin sounded concerned, and seemed to be trying to hide his fear. Kit jumped onto Pierce's shoulder. "Yokai Unison, say when,"
Something in the Swordmaster's stance shifted. "He's planning something!" Erik shouted, hearing the thoughts of the Swordmaster of Destruction. "Conqueror's Haki? What's -"
And, suddenly, there was a sensation like a million lions roaring all at once. Overwhelming waves of sheer power assailed their senses, the Swordmaster barely moving and yet somehow oppressing their very beings so fiercely that it was all they could do to remain standing. The sheer force threw Kit's ectoplasm off Pierce's shoulder, sending him flying into the wall behind them. Erik was the first to succumb, his remaining eye sliding shut, and he hit the ground with a thump. Grace started, seeing her brother collapse, and her willpower evaporated, sending her collapsing nearby, similarly unconscious. Calvin slumped a moment later, eyes fluttering shut.
'What the hell is this power?' Pierce silently, fruitlessly questioned, gritting his teeth and struggling with all his being to stay on his feet. 'It's not magic. I've never felt anything like it!'
Heavy footsteps interrupted his train of thought, and with an immense force of willpower, he raised his head against the intangible wind. The Swordmaster of Destruction was striding towards him, raising a fist. Normally, Pierce would dodge, but struggling against this . . Conqueror's Haki, whatever that meant, it was all he could do not to fall unconscious on the spot. Moving was out of the question.
For a moment, the futility of the situation overwhelmed him. The Swordmaster of Destruction. What an unassailable foe. He was nothing like anything they'd ever faced. They'd at least been able to attack Eternity, during the fight against Kairos End. But whatever kind of magic, or whatever this power was, that the Swordmaster was wielding against them, he was untouchable.
And that fact hurt even more than the blow to his head that sent him to join his friends in unconsciousness.
-[CoT]-
The Sonic Boom pulled up outside a ramshackle building on the outskirts of Stormhearth, a small town not far from Demuri Estate.
"So, we're here to meet your friend?" Boomer checked.
"Yeah. I think you'll be very interested to meet him," Yurei assured him, climbing out of the three-wheeler and making for the house.
Tyria and Boomer followed, finding the Yokai-possessed Assassin banging on the door of the building, which they now realised seemed to be some sort of blacksmithery. "Hey! It's me, open up!"
There was a thunk, as though something heavy had been moved away from the door, and the wood swung away to reveal a scruffy boy with black hair, wearing a brown jacket and tan shorts. He had a sword in his hand and was holding it in a guarded position, watching the three of them carefully.
"There's no need for that," Yurei declared, and the boy relaxed a little, recognising Yurei.
"Who are you?" Tyria asked, regarding the young boy inquisitively.
"The name's Calvin Jones. But my friends call me Cal. What's it to you?"
A/N
A/N
Gasp! A second Calvin! Calvin, why didn't you tell us you had a twin with the same name as you?
. . Oh, is that not the case? Whoops. Now, Cal has black hair, whereas the Calvin we've known since Chapter 119 has brown hair. Henceforth, they shall be referred to as Black Cal and Brown Calvin respectively.
Wait, is that not what we're doing? No? Well, crap. I'll just shut up now, since I obviously have no idea what's going on.
Also, it has been brought to my attention that Pierce has not had a lot of character development over the most recent couple of arcs. This issue has now been rectified. The patch notes are in the developer's log. Peace!