Day 5 (Or That Time There Was A Cliffhanger)

Hazel together with Inky's look-alike strode out of the portal, the hole in the fabric of space-time hissing shut behind them.

What must've been Inky's sister—or cousin, maybe—was garbed in stereotypical mage robes, the colour of soft azure. That, and she had a pitch-black staff. It was more like what you'd expect from a mage compared to Inky with her sword and steampunk coat (or it's what I think it is, anyway).

Hmmm. Lemme see.

Observe.

Prisciana Hessarian (Human) — ?

The Sage and the Fool

Level 114

Grand Hierophant

I squinted at her. She squinted back. Her green eyes left as quickly as they met mine, whips snapping towards none other than Inky. Shocking, I know.

Observe.

Grand Hierophant (Mage/Cleric)

Hierophants who have shattered the shackles of their physical forms. To attain such power, Hierophants pledge their souls to beings beyond the mortal realms. Whether a Grand Hierophant aligns themselves with good or evil, their prowess with both offensive and defensive magicks are a boon to their friends and a danger to their enemies.

"Let's finish this."

Hazel's gravelly voice shook me out of my reading session. I wasn't listening to their little pre-combat banter—it wasn't as important to me as peeking on… Prisciana with Observe.

Yikes. Like, no. Just no. I mean, Incitatia isn't exactly something I'd name my daughter, but at least it's waaaaaaaay better than fucking Prisciana. Like, imagine being called—

Hazel came with all the fury of a wrecking ball, his tree-trunk girth slamming into Ruby and I. His hand slapped the rim of my bloodshield. My wrist quivered as I slashed at his back with my blade.

It drew a beautiful arc, blood falling into a crescent upon the crimson of my bloodsword.

…

Ha! Take that! Not so EEPy anymore, eh?! Eh?

"Get back!" Qrow said, dodging Hazel's fist. "Whatever you do, don't get close!"

Uh, like, I'm pretty sure I need to get close to Mister Wrecking Ball over there. You know? To do my thing?

Qrow's sword crunched and lengthened, its blade curving to form the head of a scythe before he leapt at Hazel and—

"Beloved!"

Little Miss Schnee-byou twirled, golden glyphs suddenly spinning around the two of us. Tentacles of all shapes and sizes drummed her hastily erected shield.

"Mayhaps 'tis time for the Guardian and the Heroine to smite the Tentacle Hentai of the most terrifying?!" Fiona said, the sharp edges of her glyphs sawing the tentacles off with an exaggerated wave of her hand.

The Tentacle Hentai of the Most Terrifying growled, his severed tentacles flopping all over.

"My name is Ti!" the Assassin said.

"Yeah, like, no," I said, snickering and brandishing my bloodsword and bloodshield. "It's totally Hentai. Tentacle Hentai. You know. Ti, if you strip all the letters in between. Pretty clever, right?"

"Grrrrrrr!"

With enough growls to make a grizzly bear wet their pants, Ti summoned more tentacles from the shadows of his coat. They whipped through the air, slithering like snakes—because they were snakes. Each of them had fangs dripping with pink syrup—syrup that scorched the tiles black—and misshapen eyes that burned with violet fire.

Something tells me that's not something I'd like to get hit with.

Luckily, Little Miss Schnee-byou got the message. With a flourish of her bow, she fired back with a barrage of thunder. The golden bolts fried Ti's hentacles (ha! get it?) into crisps calamari, the crackle of charred flesh a song to my ears.

"Courage!" Leli said behind us, firing a volley of arrows at the now defenceless Ti—who scrambled behind a column to avoid it. "I have Valor!"

Oh, sweet Hesus, yes. Of course I know what they're talking about. I'm, like, trying super hard not to fangirl right now.

"Hmph!" Fiona smirked and raised her bow towards the cracked roof. A pillar of light shone upon her, mysteriously. "Let us sing then, Nightingale, and fill these halls with the song once more!"

{Buffs Received!}

{Song of Valor {S} — Leliana}

{Song of Courage {A} — Fiona Schnee}

Beautiful.

My eyes misted over as I hacked at one of Ti's tentacles, the Buffs to all my stats effectively pumping caffeine into my bones.

Simply beautiful.

Even though it wasn't really a song, but more like a war cry that soared over the frantic shuffling of boots, the sharp, clanking of steel, and the harsh roaring of gunfire. The air tasted of incense and iron, the musk of decaying bones awoken from deep slumber thick in the wind.

And, no, I'm not just waxing here to sound poetic.

Skeletal Grimm fuelled by magic—exactly the kind that killed me in the damned Tutorial—clawed their way out their graves, their graves being the ground under.

"Rise, my pets!" Prisciana said. "Show these savages the power a trueborn mage holds!"

"Oh, come on," I muttered, parrying a skeleton's sword. Steel clanged in my ears. "Necromancy, huh?"

The skeleton carried another one, and I had to catch the second blow with the cuff of my wrist. I pushed through the jarring impact and bashed its skull off with my bloodshield. It groaned, its teeth clattering as it rolled away, eating dirt all the while and leaving teeth-shaped trails on the sand.

Normally, I would've felt pain. Agony. I would've recoiled at the sight of a sword digging into my sleeve and failing to draw blood, my veins on fire. I would've flinched and seriously reconsidered my life choices. But not with all the Buffs pushing me to a whole new level, I guess.

Seriously, these Buffs were like drugs to my EEPish brain. Like, really. STR, INT, CON, WIS… every single one of my Attributes had a plus sign beside it. And I could tell they weren't done buffing up yet.

I weaved around a skeleton in bulky armour, letting one of Ti's misfired tentacles pierce its rear. The pink appendage blew its chest apart with a sharp crack. Its severed spine bent like a whip, almost smacking me in the face.

Another wave of Buffs lit my HUD—or at least that's what I'm calling it—as I sprinted after Ti, Fiona never far behind with her arrows and spells.

{Buffs Received!}

{Vagabonds Battlecry: Try Not To Die {A} — Nexus Shade}

{Vagabonds Battlecry: Heroes Never Die {A} — Fiona Schnee}

{March of the Inquisition: Nightingale's Song {A} — Leliana}

{March of the Inquisition: Harbinger's Flame {A} — Incitatia Hessarian}

...

{Counterspell {A} — Incitatia Hessarian}

That last Buff came just in time, with a blizzard bursting from Prisciana's staff. Directly towards me. It blew the loose strands of my hair all over. The chill flushed the heat from my face, but it didn't hurt.

Like, it didn't chunk my HP at all. A sheen of magic—invisible to the untrained eye—coated me from head to toe. Thankfully, it didn't cancel out my own magic or the Buffs already on me. Counterspell vanished the second its job was done. Not that I expected Inky, Lady Magnus Dei of all people, to fuck up the timing of a spell.

With a grin on her face, Inky winked at me. She raised a thumb before thrusting her blazing staff, pointy tip first, towards Prisciana and driving her back against a corner. And no, she didn't say anything remotely chuuni as she flung a rain of fireballs at her sister.

Leli tried to silently close the gap and burst down the Hierophant—but she blinked out of existence and reappeared on top of a pillar. A giant snowball fell from the heavens, rolling towards Leli and Inky, tracking ice over the sands and dividing the battlefield once again.

"Behold!" Fiona said, Skadi in its crossbow form spitting thunder at Ti. "Starburst Stream!"

I ducked under a gigantic skeleton's sword, DS-boss style. The cold steel swept past my head. I could've sworn my life—all two of them—flashed before my eyes. But that didn't happen at all. Like, come on, we didn't have time for a flashback.

"Angel Burst!" Fiona screamed, a pale-blue glyph spinning on her right hand—the one without Skadi. Spikes of ice arced towards Ti. "Chase!"

While Fiona hounded Ti using more chuuni-fied spells, I set to work on bringing down Budget Skeletor. I struck at the back of its legs using a Reaping Slash—a flaming one. It sheared through Skeletor's brittle bones and sent the splintered pieces whirling across the chamber.

Not that I could keep track of where it went. Hazel's game of cat and mouse with Qrow and Team SSBR doubled the chaos in the room, and the magical duel between Inky and Prisciana tripled that double.

Like, geez. RPGs don't do this kind of scene justice at all, and I don't think I could put it in words either. Yeah, shame on me. I know, I know. It's like watching a recording—a first-person POV recording—of a thousand-man raid or something, complete with dazzling spells and loud, booming explosions everywhere.

Before the toppling Skeletor could crush me under its weight, I sprinted past its severed knees. I threw a couple of Arcane Barrage on the back of its head, just to be sure. The bolts of thunder caved its Grimm skull in, black smoke wafting off the hole. Oddly enough, it smelled of chicken that had been left roasting in the oven for far too long. Too fuckin' long for KFC standards.

I gagged, desperately pushing the EEPy stuff back as I turtled behind my shield, weathering an onslaught of tentacles and magic.

Despite my efforts, Prisciana's Deep Freeze chilled the blood in my bones, my movements suddenly sluggish and my eyesight muted, grey. Ti's tentacles punched me in the gut, their teeth clipping through the links of my mail. I skidded a few inches back, the Abyssal Poison gnawing at my HP all while Creeping Death fought to keep it out of the red.

"Eir!" Inky gasped, white light shimmering on the ruby of her staff. "Righteous—"

Thunder flashed, and she had to change her healing spell mid-cast into one that shielded her from the miniature storm—a Righteous Seal instead of a Righteous Restore. Luckily, Fiona's A Song Through The Ages dispelled both Deep Freeze and Abyssal Poison a second before my HP hit the red.

"Hmph!" Prisciana scoffed. "You don't have the luxury of babysitting your friends, sister!"

Babysitting? Like, hello?

I scowled, firing back with an Arcane Barrage supercharged with Blood of the First. The familiar dizziness creeping up my neck, the heady dose of power, and the warm, cloying blood dripping down my wrists served a potent reminder of how weak I really—still—was.

The bullets of wind slammed against Prisciana's lazily conjured shield. She smirked, snorted, and waved her hand in contempt. My Arcane Barrage, fuelled with half of my MP and backed by Blood of the First, amounted to absolutely nothing as it fizzled out of existence.

"Well," I muttered, turning Blood of the First off. "Shit."

In exchange, Prisciana swung her staff, summoning a dozen man-sized tornadoes. They tore across the hall, kicking up sand and debris, pretty much leaving me no time to dodge.

But that's the thing. I don't need to dodge. I'm a tank with anti-magic gear, remember?

"Blood of the Pristine!" I raised my shield the exact moment the little dust devils converged on my spot.

They, too, turned into red motes of mana before the light of my bloodshield.

"You are Arkhalla's champion," Prisciana said, her staff spinning to blow Leli's arrows away. "Hmph. I see. That rusty old relic you possess is none other than her shield. You must be none other than the one known as Eir."

"It's a bloodshield, thank you," I said, "and your name stinks! I mean, Prisciana? That's, like, yuck!"

"Bwahahahaha!" Inky clutched her stomach, white fire spiralling around her, sculpted into the shape of a dragon. "She be called Ciana, eh? All of us be hating our real names, eh, Elizabeth?!"

Ugh, like.

I rolled my eyes.

I'm not even gonna acknowledge that with a response.

"O' exalted emperor of the celestial skies…" Inky stabbed her staff towards Ciana, the dragon made of white fire—now significantly larger and more detailed—following the trajectory of its shining gem. "Einherfuehrer!"

I didn't manage to see how Ciana countered Inky's nuke. Ti's tentacles returned with a vengeance and more Grimm Skeletons shambled their way to me.

Arkhalla's bloodsword hacked at them, blowing them into smithereens with all the righteous fury of a goddess.

An edgy, vampire goth goddess.

Her gentle hands guided mine into strikes so powerful that they stirred genuine fear in my heart and sent tremors of pain wracking my limbs. Every swing of my bloodsword ruptured the air, blasting turbulent wind into my ears. Reaping Slash burned hotter, sharper—all because it wasn't only my mana flowing into it anymore.

"Hurry… for the walls are weak…"

Hurrying, hurrying! Like, I'm hurrying my ass off here!

"Beloved!" Fiona screamed, Skadi's wings spread-eagled, an arrow inexplicably levelled at me. Golden thunder crackled along its frosted sights. "Below!"

Below?!

Crack!

Shit!

The world flipped upside-down as I dived into another dodge roll, the massive tentacle brushing my ass instead of plunging right into it, surprise butt-sex style.

"Fuck you, Ti!" I said, firing an Arcane Barrage at the Assassin crawling out the hole on the ground. "Fuck you and your mother!"

"Likewise, hm?" Ti said, pink eyes darting around the chamber. His tentacles danced and shielded him from my fireballs. "You've eluded my—"

"Have at thee, villain!" Fiona said, lightning bursting from Skadi. The golden sheen of her magic eclipsed the harsh, Vacuan sun. "Murderous Thunderous Wrath of the Immortal Witch Queen!"

Oh, great, her quote unquote spells are getting longer, aren't they?

Chuuni or no, the furious bolts of lightning met a wall of Ti's tentacles. The moment smoke engulfed our little corner of the battlefield, I dashed right into it—sword-first with its steel gleaming with bloodlust. Pink ichor splashed the fog as if an artist painted it with unsteady, quivering strokes. Or just one big mess of abstract art in the Louvre or something.

Well, I couldn't see shit, but my gamer instincts could. And Ti was probably…

Right there!

My bloodsword spun into a Reaping Slash, the invisible wind slicing a thin line through the smoke. It chewed into Ti's shoulder and drew a fountain of pinkish blood—blood that served as a snack for Arkhalla's blade. I dove further into the darkness with a Stampede. And in the wake of a massive boom, I drove my bloodsword deeper into his flesh.

The Assassin didn't so much as flinch. His form turned hazy, magic gathering around him for a life-saving Skill—

{Debuff received!}

{Pareidolic Interference {A} — Nexus Shade}

Ti's body turned solid again, and the wind coating my bloodsword dissipated. His eyes widened—round, bulbous holes on his head dripping with black tar. The shriek that tore its way out of his lips, and the acidic stench, as my bloodsword pried his right arm off was something I'd probably never forget, the sound carving itself into my mind and my heart.

"Curse you!" Ti said. He had his sole remaining hand on the crooked stump, trying to stem the bleeding.

"Uh, like," I said, tearing my eyes away from the honest-to-goodness arm lying next to my feet. "...what the fuck just happened?"

The weirdest thing wasn't the fact that Ti failed to dodge my—seriously—predictable attack.

No, of course not.

It was the fact that the skeletal, undead Grimm all over the chamber crumbled into piles of smoking skin and bones. Inky's fireballs fizzled into thin air. The blizzard Ciana had been gathering behind her vanished like diamond dust, and the golden bolt Fiona notched on her bow turned dull and faded into motes of light. Weiss' glyphs winked out of existence, taking the tinkle of bells with them.

Worst of all, every single one of my Buffs from Inky disappeared, along with my Blessing of Aura, which was toggled off.

The chamber stilled, quiet save for the rhythmic chanting of Korvilliath's cultists, their magic snapping back in place. Everyone seemed a little bit confused, except for Nex who looked waaaaaaaay out of sorts. Guy looked like he just saw Korviliath's tentacles pouring bukkake all over a bunch of college girls—

I shivered.

Check your twisted imagination, EEP. Now's really not the time to turn this into an R-rated hump.

Observe.

Pareidolic Interference {B}

A facet of Pareidolia (Semblance). Reinforces the fabric of Existence—with a capital E—within a large radius around the caster, rendering reality immutable to all but the most powerful of magics. Consumes a large amount of AU per second. By itself, Pareidolic Interference does not discriminate between friend or foe and affects all targets within range. Pareidolic Interference inherits the same Rank as Pareidolia (Semblance).

Tyranny of Imagination (Unique): Pareidolic Interference now disrupts spells based on aura, dust, semblances, and almost every other source. In exchange, AU cost is doubled. Tyranny of Imagination also purges magical Buffs and Debuffs at no additional cost.

Geez. Just when I thought his weapon's already a bag of tricks on its own, the edge lord pulls something different out of his ass. A semblance that can cancel magic—and every other spell—for fuck's sake.

Like, how busted is that? I mean, how does it even work? Why does it work? Did he have it all along? Was he saving it for a critical moment? Or did he just unlock it, and he's having whiplash from using it for the first time?

For your incessant string of questions that will never be answered, you have earned 1 WIS.

Gee, thanks. I really needed that one point of WIS. It could save my life someday. Really.

"What!" Ciana screeched, dragging me to reality. She was finally back to her senses—I've been expecting screaming to interrupt my monologue ages ago. "How could a—"

Leli shut her up with a dagger to the face, baton-style. By that, I meant she punched the Hierophant's chin and struck her legs with a low kick, sweeping her down the floor. Ciana landed with dust on her back, helpless—too dirty for a supposedly dignified and noble mage. Ouch. That's a hundred to a zero, ladies and gentlemen.

"You yap too much," Leli said, staring at Ciana. Her dark cloak fluttered behind her in the coolest way possible.

I squealed into my musky, grit-ridden collar, the crimson cloth burying my eyes.

Down, EEP. Down. No more fan-girling until the sequel.

Whoosh!

"Fuck!" I bashed a tentacle away—Ti's attempt at a sneak attack—and countered with an Arcane Barrage. "Hey! Don't you wanna have your arm looked at?"

I spun, my bloodsword lopping off the heads of the stunned tentacles.

"Like, it doesn't look very healthy right now," I said. "Maybe I can call an ambulance? But not for me, I guess."

Ti growled as he twisted on his heel, tentacles desperately shielding his torso from a quiver's worth of Fiona's icy arrows. Hazel wasn't as fortunate, the hail of frost leaving deep gashes on his arms which he used as meat sacks to protect the rest of his body.

"I shall respawn!" Ti said, breaking apart into pink mist with a flash of pink light. 'Cuz he liked pink that much. "Mark my words, Guardian! I shall respawn!"

"Yeah, like, just wait till we put a nuke in Korvilliath's brain, you filthy camper." I slung fireballs at his fading form, in hopes that it'd do some damage. "I mean, why do bosses keep bringing back incompetent minions, anyway?"

That would've been the end of that, but Little Miss Schnee-byou was even greedier than me.

"Not today, Tentacle Hentai!" Fiona said, a volley of thunder zapping Ti's chest—at the exact moment before he vanished completely off my Mini-Map. "Curses! The foul cur has succeeded with the escape!"

"Like, it doesn't matter anyway," I said, sighing and patting her shoulder. "Remember what Akane said? He's just gonna keep respawning until either we're dead or we get rid of the big bad. Annoying, amirite?"

"Hmph!" Fiona curled her nose up. "'Tis the epitome of what the locals call annoying, indeed. Why, this Heroine finds it most irksome!"

Like, I know, right? The guy's practically immortal since we don't know how to get rid of Korviliath permanently. Yet. Maybe I should flip him off harder next time we meet?

I kept the thought shelved away at the back of my brain as we reconvened with the rest of the party. Inky and Leli had Ciana bound to the back of a pillar, chains fashioned from Inky's fire—white fire—shackling her and her magic. Nex and his team blasted Hazel through the crack in the wall, sending him (hopefully) far, far away.

That left… I glanced at the woman sitting at the centre of the ring of cultists.

Observe.

Cinder Fall (Human) — Remnant A-404

The False Maiden

Level 58

Dark Ranger

Riiiiight. Her. Who's she again?

Inky shattered the vortex around Cinder and her pack of multiversal cultists, whips of blood and fire lashing out of her sleeves. She held them the same way those guys who trained bulls did.

It took about five strikes before the invisible walls fell. They crumbled into sheets of magic, the cultists screaming in pain as they, too, fell and convulsed atop the altar, looking like discarded toys before the splendor of the Bloodmail of Arkhalla.

Cinder's eyes snapped open, fury burning deep within. "No!" she said as Arkhalla's mail just popped and disappeared.

{Item Received!}

{Bloodmail of Arkhalla — Mythical Unique}

My Inventory. So that's where it went.

{Main Quest: Vacuan Nights Complete!}

{Rewards Received!}

{Level Up!}

"Congratulations are in order… Champion…"

For some reason, I'm not in a very good mood though. Like there's something about to go wrong, and I'm just not seeing it—

Ah, shite. Don't you dare jinx it, EEP. You've got enough bad luck as it is. Remember how your LUK is, like, only a couple points away from a solid, rock-bottom zero?

"So close…" Cinder mumbled, slumping before the creepy statue atop the altar.

Qrow stalked up the steps, keeping a hold of his scythe as he closed in on the False Maiden. "Not close enough," he said. "You'll pay for what you did."

"I'm Fall… I'm Cinder…" Cinder murmured, her amber eyes hazy. "I'm Fall… I'm Cinder…"

Uh… she's catatonic. Like she isn't even here. Should we be scared? Or maybe concerned?

"Mundane subject appears to be suffering from exposure to an Abomination. Hypothesis: Korviliath of the 19th Hell Dimension."

If that's how normies get when exposed to an Abomination—Korviliath who isn't even physically here—then how the hell is Fiona fucking Schnee perfectly fine after staring one right in the eye?

"Querying… Hypothesis: Fiona Schnee of Remnant A-404 is quote clinically insane unquote. Thus, further impairments to her cognitive facilities are effectively nil."

Yeah, like, sure.

I snorted, gripping my bloodsword tighter.

Just say my quote girlfriend unquote has a bad case of crazy. There's no need to go all clinically insane like you're Doctor Who or whatever. You're not. You're not even half as smart. You're just the annoying voice stuck in my head.

"Indeed. It is my duty."

…

Geez. Man, that's depressing. Like, I sounded pretty fucking mean there, didn't I? I'd apologise, but I'm too much of a bitch to do that.

"...I fail to process quote pretty fucking mean unquote."

Oh, come on! You were an actual Guardian before you turned into an emotionless robot! Don't you remember what it's like to feel?

Like, say something human. Please. Give me a bone here.

…

Nothing, huh?

Only static buzzed at the back of my mind as Qrow finally snapped at Cinder's incoherent murmurs.

"Shut up!" Qrow raised his scythe, ready to bring it down on Cinder's dipped head. "I'm taking you back to Oz, and he's gonna—"

Magic crackled, and a black tentacle appeared out of nowhere, piercing Qrow's gut.

Crap. Totally didn't see that one coming. Honest. Like, I've got Ti's patterns down to a pat, but not this one.

"Uncle Qrow!" Ruby broke into a frantic dash towards him, the tentacle vanishing like a mirage.

Nex and I jogged our way up the stairs, our eyes peeled around the altar and the fallen cultists. I wasn't sure where the tentacle came from, but knowing the possibility that it could happen was enough for me to be on guard. My knuckles pressed hard against my skin, the hilt of my bloodsword creaking in my grip.

"Fool," Cinder whispered, a hint of lucidity returning to her eyes. "You don't realize where we are, do you?"

Qrow coughed up a mouthful of blood, Little Miss Red Riding Hood helping him stand with her leg supporting his and an arm around his shoulders.

"Never been to this place before," Qrow said.

Yeah, like, me neither, bird-person. Did you miss the tour, too? 'Cuz I sure did.

"In here, as long as I'm under her protection," Cinder said, laughing. "I am invincible."

Oh, come on. I can't believe the villainess would say something so cliched. Well, I'll just time my Blood of the Pristine the moment she casts her spell, like this—

"Allow me to show you!" Cinder flung her arms wide open.

And a familiar red swallowed the world raw.

Author's Notes:

Thanks for reading and reviewing. If you've made it this far, we've only got 6 chapters left before the ending.