Dissonance 17 – Void and Lotus [Vex POV]

The buffoon ran down the street, unaware that the cracking behind him was not that of roaring clouds.

Both of them hanging suspended above the street, Vex’s palms met the red sheath of the undrawn blade repeatedly. The mysterious woman was swinging leisurely, though at their pace, that was still enough to cause visible shockwaves in the falling rain. Responding with equal lack of enthusiasm, Vex did just enough to prevent her opponent from reaching Otto.

She had no real stake in the matter. The stipulations of her agreement required her to obey the letter of an order. The promising newcomer would be tested and, if the situation allowed and called for it, removed from the board. That was the boss’ will and she could not resist him until she got out of that arrangement.

Having sent Otto, she had done the minimum expected of her. Now, she would have preferred if she could have personally made sure the half-ogre got sacrificed on the altar of that temple, but if she got stuck with that incompetent pawn for another couple of years, she would survive.

So why not have fun with this fight?

Vex put her hands together, wrist to wrist. The five Cores inside her resonated. Individual elements – Shadow, Earth, Shadow, Light, Shadow – interweaved into a complicated mixture that was practically unique to her. Simple building blocks made for elaborate structures.

Her fingers interlocked like the jaws of a great beast. Fangs of gravitational energies clamped down on her opponent. White, black, blue and red, the maw pressed down on shields of swirling air, sparking with an electric shade of azure in kind. A swift exertion pushed the clenching jaws back. The woman jumped back, stepping once in midair as if it were a solid object.

Vex landed on the street. The unknown fighter returned to her initial position on the rooftop. To the harlequin’s eyes, the thunderstrikes were only minor annoyances.

The woman was of one of Iridescia’s artificial species. Golden doll joints prominently marked where her arms and legs were attached to her torso. Similar joints were visible in her wrists, ankles, knees, fingers and toes. Her elbows were likely similar, but a pair of detached sleeves hid the truth of that matter. They were long, white things, covered in golden decorations resembling swirling clouds.

The rest of her clothes were… to call them risque would have been an understatement. Her front was covered by an excuse of a bit of clothing, a black strip that stretched from her halter neck to the tip of her pelvic curtain. It was secured around her narrow waist by a sash, tied in the style of the almond-eyed people who first came from the Porcelain Realm. The tight pull of the sash emphasised her voluptuous figure – which really had not needed the emphasising. At the top and bottom, the strip of clothing was far too narrow, giving an ample view of the sides of her huge breasts and baring practically all of her thighs.

“How do these even stay put?” Vex asked, squeezing her own moderate breasts together for emphasis. “Are you using your Cultivation for it?”

“Verily, I have indulged in the quality of these revealing garments,” the unknown woman responded. “To speak the simple truth: I do detest the lack of air upon mine skin.”

‘So she can see,’ Vex thought.

Throughout the entire opening clash, the doll woman had not opened her eyes. Her lids remained closed, their painted black colour standing out clearly against her porcelain white skin. The woman’s black hair was tied low, the end fluttering along her sleeves and pelvic curtain in the whims of the storm. Yet not one of the falling raindrops struck her. The corners of her red lips lifted into the lightest of smiles.

[Lightning Doll AI: https://cdn.imgchest.com/files/49fe3febb832.png ]

“Are you just going to stand up there, observing me, or are you going to tell me who you are and what you want?” Vex asked.

“‘Tis my perpetual victory for you to stand within my sight.” The doll woman responded, her voice effortlessly carrying through thunder and rain. “Mine goal is merely to prevent you from bending the new blood to the whims of your employer. Vexora Carnivella, contracted by Orthos, daughter of Zeremaz.”

Vex launched herself up at the building. A swipe of her arm cut through empty air. The reach of her Devouring Void went much further. Where the doll woman had stood, the roof was forcefully compressed by five gravitational fangs. Someone screamed in surprise.

“Oh, don’t be so dramatic!” Vex landed next to the hole, held onto the edge of the ‘teethmarks’ and dangled into the apartment below. “I gave you a new balcony, be thankful!”

Without another word of explanation towards the woman, Vex pulled herself back up. Her disguise was long forgotten. It was a shoddy one in the first place. Two colour changes and the uniform of the job. That she hadn’t been found out earlier was weird enough – but why had she been found out now?

“Hey, how did you know to track me, since you are being so forthcoming?” Vex had to ask. “I know that building has thick enough walls to mask me, so what gives?”

The doll woman had landed upon a horizontal flagpole. The thin metal rod carried her weight effortlessly, yet another bit of proof that she must have had a specialisation in Air Cores. “It was a blunder of your own making. Merely an hour ago your disguise flickered, and I was clued onto your location. From there, t’was a paltry task to connect the dots already revealed to me.”

‘An hour ago… because I misspelled the new guy’s name? Really?’ Vex resisted the urge to pinch the bridge of her nose. The fight had been cordial so far, but she still had no idea who she was fighting. The doll woman did not match any of her recollections of known hostile assets in the area.

Pushing her further should yield answers.

Drops of rain scattered away, the shockwave of her launch rattling the entire building. In an instant, she was across the divide, her hands once more forming a maw to swallow the woman with gravitational fangs.

Sheath and all, the doll woman pulled her weapon from its binding on her midriff. The motion was as smooth and natural as the falling rain itself. Before Vex could bring her fingers together, the sword was brought up in a vertical swing. It missed the heterochromic woman narrowly. Then, it hit her.

Amplified, the draft of the swing slammed into Vex like a storm gust. She was flung back, sent tumbling through the air. The howling of the wind filled her ears, raindrops whipped her skin. Hissing, she forced gravity to stabilise her flight.

The doll woman was right in front of her, a calm smile on her lips.

Partially unsheathing her weapon, she slammed the pommel of the katana into Vex’s stomach. Another amplified impact, another humiliating launch. She slammed through a billboard, sending bits of the concrete slab everywhere. The pain in her back hardly registered compared to the stamp where the handle had met her.

Vex managed to stabilise herself again just in time. Her heels dragged parallel marks through grass. Her soaked twintails whipped one way, then the other. They had landed in a public park.

“A less concerning field for our clash.” The mysterious doll woman landed atop a lantern, balancing effortlessly on the tiny metal spike that marked its highest point. There was only a light rain around them now, but that was changing rapidly. The thunder cracked behind the black-haired female as the storm clouds drifted according to her bidding.

“Who the fuck are you?!” Vex asked again.

No answer, only that light smile.

Growling, Vex reached for the well of power deep within her, deeper even than the Cores. If this bitch wanted to play, then they would fucking play!

Clothes disintegrated, swallowed up by the chaos of her existence. Skin liquified, rearranging itself as Vex hunched forward. Two enormous, four-fingered claws slammed into the ground, one blue, one red. The liquid chaos rose from her lower arms, drawing entropic patterns as they disobeyed gravity. Trees and bushes around creaked, then snapped, getting flattened to the earth as the opposite happened to her.

The split colour of her hair was flame and liquid. Blue hair, black body, blue claw. Red hair, white body, red claw. The bifurcating line between her joined halves was an ever-shifting seam of her dual colours. Even her face was split, Vex could feel it in the pulses of her primordial mana. One of her eyes was a moon-like orb in an ocean of inky black, the other was void.

“A form befitting a demigoddess,” the doll woman declared.

Vex was beyond incensed. Her jaw extended, needle-like teeth springing forth of the glowing white beyond her lipless mouth. She readied herself to swallow the world – or at least a sizeable chunk of it.

Her opponent moved at the very last moment. Her maw snapped shut, collapsing the lamppost, the ground beneath it and even the air into a singular point. Atmospheric pressure slammed into the void with a loud BANG, the consolidated metal, glass and dirt falling to the ground like a piece of chewed gum.

Vex waited until the doll woman had landed before closing the distance. Air Cultivators were bothersome to fight in their element.

The doll woman finished tying her sheath back to her excuse for clothing just as Vex’s left hand, itself the size of the woman’s torso, swiped down. Turning minimally, she dodged the attack. The ground was swallowed into the Devouring Void, leaving only teeth marks where grass and soil had been.

A displeased hiss escaped Vex’s opponent. She took a larger step back, slower than before. The ambient increase in gravity around the demigoddess worked wonders. Seeing her chance to strike, Vex went into a flurry of blows.

Every swing of her primordial claws was accompanied by the deep thrum of spatial annihilation. Invisible fangs tore chunks out of the world, collapsing them into rough spheres of collapsed matter or undoing them outright. Annoyingly, the doll woman was never among those chunks. She kept on dodging every swipe, retreating backstep by backstep.

She clenched the handle of her sword.

Vex did not even think. She simply ducked. All of her being reacted to the threat and every fibre of her was validated. In a flash of silver, the blade sliced the air, then sliced beyond the air. The blue-tinged wave of energy travelled beyond Vexora’s head, cutting unstoppably through the greenery.

“You have made me draw mine blade, well done,” the annoying doll woman declared. A second later, all over the park, canopies glided off tree trunks. Young willows to ancient oaks all began to slide down the slope of the horrifyingly smooth cut.

‘A move like that will require recharging.’ The theory was only bolstered by the doll woman re-sheathing her sword.

Vex resumed her attack where she had left off. Coming up from being prone with an upwards swing, she forced the doll woman to dodge sideways. The red claw reversed course, digits clenching into a solid block. The matter that had been undone spewed forth from a dimensional tear, clumping around her descending fist.

The gravity hammer landed with a double impact. First the raw force of the amplified attack, then a spike in the pull of the world. A small crater became the deep centre of a much larger one.

It was the second wave that caught the doll woman in the middle of her escaping leap. She was forced back to the ground, her knee almost touching the dirt. Vex spun around her own axis, launching the ball of consolidated matter around her fist. She jumped to the side, dodging the sword wave before it had sliced through the projectile, then charged at the doll woman.

The smugness of just standing there, the halves of the projectiles flying past either side of her, was beyond annoying. Vex was getting vexed and she hated that. A light click and the sword was back in its sheath. A window of vulnerability! Vex leapt. Clad in space-distorting energies, her red claw came down.

Closed eyes clenching, the swordwoman put one foot back and dropped into a crouching stance. The implication hit Vex instantly and she intensified the energies around her. Silver flashed. The air was turned into a slicing shockwave. Magic clashed against magic, elements boiling away and leaving a raw contest of force. Vex’s arm was blown back.

‘She is pushing herself!’ the demigoddess thought, for all other explanations would have been ridiculous.

Fuelling her physical might with all of her five Cores, Vex ran circles around her opponent, striking her without pattern from multiple angles. Blunt strikes, swiping claws, gravitational collapses, all of them were met with a rapid draw and then re-sheathing of her sword. The black-haired woman did not give a single inch. Her dominion over her ground was absolute, the overflow of her mana leaving her standing on an elevated platform in a land flattened by the demigodess’ presence. Impressive, yes, but a sign of how limited the woman’s reach was.

Lightning and rain drowned out all sounds beyond the battle.

Vex brought her blue claw overhead and clenched it into a fist. The Devouring Void spat forth the swallowed matter. A second gravity hammer to end it all in one decisive blow! Laughing, the demigoddess dropped the tonnes of matter, pushing with her physical might, pulling it down with her magic until the chaotic sphere burned from atmospheric friction.

Like it, her laughter came to a stop against the flat of the doll woman’s blade.

What blades of grass remained were pressed flat by the shockwave of the sudden halt. Severed canopies rolled like tumbleweeds. The small pond was pushed half out of its bed. Then, everything became eerily quiet. Even the thunder and the rain held their breath, reduced to only a gentle patter.

“A pleasant bout,” the doll woman said, gazing at Vexora with a singular eye.

The scent of ozone hung heavily in the air. The high-frequency hum of electricity made Vex’s hair stand on end. White-blue arcs of electricity arched along the blade that still held back the tonnes of consolidated matter. The silver metal was nothing immensely special, just a blade of adequate expensiveness for their level of Cultivation. ‘For her level of Cultivation,’ Vex corrected herself, meeting the one eye the doll woman had deemed to open.

Black scleras and dark, dark blue eyes.

A gold-jointed doll.

The lightning above.

Vex took several steps back, letting the sphere of matter drop to the ground with a quaking ‘THUD!’. Her mind raced, planning her escape. “Dark-Eyed Doll, Neora the Hurricane,” she hissed. “Pleasure making your acquaintance.”

“Verily, it is a fortuitous day,” the freak of nature sheathed her sword. Electricity intensified as the exposed area became smaller, a final spark dying when the katana came to a rest. “I ask you forgive mine discourtesy. Had I introduced myself, I feared I would have no opportunity to hone this blade of mine.”

Vex remained in her demigoddess form, taking another step backwards. “Imagine that, I didn’t feel like dying today!”

“Ah, a most understandable priority – one I ask that you extend to the talent of this land.”

“I wasn’t going to–“

Neora raised a hand. Vex flinched, retreating another step. “You need not explain, I heard your whisperings on the wind.” No matter how much the distance between them grew, the doll woman’s voice carried true. “Understand that coddling is not mine goal. Tell the one who holds your leash that I shall intervene only if you wield outsized strength directly against those who are yet to blossom.”

‘She let Otto go on purpose,’ Vex realized. “Why? What do you get out of this?”

“A simple sense of satisfaction,” Neora declared.

The rain suddenly whipped up. A thick curtain of grey came down between them. Vex raised her arms, ready to defend against the executing strike. Her heart pumped divine blood through her veins. She gazed past her crossed claws. The curtain thinned.

The Dark-Eyed Doll was gone.