The Golden Opportunity

Ipssimus Juniluny Snickerbottom. Her hips shook just fantasizing about it. The title of a council member was a key to the Cabal’s secrets, resources, and ultimately its destiny. As a lowly Practicus, and as a female non-human in an organization wholly led by (allegedly) human men, Juniluny was likely never meant to more than fantasize about it... but her Golden Opportunity, her precious, mysterious find in John Newman, had turned mistakes into miracles.

"Kim Moon of the Northern Wind." The trembling, wounded teen started at the sound of the halfling’s voice. To Juniluny, Kim was prone between two translucent walls of stone. All of her Maze, save the outermost edges of the barrier, were like thin holograms that let her see an entire floor's contents with a glance; the only exception was on this floor: the steel, circular room of her laboratory, at its heart, stood apart from the Maze’s design. But, even with that sizeable obstruction, she could still see her favorite guards: various small troupes of humanoid and scantily-clad males making their patrols, including one trio of orcs that would soon find Kim without realizing their master was nearby. Juni stood at the elbow of a sharp turn in another hallway, close enough to take a few steps through the real wall between her and her prey to kiss the pitiful thing, if she so desired. Juniluny’s hands explored her body; she still wore her enchanted underwear, having no time or reason to change into something decent.

Kim shivered again. Juni’s thighs squeezed together as she took in the sight of her. The martial artist—the executioner, as Juni knew her kind—managed to look quizzically at the wall, just a few inches off from where Juni stood. So she can’t quite detect my location... "I didn't need my servant's intel for that one; the Northern Wind seating one of its younger killers here in America, much less the same town as one of the Wardens, is worrying enough to reach our ears.” She didn’t bother explaining how she identified her prey: the tiger on the gi, and the power and speed she showed when killing some of Juni’s favorite Elven fucktoys, was enough to know the student for what she was.

"Who... are you?" The girl’s ruined limbs twitched, though Juni was too enthralled with her success to notice.

"Your new master... oh! You mean names! Ho ho, of course you do... well, I hate to brag," the mage lied, "but I'm the upcoming best of the Cabal, the future queen of its council... soon to be the undeniable master of its secrets and workings: Juniluny Snickerbottom!" In another context, with the straits less dire... Kim still would not have been amused. "I was already giggly over the boy-**** I've got boiling downstairs... but you! Oh, my Master can suck my teets right off if he thinks I'd give him a lick of you! Straight to the upper levels with your pretty hide... and with my name on the bow-tie, oooohoo hoo hoo!"

Kim's brow furrowed as she started to feel the bones of her ankle slowly come together anew. “More... will come...”

“I doubt that.” Juniluny had already committed the ritual to move the Maze's barrier once she had realized she would start having visitors. Even now the Maze's location in the real world was set into motion: it would travel away from the Academy and submerge, at a diagonal path, into the sewers of the city. Insofar as the Cabalist knew, no mage had taken residence there yet. Of course, there’s no enemy at the Academy that'll detect my barrier until sundown... except maybe the Warden and, of course, this eager little twat... “But it sounds like you’re in the mood to talk! Good thing too, because I must ask: were you involved in that itty little scuffle last week? One involving a small band of ne’er-do-wells including a particularly... heated fool girl?”

Kim remained silent for a few beats; her breaths slowly evened before, through clenched teeth, she answered. “You mean... the smugglers...”

A Warden, a Northern Wind assassin, and mysterious boy mage with insane potential... I suppose that could be enough, but... was it? Juniluny almost pressed for more when she noticed the nearing orc patrol. Each wielded a gladius and handaxe, wore naught but simple silk loincloths with hooks to holster either armament, and the scowls for which their race was famous. Their massive, muscular bodies were otherwise bared and glistening in the heat of the brazier flames, and their faces, bestial and fanged, did not fail to live up to reputation.

They turned the corner and, after a moment of surprise at seeing the intruder, dutifully charged down the hall. Can't let her bleed out yet, now can I? Quietly, the halfling walked through the wall, as if it were air, to stand on the opposite side of the assassin. She remained safely out of the crippled girl's reach, but plainly in sight for the sake of her subordinates. The orcs saw their master and the pearls on their foreheads, embedded in the flesh, flashed with pale light. Soon each had slowed his charge into a depressed march with downcast eyes. Kim, still prone and with her condition not visibly better, very carefully put each of her fingers flat against the floor.

“Hold,” Juniluny commanded. The orcs obeyed, standing just a few feet from the ruined body of the intruder. “Back to you, my wounded tigress,” Juni cooed, “the smugglers are precisely the ones I mean! Cute, deadly, and observant! Very good, Moon... very good. Maybe while I'm negotiating my promotion, I'll let you guard this floor... maybe even let you sleep with the orcs!" Said orcs, even as slaves, began to grumble their eagerness for this idea. Juni raised her right hand to half-heartedly cover her obnoxious cackle, and inhaled to belt it out-

The alarms blared in her head. Another intruder, fifth floor? The boy is still on the third... Another alarm. W-What?! A third intruder on the second floor?! B-But who?! The Warden I could understand... then... the witch! Has she betrayed- Her mind searched through the Maze and the connection she had with the various spying bricks laid into the walls every few feet of her home... when she realized that those spying bricks, programmed to screech in her mind when a non-**** was spotted, were somehow being blinded on the first floor. A f-f-f-fourth?! But there weren't even that many- by all that is fluid in the Abyssal Sea, what in the hottest of Hells is going on here?! Juniluny had remained in that pose, her arm still waiting for her victorious laugh, as she began to visibly sweat. Her eyes wandered in thought... and away from the Slayer.

There. Kim's body moved before her mind. Seiza. The kneeling kata; the most difficult to use in combat, meant solely for recovery, discipline, and desperation. Her body lifted on her fingertips as her diseased legs, partially healed, tucked underneath. Kim was refocused; pain was once again an illusion. Using her knees and hips, she sprang towards the Cabalist as the surprised orcs watched, stupefied, with their order to hold.

"What-?!" The halfling had barely turned her head when the Moon's fury cut through the air. Kim had meant to decapitate the halfling with the edge of her hand, now moving with enough speed to cut stone... but the damage to her body had thrown her aim. Juniluny watched as the strike passed... and the green bubble around her skin shattered.

Service rendered. Payment due. A slice of Juniluny's soul vanished into Umbra as the shield was overwhelmed...

... and her raised forearm was torn from its elbow.

The halfling shrieked as her severed arm flopped to the ground. The grisly stump, more torn than sliced, stuttered with bursts of hot blood that painted the walls, floors, and the intruder's beautiful gi. Juniluny stumbled back towards the hall she had just left, her feet moving with an animal panic, as the spray of blood continued before Kim's eyes until the wound itself sank into the wall. Kim returned to the kata as the orcs continued to hold their position. The droplets of blood sank into the collar and breast of her gi as she continued to heal her legs and, with a sigh, readied to attack the orcs if they dared to move.

In the next hall, Juni fell onto her ass, her remaining arm desperately clinging onto her draining wound in a **** attempt to stunt the bleeding. Close the wound... close the fucking wound...! The Cabalist had none of her elixirs and no blood to drink even as hers continued to leak helplessly onto the floor. Burn it shut! She screamed once more and, without gesture or phrase, willed mana into her remaining palm. Crimson flames curled against the drooling stump-

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!”

Kim flinched at the new, guttural scream, but she kept her eyes on the orcs. She might have killed the enemy, or at least gotten rid of her for now, but she was still **** here. The orcs continued to hold; one took a step forward only to flinch and whine as the pearl on his head shimmered brightly. I just need... to finish healing... and I can get away from here. The bones of her ankle had slowly drifted back together, and most of the rot remained only on the surface of her skin where the Cabalist had touched her.

Little bitch... little wretched widget of the Northern Wind... hobbled cow of the Ignorant and Visionless! I was ready to be so nice to her, too... but that’s it... they can have what's left once I'm done with her...! Juniluny shivered at the newfound cold of her home. The blood on her left hand remained warm; the stump where her right arm suddenly terminated was now blackened and glittering with the aftereffects of hellfire. Overall, she had lost over a pint of blood; for someone of her size, that was enough to make her light-headed. Umbra had taken its due, too, for her letting its protection be spent; despite topping herself off with the boy, she could feel the growing vacancy in her ugly receptacle of a soul.

But she wasn't going to stop. Let her have it. She had not had to use the full incantation for her first spell as a Cabalist in years. Contemplating it now, she knew her mastery could pull more than enough power without it. She certainly didn't need to put even more of what remained of her soul into it to augment it even further.

But now was a special occasion. Her remaining hand formed the four horns.

“Del shinos vey cala dee. Folekun dalidos casuke dad ulekeesh.”

Kim grimaced. The Cabalist was alive, though her voice was ragged from her screams, the pain, or both. Kim heard the words emanating from the stone once again; having seen the halfling walk through it like air, Kim finally dared to tap the nearest brick. Solid. It was no illusion, then... at least for her.

“Zel dafos opiin: Mephistopheles. Cain. Asmodeus. Dala Del. Upasheen kakulos Juniluny; upasheen com dudos.”

A terrible foreboding washed over Kim. Whatever was happening, she had to leave as soon as able... but her path away from the orcs was suddenly blocked by a duo of hobgoblins, yellow and hideous, wearing the same skimpy uniform as the orcs. The two laid eyes upon the intruder and readied their three-pronged spears as they began their charge at Kim.

“Shinos vey cala fafuun. Shinos vey cala jiit. Shinos vey cala djinn. Shinos vey cala dos shinos vey asakii.”

Kim’s bones clicked into place, and the Slayer sprang up seconds before the spears were upon her. Hira. Her arms fell to her sides... until she twisted her body around the futile stabs of the minions. With the **** of her movement, she grabbed the shafts of the weapons and pulled them with enough **** to slip out of their trained grips, launching each into the unguarded chests of two of the orcs. Both grunted in surprise before they fell backwards, dead.

“Hulu kelshii toe. Piidas nalu sees. Gratuukel, Mephistopheles, Cain, Asmodeus, Dala Del.”

Kim's wounds had all but healed when the last orc, even with the pearl burning agony into his body, screamed his rage and charged her flank. She planted a foot on each of the hobgoblins' chests, shooting them backwards and onto their backs as she launched into the orc. Her knee shattered the creature's face, shoving shards of skull and nose through the brain and killing the beast instantly. The Slayer managed to land on her feet, one foot to either side of the orc's collapsed head, when she felt an attack coming.

“Telos shinos upal da kat!”

Kim raised her arms, bathing them in her remaining ki to deflect whatever attack was coming. The hobgoblins slowly stood as they nursed their cracked chests.

A single, pointing fingertip poked out from the wall... and a darkness that burned engulfed the Slayer.

The **** of the spell threw her back against the opposite wall. It immediately filled the twenty-five feet around Kim with ebony fire, causing the hobgoblins to back away in a panic as the flames threatened to reach even them. Kim's shield of ki withered as the pressure increased, and soon the Slayer's arms were thrown to either side of her. The blood on her gi evaporated, and then the gi with it, as the disintegrating heat licked at her body and ate what it found. Her eyes screwed shut as she screamed, but her agony was drowned out by the continuous flow of hate. The Cabalist's wrath was a screaming waterfall, and gallons were spent on this single, pitiful heroine as seconds of this torrential fire passed.

The flames suddenly died. Juniluny's fingertip was blackened; she kept it pointed at her enemy. Between them, the orc corpse had been reduced to a lumpy, melted summary of his skeleton, as black with soot as all the space around Kim. Kim Moon, Slayer of the Northern Wind, had been stripped of her defenses, of her clothes... and much of her skin. Hideous gashes cut down into the muscle where the skin was not worn away into red, blistering flesh. Third degree burns were the best of what had transpired; Juniluny was wide-eyed and whistling with appreciation that there was anything left at all.

The Korean youth's body slid down against the bricks of the labyrinth wall, leaving a streak of red on the bit of the wall she had kept from burning... and was still.

"You... survived," Juniluny sighed, chuckling madly as she held her head. "Amateur or not, that's... haha... who would've thought... you'd still be alive after all that...?" Juniluny stepped into the hall and snapped her fingers at the hobgoblins. Both stared in awe at her missing arm, but neither dared to dally in quickly running up. "Take her to the lab and hook her into the extractor," she ordered as she reached down to Kim's hands. The fingers were fused, and the flesh was pulpy under her vicious grip, but there were nerves enough still that Kim groaned and cried in her delirious state. Juni drank a bit of the Slayer's soul and smiled at the taste. "Good, good..."