Knight of Vines

A spinning fastball splattered the slime down the hall but Beth couldn’t take a moment to bask in the satisfaction as more kept coming. She spun on her heel effortlessly, plucking another ball from where she had affixed them to her left arm, and quickly launched it at another slime.

It struck true, but the blow only slowed it down, its fluid body needing a few moments to reform into something capable of moving. Or attacking.

And in that brief window, Aeolia attacked. She flew down like an angel of war, wind swirling around the twin axes she was borrowing. The effect wasn’t as pronounced as it was on her glaive, but for these things, it was enough.

With a shout, Aeolia carved into the disrupted slime, tearing into it with two slashes, her wings flapping to keep herself hovering above it before soaring back into the air, shrinking as she went.

It wasn’t a great strategy, but with limited options, it was the best they had. Aeolia wasn’t used to fighting with such short ranged weapons, and spinning balls weren’t all that effective at putting down something that could shapeshift freely. Fucking them up, yeah, but not keeping them down. Beth’s bruised ribs could attest to that.

Aeolia landed next to Beth at full size, a hint of concern bleeding into her focused expression.

“How you holding up?” she asked as slimes continued to assault the few people in the hallway. Given the nature of who was near or in the throwing range, they were dealing with things well enough.

“I’m fine,” Beth said, doing her best to keep from wincing. Breathing was a little painful, but she wasn’t going to let that stop her from fighting. The same could be said about her shoulder.

“Don’t try to hide it,” Aeolia chided. “That hit wasn’t anything to sneeze at.”

“It’s not like there’s a nice rest area I can go to to grab a breather,” Beth shot back. “And these guys don’t seem like they’ll just let anyone sit out.”

“I hate that you’re right,” Aeolia grumbled. “Just don’t push yourself too hard.”

“Don’t think we’ve got the luxury there either,” Beth dryly remarked. “Think this is going on everywhere?”

“No duh,” Aeolia answered. “If this was only happening here, there'd be a lot more people trying to stop it. This has to be happening all over the club. Which means it’s a large-scale attack. One that’s been planned out well.”

“How astute of you,” a low pitched woman’s voice cut through the din of combat and Aeolia and Beth spun towards it. They beheld an armored figure approaching them, dark armor contrasting with a cloak and tabard of pure white. Upon both, a black tree with long roots and amber leaves was stitched prominently. The woman wearing them regarded them with serious green eyes, her grey face drawn into a frown. She shook her head, green vine-like hair swaying below a pair of wooden antlers. “I’d hoped your deaths would have been quick.”

“What a way to introduce yourself,” Beth said through gritted teeth.

“Who I am is of no importance,” the plant haired woman remarked, hefting her weapon, a spear with an amber tip, against them. “Know that I take no pleasure in your reaping, but it is necessary for a new world to bloom in this rotten one’s place.”

“Great, a zealot,” Aeolia muttered, bringing up her borrowed axes. “A subdued zealot, but a zealot all the same.”

“Is it wrong to wish the world was a better place?” their enemy asked, her spear still trained on them.

“Most people who ask that try to do charity stuff or clear up litter from the side of the road,” Beth answered.

“There is too much wrong for such small acts to amount to anything,” came the retort. “Only by clearing away all the rot can fresh growth happen.”

“Guess trying to talk you down isn’t on the table,” Aeolia said before launching herself at the grey woman. Before she crossed the whole distance, she threw one of her axes, wind spinning it into a buzzsaw.

“How predictable,” the woman said sadly as she swung her spear to deflect the ranged attack, fluidly shifting to parry Aeolia’s second swing, metal hitting amber with neither bending in any way. “So quick to fight.”

“You’re the ones that started this,” Beth contested hotly as she threw a ball at her as Aeolia drew back. A quick thrust met the projectile and the ball practically exploded into pieces.

“We are merely the manifestation of the world’s reaction to the illness. Its immune system coming to bear down on the infection, even to death if need be,” the woman retorted. “Further talk is pointless.”

“That’s the one thing we can agree on,” Aeolia declared as she went in for another attack, this time from above. This time, their opponent didn’t match weapon with weapon. Instead, she lifted her left hand and rapidly closed it into a fist. The slimes around them suddenly flashed with purple light and thick dark green vines shot out of them.

Aeolia let out a curse and shifted size, using her small stature to dodge the sudden vines. More vines flew towards Beth and she was forced to dash backwards, skating across the floor as fast as she could. One of the vines outpaced the others and nipped at her feet and Beth threw one of her last balls at it.

She imparted only a little spin to it, just enough to empower it so it could drive the vine down to the ground. It hit without doing much damage, but it didn’t have to. The ball forced the vine to touch the floor and Beth let her mana seep from the ball and into it, affixing a piece several inches long to the ground.

The vine bunched up as the momentum behind the bound piece kept going, giving Beth more time to gain distance between her and their enemy. The quick escape did aggravate her injuries and she fought to keep the pain off her face.

“Why must you struggle?” the vine haired woman lamented. “All it does is lead to more pain.”

“Pain means I’m alive, bitch,” Beth cursed. “Means I’m still kicking. And it means I can still go home later.”

“So you may continue to suffer?” the woman asked in a tired voice. “Over and over again until you die? Such a pointless existence."

“It’s the moments in between that make it worth it!” Aeolia declared as she flew in from behind, wind swirling around her axe. The woman pivoted with practiced ease, spear parrying the axe. But Aeolia had accounted for that and let go of the weapon before the counter could throw off her trajectory and she banked to their assailant's side, fist cocked back.

Aeolia threw her punch with all the force she could muster and struck the woman square on the chin. The blow forced her back and Beth was quick to send a wave of slicking mana under her. The suddenly frictionless floor caused her next step to fly out from under her and their enemy crashed to the ground in an undignified manner.

“Got you!” Beth cheered as she reversed the nature of her mana, increasing the adhesive force between the floor and their enemy. “Not so tough when you're stuck on your back.”

“Troublesome,” the woman said as she strained against the hold. “Keeping me down only delays your death and extends…”

“Our suffering, we get it,” Aeolia cut her off as she reclaimed her axes. “Your big talk would go over better if you hadn’t blown up your backup with the vine attack.”

Looking around, Beth realized that the slimes around them had collapsed into lifeless heaps, the vines that had burst from them limp on the ground, rapidly rotting into putrid sludge.

“You think this small part of the barrier was the only one attacked?” the woman asked.

“Fuck no, but you’ve let up the pressure up here. Now, we can go and fight elsewhere.” Aeolia smirked as she picked up the woman’s spear.

“Foolish,” the woman muttered.

“We’ve told you, we’re not just going to lay down and die,” Beth said as she poured more mana into the floor to increase the length of the hold.

“I meant picking up an enemy’s weapon.”

Sickly purple energy shot out from the spear, wrapping up Aeolia’s arm like kudzu. She screamed and Beth raced over to her. Her first instinct was to rip the spear out of her hand, but she knew that touching the spear was probably a bad idea. Instead, she lashed out with her foot, a layer of mana coating her shoe as some means of protection.

The magic hurting Aeolia began to lash out against Beth, shooting up her leg the moment contact was made, but the force of her kick was enough to knock the weapon out of Aeolia’s hand. With contact severed, the defensive magic faded, but the lingering shoots of pain kept racing through their bodies and both fell to the floor. The spear landed a little bit away and released a pulse of energy with a final flash of purple.

“You really shouldn’t have tried to help her,” the woman dryly remarked and Beth looked over to see her getting up off the ground. With the pain still lancing through her, she hadn’t realized her mana had been completely disrupted. A glance towards Aeolia showed she was affected too, reduced down to her innate size.

Beth tried to get up, or send her mana to the spear to keep it from being picked up, but her mana wasn’t responding at all.

“Please stop resisting,” the enemy woman pleaded in a serious tone as she picked up the spear. “It makes the end needlessly harder.”

Unable to get away, Beth could only watch as the woman hefted her weapon higher, the amber point aimed right for her heart. And she brought the spear down.

Vivian made her way to where Aeolia and Beth should have been as quickly as she could. Between the fighting and needing to keep her veil up, she wasn’t moving as fast as she would have liked. Which meant she had to see the carnage happening throughout the club. Several people of all walks of life were on the ground, some merely injured, others far less fortunate.

Those that were still alive had been saved by those that were still in the fight. A burly orc in a torn white shirt was punching an ooze in the shape of a wolf with fists coated in metal, the monster’s body deforming under the power of his strikes. A pair of women, one with canine features, the other feline, were tag teaming another ooze that had defaulted to an amorphous state, holding the pair off with tentacle arms, though each woman had taken a pound of flesh from the monster, if the goo dripping from their claws was any indication.

‘Aeolia and Beth can handle themselves well enough, even without all their gear,’ she thought, trying to use cold hard facts to tap down the rising fear of them getting hurt. ‘And they were checking out the throwing range, so there’s probably stuff there they could use.’

The sight of carnage and battle did little to help calm her nerves so Vivian began to mentally construct a number of possible arrays she could quickly draw to keep her mind from drifting to horrible notions.

‘Veils? No, just hiding isn’t going to help us get out of here. They’ve locked down the barrier, so waiting things out isn’t an option. And there’s no way of knowing if a larger group could even be properly hidden. It’s a lot easier to evade as one person. Okay, so offensive arrays. Light beams. They’ve got a good amount of light here and they seem to all still be working. Gives me a lot of ammo.’

She went over the exact scripts she could use, their arrangement, and many other minor details that mattered very little overall but kept her mind from drifting to darker thoughts. The fighting grew more spread out as she neared the throwing range, likely because most people had been at either of the shows.

Vivian turned a corner, and stopped short. Down the wide hallway, the first humanoid enemy she’d seen stood above a prone Beth, a spear pointed down at her, and Aeolia, reduced down to her innate size, a few meters away. All thoughts about arrays, of scripts and mana circuits left Vivian’s head, and instinct took over.

The veil around her fell as all her effort and will went into grabbing control of all the light in the hall. In an instant, the hall was plunged into darkness before a beam of concentrated light covered the space between Vivian and the aggressor. The blast wasn’t aimed as well as it could have been and the beam struck the woman above Beth in her right shoulder.

The blast drove the woman back, a large smoldering wound on her shoulder.

“Vi!” Beth called out, a weary note of relief in her voice.

“Get away from them!” Vivian shouted, the light levels around her fluctuating wildly, streams of shinedust flowing around her, coiling into fragments of arrays, ready to slot into whatever complete circle Vivian decided to employ.

The enemy warrior sighed, her right arm pulsing slightly with faint purple light.

“Why must you all struggle?” she asked in a quiet voice, more rhetorical than directed at anyone. “Fine. If you wish to spend the last hour of your life in pointless combat, then I will oblige.”

She leapt into action, flying over Beth, spear raised to impale Vivian. The redhead responded by letting the light around them bloom in intensity, becoming too bright for anyone to look directly at her. In the second the flash gave her, Vivian dove to one side, array pieces falling into place.

But the enemy warrior was well trained, and the light show hadn’t thrown her off. With a disciplined thrust, she drove her spear into Vivian’s heart. Only, to her clear shock, there was no resistance, the spear passing through Vivian with ease before she kept moving. A moment later, she appeared several meters away from where the warrior had stabbed, array ready.

With a silver flash, a wave of raw concussive force shot out from Vivian’s array, slamming right into the woman’s chest. The blast drove her into the wall behind her with a loud crash, the force holding her in place.

“Fuck, that’s hot,” Beth remarked as she sluggishly got back to her feet, shuffling over to Aeolia.

“Yeah, so hot,” the winged woman agreed in a tired voice. “Next time, remind me to not pick up an enemy’s weapon before John hits it with Observe. That was a great kick, by the way.”

“Give me a soccer ball, and I’ll be unstoppable," Beth joked as she scooped Aeolia up into her hands. “Guessing your mana’s all screwed up like mine is?”

“Don’t think I can even fly,” Aeolia answered.

“Raspritc.”

The word was spoken calmly, then a lance of dark energy shot out from the enemy’s spear, flying straight for Vivian’s array. It struck the delicate construct of silver and caused it to fall to the ground, reduced to the dust it was made from.

The anti-magic effect did not spare Vivian as she stumbled back, the partial arrays around her faltering in a slower fashion to the main one.

“It seems that nothing will get you to simply forfeit your lives,” the warrior said as she stepped away from the wall. “Even now, I can still see defiance in your eyes despite everything. I will do you the honor of making this quick. May you find a peaceful new life in the renewed world.”