"Then everyone cover me and the rune hound! I'll take this bitch out with maximum prejudice and absolute zero no chill!" I yelled. Bo smirked and held his short sword at the ready.
A blinding white light lit up the sky the next very instant. My eyes widened as I saw Empress, now four stories tall, emerge from the light. She spread her wings wide and white flames engulfed the crystalline feathers, she then flapped her wings and the flames fanned out. Engulfing a mile wide area in the sky with flames that danced and whirled like snowflakes.
The infected woman let out a malevolent wail as she dashed out of the flames. Her body wracked with flames and black mana whirling flowing out of of her mouth and eyes. The mana flowed back over her body and extinguished the flames before the mana faded to nothingness.
Immediately after the mana vanished Bellial flew from behind the new enormous Empress and dive bombed the woman with a axe made of ice clutched tightly in his paws. He swung the axe down hard aiming for the woman's head but she dodged at the last second and tried to fly away.
Bellial swung his tail which split open to reveal the one crystal tail was in fact ten crystal encased tentacles disguised to look like a tail. All ten tentacles stretched to grab and pull the woman back into strike range. However before he could strike Empress flew down and sliced through the ten tentacles using her tail feathers and blasted Bellial away with a burst of white fire.
The woman released a burst of black mana that devoured Bellial's tentacles and would have devoured Empress wings however she vanished, just blippled from view. My heart seized as I saw her disappear but her connection to me didn't disappear. Empress suddenly appeared behind the infected woman, gigantic in size, her wings spread open and engulfed in white flames. Lightning from the storm clouds above struck her wings, changing the color of the flames from white to a deep purple.
"Sho'lajah Style, Combination attack: Serpentine Elegance!" Empress exclaimed as she flapped her wings.
Hundred of burning lightning bolts fired from the flames and took the shape of winged snakes that flew towards the woman. She tried to perform another burst of black mana, however there were gaps this time, which swallowed up and most of the snakes. What wasn't swallowed struck the woman, biting down on her and electrocuting her.
The attacks would have been fatal if not for her body regenerating as fast as it was damaged. Midnight circled to the opened side of the black burst mana and unleashed a breath of green flames.
"Chase don't just zone out!" Bo snapped. I glanced at Bo briefly before looking back up at the woman.
"I'm not spacing out, I'm studying. I need to determine what spell to make in order to kill her…but that might not be feasible." I replied then glanced down at the rune hound. "She is only using dark element mana in its rawest form. No attributes like how we do when we use mana. That raw dark mana is what's disrupting spell casting but not mana channeling unless it comes into contact with that condensed dark element mana."
"What does that mean for us?" Bo asked.
"We'll have to work around her dark element mana. Every time she uses that dark burst she's releasing more dark mana into the air…so I have to stop her from using that."
I pointed my claws at the scales on the rune hound's head and started etching runes into the chalkboard-like scales. I worked quickly but carefully, making sure to not make any mistakes. I also explained what I was doing to Bo while I worked, he was my apprentice after all.
"Dark element mana and mana attributes have the unique ability to disrupt and absorb all other mana attributes and elements…however there is one flaw to it. Dark element mana of a higher concentration can cancel it out. In order to craft a spell to work against this specialty you'll have to use elemental conversion." I explained.
"Elemental conversion?" Bo mused while he looked over my shoulder at my work. By this point I'd etched runes all the way down the rune hounds neck and started on his back.
"Using vague attributes shared by multiple elements in order to shift the element of the spell during various activation points or mana flow vectors. Attributes like burn, flow, and bond. The element of the entire section of the spell changes depending on the runes before and after those runes." I explained.
"How does this help us if her mana devours all ours?" Bo asked. I smiled devilishly and laughed a bit.
"Elemental conversion can give rise to redundancies in a spell that need to be filled or replaced before the spell can activate. When a spell is crafted with these redundancies in mind they can be filled or altered by activation vectors placed later in the spell sigil. All of my redundancies are going to show up between the sections of the spell that determines mana element during activation. So tell me Bo, what would be the reason to use elemental conversion if the only element that works against our enemy has no attribute shared with any other element?"
Bo scratched his head and mused for a moment. By this point I'd covered most of the rune hound's back in runes and was nearing the tail. Just as I started scratching the first runes on the tail Bo's eyes widened in realization.
"Compound Elements! Like when you channel void attribute mana and burn attribute mana together and get black flames!" Bo replied. I nodded and scratched the last rune on the tip of the Rune hound's tail scales.
"Exactly…!" I exclaimed then placed my hand on the center of the rune hound's back and channeled mana into him. "…However this isn't going to be a simple black flames. Bo! When that woman is restrained you will only have one shot to kill her! Cut off her head!"
"Got it!" Bo replied gripping his short sword tighter and dropped to a low stance. I turned my attention back to the rune hound, the runes I etched on his back were glowing now but the rune hound swayed slightly..
"What's wrong?" I asked the evo.
"Lotz slof…mana…" The rune hound replied, his words were slurred like he was drunk.
"Hold on for a little longer, this is what you were made for." Bo told him. The rune hound seemed to stand straight and dug his claws into the ground to stop swaying. I took a deep breath as the runes on the rune hound started arranging themselves into an axiom spell sigil on the Rune hound's body.
"I am the vessel of tragedy. A beast of burden seeking fantasy while shackled to reality. A warning to fools praying for amnesty and respite from the cruel pragmatism of Hel, Hades, Thanatos, and Set. Hark and heed the warnings of false heroes and prophets, let their suffering and resentment which howls across the archives of time be the lullaby of the malcontent…." As I chanted a axiom spell sigil started to form around the first sigil on the rune hound. I raised my free hand and towards the infected woman and closed it into a fist. "…Sing and rejoice as the feats and suffering of the humble and unassuming breathe life into legends, fables of old crafted by the restrained and downtrodden. Hear the anguished, the tortured, and the vengeful crying out from their doomed maladies as you are battered and betrayed by the steel embrace of the threads of fate…."
As the two axiom spell sigils glowed with a golden energy across the rune hound's body before combining into one singular golden spell sigil. The new sigil thrummed with power, waiting for me to finish the chant and activate it. Meanwhile the rune hound's eyes and mouth glowed with the same golden light as the spell sigil, the scales on his body standing up straight.
"…Star's essence: Sacrifice!" I breathed.
The air felt electric as the rune hound howled and the spell activated. Two golden spell sigils began to form; one on the ground beneath our feet and another over a mile in the air. The two sigils began to grow in size until they were about four miles in diameter, a thin wall of light descended from the top sigil and connected to the bottom sigil and closing the space off entirely.
The infected woman noticed this immediately, trapped in the space with Bellial, Alpa'Nagia, Empress, Mzazzi, Bahamut, Midnight, Bo and I. Her head snapped to look at me. Quickly identifying me as the major threat and caster of the spell. However that knowledge alone wouldn't help her.
Six pillars of flames erupted from the ground in a circle directly below the woman and stretched until they reached the top sigil. They solidified into onyx stone with golden runes glowing across the surface of each. A black halo appeared above the woman's head and expanded until it looked like it could fit around her body. The woman, hadn't noticed this, instead focusing on getting to me.
The woman dashed across the sky, weaving around Bo's and mine's evos. However the moment she passed past the boundaries of the black onyx pillars the halo above her head glowed with a violet light then shrank around her body. Trapping her arms to her waist, any dark mana that had been flowing out of her dissipated and she started falling towards the ground.
Black electric tendrils shot from the onyx stone pillars and connected to the black halo, yanking her back towards the center of the circle. The tendrils held her tightly in place as pillar of ice formed and ascended to encase the woman's feet before retracting and pulling the woman down to the ground.
"BO N…!" I didn't even get a chance to finish before Bo dashed forward. His body wreathed in lightning and flames as a sonic boom echoed from where he once stood.
Bo skidded to a stop a few dozen yards past the woman, kneeling with short sword in hand and covered in flames. He flicked the blade lightly and the flames were extinguished. The woman's head fell from her shoulders and landed at her feet before rolling across the ground and coming to a stop a foot away. Bo quickly stood and turned to look at the woman, a look of uncertainty stretching across his face.
"Is she dead?" Bo asked cautiously.
Several seconds had passed already and her body showed no sign of regenerating. My spell started to resolve itself, the black halo around her waist shattered then crumbled away. The woman's body collapsed to the ground, no longer being held up. The golden spell sigils shattered into golden dust that blew away in the wind taking all other remaining aspects of the spell with them.
With nothing else restraining the woman's black mana I excepted her to start regenerating but my plan had worked, disconnected from her mana and having her head cut off had killed her.
"Thank the…" I started then felt a wave of nausea and drowsiness. I stumbled back and landed flat on my ass before everything went black.