Residential District: Part 2
Xiuyang observed the towering flames on all sides of her, and felt the encroachment of their intense heat. Covering her mouth with her scarf so as not to inhale the smoke was all she felt she could do. She couldn't fight the fire without her Gift, nor propel herself high enough to jump over them. She lowered her head in defeat, resigned to try her luck with simply charging through—but then, she saw it: a tiny spark of hope in this ring of hellfire.
The circular piece of metal was too heavy, or was it rusted shut? Calling upon what little RAS remained to her, she traced a precise ring of chemical magic with her finger—just enough to fill the gap, no more and no less. Then, she reached for her medicine box, to retrieve her survival knife to pry it open.
She almost missed the fact that, unbelievably, the mirror of swift exchange remained. A thousand thoughts ran through her mind, threatening to distract her even as the flames closed in. They'd taken every other magical item, except her weapon. Why was it still there? Had it been quietly replaced with a fake? Was she being tempted to use it to escape, only to have the strange magic in her body seize control and punish her for her cowardice?
As she struggled with the manhole cover, eyes watering from smoke and desperation, she almost gave up and used it—but it was just then that it gave way and granted her entrance to the sewers. She might have expected them to smell like death, but this city had been frozen in time for so long that it no longer smelled like anything. She replaced the cover and began her descent into the dark and unknown.
Seviin tried to create a mighty wind, to blow the flames away from Xiuyang Solari, but she could not. She called out, but the Revidian could not hear her. She also could not take any longer. A priestess' job was to care for
all Life, and so - pulse thundering in her eardrums - she turned her efforts to the Vossoriyan, Yuliya, though she scarce knew the girl.
It was only as her attention switched, at the very last moment, that Mother Oirase saw fit to bless her with relief: Xiuyang had ducked into some sort of circular cover. Seviin could tell herself that her - she could not strictly call the girl a
friend - was safe.
She called, instead, upon the power of space and time, as all Tarlonese elites were taight from an early age. She knew, now what her limits were. She called and she bought Yuliya all of the extra time that she could. It was...
Five seconds?
The reek of rot had itself withered away into nothing. There was a distinct smell beneath the smoke and sulfur Xiuyang had been exposed to before her desperate escape. The smell of rust, or was it blood? He feet met with very shallow water, hardly even a puddle. Cool and likely recent. This place may have died but rain likely got through the great cloud that shrouded the whole city.
Needless to say, it was dark. Far too dark to see anything without aid. And while a light was easy enough to come by, even with reduced capacity, the Solari found herself illuminated from above. It was very bright, in fact it was almost blinding.
Up above, the flames had not stopped and once the ring had resolved, a massive tower of flames burst from it, consuming all within and cooking anything below. Essentially, a deluge of lava was imminent right above her. The luminescent effect of melting stone did offer a clear view of her options: Forward and back in the once-sewers.
Hurry, soon the flame's corrupting spread into cracks on the stone and withered metal. All was going to collapse sooner or later.
The flow of time and space was hardly ever interrupted in this city forsaken of all life. Which made the tug on the many strings that held this world together all the more conspicuous in a remote part of town. Seviin felt it, just as the author of the first use felt her attempt.
Five seconds? She had three.
Three she re-wounded. When Seviin bent the timeline, she found a new world she could influence, three seconds younger from where she had started. The city was the same, the stone beneath them was heating up and everything behind them turned to ash. Yuliya was alive, the apparition having just appeared before her and Seviin had not wasted her time checking on a safe Xiuyang.
What did change was the ghost. It looked just like Seviin, features obscured by the build, hairdo and shape of the eyes were undoubtedly a mockery of her form. It was staring right at the Yasoi too, still mid-motion of seizing the Vossoriyan.
But instead of attempting to strange the blonde, it held a minuscule, black shape in its infernally hot palm. An aberration, she'd recognize. A grand taboo for her kind. One she'd find being shoved literally into her face as the formless horror manifesed just a foot before her, palm readied like it was ready to slap her across the face with the aberration still in hand.
Xiuyang ran forward: towards her original destination, and towards the danger. It was not a decision born of bravery, but of perceived necessity: the water that once flowed through here was intended to flow in the opposite direction, and she hoped the molten rock and metal would do the same.
She ran, desperately calling upon her Gift to prevent the ceiling from falling on her. Despite every nerve in her body screaming at her to look back, she did not—she faced forward, her path illuminated only by the glowing death behind her as she focused all of her energies on preventing a tunnel collapse, and all of her focus on not tripping. She didn't have the luxury of protecting herself with a barricade.
A horrifying thought entered her mind. What if the tunnel was already collapsed up ahead, and that was why the water was this shallow?
*Please, gods... I don't want to die here! Not when I finally have a life worth living!*Yvain had been staring down below from his point of elevation, a smirk plastered on his lips.
First using my family, then using my friends, and now using my sense of duty to help these people?... Well, these tricks won't work on me any longer! He gripped onto his shoulder. The pain will fade soon, just like all these tricks, it has to.
The fire did not scare him, for why would the flame made of Perrench spirit be harmed by these illusions? Yet seeing the manhole plan of escape.
These illusions have the weirdest plans. The nobleman raised an eyebrow at the events.
Seviin knew what she was facing the moment that she saw it. She did not have the time to fully complete her gesture, but she began to spread her arms in acceptance.
"Oirase Aloi, duul'juu joilii nabex, Seviin leithuul naxii solva."Then, it hit. It hit and she tried to resist it. It hit and she wanted it out of her...
But she did not. It was sweet and warm and invigorating. It was everything they had warned her as a child: false comfort, a fool's treasure, the harbinger of her ruin come on soft treads bearing gifts. She
needed it. It entered her through every pore and she sighed. Her clenched fists loosened. Her heart beat faster. Her senses sharpened. Then, it was over. She doubled over, hands on her knees, panting and trembling. Long white hair hung like curtains to either side of her face and none could see it for a certainty. None could know what was going on inside of Seviin'delaan at that moment.
Both Seviin and the ghost had one thing in common: None could read their intentions. The apparition's eyes were lacking pupils and the expression hadn't shifted a single time. No breathing. No flinching. Nothing. The hair didn't move when it lunged for either women. It was like it could ignore everything in this world and pick and choose what to engage with.
It was not finished with Seviin. After a few second pause where it merely ... Observed, its idle hand rose to chest level in the exact same gesture that had invited the aberration onto its palm. This time, however, the crackling of electricity and a concentration of heat that stole the flames of the tempest behind them incinerate all the dust particles in a meter radius of the palm. From this masterful and incredibly precise molding of energy came a ball of plasma. A small sun, a burning bright star to contrast the black mass it had just purged. The formatiuon of this concentrated sphere of energy was enough to prompt a small shockwave of hot air, reaching even the rooftops where a certain onlooker was doubting the reality of everything he was seeing.
Without moving its arm, the infernal orb gravitated toward the afflicted nun, promising complete annihilation the moment contact was made.
There was a moment where Yuliyah froze at the incorporeal being. It wasn't fear, but assessing her options as she looked at it with disgust. She always had the gift to depend on and when that didn't suffice, superior strength did the trick. Neither would be effective here.
But before she could process that, the ghost had already turned its attention to the yasoi girl. One might call it the actions of an altruistic savior, but not Yuli. All this Seviin girl had done was put herself in the line of fire instead, then greeted it with literal open arms before doubling over. She was an idiot and Yuli cared far less for her than she did self-preservation. Almost reactively, the Vossoriyan took a step back and half pivoted, fully prepared to leave the priestess to her fate. After all, what could she do about it without endangering herself?
Then she stopped. An inconvenient reality came to mind. If this girl died here, someone else would go with her. If not herself then likely someone she cared about who also found themselves in this place. She *
had* to save the girl and needed to be quick about it too. The ball of death was getting close to the prone priestess with no signs of movement on her part.
"Blyat..." she muttered under her breath.
Turning around, Yuli broke into a sprint and dived toward Seviin sending both into a roll. They tumbled out of the way of the plasma orb.
At the seminary at
Aloilii'hax, they had taught Seviin to be fearless. Everything, must she give in the protection of others, for such was the sacred nature of life and her duty to nurture and defend it.
Normally, it was a duty that she did unflinchingly, stoically,
lovingly even. At this moment, she wasn't even thinking in terms of duty, love, and fear, however. There was only the sick feeling of having been...
VIOLATED. It felt so... good, but so wrong. It was wrong. It was -
She was going to die. Her eyes bulged and her veins tightened and she couldn't move. She couldn't
move!!Then, the Vossoriyan was there and she was not the only one who was putting her life on the line for others. It... saved her, in more than one way. There were some in this vile place willing to act in Mother Oirase's name. Seviin lay there for only a moment, panting. She unclenched her fists to realize that she was bleeding from where claws had dug into her palms. Quickly, she hid her hands. They were healing - already visibly healing - but a good deal slower than they normally might've.
She swallowed, casting about for the wraith and the myriad other dangers, and spoke.
"A'lethei," she said softly, voice trembling.
The orb had just barely missed Seviin, saved by a sanguinaire of all thing. The sphere of plasma ended up colliding with solid stone, resulting an explosion that'd propel the two demi-humans further away. The shockwave was strong enough to reverberate through the building Yvain had been idly watching on. A small drop in a vase of countless years that finally made the shoddy foundation of the apartment complex falter.
The Yasoi and the Vossoriyan were not out of danger just yet. The ghost was very much back once some of the dust and smoke had been brushed away via unnatural gusts of wind, manifested a few yards from them with morbid intention radiating from its wicked crimson eyes. It was reading another one of its sadistically overkill assaults.
A loud pop had distracted the ephemeral being, just for a second, as it looked to the side to see the building slowly tipping down toward the road - right above the group. It wasn't seamless like some domino falling, as instead a progressive destruction of the foundation, making it appear as though the structure was melting, with pieces befalling both the ghost and the survivor duo. In any second, there was going to be a chain reaction that'd cause the whole thing to tumble down in mere seconds. With Yvain still on top.
With dust and dirt accumulating in the air, the ghost, while unbothered by the prospect of a falling building, found itself re-orienting its position, from flying slightly higher, to angling itself differently, to downright zipping backwards a few meters.
Why would the ghost even react to what was happening around them? What caused it to retreat? If it couldn't be harmed, perhaps it was perception and a lack of object permenance.
With what RAS she could muster, Yuli snapped her fingers and summoned a small ball of intense heat and magical energy away from themselves and the crumbling building.
The ball did catch its attention, as it siphoned the orb of its energy a couple of seconds after its inception. It could distinguish people from other forms of energy. And with this priming energetic material, a continuous arcane lance was conjured from a new firery orb above its head and sliced through the last known location of the two fallen. It took it a few seconds to prepare its spell, and a second more to reevaluate its aim, but it did attack semi-blindly through the veil of dust.
She was here because there was an agent of the tyrants at work. She was here because it would fall to her to stop that agent, lest the tyrants get their hands on what she suspected lay at the heart of this nightmare place.
It was ever bit the nightmare she'd feared, and the truth was likely that she'd die here. She could feel Exiran's shadow looming behind her at every turn. She recalled the auction fondly: sinking into a mountain of pillows and plushes, snuggling under a warm blanket. Still in her mind's eye were those nights up in Ever Tree with Xiuyang or Tyrel or Miret, chatting and relaxing under the lanterns.
She did not want to die.
I AM NOT YOUR ENEMY, YOU STUPID THING!! she screamed mentally at the phantasm that would not relent in its pursuit. She dived to the side and sprung up with uncanny strength and agility. The moons shone down on her and she could feel it: the power, the mercurial anger, the inyasoi nature of the beast, just
dying to tear its way through the careful veneer of
Seviin that she had struggled to put up for the past... however long.
She barreled out from under the collapsing wreckage and around a nearby corner. The monster couldn't see them, she realized, her blood bubbling with feelings she would not give into. The monster was open...
Yuli took no spare time in evading the falling building and the fiery assault of the ghost. Her plan to distract it hadn't worked and it seemed more than capable of remembering where they were. In the attempt, it had appeared to feed on the energy she had summoned. Perhaps she was being foolish, they couldn't distract it and run. They may have been faster but they would need to navigate terrain, it would not. They would tire, it would not. No, she wanted to kill this thing and be able to erase any more that came their way.
Once out of the falling debris, she stood her ground and focused on the location of the ghost. The dust swirled, reducing her sensing range and blocking her sight. She spat some of the dust from her mouth and checked on a very expensive dress that had been dirtied in her heroics. But she waited. That thing had feed on it. It was a being made of energy and it had absorbed more. There was an old Vossoriyan saying: anything one feeds on can also be kept in contempt. For the crime of ruining her dress, she would see it starve.
In a short moment, the dust divided perfectly to reveal the creature between lines of smoke. The Vossoriyan drew from it. She took away all the energy she could into herself and with that energy, she dispersed the heat further from it. A being purely made of heat had a natural weakness to one Yuliyah Ilyanova Vasilieva.
It took Seviin a moment to recognize what Yuliya was doing and, having just had one of those...
things forced into her, and moons calling her blood, Seviin was at least as strong as the Vossoriyan. She reached out and drew with everything that she had.
"Joi nash pa lenthuu j'Oirase'Aloi!" she screamed.
"Joilo samiithei nash taalabost!" Eyes bulging from their sockets, she drew. Had she only had her full capacity, what she might've done to erase this unholy thing!
"Wes ohmoad," she growled.
The building came crashing down onto the duo fighting for their lives with the specter caught in the rock slide too. With the fall of the tall edifice came a massive cloud of dust that obscured all except the shining, red light that was the ghost. A weakness they were sure to exploit and soon they were going to test out another fault in this being's design.
In the midst of its search, the phantasm's form began to enter a state of flux that progressively had it fade from the material world. First were its red extremities, then the rest got progressively eaten by the two survivors. More than enough energy was devoured in a short span to ensure its form could not withstand existence. The thing shrank in a small halo of crimson light until it vanished in a flash, eaten by two monsters.
It was a LOT of energy, more than they could hold in their reduced capacity. Especially for Yuliya, having gorged herself far too quickly with her enhanced drawing speed. Inevitably, she had been forced to overdraw if they wanted to get rid of this thing. Seviin had struck a better balance with the advantage of starting just a short moment after the Vossoriyan's initiative. Nothing fatal, overall, and a worthwhile trade off to the complete deletion of the ghost's presence.
However, something felt wrong. It wasn't just a sixth sense nagging them. It was that same tension in the air they had sensed when the specter's patrol had crossed paths with them.
Between Seviin and Yuliya shined a small, white light. Bright enough to be blinding if stared at directly. It grew at the same rate that the apparition had been razed from the mortal plane. What was an initially an orb became a vaguely humanoid silhouette and finally it turned into a familiar form. Though it was less feminine this time.
Five seconds. That was the time between the first light and its full reconstruction as a pure white and translucent entity.
It was not of this plane. That was all that Seviin could think as triumph turned to dust and crumbled away on the dead winds of this hellhole. She very nearly cursed, but she had already fallen twice, this day, and a third time would not be forgivable.
She
had noticed something, however, and she supposed that Yuliya likely had as well.
"Break line of sight!" she shouted in Yuliya's direction, taking a moment to remember the words in Avincian.
"We run down..." She pointed to a sidestreet, already moving.
"There! Then, we regroup."She suited words to actions, and Yuliya did much the same. From separate directions, they sprinted for a spot, an idea in their minds. They could not keep up this unwinnable fight indefinitely. It
had to work.
Yvain had the benefit of a vantage point and the unhinged mindset of one who did not trust a shred of the reality he saw. Consequently, he could witness the vain battle his "friends" were engaging in. Criticism also came easy as he quickly noticed the delays in the ghost's actions whenever there was a line of sight blocker. He could almost scoff at how obvious it was.
Then came the rumbling. The building he stood upon was crumbling from the shockwaves made by the phantasm. Even if this was an illusion, he could certainly feel it. The dull pain on his chest and shoulder lingered still. With no hesitation and a lack of consideration for his 'life', the Perrenchman leapt off the building as it melted into a pile of stone and dust. Flight was not an option but miniature explosions under his soles were something he had experimented with as a budding arcane expert.
He landed safely atop a broken beam of rock, once again giving him the high ground. There, he saw his two associates taking advantage of the dust. A flimsy cloud was all that kept them safe from the apparition. It wasn't going to be enough. Like the hero he thought he was, Yvain intervened in spite of the mockery he thought this all was. Pebbles of stone in hand, he launched them toward the ghost, only to have them erupt into small clouds of dust surrounding the thing. An extra layer of opacity that even covered the few locations the specter zipped into for a better view until it ascended up high. There, it only saw a big fog of debris where Yvain had drowned into as well.
"This way! exclaimed Yvain as he tugged onto Seviin's sleeve, guiding them to a tight alley he had staked out in his tenure as a critical audience member. Out of sight, dark and easy to miss. There was a lot of clutter in the way, things to hide behind.
The ghost lingered in the air, rotating in a search and destroy endeavor that may or may not even cease.
Yuli rounded the corner with the other two into their hiding spot and tried to catch her breath. Yvain's sudden appearance was a pleasant surprise, although her face didn't show it. If the Perrench noble tried to drag her unprompted into a dank alley under any other circumstance, she would have politely but firmly smacked his brains around until they were thinking straight. But these were not normal circumstances and she was happy to see him. Her dress had already been dirtied into the scuffle anyway, an alley was hardly going to do further harm.
Still, she picked up on some hesitation from Yvain. The way he looked at her felt... off. Was he a bit paler?
"What is wrong? You look like you have seen ghost." She formed a half smile at her joke.
"I have seen too many today myself."Yvain felt a awkward combination of relief and fear when looking upon their unlikely friend. Were they truly even friends, or were they only on friendly terms because of shared acquaintances? Would his companions be in true danger if Penelope would no longer be a unifying factor? However, he could not show such emotional
weakness.
"I have just seen some, let's say uncomfortable figures that tried to trick me within that fog." He clasped his shoulder.
"These are more than just mental images however."For a brief moment, although it felt like an agonizingly long quarter hour for Yvain, the world around him darkened into a thick, blueish fog. Seviin was gone and the ghost was a remote issue to be forgotten. There was his friend, Yuliya, in the foreground. The more he stared, the more uncanny her visage became. Eyes that were upside down, a nose far too thin and lips that barely hide those hungry fangs, wanting for seconds. There was no sound, only the fading heartbeat of Elisée.
Yuli had never grown up with much warmth in her life. She felt a world away from those who physically and emotionally let their expressions fly like the artist she had come to befriend. Compared to them, for all the improvements she liked to think she had made, she was left wanting. She felt reserved and unsure when it was alright to show a person care.
Yvain wasn't looking good. For all he said and whatever brave face he could put on, it didn't detract from the paleness of his face, the look of shock, and a reserved pain. At least, that's what she could guess as his eyes glazed over soon after he spoke. This was a look she
*was* familiar with. She only recently came to recognise it as one of trauma and the attempts to hide it behind bravado.
Yuli, mimicking the friends who had comforted her in days gone by, gently placed a hand on his shoulder.
"Are you alright, Yvain? You are with friends now, yes? You are safe."Seviin knew neither of these two, in truth, and so she largely kept to the background, healing wounds with what little she of the Gift she could find here. If the aberration had unsettled her and would continue to do so for some time, she was back on an even keel. She would not begrudge them a caring moment, for she sensed, in Yuliya, a good person: one who would risk her life for an unknown in the form of Seviin.
Still, there was that phantasm present, and it had proven almost completely immune to everything they'd thrown at it. It was evil and smart and yet... strangely dumb. It was no ghost, she felt even more strongly, but something of another world.
"I... second what she's said. We will... look out for each other," the priestess added.
"But that... thing is not far away and we understand little of it. If you can move, we should."Seviin knew neither of these two, in truth, and so she largely kept to the background, healing wounds with what little she of the Gift she could find here. If the aberration had unsettled her and would continue to do so for some time, she was back on an even keel. She would not begrudge them a caring moment, for she sensed, in Yuliya, a good person: one who would risk her life for an unknown in the form of Seviin.
Still, there was that phantasm present, and it had proven almost completely immune to everything they'd thrown at it. It was evil and smart and yet... strangely dumb. It was no ghost, she felt even more strongly, but something of another world.
"I... second what she's said. We will... look out for each other," the priestess added.
"But that... thing is not far away and we understand little of it. If you can move, we should."Yvain showed visible panic as the visage of a companion most dear contorted into that of a monster he could only visualize within his nightmares.
"You are a friend?..." He blinked frantically as if he was trying to see through any trickery and illusions this place threw at him.
Yuli was his friend, yet she killed her.. or was it just an image of her? Was this another said trick? Were these two real?
"Will you give me a false sense of security just to attack me again?" He looked very pale, yet his expression showed a mixture of both fear and anger. He seemed to be very confused.
The ghost lingered in the neighborhood, a few stories up and ominously illuminated the dark streets of what was once a nicer part of town.
Every minute change, whether a sound or a moving piece of rubble, had it rotate its ephemeral form to acknowledge it. It wasn't jumpy on the trigger as if keen on using its power efficiently rather than effectively.
The quietude did not last. A rhythm had sound it way into this silent realm where death had come to die. A beat that came with a voice, one a bit too remote too easily recognize. The specter immediately noticed it and stared at the direction of the central tower, where the Forge was meant to be. But it didn't move.
Even as skylights hit the dark and murky clouds above, stemming from the Fountain Square they were mean to go to, it did not move. Was this a signal? Did someone or something want the attention?
Then came gunshots, a lot of them.
In that moment, the apparition flickered in and out of the physical realm. Its luminescent coil shifted from red, to black and to white again. Its zipping also became consistent - it was all over the place, often partially within a structure, other times not even standing upright.
"No, I won't." Yuli replied bluntly and firmly, perhaps lacking the comfort the noble had needed but it was the best she could do. Whatever happened to him, it left more than visible mental scars where physical ones were lacking. She slowly retreated her hand from his shoulder to make a show of her lack of interest in attacking him. Seviin had spoken the truth anyway, there was still great danger looming around them. It would be foolish to ignore that.
She waited in silence, watching the ghost, looking for an opportunity to make their escape. But it was dutiful and it didn't look to be going away any time soon. Until the commotion.
Yuli turned her head toward the skylights and the femenine voice singing. From the people she knew joined them, there was no mistaking the two responsible for it. She smiled. Not only did they have a place to go with friends alive and waiting for them, but it also distracted the ghost from its search. This was their moment to act.
She stood from their hiding place.
"Come. I do not know if we get another chance like this, but I won't waste it." As she emerged from the alleyway and looked back toward the skylights, she realised that their commotion can't have gone unnoticed by the evil things that lurk this city. She hoped they knew what they were doing.
Seviin nodded, of like mind with this Vossoriyan she was starting to view with increasing respect and fondness. She took off running at a pace that few would be able to keep up with, towards the voice of... it
had to be that eeaiko songstress: Kaurah? Kiarah? Keraurah? She shook her head to clear it.
"She is right," the yasoi whisper-hissed.
"This is our chance. We go now." She forced herself to slow down for Yvain. He was... pretty to look at and damaged right now and... she couldn't resist the combination.
"But together, when you're feeling a bit better." She drew as they moved, and cast as well, doing her best to heal whatever wounds were not obvious to see.
Yvain was still hesitant to believe what the others were saying. But the fear of being alone with those things was ever greater than his mistrust, and thus he trekked along with them.
"Good.. that's very good." He sighed as his eyes avoided the contorted visage of his friend. Then the words of the yasoi woman slammed into his mind. Feeling better? Has he shown his weakness again? No, no, he was among the strong, of course he would be well.
"Like I said before, I am fine." he stated confidently before enhancing the kinetic energy expelled through his stepped with what little of his bountiful RAS supply he could muster.
Seviin blinked a couple of times, wanting to say more, that she, too, was often afraid of appearing young or naive or weak; that she, too, was someone of strength, though of a different variety than most found preferable. She wanted to reassure him that it wasn't judgement, but just... caring, and caring wasn't bad. She accelerated, then, away from one sort of danger.
Yuli didn't slow much but turned back to address her friend. There was a faint look of sympathy in skeptical eyes.
"I saw you fall from building and you say you are fine. Why do you lie to me?"Yvain gave the other a look of frustration back.
"And I caught my fall. . . I am fine, there is no lie in that."Yuli's expression turned to match his.
"Soldier men turn to bravado to cover hurt. If you think it is common in Perrence, then you weren't paying attention in Vossoriya."She turned her head back forward to the direction they were walking.
"You don't need to talk about it. But our magic has been taken, I know you aren't fine because I am not either."The Perrenchman sighed upon hearing the other try to convince him to show weakness. What do they know? They are among the strong.
"Okay, even IF I am not fine right now, I will be fine.""Fine. She kept her head forward and she kept walking. Whatever had happened, it was Yvain's secret to keep.
The eerie quietude of Halge Larchelon was substituted with a distant beat coupled with continuous gunshots. The beacons of light were drawing closer as the expedition group neared the site while staying out of sight, indulging in conversations born mostly out of concern for one another.
Tension in the air returned and two of them knew what it meant. Except this one came with a sudden quake. Mild, barely capable of compromising footing with dust being shaken off old structures at its worse. Still, there was no smoke cloud nearby, so one what could have done this so inconspicuously? Regardless, the ghost was coming.
But there wasn't just seismic activity and a specter that stood out to Seviin, her senses hitting their peaks after the dose of pure power she had been forced to take and her wildblood traits. A thin, wire-sized flow of energy stood out among the static that announced the arrival of a ghost. A string of pure magnetic energy flowing in a manner she had never seen before under the earth and through the walls. In fact, it was a wide network of the stuff. Her attention ended at a node that served as a sort of nexus.
The ghost manifested just a few yards before them, red and black to indicate its alertness whilst immediately getting a lock on the group. No delay, no warning, it zipped toward them, one arm morphed into a buster blade-like form of pure plasma. The bulb of energy Seviin had sniffed out swelled in tandem with this display of power.
Another, stronger tremor interjected although it did nothing to stop its assault. What did stop was the energy accumulated in the node the yasoi had sensed, inflating into a massive halo of energy until it completely deflated following the earth's shaking. Tension in the air had suddenly disappeared.
And so had the ghost.
Seviin was about to shout something. She was... trying to make sense of the strange power streams, but she was no sort of magnetic mage by a longshot. Then, the ghost disappeared. Seviin froze, stretching out her senses repeatedly and with the utmost sensitivity, to check for any disturbances, any illusions, or any strange phenomena that might explain matters.
There was only one conclusion: the ghost was somehow... animated by that magnetic tether. Perhaps there were other threats here that were as well. The buildings were strange and arcane things, as well as the ruined steel constructs. If their sources could be shut down, damaged, or removed somehow, then they might be neutralized. It was very much like the sap arteries in some of Tarlon's Hax'aloi; only, they did not have singular sources that might be easily taken out.
"I... sensed something," she offered thoughtfully, as the others made what observations they might.
"There is a great branching magnetic network running through this place, like the veins of a body." She pursed her lips for a moment.
"It had something like... a heart." She pointed.
"Down that way. It just flared and went out and when it did..." She trailed off to let them fill in the rest, glancing significantly and gesturing with her chin at where the onrushing shade had just been.
The building in question was as decrepit as any other. No doors had survived and windows had long since shattered. Inside were halls and more door frames, though with some shielding from the unnatural elements, some things had remained relatively intact. Desks, chairs, even some pots, though the dirt had since withered into a sand-like substance.
It was in the lower levels that what Seviin sought could be found, the basement where supplies were once kept. Some could be of use, but most had long expired. What they searched for would have been innocuous at first - a network of pipes connected to a main boiler with multiple vales. Within that network was their smoking gun, or rather literal smoke in the darkness. A bottle-sized metal contraption that had recently exploded was there with sturdy glass and metal shrapnel scattered about. It was still hot and thus easy to track, though the flow of electricity had since ceased.
By the time an assessment of the device could be made, they were not spared from the city-wide siren that followed the conclusion of the concert in the plaza.
The otherworldly shriek beckoned the stragglers. They had a job to finish and some of them did not have the luxury of time. Yuliya, in particular, was beginning to feel that literally pressure more and more.
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