“Pawn? Hardly.”
Alphonse’s voice echoed through beneath the roil of battle, Zeik’s emergence from the floor dripping in righteous bloodlust, speaking an end to the forgoes that befell the mage and the wolf. The screams of the vulpine Cerberus amplified, drowning the battlefield in the wails of the damned.
Fenri’s blades of ice carved through the carnage, laying into the beast with surgical precision, wild ferocity, shards of wind carving through the despair-scrawled flesh of the creature. By head and by tail, Zeik and Fenri seemed to put some weight into their assaults on their three-faced foe. Any mortal beast would have been felled, scrapped, shredded and scorched into nothing by elmental fire and ice.
But this was no mortal beast.
The ice and fire raged until there was no more, dense fog slipped through the hands of Zeik's spiritual construct and wafted past Fenri's body, disappearing into the onyx expanse beyond them. All that was left to receive Alphonse's haughty retort were two men of formidable stature stranded in a sea of darkness with nothing to hold on to.
"Come now, Zeik. You don't really think I'd be an incompetent tool?"
The obsidian floor pulsed with a single, roiling pulse washing over likea midnight surf. The energy passed through Zeik and Fenri without moving their bodies, in this realm of mind and soul.
"That I wouldn't plan your downfall personally after you hospitalized my dear, beloved daughter?"
Between the two of them, at the epicenter of the wave of energy, a circular spac ebegan to bubble up from below, a rumbling of viscous shadows spitting what looked like fume and spray into the air from a pit large enough to vanish both men into the inky depths by themselves.
"That you and that MONGREL who's been a thorn in my side for YEARS could just walk into the maw of the beast without being ground to dust?!"
The roil deepened, cursed wails spilled from the pit, and a ring of six eerie crimson lights ignited just short of the cauldron's rim, burning their way steadily higher in pairs looking outward.
"Zero was smart to bring you along, he wouldn't have been able to dispel the Nulgurian ward by himself, but you being right here, right now, has made up for that gaffe in spades."
The screams swelled and one of the vulpine beast's clawed arms shot out of the rumbling pit seething with its crimson-grey aura searing into the pitch back atmosphere above them.
Just its forearm extended above Zeik's ascended form breaking free of his worldly constraints, absolutely dwarfing Fenri with one of its glowing, carved markings adorning its skin.
Screams shook Fenri's body to the bone, a sensory experience drowned him in the wails of the damned, oppressing his senses with the weight of untold terror drenching him.
Drowning him.
Submerging the wolf in a surge of pain that crippled him, petrified him in an inescapable wave of pain inundating his spirit.
In the realm of the Seen, Fenri's indomitable spirit bode him well.
Here, in the pierced realm of the Traversing Mirror, the final bridge for departed souls from one realm to the next, Fenri stood naked before the Pike's strength.
"How dare you, mage? My relationship with the benefactors of my fealty is none of your concern. You see, I already had plans to wrest control of this world from the grips of chaos. The powers bestowed upon me only guaranteed my success."
A whirling mass of crimson-grey energy swirled up from the pit and exploded into a massive orb clutched by each of the creature's clawed fingers. It drew in long wisps of this crimson-grey energy from all over the expanse, licking wisps of it off of Fenri's body as it lifted him off the ground into a spiral current traveling up the arm's height.
"You have much more imminent danger to concern yourself with, since you're never going to see what this world will become without either of you."
The currents drawing up into the death star atop the pylon of despair before him etched claw marks into Zeik's ethereal form, chipping away at his spiritual armor, clipping his magnificent wings, degrading it inch by inch.
Fenri was lost, Zeik still had some fight in him, but the situation was beyond dire.
A Frosty Counteroffensive: Mending the Mirror
-
The Arceneaux Family
- Death Herald
- Posts: 27
- Joined: Fri Jan 12, 2024 5:17 pm
Re: A Frosty Counteroffensive: Mending the Mirror
Gwendolyn and Alphonse Arceneaux, CEO's of the Arceneaux Corporation
Re: A Frosty Counteroffensive: Mending the Mirror
Zeik felt it.
Not the pull of the orb—that was obvious, violent, unavoidable.
No.
He felt the answer
Buried beneath the screaming pull of the well, beneath the Herald’s suffocating aura, beneath the unraveling edges of his own form… there it was. A path. A narrow, brutal certainty.
He could end this.
Not the skirmish. Not the moment.
The war.
The realization came with a clarity that almost sickened him. If he let go—if he gave himself fully to the current, let the Herald surface, let it take him—he could draw it out, expose it, destroy it here, now, at the threshold between worlds.
A final exchange.
A decisive end.
His wings shuddered as another current carved through them, splintering light into nothing.
It would work.
He knew it would.
And Fenri—
Zeik’s gaze shifted.
The wolf was already being taken. Suspended, torn, his spirit dragged in threads toward the burning core. No resistance left in his limbs. No ground to stand on in this place.
Fenri would die.
Not just as a warrior. Not simply as a sacrifice.
He would be reduced. Broken down into something lesser—fuel. A nameless offering swallowed by the well-Loosh.
The word came unbidden.
Zeik’s jaw tightened.
Fenri would accept it.
That was the worst part.
If Fenri understood—if he could see what Zeik saw—he would not hesitate. He would bare his throat to the void if it meant the war ended, if it meant the Diamond Dust endured, if it meant his people never had to face this horror again.
Zeik had seen that truth already.
The Silent Moon had shifted—subtly, but undeniably—aligning itself with the Herald of War to shield those who would not survive what was coming.
Sacrifices were being chosen.
Lines were already drawn.
The world was preparing to survive… without mercy.
So he could do it.
He could become the blade that ended it.
No one would know the choice he made here.
No one would see him falter.
No one would ever question the outcome.
Victory would stand.
History would move forward.
And everything he fought for… would remain.
Zeik closed his eyes.
For a fraction of a second, the chaos fell away.
Could he do it…toss aside What he represented.
He wasn't just power.
He wouldnt just gain victory.
He muddle his Truth and become just another lowsome myth.
No longer would he be the Unyielding. Uncorrupted. No…Witnessed or not, he couldnt let that happen.
If the world he saved was built on a choice that betrayed that truth—
No, he understood that correcting this mess required something greater than a myth. It required a legend. The Great One.
His eyes opened.
The decision was already made.
“...No. ”
The word barely formed, torn apart by the screaming currents—but it anchored him.
Zeik moved.
Every inch of him resisted. The pull of the orb intensified instantly, as if the well itself rejected his defiance. His form cracked, light shearing from his arms, his wings collapsing into fragments—
—but he pushed through it.
Dragonic claws tore into the current itself, raking against something unseen, something absolute. The force fought him, crushed him, tried to fold him into its pull—
He roared through it.
“Fenri!”
He seized him.
Not gently. Not cleanly. He ripped him free—threads of spirit snapping, the current screaming in protest as Zeik tore the wolf from its grasp.
For a moment, the pull redoubled.
Punishing.
Demanding.
Trying to take them both.
Zeik planted himself in nothingness, muscles trembling, form unraveling, and forced his arm back.
“Bring him…!”
The command was not loud.
It was absolute.
Something answered.
The Mirror shuddered.
Fenri vanished.
Ripped from the current, cast out of the Traversing Mirror, hurled back toward the realm of the living. Sent back to world he understood.
Silence followed.
Not peace.
Absence.
Zeik staggered.
The dragonic form that once crowned him peeled away in strips of fading light. Wings gone. Armor gone. Power—bleeding, leaking, failing.
What remained stood bare.
Exposed.
Human.
Chains formed from the darkness itself, coiling around his arms, his torso, his throat—binding him to the Mirror’s will.
Across from him—
The Herald.
And the hound.
Watching.
Waiting.
Zeik lifted his head, breath unsteady, body failing—but his gaze did not waver.
He had made his choice.
And now—
He would bear it.
Not the pull of the orb—that was obvious, violent, unavoidable.
No.
He felt the answer
Buried beneath the screaming pull of the well, beneath the Herald’s suffocating aura, beneath the unraveling edges of his own form… there it was. A path. A narrow, brutal certainty.
He could end this.
Not the skirmish. Not the moment.
The war.
The realization came with a clarity that almost sickened him. If he let go—if he gave himself fully to the current, let the Herald surface, let it take him—he could draw it out, expose it, destroy it here, now, at the threshold between worlds.
A final exchange.
A decisive end.
His wings shuddered as another current carved through them, splintering light into nothing.
It would work.
He knew it would.
And Fenri—
Zeik’s gaze shifted.
The wolf was already being taken. Suspended, torn, his spirit dragged in threads toward the burning core. No resistance left in his limbs. No ground to stand on in this place.
Fenri would die.
Not just as a warrior. Not simply as a sacrifice.
He would be reduced. Broken down into something lesser—fuel. A nameless offering swallowed by the well-Loosh.
The word came unbidden.
Zeik’s jaw tightened.
Fenri would accept it.
That was the worst part.
If Fenri understood—if he could see what Zeik saw—he would not hesitate. He would bare his throat to the void if it meant the war ended, if it meant the Diamond Dust endured, if it meant his people never had to face this horror again.
Zeik had seen that truth already.
The Silent Moon had shifted—subtly, but undeniably—aligning itself with the Herald of War to shield those who would not survive what was coming.
Sacrifices were being chosen.
Lines were already drawn.
The world was preparing to survive… without mercy.
So he could do it.
He could become the blade that ended it.
No one would know the choice he made here.
No one would see him falter.
No one would ever question the outcome.
Victory would stand.
History would move forward.
And everything he fought for… would remain.
Zeik closed his eyes.
For a fraction of a second, the chaos fell away.
Could he do it…toss aside What he represented.
He wasn't just power.
He wouldnt just gain victory.
He muddle his Truth and become just another lowsome myth.
No longer would he be the Unyielding. Uncorrupted. No…Witnessed or not, he couldnt let that happen.
If the world he saved was built on a choice that betrayed that truth—
No, he understood that correcting this mess required something greater than a myth. It required a legend. The Great One.
His eyes opened.
The decision was already made.
“...No. ”
The word barely formed, torn apart by the screaming currents—but it anchored him.
Zeik moved.
Every inch of him resisted. The pull of the orb intensified instantly, as if the well itself rejected his defiance. His form cracked, light shearing from his arms, his wings collapsing into fragments—
—but he pushed through it.
Dragonic claws tore into the current itself, raking against something unseen, something absolute. The force fought him, crushed him, tried to fold him into its pull—
He roared through it.
“Fenri!”
He seized him.
Not gently. Not cleanly. He ripped him free—threads of spirit snapping, the current screaming in protest as Zeik tore the wolf from its grasp.
For a moment, the pull redoubled.
Punishing.
Demanding.
Trying to take them both.
Zeik planted himself in nothingness, muscles trembling, form unraveling, and forced his arm back.
“Bring him…!”
The command was not loud.
It was absolute.
Something answered.
The Mirror shuddered.
Fenri vanished.
Ripped from the current, cast out of the Traversing Mirror, hurled back toward the realm of the living. Sent back to world he understood.
Silence followed.
Not peace.
Absence.
Zeik staggered.
The dragonic form that once crowned him peeled away in strips of fading light. Wings gone. Armor gone. Power—bleeding, leaking, failing.
What remained stood bare.
Exposed.
Human.
Chains formed from the darkness itself, coiling around his arms, his torso, his throat—binding him to the Mirror’s will.
Across from him—
The Herald.
And the hound.
Watching.
Waiting.
Zeik lifted his head, breath unsteady, body failing—but his gaze did not waver.
He had made his choice.
And now—
He would bear it.
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Re: A Frosty Counteroffensive: Mending the Mirror
The myriad wails dripping from the skewered beast drowned the flash that threw massive frozen spires into its body. Fenri stood in the middle of a gentle snowfall left by the creature’s mangled body, illuminated by the fading light of eik’s smiting blast. Seeing the mage emerge as a new creature, a scion of the conviction that brought him to world’s end, gave Fenri a modicum of solace that the two of them could emerge from this trial victorious after being dwarfed by the depth of ancient spellcraft that he ran headlong into.
Zeik evened the odds, or at least Fenri felt that way being ferried into this mindscape that housed the Traversing Mirror and hosted the infernal beast skewered and shredded above them.
Fenri almost had time to breathe a sigh of relief before Alphonse began speaking to them, mostly Zeik, and pontificating on their imminent demise.
It wasn’t the first time Fenri endured a monologue from an opponent, but the weight on his body seemed to grow with every passing second. And with that, the world around him began to unfurl.
The ethereal ground beneath them buckled and rose, forcing Fenri to his back foot while a massive, obsidian form burgeoned from the placid floor beneath them. The confidence Fenro wore as his mask melted into a solemn resolve, racing through calculations in his mind to weather this unyielding threat birthing between him and Zeik.
The thick hairs tracing his neck and shoulders bristled with frost and a cloak of ice gathering from the espers of the quickly vanishing spires left stranded in the empty air fell over him. Fenri’s hands glistened porcelain white, dripping frigid mist from his fingertips as he watched the massive arm grow to tower above him, above Zeik’s ethereal aberration.
Fenri’s gaze sharpened, focused on the elevating palm, the growing glow swirling further away into the darkness.
And then, a wave of unfamiliar cold filled him from his feet to the tip of his crown.
The frost cloak that befell him seemed to extinguish itself, fading into vapor as the mist that had filled the empty space between all of them vanished and an eerie crimson-grey glow replaced it.
Fenri’s body grew weak, its spirited, frigid aura slipping away as the glowing crimson or swept wisps of energy off his back.
His body froze, the ice disappeared, and a long, pulse of crimson-grey energy slipped out of his corporeal form and followed a spiraling path up the length of the gigantic arm.
His body was frozen, or what was left of it in this mind palace ruled by the esoteric, the unyielding. Fenri, his wisdom, his resourcefulness, all failed him in the realm between realms, within the Traversing Mirror. Diving into the bridge between the living and the dead now ferried him closer to the brink than he ever dared to venture in the living world.
His aura, the prana that made up the him that filled space and meaning in the vast inbetween realm drifted toward the eye of the storm atop the massive palm seating the crimson orb beckoning him.
His mind was clear.
Clear of thought
Of concern
Of regret
His body grayed as the crimson aura rose further and further from him, a stone wading in pitch black, uncertain waters.
Though he came to solve the world’s problems, he found himself deeper in ancient warfare unlike any he’d seen on The Seen. The magics put an increased pressure on his body while his spirit ascended into the terrifying unknown.
Then Zeik’s ethereal claws ripped him from the orb's magnetic attractor and flung his spirit far across the black horizon. One moment, a crimson-grey light drew Fenri’s spirit from itself in the realm between the Seen and Unseen.
Before he could even register a shift in energy, the change was already made for him. The darkness turned white, he felt the brisk caress of Iden’s foul winds whipping frozen sand across his face and heard the crashing of the surf around him.
Fenri was back, mind, body and spirit, at the End of the World.
He heaved, landing back in his body, catching his breath, the familiar cold of Aeon grounding him in the realm of the Seen.
*Huff… huff… huff… huff…”
Fenri clenched his chest scanning the landscape of Iden, the island at the End of the World. As the world came back into view, the scene from within the Traversing Mirror’s inner sanctum melted away like an unpleasant dream, drifting into the recesses of his mind. Left and right hemispheres of the brain fought to reconcile the sharp shift in space after being almost torn apart completely.
It took him a few seconds to catch his breath, but it left Fenri breathing slowly, kneeling over Zeik’s shoulder, frozen in time.
The mage’s natural heat left a shimmer of condensation all over him, turning his physical form into a glistening effigy, a vestige all its own bridging this world to the Traversing Mirror.
With his composure returned, Fenri stood up and shook Zeik’s body calmly. Forcefully, but calmly.
“Zeik? Mage!” he said, trying to move the magister’s body, but it might as well have been frozen in time. Not a hair nor fiber of clothing moved to the touch though it still retained heat.
Fenri groaned to himself, a simple beast’s snarl scrawling itself across his uneasy face, still adjusting to the whiplash of being torn from one realm into the next.
And then Zeik’s voice rang in his head,
“Him… Him? HIM? No… Him? Of course it’s him…”
No matter how he wanted to deny it, Fenri recognized the timber of Zeik’s voice; the subtle reference to a person they knew in the face of insurmountable odds could still be the missing piece, ‘him’ among a number of acquaintances and allies amassed over the ages.
Fenri groaned, clenching his fists while he tossed a defeated grimace to the air.
“Dammit mage… I guess our back’s against the wall…”
Fenri took a deep, frigid heave of the cold air at the End of the World and exhaled calmly, standing to his feet and flexing his limbs, rolling his neck to finally ground himself in the present, the Seen, and at his place at the End of the World.
Through their collaboration, Fenri recognized his mission now. His forte rested in the realm of the material, where the elements at his fingertips could be moved into his favor. Though he felt defeated for a moment, Zeik’s expertise allowed him to return to the field where his skills could shine the most. Fenri, a man of the people, of the world, turned away from the ancient mage and made his way back towards the Iden Strait.
“He’d better be ready… No excuses…”
Zeik evened the odds, or at least Fenri felt that way being ferried into this mindscape that housed the Traversing Mirror and hosted the infernal beast skewered and shredded above them.
Fenri almost had time to breathe a sigh of relief before Alphonse began speaking to them, mostly Zeik, and pontificating on their imminent demise.
It wasn’t the first time Fenri endured a monologue from an opponent, but the weight on his body seemed to grow with every passing second. And with that, the world around him began to unfurl.
The ethereal ground beneath them buckled and rose, forcing Fenri to his back foot while a massive, obsidian form burgeoned from the placid floor beneath them. The confidence Fenro wore as his mask melted into a solemn resolve, racing through calculations in his mind to weather this unyielding threat birthing between him and Zeik.
The thick hairs tracing his neck and shoulders bristled with frost and a cloak of ice gathering from the espers of the quickly vanishing spires left stranded in the empty air fell over him. Fenri’s hands glistened porcelain white, dripping frigid mist from his fingertips as he watched the massive arm grow to tower above him, above Zeik’s ethereal aberration.
Fenri’s gaze sharpened, focused on the elevating palm, the growing glow swirling further away into the darkness.
And then, a wave of unfamiliar cold filled him from his feet to the tip of his crown.
The frost cloak that befell him seemed to extinguish itself, fading into vapor as the mist that had filled the empty space between all of them vanished and an eerie crimson-grey glow replaced it.
Fenri’s body grew weak, its spirited, frigid aura slipping away as the glowing crimson or swept wisps of energy off his back.
His body froze, the ice disappeared, and a long, pulse of crimson-grey energy slipped out of his corporeal form and followed a spiraling path up the length of the gigantic arm.
His body was frozen, or what was left of it in this mind palace ruled by the esoteric, the unyielding. Fenri, his wisdom, his resourcefulness, all failed him in the realm between realms, within the Traversing Mirror. Diving into the bridge between the living and the dead now ferried him closer to the brink than he ever dared to venture in the living world.
His aura, the prana that made up the him that filled space and meaning in the vast inbetween realm drifted toward the eye of the storm atop the massive palm seating the crimson orb beckoning him.
His mind was clear.
Clear of thought
Of concern
Of regret
His body grayed as the crimson aura rose further and further from him, a stone wading in pitch black, uncertain waters.
Though he came to solve the world’s problems, he found himself deeper in ancient warfare unlike any he’d seen on The Seen. The magics put an increased pressure on his body while his spirit ascended into the terrifying unknown.
Then Zeik’s ethereal claws ripped him from the orb's magnetic attractor and flung his spirit far across the black horizon. One moment, a crimson-grey light drew Fenri’s spirit from itself in the realm between the Seen and Unseen.
Before he could even register a shift in energy, the change was already made for him. The darkness turned white, he felt the brisk caress of Iden’s foul winds whipping frozen sand across his face and heard the crashing of the surf around him.
Fenri was back, mind, body and spirit, at the End of the World.
He heaved, landing back in his body, catching his breath, the familiar cold of Aeon grounding him in the realm of the Seen.
*Huff… huff… huff… huff…”
Fenri clenched his chest scanning the landscape of Iden, the island at the End of the World. As the world came back into view, the scene from within the Traversing Mirror’s inner sanctum melted away like an unpleasant dream, drifting into the recesses of his mind. Left and right hemispheres of the brain fought to reconcile the sharp shift in space after being almost torn apart completely.
It took him a few seconds to catch his breath, but it left Fenri breathing slowly, kneeling over Zeik’s shoulder, frozen in time.
The mage’s natural heat left a shimmer of condensation all over him, turning his physical form into a glistening effigy, a vestige all its own bridging this world to the Traversing Mirror.
With his composure returned, Fenri stood up and shook Zeik’s body calmly. Forcefully, but calmly.
“Zeik? Mage!” he said, trying to move the magister’s body, but it might as well have been frozen in time. Not a hair nor fiber of clothing moved to the touch though it still retained heat.
Fenri groaned to himself, a simple beast’s snarl scrawling itself across his uneasy face, still adjusting to the whiplash of being torn from one realm into the next.
And then Zeik’s voice rang in his head,
“Bring him?” Fenri asked aloud, wind howling in his ears, drowning out his jumbled thoughts that failed to gain clarity.
“Him… Him? HIM? No… Him? Of course it’s him…”
No matter how he wanted to deny it, Fenri recognized the timber of Zeik’s voice; the subtle reference to a person they knew in the face of insurmountable odds could still be the missing piece, ‘him’ among a number of acquaintances and allies amassed over the ages.
Fenri groaned, clenching his fists while he tossed a defeated grimace to the air.
“Dammit mage… I guess our back’s against the wall…”
Fenri took a deep, frigid heave of the cold air at the End of the World and exhaled calmly, standing to his feet and flexing his limbs, rolling his neck to finally ground himself in the present, the Seen, and at his place at the End of the World.
Through their collaboration, Fenri recognized his mission now. His forte rested in the realm of the material, where the elements at his fingertips could be moved into his favor. Though he felt defeated for a moment, Zeik’s expertise allowed him to return to the field where his skills could shine the most. Fenri, a man of the people, of the world, turned away from the ancient mage and made his way back towards the Iden Strait.
“He’d better be ready… No excuses…”
The team