Vescrutia: Legacy

The cacophony of war was a distant roar, a percussive backdrop of steel, stone, and screams from the slopes of the Emerald Ascension. Up here, on the windswept summit, the world had shrunk to the space between two combatants. Dalazar Denkou, the Emerald King, felt the storm of the invasion below as a tremor in his bones, but his gaze, sharp and analytical, was locked on the epicenter of a far greater tempest: the woman before him. Kilik.

His Magic Sense, a Denkou trait that allowed them to sense and echiper other forms of magic, screamed an unrelenting alarm. She was barely taller than his own sword, a compact frame of whipcord muscle and impossible grace, yet the magical pressure she exuded was suffocating, a weight like a collapsed star. It was the aura of something primeval, a colossal power masquerading in a deceptively small vessel. He had seen the meteor she rode down from the heavens, a brilliant scar across the morning sky, and still, a part of him struggled to reconcile the cataclysmic entry with the person standing there.

Then she had spoken, her voice a low murmur against the wind, yet each word landed like a hammer blow against the foundation of his kingdom. She spoke of his ancestors, the first Denkou clans, and their sin—the colonization of these sacred mountains, wrested from the Azerri, a land they had no right to claim. A familiar, bitter history. But it was her identity that made the pieces click into a horrifying new picture. An Atlantean. The scales that shimmered across her skin, not like fish but like captured nebulae and swirling galaxies, were testament to it.

The old conflicts, the wars for the coastlines just after the Denkou’s pilgrimage of pillage… it was all written in blood-soaked history texts. But that was ancient history. Why now? And why, in the name of all the spirits, would an Atlantean, a child of the deep, ally with the B’halian Empire—a landlocked, tyrannical regime known for its enslavemnt of other non-human races? The fragile peace, the hope he’d felt seeing Atlantean delegates at the Neo festival just months ago, sharing music and food with his people… it all felt like a cruel joke.

He had no time to voice the thousand questions warring in his mind. Before the first syllable of a protest could form, she moved. It wasn’t just speed; it was a violation of physics, a fold in the space between them. One moment she was twenty paces away, the next her blade was whispering for the blood in his throat.

In the end, the reasons mattered little. She was an enemy commander on his soil, and his people were dying. He was the Emerald King. He would not yield.

His singular, gauntleted hand was a blur of steel and emerald light, meeting her assault with a deafening clang that cracked the very air. The shockwave of their meeting blew dust and loose stone from the summit in a violent halo. Draconic magic, raw and crushing as the abyssal pressure of the deep sea, met the crackling, untamed fury of Esoteric Lightning. The mountaintop vanished in a blinding flash of emerald and azure. The battle for the Emerald Ascension had begun.

Her strength was a physical heresy. The force that traveled up his arm from her blade was staggering, a living tide of power that threatened to buckle his knees and shatter his bones. He knew of Atlantean physiology; they were dense, sturdy, adapted to the crushing depths. But this was something else entirely. This was the strength of a god packed into a mortal frame. Every ounce of his considerable power was focused on the singular act of not being cleaved in two.

In that moment… her power skyrocketed.

His Magic Sense shrieked. The vast, ambient ocean of her magic was now consolidating, pouring into her muscles, her bones, her very cells. Enhancement magic, of a potency he had never conceived.

A grim smile touched Dalazar’s lips. "Two can play at that game."

Green lightning, the sacred inheritance of the Emerald Soul, erupted from him. It was not a shell, but an infusion. His silver dreadlocks writhed like living serpents, each strand crackling with verdant energy. The power surged through him, an exhilarating fire that banished fatigue and ignited his cells with magical might. He roared, pushing her back a single, hard-won inch.

They became a whirlwind of lethal intent. Their exchange was a blur of afterimages, a storm of strikes too fast for any mortal eye to follow. Each blow Kilik landed was not just a strike, but a wave building upon the last. Her power was cumulative, a relentless tsunami that eroded his defenses with every crashing impact. He could feel his guard weakening, the lightning in his veins struggling to mend the microscopic fractures in his bones as quickly as they formed. He couldn't win a war of attrition. He had to break her rhythm.

As she lunged, her blade a silver streak aimed for his heart, his scarf—a relic woven from the silk of lightning elementals—came alive. It whipped through the air with sentient speed, a green ribbon of magic that coiled around her sword arm, constricting with immense force.

Her focus shattered for a barest fraction of a second. It was all he needed.

Pivoting on his heel, Dalazar drove his boot into her stomach. The impact was solid, visceral. Her smaller body soared backward, tumoring through the air. In that brief, precious reprieve, he channeled his will into his blade. The sword, forged from storm-silver and naturally conductive, drank the magic greedily, humming with terrifying power until it glowed with the intensity of a captive sun.

He shifted his grip, holding the radiant blade like a javelin. The air itself seemed to thin around him, pulled into the vortex of his power.

"Lightning Magic," he bellowed, his voice the clap of thunder itself. He drew his arm back, muscles coiling into knots of pure energy.

"SEVERING BOLT!"

With a final, explosive cry, he cast the blade. It didn't fly; it erupted from his hand. It shrieked through the sky, an emerald comet leaving a trail of ozone and scorched air in its wake. It was no longer just a sword but a pure concept of severance, a blistering bolt of judgment aimed to punch straight through her and obliterate anything in its path. It moved at the speed of thought, of lightning itself.

The air at the roof of the world was thin, cold, and electric. At the summit of the Emerald Ascension mountains, beneath a sky bruised purple and black by an eternal storm, two figures moved as blurs of impossible speed. One was a king, wreathed in the viridian lightning that gave his kingdom its name. The other was a living cataclysm.

Kilik’s blade, a sliver of polished, clear, forged in the crushing pressures of the deep, was a living thing in her hand. She unleashed slash after slash, a relentless rhythm of destruction. Her movements weren't a sequence of attacks but a single, continuous flow, a torrent of violence. Each strike fed the next, the kinetic energy coiling in her well-toned muscles and erupting again with exponentially greater force. It was a dance of steel and power, each elegant arc and brutal pivot capable of shattering bone, grinding most defenses into dust.

And yet, Dalazar Denkou, the Emerald King, stood his ground. His one arm moved with the speed of two, his own blade a conduit for the Esoteric Lightning that was his birthright. Every parry was a contained thunderclap, every block a flash of emerald energy that sizzled against her dark blade. He matched her speed, her power, but Kilik could feel the strain. He was a dam holding back the ocean, and she could sense the hairline fractures forming in his defense. It was impressive, she admitted, far more than she’d expected from any human mage, even one who held the title of King.

But arrogance was a luxury even she could not afford. Just as the overwhelming flood of her power was about to break him, Dalazar did something unexpected. He broke the rhythm. In a move too fluid to be desperation, he flicked his wrist. The emerald scarf tied around his bicep unfurled like a striking serpent. Kilik, her entire being focused on the singular goal of crushing him, found herself ensnared in the odd, shimmering fabric. It tightened with impossible strength, a silken manacle.

That fractional lapse in her focus was all he needed. By the time her cherry-pink eyes snapped back to him, his boot was already a blur, barreling into her gut. For a being like her, pain was a distant concept, a dull and uninteresting signal. But the force was undeniable. It was like being struck by a meteor, a raw, kinetic impact that launched her several meters.

The distance was his. In that sliver of time, the Emerald King was already preparing his ultimate expression of power. He raised his sword to the roiling heavens, his silver dreadlocks whipping around his face, each strand crackling with green light.

The realm shuddered. Lightning, not from the clouds but from the very essence of his being, coalesced around his blade. It compressed and intensified until the sword itself seemed to dissolve into a solid bolt of incandescent emerald rage. He thrust his arm forward. A streak of green fury, accompanied by the literal flash and deafening crack of lightning, tore across the gap between them. The Severing Bolt.

There was no time to dodge, no space to evade.

But Kilik didn't try to.

As the bolt screamed toward her, a strange, profound serenity settled on her features. The cosmic nebulae swirling across her scales pulsed gently. Her cherry-pink eyes began to glow with an inner light, soft and ancient. Instead of bracing for impact, she opened her arms wide, a gesture not of surrender, but of welcome.

The Severing Bolt struck her squarely in the chest. The force of the strike was so great that it sent her cascading towards the ground like a falling star encased in lightning.

However...

There was no spray of blood, no cry of agony. There was only light and sound. An explosion of steam and emerald energy ripped outwards, a shockwave so violent it momentarily vaporized the swirling clouds around the summit. Dalazar might have thrown his arm to shield his eyes from the blinding glare, a triumphant snarl on his lips.

Yet when the light faded, his heart would plummet into a cold, dark abyss.

She was still standing. The Severing Bolt was embedded in her. But it wasn't piercing flesh. It was submerged into a molded cavity of her scales, as if plunged into still, deep water. The lightning, his raw power given form, was being… absorbed. The galaxies on her skin swirled violently, drinking the emerald energy as a parched man drinks water. Her silver-blue hair whipped around her in a vortex of wind and mist. The air grew heavy, humid, crackling not with his lightning, but with the promise of a biblical deluge.

Water vapor hissed from the point of impact, shrouding her form. With a casual, almost lazy motion, she wrapped her hand around the blade-shaped bolt lodged "in" her chest and pulled it free. There was no wound. Not even a scorch mark. The skin beneath was pristine, covered in its swirling cosmic tapestry.

She looked at the flickering remnant of his power in her hand, then at him. For the first time, Dalazar would see not just a formidable warrior, not just an Atlantean commander, but the ancient, fathomless being lurking beneath that beautiful, deadly veil.

"It is from the ocean that all life is sired, Emerald King," Kilik’s voice echoed. It was no longer the sharp, clear tone of a soldier, but a chorus of crashing waves and roaring tides, a sound as old as the ocean itself. "Lightning itself cannot be born without water..."

The last of his lightning sputtered and died in her grasp.

She had been prepared. Before this mission, Kilik had made a clandestine inquiry to a B'halian scientist, commissioning an upgrade to the nanite suit that was a second skin to her. Woven into the molecular structure was a unique substance, a dispersion gel that could "capture" a directed energy charge upon impact, preventing its travel past the point of contact and accelerating its dissipation into harmless thermal energy and vapor. Against a lightning user, it was the perfect counter to her elemental disadvantage.

A smirk, sharp and predatory, touched Kilik's lips. She tossed his blade aside, the hilt clattering hollowly on the stone. Her hands, free and elegant, then knitted together a series of complex signs. As she moved, glowing azure glyphs manifested in the air around her.

"Noa Caar..." she whispered, the draconic tongue for "Shape."

High in the skies of the Emerald Ascension, she was in her element. The eternal storm was a nigh-endless reservoir. From the saturated clouds above, thick streams of water answered her call, descending and oscillating around her like loyal serpents. In seconds, under her absolute control, the water crystallized. The temperature plummeted, and a litany of frozen shards formed in the air, each the size of a fully grown man, each honed to a razor's edge. They numbered in the hundreds, a glacier of spears hanging in the sky, blotting out the last of the light.

Kilik pointed her sword towards him, her command absolute. As she began her own slow, controlled descent towards the kingdom below, her onslaught of frozen death screamed towards its helpless target. She wondered, with detached curiosity, how the King would fare now.

A casual smirk crept upon Dalazar’s face as the Severing Bolt connected. The flash it produced, a blinding concussive burst of emerald light, was even more potent than he’d anticipated, forcing the King—even from his distant vantage atop the Emerald Ascension’s highest spire—to shield his eyes from the intense gleam of the clash. For a heartbeat, the world was pure, searing green. Then, as the light waned, Dalazar’s smirk faltered, his confident posture rigidifying into disbelief. What he expected was a mortally wounded foe, perhaps even an atomized vapor trail. What he saw was Kilik, her small form utterly unscathed, a renewed vigor radiating from her, and an indifferent, almost bored, curl to her lip.

“She...caught the lightning?” The words, a whisper barely audible above the residual crackle in the air, escaped Dalazar’s lips. It was a feat only fit for a being of divine origin, a goddess of storms, not this Atlantean Commander. True, his Esoteric Lightning, the very essence of the Emerald Soul he wielded, had been clamoring around the blade, transforming the weapon into a living, shrieking tool of the skies.

And yet...this being, barely reaching his chest at 5’3”, had managed to not only capture his blade mid-strike but, somehow, dispel the electricity saturating it, leaving his most potent attack inert. Her scales, shimmering with the depths of cosmic nebulae and swirling galaxies, seemed to hum, absorbing the residual energy without so much as a tremor. Her cherry-pink eyes, usually sharp and discerning, held a distant, almost melancholic glint, as if bored by his best effort.

“I have to admit that was pretty impressive,” Dalazar murmured, more to himself than to her. She remained leagues beneath him, a curious anomaly in his otherwise predictable path to victory. His pride, however, was quickly overshadowed by a dawning sense of unease.

Then it happened. A chilling power emanated from Kilik. The clouds above, which had moments ago been mere spectators to his fury, began to twist and writhe under a dominion not his own. Dark, heavy cumulonimbus formations, bloated with latent moisture, shimmered, then visibly thinned, drained of their very essence, the water coalescing around Kilik. A litany of ancient, undulating glyphs, shimmering with an ethereal, cerulean light, manifested around the invader, forming an intricate, swirling barrier.

Dalazar’s silver eyes narrowed, his silver dreadlocks, usually sparking with controlled energy, flared with untamed power. This was no ordinary Atlantean. This was a direct defiance of his meteorology. “Let’s see then, just how much you can take!” His voice boomed, echoing across the Denkou Kingdom, a thunderous challenge to the impudent invasion.

With a primal roar, Dalazar unleashed his full might. The skies above the Emerald Ascension mountains were broken, splintered by his furious will. The pounding war drums of the cumulonimbus clouds, now utterly subsumed by his power, banged against the very atmosphere, releasing a furious symphony of thunder.

Lightning, emerald and vibrant, coalesced around his being, engulfing him in a tempest of raw power. Sparks, thick as ropes, continuously ripped at the very air, causing everything around him to polarize, to hum with static potential. Yet, under the flaring will that was his electric edict, not a single spark of electricity descended upon the kingdom below; rather, every charge, every ion, every whisper of the storm accosted him.

His entire form became clad in the heavens’ fury, his silver dreadlocks ripping with chaotic, sporadic sparks of emerald lightning. He slipped casually, almost gracefully, into his Orochi Mage Fist style, a martial art born of his connection to the volatile energies of the sky. And like a shrieking arrow, a bolt of emerald wrath, Dalazar zagged through the skies towards Kilik, leaving trails of superheated air in his wake.

“Orochi Mage Fist…” His voice was a low growl, a guttural hum that vibrated with raw power. Kilik’s defensive glyphs, now solidified into sharp, crystalline thorns of ice, fired at him in their hundreds, guided by the swirling malice of her water magic. But Dalazar’s speed was unparalleled. Each icy thorn, reaching for his heart, his eyes, his limbs, was shattered an instant before impact by a lightning-endowed strike from an open palm, a flick of his wrist, or the barest brush of his charged dreadlocks. His well-toned, 18-year-old body was a blur.

“Chained Lighting Flux!” he roared, a brilliant green arcing across the sky. True to its name, each shard struck by his lightning attack became a primer for the next, producing a volatile pathway for the electricity to strike the subsequent crystalline projectile. He unleashed a furious array of hundreds of strikes in mere seconds, a blur of emerald light and kinetic force.

The aftermath of his blows produced hundreds upon hundreds of smaller, localized bursts of lightning, each one exploding with concussive force. The sky above the Denkou Kingdom became encased in a firework light display of emerald lightning bursts, all while Dalazar maintained his relentless pursuit of Kilik. He was weaponizing the truth of her earlier words, that lightning could not exist without water, and true to that point, he leveraged the lingering moisture, the very air she had once commanded, to empower his technique, drawing out every last bit of energy.

“Combo skill,” he punctuated, his voice tight with exertion and growing exhilaration, as the last of the icy shards was dealt with. Yet, the cumulative lightning produced by his assault did not dissipate; instead, it traveled behind him, a furious emerald serpent, suffusing his right leg with immense power as he went into a front flip. He was no more than a hair’s breadth from Kilik now, his eyes locked onto her indifferent face.

“Fulgora Hammer!” And with that exclamation, Dalazar unleashed a devastating axe kick. His leg, empowered by the collective fury of his sky-borne voyage and the kinetic energy of hundreds of lightning strikes, became a singular conduit of destruction. He centralized all that raw power, all that cumulative force, on one point: Kilik.

The resulting clash with her form was a thunderous smite, a shockwave that tore through the upper atmosphere. The sheer force alone, whether she managed to defend or otherwise, sealed their fate. It would result in them crashing, a meteoric impact, deep into the ancient arena within the heart of the Kingdom, leaving a cratered testament to their battle.

Kilik's eye narrowed as she watched the lightning encapsulate him. She had to admit, this was the first time she had encountered another "Elemental" being capable of bending the natural forces of the planet to their whims. What's more, she had seen the likes of fire users like the Salamanders, Joro, with their mastery over stone, but this was the first time she was face-to-face with an entity capable of subjugating the force of lightning under its thumb. It was both harrowing and exhilarating, a perfect preamble of experience to what it would be like when she faced....him. Her true target, but for now, this, Dalazar would serve as the needed stepping stone to prep her for what to expect.

Kilik, however, was ready. Even as Dalazar’s emerald-clad leg arced down with apocalyptic power, her indifference shifted. A hint of something akin to grim amusement, or perhaps resignation, touched her cherry-pink eyes. The glyphs around her, the remnants of her cloud-draining magic, flared with intense cerulean light, forming a shimmering, multi-layered shield composed of solidified water and compressed air. The lightning-dispersing effects of her armor pulsated through her congregated at the point of impact.. Her well-toned body tensed, the cosmic nebulae patterns on her scales swirling with increased intensity, absorbing and deflecting the immense pressure building around her. This was the strength of a water dragon, a creature born of the deep and imbued with the very will of the oceans. And yet...

"Ngh!"

The Fulgora Hammer connected with Kilik’s barrier, not with a resounding clang, but with a sickening, wet crack that reverberated through the very fabric of reality. As Kilik blocked the attack, she felt an intense burning pain in her side; the wound from her previous battle had not fully healed, causing her to wince in agony. This lapse compromised the full integrity of her lightning absorption, causing it to give way. The impact was an explosion of sound and light—emerald lightning meeting cerulean water magic. Her glyphs shattered, layer by layer, unable to fully contain the Emerald King’s unleashed fury. But they served their purpose, dissipating enough of the raw, crushing force to prevent her instant annihilation. But not enough to prevent damage entirely.

The dust of the arena tasted of ozone and pulverized history. For a moment, cocooned in the heart of the crater, the only sound was the high-pitched ringing in Kilik’s ears and the frantic, shallow breaths she forced into her protesting lungs. The pain in her side was a riot of fire, a phantom spear twisting with every heartbeat. Shards of glass seemed to grind against her ribs, a visceral reminder of her own fallibility, of the wound she’d carried into this battle like a fool’s gambit.

Dalazar’s silhouette solidified through the settling gray haze. His form was a defiant pillar of emerald energy against the bruised sky, the storm above the Denkou Kingdom swirling in a vortex of raw power that answered directly to him. He was a king on his throne of ruin, his power an endless circuit between the heavens and his very soul. He was magnificent, Kilik had to admit, a perfect storm of human ambition and elemental fury. And he was utterly surprised. The disbelief etched on his face, warring with his triumphant grimace, was more satisfying than any gasp of pain she could have wrung from him.

Kilik straightened, a deliberate, almost languid movement that ignored the screaming protest of her muscles. The cosmic nebulae patterns on her draconic scales swirled, the deep blues and purples a stark contrast to the monotonous gray rubble. She ran a hand through her long, blue-silver hair, dislodging a cascade of grit. Her cherry-pink eyes, holding the dispassionate calm of the abyssal deep, met his.

"What's wrong, King?" Her voice was a low murmur, yet it carried across the crater with perfect clarity, cutting through the crackle of his residual lightning. She dusted a shard of stone from her shoulder. "You didn't think it would be that easy, did you?"

Kilik… You are wounded, a voice, ancient and deep as the oceans, echoed in the quiet chambers of her mind. It was Orvyn, the Primordial Dragon of Water, the source of her power, the architect of her very being. His presence was a constant, a cool current beneath the surface of her thoughts.


It's nothing, Orvyn, she projected back, a silent rebuke. Aloud, she simply offered a faint, disdainful smile.

But she knew the truth. Orvyn knew the truth. The internal trauma was significant. Time was a luxury she didn't possess. Dalazar was tethered to the storm, a limitless battery recharging with every passing second. She, on the other hand, was a leaking vessel, her power and stamina draining away not only from the fight but from her body’s desperate attempt to knit itself back together. If this fight continued as a contest of attrition, she would lose. Her mission—the B'halian Empire's mandate to cleanse Vescrutia of the human plague—would falter here, on this mountain peak. And she would never get her chance to face him.

This place had to become her ocean.

"What do you say we raise the stakes?" Kilik asked, her gaze drifting past Dalazar to a large, ornate grate a dozen yards away. It was a sewage drain, a conduit to the unseen underbelly of the mountain kingdom. Through her connection to the world, a power the humans could never truly comprehend, she could hear it: the rush and gurgle of a current, the song of a vast cistern deep within the mountain's heart.

A hidden reservoir.

A captive sea.

A devilish, predatory grin finally broke through her indifferent facade. It transformed her features, hinting at the true, calamitous nature lurking beneath. Her body became outlined in an intense, ethereal light the color of cherry blossoms at dusk. This was Shinjustu, the art of becoming one with the planet's pulse, of borrowing its untamed strength. The air grew thick, heavy with the scent of petrichor and ancient, deep water.

"Noa Caar," she whispered, the two words of Wyrmspeech not merely spoken but impressed upon reality itself.

The spell was the same she had used to drain the clouds, but its target was now terrestrial, its ambition far grander. A massive, impossibly complex glyph blazed into existence on the crater floor, its cerulean lines scorching the stone. The ground groaned, then split apart as a geyser of unimaginable pressure erupted from the drain. It wasn't a clean spray, but a churning, furious torrent of the cold, dark, forgotten water that had slumbered in the mountain’s core for centuries.

The deluge slammed into Dalazar, forcing him back with the raw power of a flash flood. He threw up a crackling barrier of emerald lightning, which hissed and steamed as the water crashed against it. The arena floor vanished beneath a rapidly rising tide, the crater becoming the epicenter of a new, churning lake.

But the water was not aimless. As it swirled around Kilik, it obeyed the silent command of her will. The torrent twisted, coalesced, and writhed, rising higher and higher. Shapes began to form from the churning chaos—serpentine necks, heads of crushing fluid, and eyes that were nothing but furious, spinning whirlpools. Kilik rose with it, at the very center of the monstrous creation, its beating heart and malevolent will.

"Wave Mother's Brood!" she announced, her voice booming, amplified by the roaring water.

The creature was a hydra born of raw elemental power, a liquid behemoth with a dozen thrashing heads, each one a living tsunami. It towered over the Emerald King, blotting out the sky, its very presence changing the battlefield from a mountaintop arena to a roiling, watery abyss. Kilik, serene within its belly, raised an open palm.

Instantly, three of the massive aqueous heads lunged. They descended upon Dalazar not as simple water but as colossal fists of hydrostatic force, each carrying enough weight to pulverize granite and shatter steel. They struck his shield with a chorus of hissing waterfalls and deafening booms.

Dalazar roared in defiance, pouring more of the storm's power into his defense. A spear of condensed lightning erupted from his hands, vaporizing one of the hydra's heads in a massive explosion of steam. But two more immediately took their place, their watery maws snapping at his flickering shield.

He was no longer the king of the mountain. He was an island, besieged by a relentless, self-regenerating ocean. An ocean that answered to her. This was the strength of a water dragon. This, she thought, a grim satisfaction cooling the fire in her side, was why they called her "The Calamity." This was a proper test.