How...Ideal

In a realm that didn't exist in the same sense as most are familiar with, three men sat across from each other on a table and played a board game resembling chess, yet instead of a square the board was in the shape of a jagged and nonsymmetrical polygon and there were no two pieces with the same rules.

The realm they were playing in seemed to be infinite, but extremely drab and repetitive in the background. They were sitting on a mesa hundreds of feet above the ground while sharp and menacing formations of purple and black crystals rose to compete with the towering one they occupied. Above the cloudless and dark skies, a purple and many-sided celestial body shed just enough light to get by in a Hollister.

A crone-like figure with pale skin that wrapped tightly around pale bones clawed at one of his pieces and moved it four paces forward and one diagonally forward-left. In the distance, one of the crystal formations slid hundreds of feet forward and then turned abruptly for a mere hundred feet. He receded his deathly hand into the folds of his cloak and said "Your turn" to another crone to his left for the literal millionth time.

The crone who was signaled looked at the pieces of one of his opponents that split with an order that was hard to discern and could be mistaken for randomness, yet each piece had an individual goal across the board.

"What will you call this offensive, Visaldin?"

"The Hist Offensive seems apt, Malidof."

"You two, always making up tactic names while paying less attention to the board will let me slip past all of it and wrench ya."

"You should beat us first, Hevnor, before running your mouth, hehehe"

"You never beat me in 'War' either, Visaldin! Hmm?"

Hevnor closed his eyes and felt for a disturbance. He kept a closer watch on their Cairn than the others because he liked to play with interesting souls, but that was still a very rare event. The last time he checked on the place was when Valerica was on her way out, but now that Durnehviir was gone as well, he needed to keep a closer eye.

*Whoosh* *Whoowhoosh*

'There it is again, souls are vanishing. Hundreds have already disappeared before I checked. What could it be? A hole? Maybe tied to that anomaly which has been screwing things up the last few days.'

"What are you looking at Hevnor?"

"Souls are escaping the Cairn, but I can't find the reason..."

Their interest was peaked. Valerica was Hevnor's but Durnehviir was the first dragon soul they had in a long time and he was lost only decades before they could taste him. Did they have an opponent besides themselves for once or merely a gap in the Cairn? The two other crones closed their eyes and watched the proceedings.

*Whoosh, Whoowhoosh* *Whoosh, Whoowhoosh*

"Whatever it is, it has a rhythm. This can't be a hole in the plane! I detect no anomaly either, meaning they are skilled at least!" One excitedly intoned.

"It is also moving along a path and grabbing souls within a range, meaning it definitely isn't a hole in the plane and most likely a singular entity. Gentleman, have we made any notable enemies?"

"You have no idea how little that narrows it down, do you?"

"It's the one that took Valerica, I'm sure of it. I couldn't see them when they came either! It was like a soulless vessel!"

"Well, Hevnor, it appears you have your game of War after all! Whoever catches the rat wins! Bonus points if they have the location of Durnehviir."

Malidof swiped his hand and their game projection vanished, while the stalagmites crumbled and turned to a fine sand that changed the ecosystem of their little realm. Projections of the Cairn and all the souls were white, the buildings were gray, and their soldiers black and purple. The winds picked up dramatically as they took one of three triangular directions on their mesa and looked out over the land as if they were at the Cairn's center.

In Hevnor's direction, souls were vanishing.

"To War it is, then!"

Hevnor opened his hood and revealed his face while his veil-like robe whipped in the wind and revealed up to his elbows. Ears four inches long that stretched behind his head, skin that merely changed the texture of his hairless skull, blue veins running across it and eyes sunken it yet scanning maliciously to the increasing path of emptiness being carved in his territory. He stretched his hands with nails that looked sharpened instead of trimmed and aimed them downwards.

*Booom* A low percussion echoed across the Cairn. Yuri abruptly looked toward the last layer wall and witnessed one of the Ideal Master's crystals leave its post and float upward.

The wall separating the first layer from the second became purely ornamental as it unfolded like a curtain. He witnessed numerous walkers exit in a file but they seemed denser and more powerful instead of the stick bugs he dealt with last time. Armed, armored, and gigantic with visible skeletons instead of just crystal they seemed like a combination of keepers and walkers.

"Time for my own attack on titans," Yuri commented.

Light magic would certainly be effective, but he didn't want to get spotted yet in case that was what the IM were aiming for. But he didn't need it.

Hevnor frowned browlessly as he watched whatever-it-was stop taking souls and carve up earth and stone with every hundred yards bound it took to his troops.

"I thought it was a mage, but it seems we have a bit of a monster on our hands, gentlemen," Hevnor commented as the monster neared the first titan.

"So he's over there, ey? Don't give up the backline, Hevnor."

The other two halted their preparations and glanced over Hevnor's shoulder to witness a bit.

"Could be some kind of experimental familiar. We have no idea what the latest flesh magic can do"

"Flesh magic hasn't made a major reappearance in centuries."

"One genius like Mannimarco is all it takes."

"Too bad we didn't get his so-"

'Raging River - Perseverance' 'Roaring Dragon - Cracking Mountain' *KRRRRRATATA KSHSHSHSH BOOM*

The ground blurred as Yuri neared the hundred-foot-tall Titan and the ghosts fled for dear life. Yuri angled his middle slightly above his index and bunched his fist. He leaped on the knee of the Titan who swung his sword to cleave Yuri even at the cost of his own leg. Winds were forced aside in a torrential gale as the blade buffeted and scattered the dust on the earth before it even reached it. But like droplets carve through a block of stone, Yuri TP'd to the lower abdomen of the Titan and began his persistent assault. The sword struck the ground and Yuri clung on while his arms blurred as he rained down blows and walked higher along the chest in a curving path. It looked like an anchor had been dragged along asphalt and dug up a schism wherever Yuri walked. The Titan staggered and lost balance and his torso fell apart from the blows up front to the impacts that traveled past his back and rained glass dust below him. The skeletal structure gave in quickly, and the Titan tried to make a martyr's strike from where the blows were arriving by stabbing himself in the chest.

'The monster is translocating! I can follow it with the fluctuations in space from its entry to exit even if I can't see it... I can use that' Hevnor thought to himself.

Yuri TP'd once again and continued from shoulder to neck, all of which collapsed as the arm fell off and the Titan started to lean in Yuri's direction. He reeled in for one finishing blow, and with that BOOM the helmeted head was blown from armor to skull to crystal core and turned to dust that blinded the Titans to his right.

"You're sure that Flesh magic isn't involved?"

"Not anymore...but now I am certain that it is a mage. No facsimile could teleport so skillfully. Which means some newfangled self-experimenter STOLE MY VAMPIRE!"

"If they are a mage that means they're incredibly knowledgeable if even we can't see their soul. Perhaps we should join forces for once, Hevnor"

"Neither of you are getting in the way of my reimbursement! Their soul is mine to repay this enmity they have already sown!"

The sound of shattering glass and crumblings like falling towers were heard multiple times during this conversation, and interrupted them when one was used to destroy another and tore through the first wall of theirs at once.

"How many is that already, four hundred souls and six giant soldiers? I thought you were great at 'War', Hevnor?"

"Ever heard of a trap, Visaldin? He who is prudent and lies in wait for an enemy who is not, will be victorious."

"I know you miss your dear friend, Tzu, but it's been millennia, Hevnor"

"I'm still mad about that! What kind of guy as wise and talented as him refuses immortality?!"

Yuri jumped through the destroyed wall to cut the Titans from the source if there was one, and behold he found a wall slot that was continually pushing them out, albeit slowly, to his right a few thousand feet away.

Yuri teleported in rapid succession to the giant slot they were pulling themselves out of and preparing himself to face four more head-on, when he jerked his head to his right and sensed something was wrong.

Out of nowhere, a mile square purple screen had manifested right before the group of Titans, and Yuri felt that he couldn't open a portal, use telekinesis, or teleport. The emergency teleportation anchor he left in the Mundus still held true, but this was still a shock to him for a second. Another shock came when he realized that some purple aura had clung to him the moment he exited his TP and now he looked like the purple outline of his own body.

The crystal of the IM appeared in his ESP behind him and manifested tendrils of purple energy to quickly place the titans in a tight formation before him while leaving only a singular column gap in the same direction as the crystal.

'Wait, my ESP is still working?'

"HA! I have him now!" Hevnor shouted in triumph while the others watched on skeptically. The titans raised swords and spears in hand before swinging as quickly as their giant forms could manage at the purple ant below them.

Yuri swiveled relaxedly since he had a few moments in his own perception before he needed to act, and observed the Ideal Master's chosen form for observing the Cairn. His Tenth Eye spell took on a purple hue to match his new skin and he tried to use clairvoyance to get a picture of how it worked.

A low-resolution image of an elvish Voldemort with a nose came into view. The Voldemort had his hands sunken into the crystal completely and was charging to fire some kind of soul magic laser. Yuri could tell by instinct that while his soul couldn't be claimed by the Voldy, he would certainly die even after eating the Soul Husks earlier.

'My ESP works, so let's try something'

Hevnor felt something tug on his crystal lightly, so lightly that he quickly tossed the thought aside as a hallucination. Like one forgets if a fly landed on them that day, but even more subtle... to the point of formlessness.

{Had to do it again}

'Ha...Haha...HAHAHAHA! OOOooohhh this is gonna be so anticlimactic. Now to bait him into it'

Yuri returned his focus to the 6 giant swords that were trying to gouge and bury him simultaneously from above. He was meant to escape through the obvious gap in the giants' formation and run directly into the beam that would appear from the crystal. Yuri decided not to try dodging something that he didn't know the speed of, and opted for a different approach.

Hevnor watched as his prey uselessly jumped onto one of his soldiers to try and hide behind it. The crystal being the real threat was seen through, but it mattered not. He felt the intruder's position and form perfectly with no need for sight, due to his space marker. There was no short or long-term solution, he was a sitting duck.

Ink-like Sanskrit drawn like chains traveled up Yuri's right arm from his palm as a circle formed and an image of a key appeared inside of it.

'He's tampering with the barrier?! How is that possible?!'

Yuri saw the image of Hevnor sink into his crystal up to the elbows to speed up the charge and the crystal released a sinister beam of black and white shades that traveled to Yuri. What Yuri saw before the beam even arrived was a red string charge in a rapid line and arrive at Yuri to give him an uncertain fate. He knew to dodge it before the beam was even created, and as the beam attempted to try to cut him, a red string was projected beforehand in the way it would and Yuri was moving out of the way before it happened.

'So this is what happens when soul attacks take shape, huh?'

In the few minuscule moments Yuri was rotating away from the beam that tried to adjust in his direction, he picked the lock.

Hevnor felt a spatial warp above the crystal and tried to refocus on him, but was slapped down to the ground by an open palm strike from above. Fissures formed on it which were quickly healing, yet they stopped when they found a certain chain had extended from the crack and was leading to the hand of the purple marked intruder.

Hevnor tried to remove the chain but would be unable to until he poured more power into the crystal.

"Malidof, it appears we need to go help Hevnor before he expends more Magicka over a mortal"

"Indeed, Visaldin, most embarrassing"

"I said stay back there! His unique soul will be mine!"

Yuri saw the clairvoyant image of Hevnor furrowing into a rage and dipping up to his shoulders in the avatar he was using in the Cairn, and getting headway in his attempt to release himself from the chain Yuri had implanted.

'This guy is more temperamental than his age would suggest. Or does this much time in relative solitude and routine dull one's resistance to emotion?' Yuri pondered on the effects of immortality.

Yuri whipped the chain up and above him to raise the crystal over his head. He had to swerve it to the side as another beam tried to cut his life force up and offer it to the Cairn, but he still managed to make the crystal take a beautiful arc and slam into the giant titans that were way behind the current events.

Yuri's eldritch wrecking ball had totaled one of them, but Hevnor managed to release himself in the process. Yuri whipped both hands back while he saw the red line draw a path to his head once more. He leaned and leaned again, before throwing both hands forward when he found an opening. Two more chains flew to the slow-moving crystal, and spiked into its sides. Yuri whipped him around like a marionette while dodging small laser blasts and bounced it from wall to wall while bringing it closer.

'If I let it destroy my avatar, it'll take too much time and resources to make a new one and I'll fall behind these other two in everything for a very long time. What a bother. Better burn a bit of Magicka now than suffer later, however'

Yuri watched with an increasingly growing grin as he watched the Ideal Master climb further and further into his avatar to give it more of his own essence, but Hevnor refused to let more than his 'middle-chest' climb into the crystal. Meaning Yuri baited the Ideal Master into using about 50% of his power to get rid of him.

'Holding back paid off, otherwise I could've destroyed it quickly and they would have all retreated till I left no matter what'

Yuri witnessed the Ideal Master's red string manifest into a vortex around the crystal, much like a rasengan, and condense like a pattern before an explosion. It was Yuri's time to make his move.

Yuri teleported repeatedly in the direction of the Ideal Master while timing it close to right before the explosion.

"It's too late to stop me now, little mortal! Come unknowingly to your death and be mine, hahaha!"

"Are we sure he should be doing this much?"

"You know how he gets when he's mad. Just let him do it. Maybe he'll get lucky and we can share in the interesting mage's memories"

A blinding purple light flashed and illuminated the entire Cairn while Hevnor cackled at his imminent prize.

And then it all vanished.

The light left a glaring nothing that almost made the normal seem dark in contrast as quickly as it came, the silence in both the Ideal Realm and the Cairn made the lack of laughter and explosions resoundingly evident. The giants turned to dust as they stopped being supported out of shock, and Malidof and Visaldin watched the proceedings below in confusion.

"Hevnor, where is your avata- HEVNOR?!"

Hevnor was on the ground with only his head and his upper chest to call his own.

"Kgghhhhh...kugh!"

"HEVNOR, WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED?!"

"I happened"