40. Mistress of Blades' Deathmatch

"Though this shall prove interesting." The Mistress of Blades exclaimed with the faintest trace of a smile. The one she had thrown a knife at rapidly approached her using its massive leathery wings.

It was fairly powerful, in pure psychic power from what it was letting out and her reading, at the very least. It was encroaching in the same league as her, as insulting as the matter was. It was the strongest psychic lower lifeform she had the fortune to encounter.

And that truly picked her interest; it was exceptionally rare to fall unto such a being, and they always proved highly entertaining.

"I demand you to waste your asinine effort at another location." It said in Aeldari, and if not for Qa'leh's telepathic message, Hekatii would have jumped and burned this creature unworthy of existence to an agonizing cinder in body, mind, and soul.

And there was more to that, notably the distorted golden holy effigy on its unsightly rag that served as a poor dress. How much the Red Crone wanted to befall judgment on this parasite, but alas, it wouldn't come. Not now, at the very least; she was not one known to forget.

-It's mine.- Qa'leh sent the tone indicating no other alternative would be accepted.

-Then it shall be.- She answered comprehensively; there were more pressing matters, such as the lost ones of the Empire and the goal of their mission.

Hekatii then floated away, letting the younger of the Dark Muse her due prize, only to be interrupted by a sharp probe on her mind; barriers shattered into flakes as it was followed by a short sharp pain and a hot wet trickle down her nose… She touched it, the psycho-tactile nature of her gloves letting her know what it was if the sensation of hurt was not enough evidence.

Yet she was in disbelief, unable to process the impossibility of the present. Denial. Confusion. Incredulity and many more flashed through her mind.

It was blood… Her blood… she had been wounded…. her… ho-how… How-HOW DARE THEY!?

Righteous anger overflowed as her head mechanically turned to the source of the blasphemous touch, the pitiful attempt to hurt her superior existence. All serene regality was gone as her maddened eyes, brimming with undiluted psychic power, landed one insignificant little soulless automaton with a peculiar staff in hand.

"Ah, I miscalculated… My most sincere apologies, lowly wench." The undead abomination let out, staring at the dying glow of its heretical weaponry using technology designed to grant true death to the chosen people—a fate she would have shared if not for her careful preparation of the mind defense art and equipment.

The use of Aeldari with a mocking accent and the insult added to the burning hot anger coursing psychically through her body as reason slipped away.

"Hum… Tactical retreat seems advisable." Was all the Necron uttered before his displeased one-woman audience and wisely decided to flee, vanishing in green particles, but it wasn't enough for the Red Crone to lose sight of him, and so began a game of cat and mouse, who was whom yet to be determined.

"Undisciplined primitive animal. So little for you to lose the little sentience blessing your soul." The unsightly winged creature exclaimed with cold disappointment before refocusing on his opponent. The haughty surety present until now shifted to shimmering fury of extreme proportion, but Majun couldn't study such an amusing visage as a blade aimed at his head.

One howled in agony as it bared a soul. No, it was multiple souls clumped together enough to keep a semblance of individuality made physical material and turned into weapons. Still, it wasn't the time to study this profane and needlessly sadistic technology.

A delicately interwoven shield of silky runes weaved itself into existence like the most immaculate of coats, stopping a potentially fatal strike by intertwining itself with the offending blade. Hundreds of smaller blades of all shapes chaotically danced around the Mistress of Blades in a magnificent display of raw, vicious violence aiming at key points of the shield, testing hundreds of alternatives per second, searching for any weakness in the psychic weave, and succeeding.

It was no mere blade play. The Dark Muse was dancing, expressing her sordid art in a display incompressible to mortal minds. Her very soul and flesh extended to her weapons as all were one and the same in a euphoric symphony of bloodlust.

But her current effort yielded little result, to her immense frustration and deeply hidden elation for a warrior she was at heart.

This standstill didn't last any further as its pointless nature was evident to both parties,

"Be honored, Mon'Keigh, for on this esteemed day, you shall become one of my finest blades, resi-" She was silenced as the Archdeacon acted first, not in the mental state for quips or banter—one of the paramount lessons of his Lord. Gloating was only allowed when victory was attained, and even then, it was a luxury.

And so the bubble of silken nebulae exploded, blinding the Dark Muse briefly. But this brief instant was enough for Majun to jump in and out of Realspace, reappearing behind his mildly stunned opponent.

A pentagram floated millimeters above his downward striking palm; it was composed of the classical pentacle with three seemingly innocent-looking dots connecting to her. The thin blades dug through his limbs as the Khrave did so beyond anything he had experienced, whether physical or mental, but it didn't stop him.

His faith was far too strong for such measly gimmicks to hinder him, and the management of pain wasn't one he was alien to. Hoopa, having dictated this sensation, from its uses to power in countless scenarios. It was a magnificently horrific tool in the right hand.

The Aeldari God of Magic had such confectioned spells to resist it, used it to heal but also created it at an extreme degree, able to affect even mindless Necron. As such, Majun muted it easily, but he acknowledged how pushed it was. This running agony wasn't natural pain, and to purge it from his system, a trip to Dylath-Leen was required.

The agony aside, three things happened after the contact. First, the dots spread. The one with a positive glyph flowed to her nape while the one with a negative glyph to her lumbar region, and the third was put between the two. Second, the positive and negative activated, and in a mimicry of magnetism, attracted one another. The third, the last dot, created a vector to use the force generated to propel itself forward.

The effects were immediate, Qa'leh's body sickeningly twisted, like a brittle twig, her back snapping backward at an angle impossible even for Aeldari in a fraction of a microsecond. She was flung forward with extreme force and velocity, leaving in her wake sonic booms and ionized air, destroying all in front of her like a comet in a clear night sky. Blades scattered erratically in the air with the initial shock wave behind.

'That won't kill her.' Majun astutely noted, however, that he didn't ponder senselessly on the resistance of his foe or was disenchanted by the result. His action wasn't aimed at killing, not that it was possible with such a superficial attack.

Fleshy wounds, if they weren't total bodily destruction, were on creatures of their station of an ephemeral nature. And it wasn't wise to push too far when the goal wasn't to destroy; despair was a double-edged sword.

This breathing moment in the chaos of the battlefield was not to be left in vain. The other combatants were aware of the scale for one half and unwilling to attract the sadistic ire of their mistress for the other, so they let the Khrave do as he pleased.

Using his shapeshifting to close and heal the wounds, he lifted his upper pair of arms, and, in a flagrant show of light, dozens of spinning arcane circles appeared, each unique and of mysterious glyphs with only a common point, a central five-pointed star. However, any respectable Magii would know of their nature to seal using a sumptuous array of runes that turned the prisoner's effort to escape into energy for the prison up to a certain threshold.

And it showed the immense skill of the Archdeacon. It was an incantation inspired by the Flask of Sealing but evidently of a countless magnitude in inferiority. The poetic irony of the spell's trapping purpose in context to the history of the Archdjinni of the Rings was not lost on Majun.

Still…

"Oh… fuck." He mused in discontentment, the word at the end borrowed from his Lord without a proper understanding of it besides it was when an object or situation was unpleasant. A word of immense wisdom fitting rightfully his current predicament.

The closest of the blade lit up, and from it, the Dark Muse formed, her sneering face caked in blood and a minor muscle-deep burn in a belligerent sneer of catatonic anger in perfect tune with the disheveled hair. For the part of her skull not partially cremated but hideous as those wounds appeared, showing the color of her inside, they weren't grievous and already in the process of swiftly knitting themselves.

As he predicted, the Archdeacon would have thought she was well and alive if pissed off, but that was the only part of his calculation. He lacked information on her. Her sudden teleportation and the following myriad of blades flying to turn into a tattered bloody lint of skin was the price of his ignorance, but teleporting would cancel his spell.

He made a split-second decision, a sacrifice for success; casting another spell was impossible given the current parameters, but the Khrave innate shapeshifting ability wasn't under the same restrictions. Calling it shapeshifting didn't do it any favor. It was absolute control of one's own body if trained adequately.

And so his form exploded outward, diminished upper body with torso, arms, wings, and head detaching from skin and garments. This extreme act of autotomy left his lower half and remained where he once was. The poor imitation of his true self turned into an eruption of gore and blade an instant later.

He had ejected himself from his very skin, saving it in the process. Though it wasn't a perfect escape, several dozen blades reached him regardless, spearing in his flesh and out. But it was a measured risk, the wounds in the realms of the acceptable. And so it worked.

The Aeldari cruel smirk of victory became one of immense confusion and rapidly to greater heights of anger as her mind grasped the cowardly ploy.

Alas, her emotions, in all their intensity, were useless. Her winged opponent clapping exposed muscles on exposed muscles indicated the end of his casting. Running and fleeing as she might have tried from the five ethereal chains of crystal, it proved to be great efforts put in vain.

One latched to her right hand on a miscalculated warp jump between her blades, and from then on, the half a minute of chasing ended in an anticlimactic finally. Her blades couldn't cut through them, only deflect, but like snakes, they shifted. Her other hand was next, and her neck and legs quickly followed it.

The Dark Muse's trashing, cursing, and screaming were all but white noise and unnoticeable in the frenzy of the battle. Her psychic power was unable to leave the confines of her body before being devoured by the pentagram that her body was slammed against, the point of origin of the chains.

Qa'leh, the Dark Muse, the Mistress of Blades, had been neutralized. Majun, not one to brag, ignored her and clothed himself in what little of his self-repairing garb remained, his dark red muscles shifting to the usual dark, chitinous, furry skin of his kind. The holes and internal hemorrhage were closed as well.

There was still much to do. The battle was far from over, and his place in it had shifted to a supportive role.

Words would fail to depict the battlefield beyond chaos, objects not brought to the rituals circles flying, scattering, and exploding around between skirmishes; it wasn't a field of cataclysmic destruction, but death and violence remained a constant.

Ultimately, it was of Necron, Harlequins, Magi, and Imperial Aeldari in a maddening display heedless of dangers of light and power, with neither side gaining significant ground.

One held the advantage of raw numbers and pure power, but the other possessed skill and blessing unparalleled, or so it was for true believers of the Aeldari Gods. As technologically superior in the realm of reality as the Necron were, compared to Khrave and Aeldari, they remained handicapped in the world of the supernatural. But it was merely a hurdle.

As more cracks came in the dimensional barriers, the more the invading side edged toward absolute and certain victory.

Within the current time frame, at least one Arch-Cryptek was displeased by the present as he oversaw and controlled a tide of dark grey and sickly remained ready to act upon the treacherous unthinkable. Though calling it so was a significant exaggeration in Sannet's humble opinion, it was common courtesy and merely to wait when the time was ripe to keep what he had sworn per his position safely.

Until then, he was to observe and react accordingly, which he did with immense success. The goal wasn't to win. It was an impossibility as the downpour from the outside would ceaselessly increase; it was to gain time.

Indeed, there was no point in aiming to be deadly; killing was far harder with this adversary. Sannet didn't like this plan, judging it unworthy of the risk, but he was a servant and would obey.

And he was humble enough to acquiesce to his wrong. One of the two main targets, the first 'Dark Muse,' was trapped. None was ordered to fire as they were informed it could disrupt the spell, and the invading force didn't either. If it was out of malice, fear, shock, or confusion, none could tell, and Sannet didn't care for those pests' lesser cognitive competencies.

As for the second, the old fiery-haired one able to handily resist a resonating blast of the Empathic Obliterator of his Overlord was pursuing said Overlord. Admittedly, only thanks to the insect's cunning, but it had worked as intended regardless of how Trazyn fled across the Solemnace from the living, unholy storm of all-consuming psychic flame may look.

His Lord periodically screams and randomly throws objects at his pursuer, one of the scarce few sights to alleviate his dulled emotions. The non-use of Terrescat Labyrinth was perplexing, but the current state of affairs was unfit for optimal dimensional containment, so he could at least understand that.

"Heeenllooo robot fren!" A squeaky, high-pitched voice came from behind the Arch-Cryptek, and if not for lacking a natural biological barrier to jump off, he would have. A Harlequin, by all accounts, his scanner gave and from the clothing a Solitaire, female by the curves of the surplus of fatty tissue, one of the most skilled, powerful, and impossibly annoying of these clowns.

"Uwaah! No response. How can you be so cold and heartless? Why the steely stare?" She cried out, fake tears of light pouring in comical quantities from her half-despairing half, laughing mask.

There were a number of hypotheses in the Necron processors on the presence of this… titering vomit of colors. Notably how she found him, how she got here, how she passed every security measure, and more. It was deeply irritating.

"What is the operative function of your presence, Solitaire?" He demanded cooly, his body never once having moved from the start. His processing power focused on the battle.

"Err, to turn on the Blackstone Pillars." The Solitaire said awkwardly, scratching the back of her as if embarrassment was anything but an alien sensation to her.

"Acknowledged you may-and she is gone," Sannet exclaimed, an annoyed grumble at the end of all he did to demonstrate his discontentment at the Aeldari unladylike approach and rude disappearance.

But the time wasn't wasted on asinine mysteries. He had a task, and he couldn't be happier to see it carried.

*

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