Call of the Abyss [Book 2 Complete]

Lightning arced around Julia's body threateningly, and she suddenly dashed forward, using gravity propulsion to close the distance in an instant. She struck at Cass's head with an overhead swing, but she caught the blade with her bare hand. Somehow, it didn't penetrate her skin, though it discharged the lightning around Julia's body.

Cass grinned, lightning arcing across her teeth, and held Julia's blade still—apparently unaffected. She raised her hand on the ax handle to be just under the head and chopped it at Julia, who released her sword and stepped back to avoid the swing.

The ax passed harmlessly in front of her, and Julia smiled in satisfaction. Cass looked at the sword she was holding, admiring it.

"One hell of a weapon. Letting it go so easily—" she started in lecture, but she was cut off by a torrent of blue plasma that flooded her form.

A great gout of fiery lightning and death poured out of Julia's outstretched hands, seemingly connected to her sword by an invisible thread. Julia's smile was wide, but her senses suddenly returned to her, and she halted the stream of plasma.

Shit! Was that overboard?!

Smoke and dust whipped around where Cass had stood, obscuring Julia's vision. She hoped she didn't get carried away and—

The smoke suddenly cleared in a great gust of wind, sending small rocks and debris flying and setting the crowd coughing.

Cass stood there unharmed, patting at the smoldering ends of her tunic.

"Potent stuff. Don't think I want this anymore," she said jokingly, tossing Julia's sword back to her.

Julia caught it and her smile returned—this was getting fun.

The air suddenly started vibrating—no, it was the ground. The ground rumbled so fiercely that it was disturbing the air above it. Julia saw a huge river of mana leaving Cass and flowing into the ground, so she decided it was best to leave it altogether.

She began rising into the air, hovering up near the open ceiling just as huge spires of earth erupted from the ground, turning the once-flat arena floor into a forest of stone. Julia wasn't sure how this was supposed to aid Cass, until she suddenly sank into the ground, disappearing entirely.

This normally wouldn't have been an issue for Julia, as she could track mana signatures without even thinking. However, Cass had just permeated the entirety of the arena with her mana signature—it all looked like a pool of Cass down there. Julia squinted, but the mana was roiling and tempestuous—she couldn't tell what or where Cass was.

On top of that, there was something strange about the mana infused into the earth. It was…shifting slightly. Not physically—it wasn't physical to begin with—but it sort of shied away from her sight, as though embarrassed. This was anthropomorphism, obviously, but that's what it felt like. Julia hadn't ever encountered anything like it—the mana was almost alive, though she knew that was a ridiculous thought.

A huge arm of rock launched from the earth like a fish jumping from the water, pulling the rest of its enormous body from beneath the roiling waves of dirt. It was huge, but it wasn't alone, as four more golems of equal size dragged themselves from beneath the sand sea. They were at least two-or-three times her size.

Julia's smile went wild—she wouldn't hold back against golems.

She spoke with a voice that rumbled the air and stilled the stormy earth for a brief moment, catching the attention of something greater than its individual parts. What she said couldn't be discerned—she didn't even know what words she spoke—but she knew what she wanted to convey to the World.

Let's dance.

The arena suddenly expanded, as though someone had grabbed the ends of the space and stretched it. Such a thing didn't seem physically possible, but one must wonder whether anything is impossible with the World itself's assistance.

Julia's helmet slammed down over her head, and it lit up with an intense glow, two large antennae of crimson and blue mana sprouting from her head. Her shield shifted, crawling across her body until it was attached to her back—she was going to need both hands.

She rocketed toward the first golem, the sudden speed so much that the air cracked behind her. She cocked her sword back and slammed it into the golem's head, the speed and power of her swing so great that it passed through with minimal resistance.

The golem's head exploded in a shower of dirt and rock, but she was already heading for the next. It timed a swing of its fist to connect with Julia as she arrived, but it didn't account for her Spirit Body being far more malleable than a human's.

She shifted her gravity propulsion, changing her momentum immediately—a feat that would likely have pressed a human's organs into paste and killed them—and skirted to the side of the golem. She swung her sword around, cleaving it through the golem's midsection.

It erupted in another shower of dirt and stone, and once again, Julia was already onto the third. Only a few seconds had passed, and two of the golems were already down, but the second golem's ability to adapt to what it saw happen to the first made her hesitant to approach the third. Perhaps it would have developed a strategy to her momentum shifts—she didn't want to risk it.

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She sent crimson lightning surging into her sword and launched it at the golem, halting her body in the air. The momentum from her charge combined with the force of her throw sent another shockwave blasting around her, and the sword spun through the air end over end so fast that she couldn't make out its shape. It looked like a blur of crimson death.

It sliced through both arms that the golem held out in defense and buried itself deep in the golem's head.After just a second's delay, the entire golem's body erupted in a cataclysmic detonation of lightning and earthen shrapnel.

Julia held her hand out and the sword came flying back to her, but as soon as it reached her hand, her domain flared—something screamed toward her just as fast as the sword had flown. She spun around just in time to hold her sword in front of her body, but the force from the thrown ax that smashed into it slammed it against her body and sent her flying through the air.

Julia hit the ground at speeds that would kill most, blood spraying from her mouth as she bounced along the ground. Her domain was doing her a bit of a disservice here, as it was automatically combating Cass's mana in the ground and reverting it back to being solid dirt—which, of course, made her landings much harsher.

She found her feet and skidded to a stop, throwing her head and torso back to bend at a 90-degree angle. A golem's fist crushed the air where her upper body had just been, just the force of its passing threatening to throw her to the ground. She reached up with a quick claw, grabbed the arm, and sank her fingers into the dirt.

She flooded the construct with her mana, destabilizing it—consuming it—and causing it to crumble to the ground, becoming nothing more than a pile of dirt.

Time instantly slowed to a crawl as Julia surveyed the last golem charging her faster than she'd ever seen anything move. It wielded Cass's ax—the same that had blasted her out of the air—in its hands, and its speed was so great that the dirt of its body was cracking and crumbling away, revealing Cass with a wild look in her eyes inside of it.

It seemed to be surrounding her body like a shell, and now that she had time to inspect, Julia saw that it was smaller than the other four. This was a diversionary tactic—one that Julia would have to learn from. Cass created the golems as strong but disposable pawns that would make Julia comfortable with their strength, disguising herself as one to deliver a winning blow after Julia's guard had been lowered.

Clever.

Julia wasn't planning to use too many of her abilities this fight, but she supposed a few wouldn't hurt. She'd been mulling over some of their implications for a while now, and one thing she couldn't get out of her head was the equation for momentum, mass times velocity. Braden had once said that it was often much easier to increase momentum through velocity rather than mass.

For example, you could always throw something faster, but how exactly would you increase the mass of an object? Well, you could use an object with more mass, obviously, but still. Something about energy and work and blah-blah-blah made throwing heavier objects often less efficient than throwing smaller objects faster.

And what could be faster than her Paradox Step?

Julia's sword and shield disappeared from her hand and back respectively, and she launched forward, pulling her right fist back as if she were charging it. She reached Cass's location quickly—even before considering her Skill to distort time—and sent a punch straight into her gut.

There was an instant where her gauntleted fist connected and time was still slowed that gave Julia plenty of time to regret her decision.

And then time resumed.

A crash sounded throughout the whole of the arena's still-stretched space, followed by an object flying so fast that most couldn't even see it—only the trail of superheated air that followed it.

The ground around Julia bucked and heaved, moving like liquid despite her domain having reverted it back to its natural state. The shockwave from the impact would have likely burst eardrums for quite a distance.

"Argh—" Julia yelled, but she bit her lip to silence the scream. Her gauntlet was undamaged—obviously, it was Adamantine—but her meaty hand underneath was not.

The tremendous momentum from her time-accelerated punch had crushed her hand against the metal like fruit thrown against a wall. It happened so fast, but she was certain she felt her bones grind together, with all her other flesh crushed in between.

Her hand quickly reformed into its proper shape, and she made a mental note to workshop that move before using it again.

Her attention was drawn by a huge crash at the opposite end of the arena, where a great plume of dust rose all the way up and out of the open ceiling—the spot Cass impacted, obviously. What grabbed her attention most, however, was the huge cage of mostly-transparent energy that sprang up around the arena. It perfectly encapsulated it and separated the arena from the stands.

This made sense, she realized. It would be hard to have spectators for fights if they were constantly worried about their lives. It must be a defensive—wait. A familiar feeling tickled her senses. It came from the cage of energy, ran down through the floor, and shot off into the distance—away from the Guild entirely.

Etherium.

"You got some nerve spacing out in the middle of a spar," Cass said, drawing Julia from her speculation.

She turned to face Cass's voice and found that the spike on the back of Cass's ax was less than a fingernail's-width from her nose.

"Ah, fuck," Julia said lamely.

"Ha! Well said. Even the strongest can be done in by a moment of carelessness," Cass laughed, lowering her ax. Julia was pleased to see that she had blood trails at the corners of her mouth and down one nostril—she hadn't tanked that hit unscathed.

"What say we call it here? Can you return the arena to normal?" she asked, motioning toward the warped space.

Julia released the hold she didn't realize she had on it—more like affirming to the World that her spar was completed—and the space instantly retracted back to normal. Cass also dispelled her mana from the ground, and the tall spires of earth slowly collapsed back into loose dirt.

"That's good enough for me. Doubt there are even many Adamantines that could give you a run for your money. This exam is over. I'll let Wilfred know you passed," Cass declared loudly, again making sure the crowd could hear her.

However, there was no applause, nor were there jeers—only silence. Julia glanced at the crowd to see stunned faces, some ghostly pale and sweating. Rather than a fun bout between high-ranking adventurers, they looked more like they'd witnessed something horrible—or maybe terrifying.

Did we overdo it?