Heretical Edge

A few seconds earlier, I had been calmly (well, relatively) directing my Theriangelos polecat to follow this William Stoughton guy, who was apparently the lieutenant governor in charge of the Salem witch hunts. Vanessa (with her Therry raven) and I had followed the man into the courthouse and down through the hidden hatchway in the floor of the lobby leading into what was clearly a buried spaceship. We'd trailed Stoughton through the ship to a small cafeteria, only for the man to reveal that he knew there were Therries following him. And also that he wasn't actually Stoughton at all. The man was being possessed by Charmeine, who had used a spell that forced me to immediately swap places with my Theriangelos, bringing me right to her.

Fortunately, I did manage to shift into my Jacob form in the process, so the entire timeline wasn't ruined by her seeing Felicity Chambers a few hundred years early. But that also wasn't the end of the problems, because before Charmeine could do more than apparently recognize Jacob, Sariel showed up. And not only did she recognize 'him,' but she was also clearly very much not a fan, considering her immediate reaction was to come at me while flinging a knife at my face.

If it was left just up to me by myself, I would have died instantly. That was all there was to it. That wasn't even a question, not really. If it had been up to me to save my own life in that moment as Sariel threw the knife at my head, it would have been all over. I was caught completely flat-footed, left standing there with my mouth practically falling open in shock and confusion. There was no way I could have actually snapped out of it in the millisecond I had before the blade would have embedded itself right between my eyes and through my brain.

But I wasn't alone. Not at all, not ever. I always had someone right there with me. That was a comforting feeling all the time, really. But now most of all. Yardbird was the Flique member who was running copilot right then, and even though she didn't exactly have a lot of experience with it, she still instantly took over. While I was still trying to comprehend what I was seeing, she made our hand snap up. Our reflexes were good enough to catch the handle of the knife just before it would have gone through our skull. In one motion, she threw the knife to the side.

But that wasn't exactly the end of it. Not in the least. It was barely the start. No sooner had the blade clanged against the floor than I had to quickly throw our arm out to the side to catch Charmeine's incoming fist as she punched right at our head. In the same moment, Yardbird was snapping our foot up to kick away the second knife that Sariel had sent after the first. That one had been aimed for our stomach, and she barely managed to knock it up into the ceiling.

This was a problem. Not just for the obvious questions involving why the hell I was being so viciously attacked by someone I cared that much about, but also because I didn't have access to my Necromancy. I couldn't use it in here, not with those protective spells they had up all around the town. I couldn't summon ghosts or zombies to play back up, or do anything else with that. My strongest ability, my best asset, was completely cut off in this place. And boy was that ever something I would have had a hard time coming to terms with last year when I had first inherited Manakel's power. It took me quite awhile to accept that Necromancy wasn't automatically evil.

Not that I actually had any time to think about that in those first couple seconds. Or anything else for that matter. As soon as I blocked Charmeine's punch, she was already following up by trying to stab me with a knife in her other hand. I quickly caught hold of the wrist of the hand I had just blocked, and yanked it down to intercept her other incoming hand, essentially forcing her to block her own attack before giving a hard shove to push the knife further away from my chest. I was basically trapping both of her arms together, pushing them up against her own body while she struggled against my grip and spat a series of what I was pretty sure were very nasty insults.

Sariel was right there. She had already instantly summoned her twin knives back to her own hands and threw herself our way. She was coming in with a violent, furious overhand stab, right toward my shoulder while I was still mostly turned toward the other woman, holding her wrist.

Yardbird was on it, taking control of the power that made it much harder to move objects and using it on that knife. Suddenly, Sariel seemed to come to a complete stop for a second as the knife failed to move with her hand. The woman jerked to a brief halt in mid stabbing motion.

She recovered quickly, of course, because she was Sariel. Within a second of her hand coming to a stop, she simply released the knife and carried on with bringing just her fist toward my chest. At the last second, she summoned the knife again. No, not that one. She summoned a completely different knife and very nearly stabbed us anyway. At the same time, she was doing her best to drive her other knife. No, the other other knife, into our stomach. All while glaring at me with a look of absolute fury and hatred. That by itself was enough to hurt almost as much as the knives themselves would have. Whatever had happened between her and Jacob in the past, it was obviously really bad. What the hell did that other me end up doing? Was it at another rift?

She was coming at me too hard. I couldn't make her stop. But I could put something in her way. Or someone. Just before she would have stamped me with both of those knives, I was already using my grip on Charmeine to yank the woman toward me. At the same time, I caught her arm with my other hand and twisted, giving her a shove right into Sariel's extended arms. I was strong enough by that point to rather easily lift the first woman off the ground and haul her around like a ragdoll to shove her bodily into the other so hard it actually knocked both of them to the floor.

It would have, anyway, except these were a couple of Olympian Seosten I was dealing with. They both managed to untangle themselves, separate, and flip around to land on their feet before they even hit the floor. It was so smooth I would've sworn they'd actually choreographed the whole thing extensively. Just like that, they were back on their feet and coming after me again, before I'd even had time to do more than take a single breath. Now the two were working together. Those first seconds had been Charmeine reacting to Sariel suddenly attacking me out of nowhere. Now they were on the same page. And I still couldn't even use my Necromancy.

They were just as coordinated in coming after me as they had been in recovering. The next thing I knew, the two of them were lunging right at me. Sariel went high, even as she chucked one of her knives at my foot. At the same time, Charmeine went low, attempting to stab me in the side of the other knee with one hand while her other hand flung some sort of tiny explosive behind me. If I dodged backward, I'd end up losing a foot, or worse, to that thing. They were trying to cut off any possible escape avenue and hit fast enough that I couldn't react properly. I needed a second of focus to teleport, and they definitely weren't going to let me have that now.

Two could play at the going high game, however. I jumped, using my rocket burst to move faster and higher. Which took me away from both Charmeine's knife and the one Sariel had thrown, as well as that explosive that was just going off behind me. It also sent me flying straight into the lunging Sariel, but that was okay. My hand caught her elbow as she was trying to stab yet another blade into my throat, while the rocket burst carried both of us away from that spot.

In mid-leap like that, Yardbird made our right leg snap backwards and up as hard and fast as possible. We had both sensed Charmeine pivoting and rising to come after us, before that kick caught her in the face and made the woman stumble backward and give a sharp, vicious curse. Except she was so quick with her boost that her knife managed to cut deep into our leg in the same instant, sending a jolt of pain through us. If she'd cut any deeper, we'd really be in trouble.

Ignoring the pain shooting through our leg still, I focused on Sariel. We had to talk, I had to try to find out what the fuck her problem was, but I couldn't do that until I made at least a little bit of distance between us and managed to get a word in edgewise. The two of us were still being rocketed across the length of that small cafeteria, knocking over several chairs in the process of all this. Before we could hit the far wall, I released the other woman's arm and adjusted the rocket burst in order to help flip myself over in midair. My foot collided with her chin, snapping her head back and knocking the Seosten into the wall, while I was sent right up against the ceiling, catching myself lightly against the surface in that upside down position with my feet. From there, I could kick off, send myself back at Charmeine to knock her down,then make some distance between us in order to finally regain some small bit of control over the whole situation.

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Or rather, I would have done all that. But it turned out that the cut in our leg was worse than I'd thought at first. As soon as I tried to put any pressure on it in order to lunge back that way, an even worse pain, almost blinding, went rushing through us and the leg completely collapsed. Instead of leaping off the ceiling, we just sort of fell straight down. At the last second, Yardbird managed to orient us so we landed rightside up instead of falling right on our head, but we also weren't in any condition to land on that foot. So we only had the one to come down on properly, stumbling in the process to crash haphazardly into one of the nearby tables with a pained grunt.

Fortunately, before either of the Seosten could take full advantage of that, I managed to bring my staff out. I'd changed the color to black instead of red, and it had the gold attachment, so with any luck they wouldn't instantly recognize it in the future. Either way, they didn't get too good of a look at it right then, since the first thing I did as soon as it appeared was trigger one of the wind spells that was stored in that attachment. One quick word made the tornado-like gust appear, sending the rest of those tables and chairs flying in every direction. Charmeine was flung upside down to crash into the opposite wall, while Sariel was knocked back into the one she had just rebounded off of. Before either of them could recover from that, I pivoted on that good leg and flung the staff like a spear while triggering the kinetic blast from the other end so the wind wouldn't knock it off course. Even then, with my already enhanced, inhuman speed and reflexes, it wouldn't have been fast enough. But I also used my own Seosten boost, which meant Charmeine had just enough time to bounce off the wall, the strength of that magical wind making her squint before the end of the head of the staff (I didn't have Jaq or Gus attached yet so she didn't get hit by the blade or grapple, just the blunt end) rebounded rather hard off her forehead.

I hadn't stopped pivoting after releasing the staff to throw it that way, continuing to come all the way back around toward Sariel while the woman was in the midst of a twisting dive through the narrow space right between two flying tables just before they would have collided with one another and crushed her. She barely made it through, igniting a luxensis (the laser swords) in the process as she continued her twist to land on both feet. In that same motion, her glowing blade swiped through the air right where I was standing. I barely managed to twist away from it, but that meant I had to come down on my bad leg. Which was just what she was going for, obviously. No sooner had I pivoted that way and buckled a bit as I came down on that foot, than Sariel was already dropping her luxensis into her other hand and stabbing it right into the space I was stumbling into. It was driven right into and through my side with a loud hiss of energy and a grunt from the woman herself. It probably would have actually been enough to kill most people in that instant.

But I wasn't most people. Or rather, we weren't. In that instant, even as I was trying to catch myself (a distraction Sariel had been counting on), Yardbird had taken over and used our energy absorption power. The glowing blade flickered briefly, shutting off as we drained the power right out of it. That wouldn't last long, clearly. The absorption power was completely overwhelmed as it was, and the luxensis would recover almost immediately. Then we'd still have the laser blade through our side and no more absorption power. This bought us maybe a second and a half. But that was enough for me to use that object recall ability to summon the staff back, with the end pointed toward the woman as I hit the button to send a burst of kinetic energy right into her face.

That sent her flying away from me along with that deadly blade. And I had so much energy built up in that moment that my skin was glowing. It was about to make me explode if I didn't let some of it out immediately. Which I did, in the form of channeling it into my boost to make it even stronger. Just like that, at least for a few seconds, I was moving about twice as fast as I usually did at full Seosten boost. It was kind of ridiculous. But then, I needed ridiculous if I was going to get through this in one piece. I needed to talk to Sariel, but I had to get into a position to try first.

On the plus side, my regeneration was good enough that I could put weight on that injured leg without immediately collapsing. Granted, it still hurt, but I could do it. Sariel and Charmeine hadn't managed to take full advantage of the injury yet. And they were losing their window to do so. Which was another reason I needed this extra boost over these next few seconds. They were absolutely going to throw everything they could at me in that time to take me down before I could recover properly. And I really had to shove that thought away rather than dwell on the idea that two Olympian Seosten assassins were apparently doing their level best to take me down.

Using that speed, I pushed off with my good foot to hurl myself toward Charmeine, just as she was recovering from taking my staff at full speed into her forehead. Even with the boost, however, I still wouldn't get there quickly enough, so I sent my speed rings that way, flipping them over to the acceleration side and making them grow large enough for me to pass through them. Just like that, I was suddenly moving at blinding speed, crossing the room instantly. Charmeine barely had time to give one syllable of a curse before my elbow was driven into her face hard enough to snap her head back to hit the wall behind her and leave a bit of a dent in it. The wall that was, not her head. Though maybe the head too, considering how hard I hit her. Yeah, I might've been just a little frustrated and upset right then. But I also needed to finish this.

As part of finishing it, I was already pivoting toward Charmeine while her head was snapping back. Yardbird made our hand drop down to catch her rising wrist before she could stab us, which she was far more focused on than she was toward anything trivial like recovering from that recent head trauma. Not only was she trying to stab me with a blade in that hand, but she had another one in the other hand. Even with my stupidly boosted speed, it still wasn't quite enough to avoid that knife entirely. My head snapped sideways as the knife cut right across my cheek. I felt stinging blood there, but at least that one wasn't as bad as the leg injury had been.

My right elbow swung sideways to collide with the woman's arm while she was doing her best to turn that glancing cut across my cheek into a full-on stab through my brain. It was enough to knock her blade away from my face, before I used the fist of that same arm to punch her in the chin. It was just that quick, a snap of my elbow sideways to knock her arm out of the way, then my fist went forward to hit the woman's chin. Strong as I was, with the boost added and the fact that she'd already been hit in the head a few times as it was, Charmeine had to be feeling it.

But she didn't show that. The only thing she showed was… uh, anger. A lot of anger. I heard the woman give an almost animal-like snarl of absolute rage, before she brought her leg up to kick me in the stomach. That hurt, driving me backwards while she bellowed something I didn't catch at first. Only belatedly did I realize the words she was screaming were, "Another one!? You kill another of our people!?" Which I processed just as she flipped around to kick me again, right across the face with enough force to knock my head sideways and made the room seem to spin for several seconds longer than it should have.

Wait, what the hell was she-- In the midst of my head being snapped to the side, I caught a glimpse of those rings. Oh. Oh. Oops. Yeah, those had come from another Olympian crewmember, hadn't they? Elemiah, that was her name. I hadn't even thought about that in the heat of the moment, shit. No wonder she was suddenly so pissed. Well, even more pissed than she'd already been.

Speaking of those rings, however, Sariel had recovered by that point and was coming after me again, using the opening her partner seemed to have created. At the same time, Charmeine herself had caught hold of my wrist in an iron grip while using her other hand to punch right at my throat. But I wasn't quite as dizzy and out of it as it might've seemed. Just before her tight fist would have hit my trachea, my free hand came up to catch it, while I managed to twist my other arm out of her grasp.

Meanwhile, Yardbird had flipped those rings around and moved them so the slow side was facing the lunging Sariel. She passed through one, then the other, completely stopping her forward momentum entirely.

That was when I moved the rings back toward me, past her, while pivoting as I kept Charmeine's closed fist in one hand and caught the opposite arm with the other. In that motion, I spun and hurled the woman through the rings with the acceleration side facing us. In almost the same moment that Sariel was starting to move again, Charmeine was flung through the speed-up side and slammed into the other woman. Both of them were sent tumbling end over end through the air to crash down onto one of the tables. They landed on that table, which collapsed under them and flattened itself against the floor. The collision and subsequent crash down through the table like that finally seemed to have slowed the two of them down, giving me half a second to catch my breath and stop wheezing so hard. But hey, wheezing or not, I'd fought two Olympians together and so far I was alive to talk about it.

Now all I had to do was keep that whole 'staying alive' thing going long enough to get some actual goddamn answers out of these two.