Heretical Edge

Three knives were already whistling through the air at me, the trio of blades sent with just a flick of Sariel's wrist while she continued to cross the distance between us. One of the blades stopped in midair as Yardbird halted its momentum. The other two were knocked off course by a quick burst of concussive energy from the end of my staff as I swept it downward. That burst was followed by an even stronger one as soon as the end of the staff finished that arc and was pointed toward the ground in front of me. I was lifted up and thrown backwards by it while my feet kicked out behind me to hit the trunk of a nearby tree so I could rebound off it and back the way I'd come. As Sariel landed, I was launching myself at her, staff snapping at her arm.

It wouldn't have accomplished anything, given how easily she twisted away from the incoming blow. But at the last second, I focused on my staff and made it grow to about twice its usual size instantly. Just like that, what would have been just enough space for Sariel to comfortably avoid the hit wasn't anymore. The staff smacked into the side of her arm. Even then, it wasn't about to immediately drop her or anything. Not with the protection spells and such she had on her Seosten bodysuit. But it did take her by surprise, sending at least a jolt of pain through her as she stumbled a bit.

Yeah, I got that one hit in, but now she knew I could do that. She knew my staff could change size, so she'd incorporate it into her strategy. I was pretty sure I wouldn't get another easy shot like that. But that was okay, we didn't have to win this fight, not really. We just had to keep these guys busy long enough for the twins to do their thing. That much at least we could maybe do.

On the other hand, we also had to survive these next few minutes, and she wasn't about to make that easy. Sariel very clearly absolutely loathed Jacob. And why shouldn't she? Apparently we had stopped her from curing her mother. Gods, I still didn't understand any of that. But I didn't have time to try to understand it now. I just had to hope that when my memories of everything I had done at all these separate rifts came together, I would actually find out enough to be able to forgive myself for it. And maybe even get forgiven by both Sariel and her mother.

But there would be no forgiveness or understanding right now. Even as my staff smacked into the woman's arm and made her stumble slightly, she was already spinning around, pivoting on one foot while the other came up to viciously kick the side of my head. It came so quickly and smoothly that we couldn't avoid it, even with both Yardbird and me working together. That was just how good and dangerous Sariel was. As if I really needed the reminder after all I'd seen.

The force of that kick sent a slight dull ringing through my ears, but I ignored that. Now really wasn't the time to let myself get distracted by little things like a concussion or possible skull fracture. Instead, I let the blow knock me back a step before snapping my staff down at an angle to catch the knife that she had been trying to sneak up into my ribs as she continued that pivot and came back around. The blade rebounded off my own weapon while I planted the end in the dirt and used it to hoist myself up, leg snapping out in a kick of my own. It probably all looked wonderfully dramatic with my long coat billowing behind me from the motion as my foot slammed into her shoulder and knocked the other woman back several steps before she could fully duck out of the way.

Landing back on our feet, I focused on twisting my head sideways to avoid the knife that the woman had just flung our way even as she was recoiling from that kick. The blade almost grazed our neck, coming close enough to very nearly draw a line of blood on its way past, which probably would have been pretty bad. Especially given the way the blade seemed to be giving off this noxious purple smoke. Yup, I really didn't want to know what it would've done if the thing actually made contact.

At the same time, Yardbird was bringing our hands up, clasped together quickly to catch Sariel's rising foot right before she could kick us in the stomach, that thrown knife having been a distraction. But just as we caught it, the woman used that to hoist herself up and spun around so her other foot collided with our forehead as she twisted in the air, tugging out of our grip to land smoothly on both feet. She'd started slightly to our right, now she was just a bit to our left.

Like that first kick, this one hurt. That ringing in our ears got worse. But again, I shoved that to the back of my mind. I could go over all our injuries once this was over, assuming we were still alive by then. Which wasn't exactly a guarantee, considering how pissed off Sariel was right now.

Except, maybe that wasn't such a bad thing for our survival. Yeah, that sounded bad, but honestly I was pretty sure the fact that she was so angry was, at least in some ways, working against her. She wasn't being nearly as cold and calculating as she could be, considering her assassin skills. Thanks to some of the others, including my own mother after she had been forced to fight her by Fossor, I knew at least some of what the Olympian who had been known as Artemis was truly capable of. But most of that probably required her to keep herself at least a bit calmer.

And no, the fact that the sight of my male self apparently made Sariel so pissed off that she completely stopped thinking and flew into an utterly blind rage where her only goal was to throw knives into me really didn't make me feel any better. This entire situation sucked beyond the telling.

All of that had happened in a quick burst of motion. Now that there was a few feet of distance between us, I caught the barest glimpse of the woman's hand moving to throw something else our way. It wasn't a knife this time. Instead, the thing was a smoke bomb, which exploded into a thick, dark cloud that absolutely would've been a real pain to deal with. Fortunately, my ghosts were ready for things like that. The second Sariel threw that, one of them came flying through to catch the little ball and took it as far as possible in that brief moment before the thing went off. Just like that, the space about ten feet to the side was filled with that smoke. I barely caught a whiff of it and even that was enough to make my eyes water. Eesh, that would've been bad if I was right in the middle of it.

In that time, while Sariel was still reacting to her smoke bomb being snatched out of the air, I was already dropping to one knee while my staff shifted to its bow form so I could send one of those concussive energy arrows toward the ground right at the other woman's feet. Which, of course, she evaded just by leaping into the air while the dirt and rocks exploded beneath her.

God, she was so quick, and every motion she made was just… almost perfect. Even with the very slight disadvantage of being so angry she clearly wasn't focusing properly, Sariel was absolutely one of the most dangerous single opponents I'd ever faced. Especially when you added in the fact that I didn't want to actually hurt her. In most fights, I could aim for a quick kill as soon as I saw any sort of opening. Not that an opening was likely to happen, but either way, this time my only choice was to keep the fight going.

And speaking of keeping the fighting going, I hadn't exactly just stayed in place after sending that first arrow. Instead, I twisted the other way and loosed another shot at the ground just a little bit ahead of me (formerly behind before I turned). At the same time, Yardbird focused on hoisting us back to our feet and leaping backward toward Sariel. The rocket burst power lifted us higher and further that way, while my mind mate took control of the cloud of dirt that explosive arrow had made. It was close enough to sand for our power to pull it that way, mixing it with the cloud that was already there from the first arrow. Sariel had tried to blind and choke us with some sort of nasty smoke, now we were just returning the favor in our own way. But hopefully with at least slightly more success.

The other woman's leap had carried her about twenty feet in the air before she started to fall back down, just as that cloud of fine dirt engulfed her. She had enough time to see me rocketing in right over her head, and reacted quickly, flipping over as she fell to send yet two more blades zipping our way. Honestly, with everything that was going on, we probably would've been hit then. Her knives came so quickly, and were so perfectly aimed even in that situation as she fell back through the air and into the obscuring dirt cloud, they absolutely would've gone through my chest and throat. Fortunately, once again those ghosts came into play. That was the job I'd given these guys in this fight, to hang back and jump in when they were needed. And boy were they needed right then. Two of them flew past, taking the knives out of the way an instant before we would've been hit.

Of course, the problem with having a cloud of obscuring dirt below us as we looked down from that position would have been that we couldn't see where Sariel was. But that didn't really matter, thanks to our object sense. We knew where her clothes and weapons were, so we knew where she was. Which meant, as Yardbird briefly froze our shoes in place so we could stand in midair, I was able to aim at her perfectly as I summoned that energy frisbee I had inherited during that fight on the Cryptseeker while it had still been Fahsteth's ship and sent it flying that way. That was the disc thing that I was able to imbue with various physical properties for specific lengths of time, like making it super-hot for a few seconds, then cold, then bouncy, or sharp, or sticky, or any number of other effects. In this case, I made the thing both very sticky and incredibly stinky. It was absolutely noxious even from up here, almost making our eyes water.

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Obviously, in most cases, Sariel would have avoided that thing without any trouble at all. Even blinded by the dirt cloud, I was absolutely positive that she would have been nowhere near it by the time the thing reached that spot. But this wasn't most cases. In that moment, while I was focused on imbuing the disc with its effects and then throwing it, Yardbird had put all of her attention toward using the power that let us increase objects' resistance to motion. She used that against Sariel's bodysuit, and just like that the woman was moving much more slowly. It wouldn't last long, just a bare handful of seconds, but it would stop her from easily dodging.

And yet, even then, with that much of a disadvantage, Sariel still nearly evaded the whole thing. She twisted sideways, clearly using her boost to at least slightly offset how slow she was right then. The flying disc almost sailed right past her. But it barely caught the side of her raised arm right before the woman could fully pull it out of the way, and stayed there. The stickiness kept it in place, forcing Sariel to keep smelling that awful stench for as long as that disc actually lasted.

Or it would have, but even as I was dropping back down that way, I heard her mutter a quick spell, one I belatedly recognized as some form of that clean air spell I'd learned a long time ago. Right, so all of that had basically accomplished a grand total of… making Sariel smell something bad for about two seconds before she negated it entirely. This whole thing was going just swell.

And speaking of going swell, that new Seosten, the one I didn't know, had been trying to get involved in this fight, trying to take advantage of our focus on Sariel. But a small army of other ghosts, including Grover and Seth, were keeping him distracted and out of the way. It was yet another reason to be glad I had these guys around. Not that I needed any more to be absolutely certain that I would've died a dozen times already without their help. The ghosts carried this.

As if all of that wasn't complicated enough, I couldn't even keep track of what Marian was doing. I had no idea how well she was faring against Charmeine over there. Given the way Sariel was acting here, sparing any attention at all to focus on that almost certainly would have ended with me having at least four different blades sticking out of various parts of my body. I just had to hope that the other girl really did know how to take care of herself against someone like that.

Or rather, that they knew how to take care of themselves. Or however that term would actually go in this particular case. There was one of me that was almost but not quite fully merged with her. She had so many of my old memories, like she was kind of me yet still herself, I just--

Right, incredibly dangerous and pissed off woman trying her level best to throw knives into me. At that moment, she was already hurling two more of them my way, one at my foot and the other up toward my ear. And no, standing in the middle of that cloud that Yardsmith was still making sure was right in her face really didn't seem to do anything to actually throw off her aim. Either she had some sort of magic or tech telling her exactly where we were, or she was just that good. Whatever the reason, the knives were right on target, and I really didn't want to let either of them hit me. Yes, I could heal, especially ear damage, but something told me she had magic or poison or something on those things. Sending the one blade at my ear felt like a trick, an invitation for me to just ignore it as not actually that dangerous only to be fucked over by it anyway. That was probably just the sort of thing a super-dangerous assassin like Sariel would do, right?

Before the knives could reach us, I already had my weapon shifted back to its staff form, once again sending a blast of concussive force into them to knock the knives out of the way. But that didn't actually solve the problem this time, as it turned out. Instead, the second that blast of force hit the knives, the damn things exploded into a burst of heat and light. Oh, that was the trick. I had just enough time to realize that as we recoiled, the light basically blinding us right then. Shit, shit, that was bad, really bad. Sariel was absolutely going to try to follow up before we could recover. And wouldn't that be an embarrassing and awful way to die? How would Tabbris react?

Wait, we didn't actually need our vision. That realization came on the heels of the Tabbris thought, just in time for me to snap my staff up to block Sariel's arm as she landed right in front of us and tried to drive a knife into our shoulder, probably to disable us so she could follow up with something even more lethal. But I managed to just barely deflect it while staggering backward.

That motion may have deflected Sariel's blade, but it also left me open for her second attack, which had obviously been her intention the entire time. I would've taken a knife to the stomach if I only had my own mind steering this body. Fortunately, I had Yardbird. She instantly made our thumb touch the wooden part of our staff, possessing the thing so we seemed to completely vanish just as the blade would've struck home. Sariel had enough time to wonder just what the hell had happened before we came back out of the staff, standing on the opposite side of it. In the same moment, I snapped the weapon up and forward, trying to smack it right into the woman's face. With almost anyone else, being taken by surprise like that would've been enough to get a hit in. But no, with Sariel, she was able to barely jerk her head back enough to make the end of the staff whiff right past the end of her nose, missing her by little more than a couple hair widths.

"Sariel!" I found myself shouting even as I exchanged a quick flurry of attempted blows with the other woman, "I don't want to fight you, I don't want to do any of this! Please, just talk to me for a minute, we can work this out. None of this shit has to happen, you know it doesn't. You know we can talk. You know this is wrong!" The entire time I was saying that, my staff kept snapping back and forth, trying to get a decent hit in while she easily evaded every single strike. I couldn't even graze the woman. And she definitely would've stabbed me several times if I didn't have Yardbird there to focus on dodging and blocking while I was fully focused on attacking and trying to talk.

"I listened to you once," came the dismissive response while she continued to evade everything. That was the only thing she said. There was no elaboration, no argument, no discussion. She said those five words and left everything else unsaid. Well, not unsaid. The rest of the entire dissertation of her feelings on that subject came in the form of three blindingly quick knife thrusts that we barely avoided and a foot to the gut that we didn't.

Stumbling backward from that blow, trying very hard not to lose my lunch, I barely managed to focus on the next knife enough to halt its forward motion before it would have gone through me. There was the slightest opening as the woman was caught by surprise when her hand halted right along with the knife that she was trying to hit me with. Quickly, I took a step back to put some distance between us so I could finish recovering.

And that was my mistake. Sariel managed to make her knife move again, but instead of following up, she paused. Her eyes narrowed as she looked at me intently. There was a flicker of confusion in her eyes that quickly settled into realization. "You-- you don't want to win. You want this fight to continue. You're--"

She knew. By not taking that opening, by backing off instead, I'd given away the game. Sariel knew we were distracting them, that we were keeping them away from the ship. She was about to go back. She was going to leave, either by using magic to teleport or just recalling to her host. Either way, she would get back to the ship. And if she did that, she'd see Vanessa and Tristan. Sure, they were in disguise, but she might just turn lethal immediately. If that happened--

I lunged, triggering my boost on the way along with the rocket burst. I was screaming inside my head-- our head for the Flique to keep Sariel out of all of our thoughts and memories. We had to stop her from… from seeing or doing what she shouldn't, what she couldn't. We had to stop her from getting anything out of that ship. We just had to stop her, period.

Everything happened at once then. I dove that way, hand outstretched just as Sariel started to fade out. My fingers brushed her and I threw everything I had into possessing the woman, praying I wasn't too late. I felt her skin for an instant, and that was enough. I disappeared, possessing Sariel. Right after that, she vanished as well, recalling back to her host. But I didn't have time to even notice where that body was or what it was doing. Because I was possessing Sariel. I was possessing Sariel.

And now we were in for the real battle.