Unchosen Champion

Coop was biding his time, waiting to see how the two unoccupied High Priests would aid the Totemic, while chipping away at the High Priest’s defenses. Both the Deathstalker and the Herald were equally focused on the confrontation between himself and their companion. Coop knew that he had to consider the Priests’ ability to support and work together if he was going to have continued success against the group. So far, they had answers for his phantasms and his unleveraged stats, at least temporarily, but he also had at least one more gear when it came to skirmishing and an extended fight favored his build above most others.

Tzultacaj, Mateo, and Juliana were all engaged with the Colossus near the edge of the pyramid. The Colossus continued to grow larger. At this point the Elite Jaguar Warriors were fighting a golem that had grown over 16 feet tall and threatened to stomp them if they were too slow. Tzultacaj was carving stone chunks off the High Priest’s body, but Juliana and Felix only scoured the surface of his armor with claw marks when they attacked. Mateo hadn’t fired a single laser beam since he first arrived on the top of Chakyum’s temple, ostensibly waiting for an opening.

Coop was in the center of the pyramid, near the settlement’s civilization shard, as he hammered at the empowered Totemic. Both the Deathstalker and the Herald stayed nearby, supporting their comrade against Coop’s assault, with their backs to the staircase that led deeper into the structure.

The sky had transitioned into an overcast gray above the Yucatan Settlement. High above, barely formed clouds mirrored the swirling patterns of mana Coop had seen in the monochromatic world. Coop had the impression that they were standing on an active volcano that had already erupted, and were now reliving the footage of the aftermath in reverse. Instead of belching clouds of smoke into the atmosphere, black plumes of mana were slowly being sucked back into the structure.

After both of the Totemic’s totems were destroyed, two more of the wooden stumps slowly coalesced from drifting green energy, returning to their places criss-crossing on his back. He and Coop exchanged blows with the High Priest blocking Coop’s warhammer with his forearms or taking blows to the limbs without complaint, and Coop blocking meteoric punches with his shield, dodging, or casting Legacy of the Mists to harry the empowered healer. The standoff lasted until the totems fully solidified. As soon as the High Priest opened a window for Coop to take advantage, by moving to retrieve one of the totems, Coop shifted into his second gear, pushing his body with the full extent of his stats, no longer holding back to pace himself like a marathon runner. He altered the tempo so that it became a sprinter’s dash to the next checkpoint.

The sparring ended and Coop revealed the true extent of his stats while taking advantage of the stacking effect of Clarity of Purpose. Every blow that the Totemic received meant that Coop could ignore a fraction of his defenses on subsequent blows. With the way the fight had gone, Coop expected to have reduced the Totemic’s defense by more than 25% already.

Coop could feel the strain from his right shoulder all the way to his hips as he slammed his hammer into the Totemic’s ribs with a devastating forearm swing, finding the gap exposed beneath the man’s upturned arm with sudden precision, and the High Priest hissed as he absorbed the powerful blow. The Priest reflexively brought the upturned limb back down in an effort to catch Coop’s hammer between his arm and his body to prevent it from hitting him a second time.

Coop entered Vaporform for a split second, escaping the trapping arm by passing straight through, then slammed the hammer into the newly presented elbow with equal force. The High Priest grunted in pain, shying away from the blow before he thrust his other fist forward in a powerful cross that could have killed a bull.

Coop shifted his head to the left side, letting the deadly fist barely flick his ear, tearing the tip, then slammed his shield into the outside of the extended arm, turning the Totemic’s body to the side and eliminating any further defense from the pivoted Priest. The force of Coop’s strikes had suddenly escalated beyond what the High Priest had grown comfortable with and the pained responses eroded the seemingly unstoppable bloodlust he had been presenting.

The Deathstalker stepped in before Coop could continue building his advantage, passing through one of her gateways at his side. She forced Coop to abandon an overhand swing with his hammer to account for the additional party. Coop blocked the obsidian dagger as she attempted a rapid but telegraphed attack. The assassin was only present for a split second before she returned to the Herald’s side, not giving Coop an opportunity to counter her brief visit.

The Totemic had no hesitation, already throwing a desperate haymaker before the Deathstalker was gone, subconsciously feeling the inadequacy in his stats, and acknowledging the fact that if he let Coop take the advantage, he’d never get it back. When the Deathstalker disappeared, her scowling visage was replaced by the High Priest’s crushing fist.

The Totemic’s knuckles passed through mists as Coop stepped forward, lowering his shield while shifting into another attack. The High Priest’s recognition of the shifting momentum had come too late. The Totemic was being left behind. Coop rounded on the High Priest before exiting another quick Vaporform to slam the hammer into the back of the Priest’s knee with the full force of his combined attributes. The Priest finally stumbled.

Coop cast Legacy of the Mists, summoning another phantasm, and let his hammer slip from his hand and fly into the air before blocking the reverse spinning fist that the Totemic used to retaliate. The force of the Totemic’s blows had increased with his desperation, but they both knew it wasn’t enough. From the outside, nothing had changed, but each of the combatants could better gauge who had the upper hand. It was Coop.

Coop raised his ethereal shield and braced with both hands as he accepted the collision. Coop slid backwards, feeling the reverberation run from his forearms up through his shoulders and deep into his chest. Every blocked punch was like a car crash, but it would take more to stagger him.

The phantasm was ripped apart by a void sphere as soon as it manifested, but the pressure it applied on the group of High Priests was all he wanted. The Elite High Priestess was paying close attention to his summons, but all three of the Priests ignored the hammer that flipped in the air above the Totemic, like his grip on it had simply been lost on the duel. They anticipated another quickswap and waited to see which new weapon Coop would bring out.

Coop defied their expectations and mistjumped to the hammer. Without his spear in play, they weren’t being mindful of his movement ability. Before they recognized his misdirection, he was already swinging the weapon with as much force as he could muster while in the air, roaring with the exertion. The narrow shaft whooshed through the air and the Totemic took the blow to the side of the head with a crack that echoed across the temple.

The green energy that empowered the Totemic remained where he had been, like a verdant bonfire, but his body flopped to the ground where he struggled to catch himself, dazed and confused. Coop hit him so hard his empowering energy seemed like it was momentarily ripped away.

Coop landed next to him, and when he attempted to follow his attack with a blunt execution, the hammer froze in the air, restrained by the scowling Elite High Priestess and her void sphere.

Coop unclenched his hand, letting the trapped weapon fly into the formation like a small piece of metal attracted to a giant magnet. He was already dismissing the warhammer in favor of his shortsword.

He slashed the newly summoned weapon through the air instead, cutting through the heavy atmosphere with a ferocious arc, but before the blade was halfway down, a black and purple portal separated him from the Totemic. The obsidian dagger of the Deathstalker clashed with the ethereal edge as the assassin came to the Priest’s direct defense. Sparks flew, and the assassin’s arm was thrown backwards. She spun with the momentum and slashed at Coop’s chest as she turned, causing him to dodge backwards.

Coop mirrored his earlier action with the hammer, deliberately flipping his sword up as and over the assassin as he moved away. She immediately disappeared and another portal spawned in the air next to his sword as it flew above the Totemic. The Deathstalker anticipated his mistjump and prepared to counter it, but Coop just resummoned the sword to his hand, stepping forward while she bit on his pump fake and teleported into the air. After planting his foot, he brought the ethereal blade down on the Totemic as the Priest furiously stood back on his feet, lacking the verdant energy that had aided him in his frenzy, but still defiant.

“No!” The Deathstalker bellowed as her defense was sidestepped, but it was too late for the Totemic. Another cloud of black smoke drifted into the darkening sky before being whisked into the pyramid. She wouldn’t be getting the healing that she desperately wanted.

Coop ignored the assassin as she landed lightly on her feet. Instead, he faced the Elite High Priestess and finally turned his target back to the leader of the group. He lunged toward her, not giving the Cultists a chance to regroup now that the second of the five High Priests was defeated. The Champion of the Yucatan had hardly changed her expression a single time throughout the fight, and even after Coop’s attention bore down on her, she was unmoved. The only hint of her humanity was the slightly frustrated furrow of her brows.

Coop only managed a single step before the Deathstalker’s shadow clone attempted to stab him in the back. He slid to the side with plenty of time to spare thanks to Presence of Mind.

He glanced back at the Deathstalker. She stood over a pile of faded ashes that drifted away in the breeze, having once been the Totemic, with her injured arm held gingerly across her waist. She pointed her one good arm at Coop, extending her pointer finger from its grip on the ivory colored shaft of her obsidian dagger. “I’m not done with you.” She ominously declared with a hoarse voice.

She raised the dagger to her face, covering her right eye with her fingers while pinning the blade against her cheek. She showed her teeth as she grimaced and a vortex of shadowy dust broke from her form. The shadows twisted around her legs and rose until it obscured her entire body, leaving just her head, before disappearing. It vanished as quickly as it formed, simply drifting away. Then, she split her fingers, revealing that her hidden eye had turned completely white.

A rare warning appeared unbidden from his notifications, ignoring his normally required input before being displayed.

[You have been Marked for Death!]

“Hm.” Coop grunted. It wasn’t the worst notification he had received from an enemy, but it wasn’t ideal.

“Danse Macabre.” The Deathstalker breathed before her form flickered twice and she phased completely out of existence.

Coop squinted, anticipating one of her black and purple portals, letting Presence of Mind fill his awareness. When nothing happened, he continued searching for her aura, and noted that it was about time he channeled another Fog of War. The thin mists had completely faded during his bout with the Totemic with the void spheres eating it away and was ready to be rechanneled.

In the meantime, Coop had completely lost track of the Deathstalker. He looked back at the Herald, worried that the assassin had fled, but the Champion of the Yucatan seemed happy to continue observing. To him it seemed obvious that Elite High Priestess was merely letting those lower in rank than her reveal all of Coop’s abilities, rather than form a proper party. Even though they built standard archetypes, they didn’t establish the necessary framework to maximize their advantage. In any case, her continued observation implied that the Deathstalker was still in play.

He didn’t see any way around it. The High Priests were formidable enough opponents that he couldn’t necessarily hold back too much and still come out victorious on the other side. He had to take the Deathstalker as seriously as any of the other High Priests.

“What’s with all the dancing?” He grumbled as he channeled Fog of War.

His mana economy had been extremely efficient thus far. The phalanx of phantasms had made sure to send him off with nearly 100% mana, his first Fog of War had been a frugal expenditure and consequently had less downtime, and a few casts of Legacy of the Mists barely dented his pool of resources. Of course, mistjumps, quickswaps, and weapon summons were all free, thanks to Practical Application’s reduction to flat mana costs. His primary expenses had come from Mind Over Matter preventing health damage when blocking the Totemic’s punches, and the steady drain from entering Vaporform, though he had kept the durations of his visits to the world of mists to a minimum.

With around 30,000 mana in his pool, he was happy to unleash a massive Fog of War. He’d use the expansive creation to take over the battlefield. The top of the pyramid would become his personal domain.

A massive plume of mists rose from around his feet as he began the channel. An obscuring cloud, thick enough to blind everyone trapped inside, seemed to leak directly from the stone in the area around him, rising up to his ankles before whisps rushed upwards and the rest filled the empty space. The area the mists covered spread beyond his immediate vicinity, covering a wider and wider area as the fog rose to his knees.

“Gotcha!” The Deathstalker whispered in his ear, close enough that he could feel the warmth of her breath on his skin.

Coop twisted away, turning 90 degrees while swinging his sword where she should have been. It wasn’t the first time an assassin had appeared behind him unexpectedly, and the first time had cost his ambusher their arm before their life.

However, she wasn’t there. Instead, she manipulated him into turning his back on her real position. He felt the obsidian dagger pierce the small of his back while she laughed giddily. The Fog of War channel was interrupted as Coop reflexively toggled Vaporform before the blade penetrated more than an inch into his flesh.

The monochromatic world had continued to deteriorate, now churning violently with black miasma that restricted his perspective to the top of the pyramid and nothing more. Gazing outside the edges was like trying to peer into the depths of the ocean or beyond the starless sky. There was nothing else to see.

He observed the forms of his two opponents, both glowing like burning torches of illuminated mana among the swirling storm of black fumes. The Deathstalker flitted away with her blacklight colored mana concentrated on obscuring her body, but the Herald had an invisible sphere hovering above and behind Coop like a balloon trailing from a child’s wrist, as if tethered by a string.

Coop made note of the Deathstalker’s position as he toggled Vaporform off. He lunged forward, slamming against the invisible assassin with an admittedly clumsy shoulder tackle. She was caught by surprise. For a moment her form flickered back into existence as she slammed into the stone. Coop used the brief flash to triangulate her position and slice his sword forward.

His sword froze in the air, and he strained for a moment, worried about losing track of the Deathstalker if he didn’t strike while the iron was hot. He gave up shortly afterwards, realizing he would need to repeat the process of applying Vaporform to survey for the Deathstalker’s position, and the sphere disappeared. He glanced at the Herald that had interrupted his attack, considering his target priority. When he turned to face her, making his decision, she seemed surprised by his shift in attention.

“Hm?” The Elite High Priestess hummed.

She idly moved a single finger to reveal the void sphere above Coop, sending streams of mana into the formation. The manifestation lifted him off the ground by his sword and shield, empowered by her additional maintenance.

“How precocious.” She muttered.

Coop kicked his feet helplessly, lacking purchase to reorient himself. For a moment he was almost exactly like his defeated phantasms, untethered from gravity and held at the whim of the Elite High Priestess’s dark sphere, just a few feet off the fog-covered ground. His weapons dragged him into the air, twisting him so that he was belly up, and he struggled to shift around, knowing that he would need to figure a way to counter her ability if he wanted to defeat her.

He prepared to abandon his shield, throwing it away from the orb with enough power to escape the magnetic pull and give himself a mistjump destination, but before he let it go, the Deathstalker appeared right next to him, kicking up a cloud of his mists with her sudden presence.

“Die!” The assassin growled as she clenched her teeth together.

She drove her dagger down at his heart like he was a sacrifice being made to her master. Coop hesitated before casting Vaporform, remembering how his phantasms were scattered into mists by the same ability that currently trapped him. Would the same thing happen to him if he abandoned his material presence while in the sphere’s grip? He had a split second to either brace himself, relying on the layered defenses that had ensured his survival so many other times against so many other opponents, or risk it all by leaning on his newest ability to try and escape.

He expected either method to work imperfectly, each risky for different reasons, but he chose the simplest answer possible, as was his habit. He let go of his shield and sword, and fell to the ground, unarmed, but drawing away from the assassin’s strike and into his thick layer of knee-high mists. The Deathstalker’s face was the perfect image of irritated shock as she struggled to adjust, engrossed in the potential killing blow and not anticipating such a simple solution to their magical trap.

He fell to the ground before the blow landed, and to his surprise, his shield and sword fell after him, clattering against the stone floor after they were also released from the trapping force of the void sphere. The Elite High Priestess lost control of her ability after she was caught unaware and smashed by a blast of air.

A moment later, a familiar green bird dive bombed out of the sky toward the confused assassin before she could readjust to Coop’s new camouflaged position at her feet, hidden as he was by Fog of War. The domain wasn’t large enough to actually hide him, but it temporarily broke her line of sight, giving him enough time to roll away.

Meanwhile, the tropical bird transformed into a human girl with a burst of mana, already winding up a massive haymaker to the side of the searching Deathstalker’s head. The punch landed with a bang and was followed up by a single blast of mana that sent the assassin stumbling and a wave of mists flowing across the low domain.

The punch was linked with a quick jab to the Deathstalker’s throat, a straight punch to her sternum, then some fancy footwork where the girl slipped backwards, shifting her feet within the mists while the assassin hunched forward in pain. Her feet erupted into a rising kick as if propelled by rocket boots. She flipped upside down with a stream of Coop’s mists trailing after her heel while executing a flourishing bicycle kick into the chin of the Deathstalker, causing Coop’s Marked for Death debuff to fade away.

“Miss me?” The final of the four Jaguar Elites asked before propelling herself back into the sky with a twirl, leaving a spiral of mists in her wake.