Collide Gamer

Chapter 1017 – The mystery of the Death Zone 10 – …the Dawn [Rave POV]

The bronze lines of the summoning circle exuded an incandescent glow, intensifying until the entire room was consumed by the heat. To Rave, it felt like the process took several seconds. In reality, less than the blink of an eye passed. Whatever Lorylim matter remained in the room was turned to dust by the light. Yet, none of it seared into her eyes and she could still see the outline of the circle and Copernicus as clear as ever before.

Resigned and confused, the solar jaguar shook his head. Then his corporeal form began to pull apart. Unravelling into strings of gold, silver, purple and black, descending in commonness, the elemental’s body made its way over to Rave. Her left arm, mostly exposed under the ruined, barely self-repaired bodysuit, was the primary destination of these strings. Ruined flesh was mended, healed and complemented by elemental essence. The magic became part of her very being, spread through her blood and every fibre of her body. Other strings threaded through her, knitting the bestowed cat features into her existence.

Pain subsided, power surged, Rave’s arm was fully recovered, the remade skin covered in a complicated, geometric pattern formed by straight, black lines that spread from the top of her shoulder all the way to the now golden fingernails. All of Copernicus’ body was now gone. Rave’s heart took its first beat since dropping into the place of the ritual. Then a second time, as she started to turn around. The lines of her left hand changed to a golden colour, outlined by supernatural black. At the third heartbeat, her perception of time returned to normal. ![Her headphones switched to a new /watch?v=0ZgNpboHPMI). All aligned for that one moment.

Claws of hard light extended from the glowing nails, formed fully just in time for the feline Lightbearer to slice open the chest of the corrupted Metracana. The Lorylim matter hissed as it evaporated around the claws. Ehtra’s elongated head snapped forward, missing Rave by quite a margin as the Lightbearer dodged and simultaneously turned into a roundhouse kick. All of her movements pulled after them streaks of multi-coloured light.

Ehtra was catapulted through a couple of walls and Rave chased right after her. Aura ignited and utilizing Shift, she got ahead of the flying monstrosity. Raising her leg high, the feline Lightbearer delivered a third attack, this time smashing the corrupted Metracana through the floor. Relentlessly aggressive, Rave kept up the chase and jumped down the hole.

“How peculiar – how interesting – how ultimately pointless,” Izha hummed, and forced Ehtra on her feet. The First of Hatred greeted the descending Rave with a wild swing of her talons. A first strike cut through the bodysuit at the lower leg, but dealt no considerable damage. Further ones forced the pink-haired woman to dodge backwards. Ehtra repaid Rave’s aggression in similar fashion, setting after her with long strides. Her lanky arms tried to grasp Rave, tendrils ending in Astrotium blades spread out from her torso, and the five trenches the Lightbearer had cut closed at a crawling, barely visible pace.

“I’ll show ya pointless,” Rave returned, charging in without fear. The tentacles closed in around her, a bladed embrace from the Astrotium maiden before her. Pure instincts drove the Lightbearer to pour mana into her left hand. The hard-light claws extended into beams, allowing her to cut every tentacle with one arch of her arm. Wing-like blades fell to the floor; Rave grabbed the elongated neck of Ehtra with her left and pointed her right palm at Izha’s protrusion. A sphere of multi-coloured magic formed in the open palm of her right hand. Magic charged, then burst out.

For a couple of seconds, the light of the spell doused the corrupted world around them in the entirety of the colour spectrum, creating a bizarre contrast between writhing mould and raving brightness. Inside the beam, Izha’s head was torn apart. Even now the human mind of the Lorylim laughed, until the vertical maw crumbled away and left Ehtra’s neck to slide back into its proper place.

Rave backed off when the corrupted Metracana sliced at her again. The two engaged in a deadly dance, the feline Lightbearer expertly dodging every single attack. Around them the Lorylim matter stirred, reconnecting the severed wings to Ehtra’s back. Lesser hosts intervened in their battle, but were always discarded in a matter of seconds. Whether this happened because Rave threw a punch at them or because Ehtra uncaringly cut down her ‘allies’ didn’t make a difference.

A familiar power grew within Rave, one she previously had no direct access to but had nourished all the same. Their fight continued and every clash of blows brought her closer to the threshold. Once it was reached, Rave Unleashed the power without hesitation.

Her hair turned gold and her lips started moving, chanting the familiar words. “A solemn reign, for the few that rise up high…”

The First of Hatred redoubled her efforts in attacking Rave upon hearing that phrase. Even in her tortured madness, Ehtra must have recognized the words and what would happen after they were finished. This time around, Rave didn’t fear the interruptions of her enemy. Their power dynamic had been switched around, and now that she was Unleashed, the feline Lightbearer easily outmanoeuvred every attack thrown at her.

“…and we all fight…” she continued, ducking away under the last desperate swipe of the corrupted Metracana. Already Lorylim matter was jumping off Ehtra’s body, likely feeling the imminent end.

“…Mother… why…?” A spark of clarity surfaced in Ehtra’s eyes and she lowered her head, distorted maw closed. “…Free… me of this…”

Rave nodded as she finished the chant, “let our worlds collide.”

A surge of energy elevated her physical and magical might to absurd heights for just one drawn-out moment. Once more, she slashed at Ehtra with her left hand. She cut through the metal of the shoulder effortlessly, turned Lorylim matter into ash and dust, and only stopped when she reached the Astrotium head. The led-grey metal was resilient even to this immense force, but it was no immovable object. Simultaneously tearing the head off and melting trenches into the Astrotium, Rave’s attack extinguished the twisted mind of the Metracana.

While the distorted head flew upwards, aftershocks extended from the trajectory of the five claws. They took the shape of searing light, bursting and burning their own paths into the landscape. Only after more than five metres did they dissipate into strong but mostly harmless wind that disturbed the nearly omnipresent spore clouds. Nearly, solely because Rave’s attack had just burned so much of it.

Rave was still filled with an echo of the Unleashed power. Maintaining it was physically exhausting, but she kept it up as she watched nearby Lorylim matter rush in to once more reconstruct Ehtra’s body. They were halfway finished, when Rave allowed herself to relax somewhat. The shambling construct that she saw then and there wasn’t a second revival of the First of Hatred, merely a mass of black ooze that integrated her body parts. The Lorylim realized the same and collapsed into a puddle of sludge, not bothering to finish this fruitless endeavour.

The last beats of the current song played, as Rave picked up the damaged head. She had no immediate explanation why she did it, but she carried it with her as she headed out of the building. The gold drained from her hair, as she looked down on her hard-light claws for the first time. They weren’t even properly connected to her fingers, hovering a centimetre above the skin and coming to a point after extending a fair distance from the tips. Testing, she made as much as a fist as she could without cutting herself. The body suit had fully regenerated by now as well.

There was more to learn about this new manifestation of her Innate Ability and how it changed the way she could fight. This, however, wasn’t the time. Rave leapt up to a nearby building and looked around. The lava field was gone, she wasn’t quite sure how or when that had happened, but there was a crater in its stead now. Her blue eyes scanned the environment for any tell of where John and the others were now. She couldn’t locate anything immediately.

‘Guess a direction is better than nothing,’ Rave thought and started running.

“I must admit, truly admit, that you are all annoying me,” Izha’s voice growled from every direction. “You should die.”

“Die – die – die,” other Lorylim minds echoed. “Is Izha showing humanity?” “So annoyed, so alien to us.” “The ancient hates and eats.” “And eats.” “And eats.” “And eats.” “And eats.” “And eats.” “And eats.”

“Eat… yes, yes, devour…” Izha cackled. “Devour you whole, Jane – Hollmey,” the once-human mind spoke her name like a delicious brand. He cackled and a number of voices joined, sounding pained as they did so. More tormented laughter, louder and louder, reached Rave’s cat eats – all of it coming from above.

Raising her head, her slit pupils quickly focused on a part of the writhing ceiling that dropped down on her. She dashed out of the way before it could fall on her and immediately found herself followed by a hovering, writhing mass. It distantly reminded her of a tightly packed swarm of eels, except bound together by greyish green bodies and energies, rather than being confined in a container.

Several tentacles peeled out of the amalgam of corrupted air spirits and attacked Rave. Some did so by stretching towards her, others screeched with painful volume, and yet others launched slicing gusts or lightning magic at her. Rave jumped from one roof to another, hearing buildings collapse behind her, until she hit the crater. From there, she continued running along the rim, dodging the rain of attacks.

‘Do I fight that?’ she wondered. Although she wasn’t quite sure about the boundaries of her new powers, her instincts told her two things: one, that she could kill this abomination and, two, that she would probably need another incantation to do so in a sensible timeframe. The problem with that second part was that she didn’t know if she could continue after throwing a third incantation out in the same day. Not without taking a break and the safety required for a break could hardly be provided before she found John.

Swerving out of the way of a biting tentacle, Rave did a heel turn and used the thick, boneless limb as a path up to the amalgam itself. Whether she was dedicated to exterminating it or not, she had to fight it to some degree. Tendrils grew out of the semi-liquid body, each beset with teeth, trying to hold onto the Lightbearer and drag her under the surface. As long as Rave kept moving, they didn’t have an opportunity for that.

The top of the creature was an unsurprisingly hostile place to be. Several dozen tentacles of varying size rose from the writhing mass. Rave didn’t stop for any of them, only pouring mana into her left arm and cutting into the body with the elongated claws as she ran. With a Force Stomp, she launched herself off the body at the opposite end.

She tried her best to see something in the landscape that might inform her about John’s or Nia’s whereabouts. All she could see was the crater to one side and infection everywhere else. Not that having to weather and block the attacks thrown at her made scanning any easier. Had her tiger been defeated? Impossible. Was he hiding somewhere? More likely. Perhaps he was fighting some kind of Lorylim so large that it blended in with the environment? Not impossible.

Rave kicked the ground with the Anti-Fall technique, preventing the impact from hurting her or slowing her down. Then she dashed away from the attacks following her, still looking and hearing around. The tormented babbling from the air spirits was making it difficult even for her enhanced senses.

Then there was… something. Rather, the lack of something. A hole of information of the variety that she had come to be quite familiar with, through daily exposure and sparring sessions. Without hesitation, Rave turned in that direction and prepared herself for the next fight. Whatever she found, she would solve it somehow.

Because that’s just how she rolled.