The Effaced: Chapter Thirty-Two (Patreon)

The second and third combat teams were relatively easy to dispatch, since they overly relied on force magic and anti-tampering spells.

Both of those were fine defenses, but even if I hadn’t possessed Odril’s infusion abilities or my experimental rune bond, it wouldn’t have been enough to stop me. Though detaching the output of the spells frequently was hard, and I wasn’t as good as Aniseed had been, I still had more than enough skill to mess with the buttons in their clothes, the bullets that were unenchanted, or else just shatter the flooring underneath them and send them falling into the abyss, then reseal the floor before the force mage could fly them back up. 

Something that people tended to forget was that the city was made of metal. It was understandable – thin facades hid the copper and brass, enchantments often glowed and made for a far more impressive sight, and after a lifetime living in buildings, you stopped thinking about its construction. Even a lot of metal mages needed to be reminded of the fact that metal was everywhere around them, all the time. 

Firefight, on the other hand, was a bit harder to deal with.

“Hello brother,” he said, a gentle smile on his face as he hovered in the air on some sort of flight boon, his trademark flames licking the air around him.

They weren’t real flames, of course. Demonic flames rarely were, and using flame this far underground would have been a death sentence. It was just aura doing its best impression of flame. His demonic boon that allowed him to freely shape hellfire with his aura was a strong one, but the Arenamaster had made sure we had the best. 

Firefright was tall, though still almost an entire head below my towering frame, and muscular. His skin would have had a natural proclivity to being dark, but spending all of his time in the undercity without any natural light had given it an unnatural, almost sickly pallor. He should have been handsome, but the sheer hate rushing through his face was enough to mar the technical perfection that the Arenamaster’s alterations had hand crafted us to have. 

“I don’t suppose you’re willing to surrender and turn in the Arenamaster?” I asked quietly. Firefright gave a dark chuckle and shook his head. 

“I have no intention of betraying our mother. You and Zone are the traitors. She gave you two everything, and you both repay her by running away, living under false names, hiding like cowards behind civilian identities, and refusing to return to her when she came for you? No, she was wise to have you killed.” 

He sounded genuinely angry and offended, as if the very idea that we were disrespecting the Arenamaster was both unthinkable and unacceptable. 

“She was and is a delusional murderer who indoctrinates children to turn into soldiers for her own sick gain,” I said flatly. “As for having me killed… She hasn’t managed it yet.” 

Despite the circumstances, I couldn’t help but let a small smirk spread at the corner of my mouth. I knew Kelly was watching, hiding behind a pile of rubble, so I tried to not let my confidence grow too much, but it was harder than I had hoped. 

“The new Mist is still growing,” Firefright said dismissively. “You should be impressed that a child was able to nearly kill you.” 

“I am,” I said honestly. “And I’m also sad for her.” 

Firefright rolled his eyes at me. 

“This is your last chance, Mist. If you come with me peacefully, return to mother as you always were supposed to, then you don’t have to die. We can be a family again, working together to accomplish our mother's ambitions.” 

“What exactly are those ambitions?” I asked. I didn’t think it would work, but if he was willing to spout out free information, then I wasn’t going to stop him. 

“That’s a no, then?” Firefright said, sounding almost sad. “Ah, well.” 

He raised his hand, and a beam of bright red hellfire lanced through the air between us, headed right at me.

I threw myself to the side, using my coat to guide my motions as I raised my pistols and fired off two shots, one of which was infused with my fourth arch-star to make it bypass divinations, while the other was infused with my third, to allow it to keep up a continuous stream of power as it flew at him. 

But Firefright, for all that he’d never broken through the brainwashing of the Arenamaster, was a fine duelist, and one who knew my tricks well. 

The flames curved in mid-air, spinning for my head and forcing me to keep on the move. At the same time, Firefright activated an earthen armor boon that called physical stone from the Elemental Fields and coated him in it.

Though I could use my experimental mass bond to pass through force, it was still far too limited to pass through physical matter, and so the fourth arch-star bullet pinged off the thick stone. My other bullet, with the aura-generation star, struck his armor and continued to drill forwards, the spell that propelled it still powered by the continual flow of aura, but Firefright turned and let it fly past him before it could dig too deep into his defenses.

He shot forwards, covering the distance with the flight boon he’d used as long as I could remember, and I knew the fight was over. 

That particular flight boon came from a faerie, and I was a metal mage. I raised my hand and cast a sympathetic linking spell between iron and my aura, then released a pulse at him. In the same moment, I built another spell in the back of my head to open the floor beneath him the moment his flight failed. 

The wave of aura passed over him, and the flowing winds around him cut off. I tore a hole in the floor.

But he didn’t fall, instead hovering in place. 

“Sorry brother,” he said with a laugh. “I’ve got my own tricks now.” 

Then he vanished. 

I spun and fired directly behind me, figuring that he’d swapped places with his mind spirit familiar. He had, but he hadn’t gone behind me, having ironed out that old flaw.

A heavy stone foot struck my side, and I threw together a spell as quickly as I could to distribute the impact through my entire coat. I was still thrown backwards, but my ribs only creaked under the strain, rather than completely shattering. 

As I staggered to my feet, I saw Firefright approaching, stepping through the air with seemingly no problem. 

He was a demon. 

No.

I’d dealt with demons before, I’d spoken to the contractor, and I wanted Odril back. The idea that all demons were evil was a superstition. It was true they molded their thrones off the souls they used to construct it, and that often made very dark thrones, that was humanity, not them. 

Firefright was not a demon, because he was worse. 

Each and every step resonated with the finality of an executioner’s blade. 

Firefright was nightmares made manifest, the worst of the worst bits of humanity, the darkness that crept through the shadows, stalking through the night to kill demonic thrones. 

He was a killer of the unkillable, the devourer of entire worlds, he was…

A dirty trickster. 

Firefright had two primary familiars he was always contracted with – his demon of war, which contributed to the fire part of his name, granting him the incredibly rare and powerful ability to shape hellfire with his aura. 

And a nightmare spirit from the Dreamscape. It’s ability wasn’t subtle, but it was strong. 

When Firefright touched someone, he could incite fear into them. The ability bypassed most magical defenses against mind magic, which could make it surprisingly subtle. 

But it couldn’t break through the ultimate defense against mental magic – a person’s own willpower. 

Mind magic could always be fought with willpower, doubly so if you knew that you were under the effects. Direct attacks were the hardest to fend off, but I’d undergone rigorous mental training courses in EC-Six. 

For the first time, I was more prepared to fight against an effect than I had been when I’d just been a fighter in the arena. 

I could shatter the hold that the fear had on my mind at any time, but I held off, waiting for him to approach. With my second stream of consciousness, I built a spell, then a second spell, and then a third. 

“Are you ready to surrender?” Firefright asked, holding up his hand. It lit with hellfire, glowing a ruddy, almost bloody shade of red. “Or should I just kill you now?” 

I snapped the hold that Firefright had over my mind and launched into movement. My first spell settled around Firefright, reducing the mass of his stone armor to effectively nothing. 

My second spell caused my sword to leap into my hand, and I started flowing aura through its enchantments. 

And my third spell manipulated my coat to flare out and stop the hellfire dead in its tracks. 

I built new spells on my sword and slammed it into Firefright’s chest, infusing it with my third arch-star. His armor cracked, and I kept up the momentum, smashing into it again and again, until it vanished back into the Elemental Fields. I raised my gun…

And hesitated. 

If I’d shot then, I would have killed him, that was certain. 

But I couldn’t just execute my brother in cold blood like that. 

I wasn’t sure if I could kill him. He was an idiot who’d run back to the worst parts of the undercity the moment he’d gotten the chance, and who’d willfully refused help. He’d tried to kill me. 

Yet I couldn’t help but pity him. He was pathetic. 

I should kill him. He was going to kill me, and kill Jessica – she wasn’t Zone anymore, despite how easy it was to fall back into that thinking. 

I couldn’t. 

Not because I didn’t fire, but because my hesitation had given him just enough time to activate one of his own arch-stars, causing him to swap places with his nightmare spirit again. 

He vanished, and I spun, sweeping my blade out on one side and my gun on the other. 

I must have shaken him, because he’d fallen back on his old trick of appearing behind me. I aimed and fired, and a shield of stone appeared before him, blocking the shot and vanishing. 

I strode towards him, firing again, and he thrust his hands out. His entire body exploded with hellfire, and it scoured down the tunnel, erupting with licking trails of not-quite-real flame. 

It wouldn’t burn the air, but my body and anything I was holding could be burnt. 

I ripped a chunk of the floor up and used it as a shield, the massive pillar of fire striking it and curling around my body. I lifted my body with my coat and kept pushing forwards, using the chunk of brass that I’d torn up as a wall. 

The flames cut out a moment later, and I tilted my head to look around my makeshift shield. 

Firefright had turned and was sprinting away, his body glowing with a bright green energy. 

I squinted, then released a burst of aura infused with iron. The green faded away – it had been another faerie boon, like I’d thought. 

I exploded forwards, flying through the air, lifted by my coat, and I grabbed him by his collar, hoisting him up into the air like a kitten. 

“No,” I said. 

“Please, Mist, don’t kill me, please, I can’t die, please I’ll–” 

“Oh shut up,” I said, “Tell me what the Arenamaster’s plan is, and I won’t kill you.” 

“I don’t know!” Firefright practically bawled. “She just said that she was going to become impossibly strong, stronger than anyone, and that Mist – not you, the new one – and me would be rewarded for helping her reach that level of power.” 

That was less than clear, so I asked another question. 

“Where’s she going next?” I asked. 

“I don’t know, some hotel to the northwest, but I’m supposed to go somewhere else and burn it down instead!” Firefright said. “I’m supposed to go to the Anterior Gardens and use a one-use boon from a pure flame drake to blow them up…” 

“Well you’re not doing that,” I said. “Come on, let’s get Jessica, and then we’re going 

“Who’s Jessica?” Firefright whimpered. 

“You called her Zone,” I said. “I did too. I think you just showed me that was a mistake. I’m not Mist, and she’s not Zone. You say we hid behind civilian identities, but the truth is, we evolved past Mist and Zone. We became more.” 

I gave him a pitying stare. 

“You just stayed the same. Now, lower all of your mental defenses and accept the sleep spell.” 

“What? Why? You don’t have a mind bond.”

“No, but I do have artifacts,” I said. “So save us both the trouble of me shooting you or knocking you out physically and giving permanent brain damage…” 

“Fine,” Firefright said. 

Kelly must have realized that was his cue, because Firefright slumped to sleep a moment later.