Serenity shifted his awareness back to the body he had on the surface. He leaned into the information available from the ritual circle, only to find out that it was less informative than expected. Whatever stealth Skill the Viper was using also confused the ritual. It wasn’t enough to completely erase his presence, but it was enough to blur it.

Serenity could tell the Viper was in the area and fighting; he could even tell that the man was moving around. A Tier Ten aura left too many traces to be missed when there was no one else of similar power around and the Viper’s aura control wasn’t good enough to fully hide it. What he couldn’t tell was exactly where the man was.

Serenity’s awareness returned to the body in the base with a start as a dagger slid into his side, having sliced through a thinner spot in his armor. The good news was that now he knew where the Viper was; the bad news was that he’d probably just been poisoned.

He’d just have to live with it until he got to the surface. Blaze should be able to deal with it; if Blaze couldn’t, Serenity would just have to heal through it. Trying to remove a poison with destructive healing was far too difficult for combat, so healing through the effects afterwards was the normal solution.

Serenity pulled his Crystal Hilt out of the sheath without using the sheath’s enchantment; for this, he wanted the mana blade to be itself, not partially physical. It was the best weapon he had and he needed to use it. The blade poured out of the hilt as he struck towards the origin of the dagger.

A hiss of pain told Serenity that he was barely fast enough to clip something. It was probably just the Viper’s shield, but even that was something. He still couldn’t see the Viper, but there was something there that hadn’t been in the hallway, something that took up space in the room. Something that was still holding the dagger that sliced him; Serenity could feel the hint of his own blood that still stained it.

The Viper had backed up, so Serenity closed the distance. If he was almost as fast as the Viper, he could make this work. He just needed to be almost as strong as well. The Crystal Hilt’s manablade wouldn’t go through a shield easily, but it would penetrate and that could be enough if he hit in a vulnerable spot.

The Viper shifted direction towards the entrance and Serenity moved to cut him off. There was more than one entrance to this room, but only one was open: the one Serenity crashed through. The Viper seemed to be trying to get out that way.

The Viper kept going. Serenity took the best guess he had for the Viper’s position and swung his blade at the man’s chest as he ducked around Serenity. Even as he swung, he knew the man had twisted, but he couldn’t tell how; the flashes he got from Eyeless Sight were blurred and distorted. Magesight gave a different but overlapping picture, so he aimed at a location both said held something.

This time, he felt the shield, then a moment where his slice met less resistance, then slightly more; he’d hit something strong enough to slow his manablade down other than the shield. That could be armor, an enchanted item, or even the Viper himself; whatever it was, Serenity wanted to hit it again.

“The Viper’s in here!” Serenity called out into the hallway. Zanzital and Daryl were almost certainly still fighting the Viper’s invisible illusionary double; it hadn’t been long enough for them to realize what had happened. “He can make fakes of himself!”

The Viper ducked around Serenity again. This time, Serenity wasn’t able to get between him and the door. He got another hit on the man, but still couldn’t tell what he hit. Unfortunately, the Viper made it into the hallway. “He’s in the hallway now!”

“You can see him?” Zanzital bellowed back at Serenity.

“Sort of,” Serenity called back as he stepped into the hallway. He had to dodge a poorly-thrown dagger from the fake Viper almost immediately; that thing needed to be dealt with before they’d be able to swap focus to the Viper himself. It was a menace just by existing in such tight quarters. It was also between him and the Viper, now. That was probably deliberate.

Fortunately, Serenity had just the tool for this situation. He tracked the Viper’s real form and called out, “He’s heading into the target room,” then pulled his Wand of Severing out. He could do this manually but it would be much faster with the wand. If he was lucky, the wand would even survive. It should; it wasn’t like he needed to push that much energy through it. While a Skill like this certainly took a lot of mana to set in motion, the throughput should be relatively low or it wouldn’t have lasted very long at all and this felt like a longer-duration Skill.

It probably also required an entire bucket of daggers to be provided in order to work correctly. That probably explained why they were mundane daggers; the one the Viper used to get through Serenity’s armor was almost certainly not mundane. Most basic materials had trouble getting through dragonscale, even the thinner dragonscale where it had to be flexible.

The next dagger was easy to dodge; the illusion really wasn’t very accurate. Serenity focused his Magesight on the Skill. It tried to blur, but Serenity pushed through the effect enough to figure out where some of the lines that held the spellform together and active were. It was surprisingly low on energy; it must have been active for quite a while.

Serenity lunged towards the illusion, staying away from yet another thrown dagger, and sliced through one of the lines powering the spellform, then another, then a control like. None of them saw any real resistance; the spell wasn’t designed to protect itself from this type of attack.

Three cut lines was enough; the next dagger was dropped instead of thrown, then a pile of daggers rained from the illusion’s location. Each one clanged as it hit the floor; they should have sounded musical, but it was an ugly sound in Serenity’s ears.

“Where is he?” Zanzital didn’t waste time looking at the pile of daggers; instead, he cast around for the Viper.

Hadn’t he heard Serenity? He knew he’d yelled out where the Viper was headed. Maybe he’d been too quiet or maybe Zanzital had gotten tunnel vision; either way, the Guildmaster must not have heard. “That way!” Serenity pointed into the room he’d seen the Viper disappear into.

Running footsteps from behind told Serenity that Daryl heard, too.

Serenity activated his Footwraps of Air Glide to make it through the hazardous terrain created by the spilled daggers and slid towards the room as well. He was only a few feet behind Zanzital when he crossed the doorway.

A more or less man-shaped blur stood in the center of the ritual. He seemed to be trying to activate it; the Viper must not have realized that a piece was missing. Serenity called out, “In the middle,” and pointed towards the apparition.

There was another spellform in the center of the ritual, but Serenity couldn’t tell what the Skill was. The one thing he could say for certain was that it wasn’t another dagger-thrower; no daggers had yet flown away from it. Serenity stared at it carefully; there were several options for what it could be. Most of them could be ignored but the ones that couldn’t could be huge problems.

There was a visible blurring of the wall beyond it as it moved; that confirmed what it was. It was an illusionary trick to distract anyone trying to attack into missing the Viper. That seemed very much in line with the abilities the Viper had already shown; in fact, it was entirely possible that this was simply another variation of the Skill he’d used in the hallways. This time, he must not have had the daggers to supply it with.

Zanzital didn’t wait for Serenity’s evaluation past the approximate location of the enemy; he threw out a Death Magebolt that was clearly modified to cover a wider area than normal, aimed directly at the center of the ritual.

Serenity felt the magebolt. He hadn’t felt anything that Deathly external to himself since he left Tzintkra; even Death Himself didn’t feel different to Serenity. It grabbed at his attention as if he could reach out and touch it, take it for his own and make it do what he wanted.

It reminded Serenity of spellcasting with an Aspect active. High end mage combat between mages of similar enough Aspects, or mages with the Arcane Aspect, could turn into fights over a single spell; this reminded him of that. He hadn’t had that sort of fight for a very long time, even by the Final Reaper’s standards, but he remembered what it was like.

He didn’t have an Aspect of Death; what he did have was his Incarnate and it wasn’t active. The spell called to him anyway.

Then it was gone. It didn’t hit the Viper cleanly, but it did hit him, because the Viper didn’t move out of the center of the ritual. It splashed off his shield, damaging and draining it but not penetrating.

The Viper probably thought the ritual circle would activate at any moment, which might well mean that he needed to be in the center for it to teleport him out or whatever it was going to do. At least that anchored him in place; it was a huge help for fighting an enemy when they refused to move to cover.

Serenity was certain he could guide the Death Magebolt more accurately; he could see the Viper, more or less, after all. It seemed like the best course of action; unless he could corner the Viper, he wasn’t going to be able to do much with his blade and his own spells were nearly useless. Even his own Death Magebolt was only Tier Four. It punched well above its weight, but without stacking the deck in his favor the way he’d done against Arkandaeon, Serenity wasn’t up to fighting a Tier Ten.

Oh, they’d win; Zanzital was Tier Ten and there were two Tier Nines present as well. Simply being able to point out the enemy’s location was valuable and Serenity could both defend himself and hurt the Viper; he wasn’t dead weight for the fight despite his Tier limitation. It simply wouldn’t be fast; the Viper was too slippery.

They needed it to be fast. Serenity hadn’t had time to hand out the hearts yet, but he was certain the Hollow One effect had to be spreading their direction.

Serenity opened himself to the power of his Incarnate. It never completely left him, but he could suppress it; truthfully, he had to suppress it if he wanted to contain his aura. It was too potent to contain at his low Tier if he allowed it to manifest. It might be too potent at any Tier; Serenity didn’t know. He’d never knowingly encountered an Incarnate, after all.

Zanzital threw another enlarged Death Magebolt. Serenity guided it to impact cleanly on the figure in the center of the ritual. Much of the energy still evaporated on the Viper’s shield, but some of it penetrated.

Zanzital glanced at Serenity before he looked back at the Viper. He muttered something, but all Serenity could make out was the word “hand”. There were several possible ways to take that, but the most likely seemed to be grumbling about Serenity’s position in Order’s Guild; he’d probably have to explain about Aspects later but for now Serenity didn’t say anything.

The third Death Magebolt was quickly followed by an arrow as Daryl arrived in the doorway.

At that point, the Viper tried to run.

Lillene

Fighting stealth specialists sucks. Fortunately, the Viper isn’t a combat specialist as well.