What do you fight for? (solo)

[Shinsou Vaan Osiris]

Shinsou Vaan Osiris careened across the snowbound path, Enpera’s perfectly balanced steel gleaming in the artificial, Citadel created light. It took the leading ice lance head on, the magic projectile erupting in a violent explosion of frosty shrapnel. A streaking barrage of cryomancery, darting ice that was both arcane and fey, followed the lance through the wintry skies. The barrage was cut down quickly.

A glacial mist from the combined spells was still dancing across the snowscape when, moments later, the perpetrator of the assault flashed past. Remy Krystanthia, garbed in the royal blue robes of the Council of Five, clasped her hand on the hilt of Mizu Jotei, her slender sabre. She wore the banded cuirass, tassets, and vambraces associated with a high-ranking Telgradian. Her caramel hair was tied with a delicate golden thread, which whipped about as she dashed.

“Come on!” Remy yelled from her lead, quite unnecessarily. She nocked back her sword arm whilst her light and quick footfalls unerringly found the safest path through the deep snowdrifts.

“Tch!” Osiris hissed through clenched teeth as Remy closed the distance between them and carved a breakneck arc with Mizu Jotei that was met with a jarring parry of his own. Despite the fact that she was more heavily armoured than him, Remy still kept up with consummate ease. Casting a spell at full sprint had been less sapping on Remy than he had hoped, although his frustration was somewhat mitigated by the satisfaction of seeing his sword actually successfully strike down her projectiles for once.

The male Telgradian spellsword used his momentum to carry her out of his space with by a few feet. The biting wind caught the white greatcoat Shinsou wore and trailed it out in the cold air behind him as he pivoted, and quickly raised a hand parallel to his mentor. The crackle of dark energy snapped and bit into the cold as a black void opened up at his palm, aghast the never-ending white. Like an archer nocking a bow, a lance of dark matter quickly manifested from within the void. And then another. And another, until there were eight all in a line, all suspended within the gravity of the dark well. The all-too familiar incantation followed.

Enpera Kurohitsugi.

Remy dropped to the cold wet snow without a second thought. The fleetest of instants after, the first spear tore from the well and careened towards – and over – her.

“Ugh!” Extending a graceful leg out, she planted a foot and kicked off the ground to meet the second with her blade, cleaving the dark matter projectile in two. Her reactions were much better than his, but even Remy struggled to discern between, and react to, the multitude of dark shapes rocketing through the air. The third tore past her left arm, carving a deep gash, and the fourth embedded itself in her right leg. The macabre stench of smouldering ozone wafted upwards under the low-lying grey of the early afternoon clouds as she collapsed to one knee, panting for breath.

Shinsou wasted no time. Enpera extended, he rushed towards his downed mentor, his ferocious golden eyes locked on for the kill.

“Senkei. Mizu Jotei, Reito Masuku.”

The laboured words of the incantation slipped through Remy’s lips as Mizu Jotei became enveloped in a magnesium white light. Shinsou, momentarily dazzled from the glare, lowered his hand from his eyes.

Dammit.