Olimpia

The world around Kanieta snapped into focus as she came to a stop. It wasn't that she lost sight of everything around her with the use of her spell. A movement spell would be kind of useless if that was the case.

Because what's the point of an escape spell if you only end up in the same situation you were trying to escape due to an inability to see what's in front of you? Then again, it could be that you ended up in a situation in that no magic short of full-on teleportation could save you — which was theoretically possible though no one Kanieta knew had a teleportation spell.

But there was no getting around the fact Kanieta used shadow magic. So while she was propelled by and slipped through the shadows, it came with the disadvantage that anything farther than twenty feet away was beyond her sight. And even things ten feet away were hazy.

Thanks to her heritage and magic, shadows hindered her sight very little. Looking into dark shadows wasn't as clear as day, but few could use them to hide from her gaze.

Magical shadows were different, though. Even Kanieta's own conjured shadows were hard for her to see through, and those of others were basically opaque. The same rules applied to every other shadow mage.

So when Kanieta appeared next to a group of her chieftains, and Shadow Spikes stopped less than an inch from her throat, she wasn't surprised.

Freezing in place, Kanieta held her open hands to the sides facing forward. A moment passed, then a voice lashed out, "Can you not recognize our Faction Leader after a few seconds of absence? Drop your shoddy spells and move aside already!"

Appearing from the shadows between the four Kin positioned around her, Lurta walked towards Kanieta. "Glad to see you as well as ever, Elder," Kanieta said as she turned to sweep around the area.

"Why wouldn't I be fine? I was the first one to react. These children would be dead without me taking the Olimpian seriously."

"Ahh." Lurta was known for her nose for danger, and even if it wasn't true, pointing that out would help no one.

The small group was standing a little to the side of the northern doors to the chamber and was one of the few groups with some level of organization.

Blood golems had a grotesque appearance, but that wasn't why the chieftains were panicking. Well, that wasn't the only reason. The main reason would stem from their childhood.

Everyone knew the stories of the Blood Witch and her creations. The Blood Witch appeared centuries ago, at a time when the People were struggling to hold back the Letairry. She offered a solution.

Mindless flesh creations which could be guided from afar and would only grow stronger the longer a battle lasted. While they could not hold up to the Letairry themselves, they were the perfect answer to the Lost.

The Lost won battles with numbers, but the blood golems would turn those numbers against them.

From standing on the brink of destruction, the situation completely turned around as the People pushed back the Letairry. They were even able to drive the dark elves back to their surface cities with a sea of blood buoying them up.

But the blood magic began to change those who wielded it. Twisted their minds to continuously seek after more. To quench their ever-growing thirst for power.

Then the endless foes vanished, and the People had to push into the depths of the earth to fight their eternal foe. The blood mages led the charge with their creations, but even they were ground to a halt.

The war turned into a grind of attrition, and their once limitless power, thought to be a vast river, had tightened to little more than a stream. So they turned on the rest of the People.

Some blood mages lashed out due to madness, others as they sought to cast powerful blood magic to affect the Letairry.

There was a secret that only a few Faction Leaders now knew. There was a quirk of blood magic. The more that was sacrificed, both in terms of quantity and quality, the greater the power. While quantity was a linear progression of power, quality could be exponential.

If a mother sacrificed their beloved daughter, they would gain a hundred times that of a stranger. To a lesser degree, the same held true for children and adults.

After all, a child has limitless potential, while an adult is already constrained by the choices they made over the course of their life.

So as the endless war of their people ground to a halt, people began to vanish. It took a while, but the cause was eventually discovered. The Blood Witch and her disciples were planning a great spell.

Driven by madness and hatred, the Blood Witch sought to utterly destroy the Letairry and would do anything to accomplish that goal.

It was nearly too late by the time it was discovered. Warbands marched on the blood mages' ritual, only to find that the golems that led them to victory were now turned against them. The People learned of the horror they had let loose on the world, as their own losses and deaths were turned into weapons against the living.

The cost of life was high, but the Blood Witch's spell was eventually destroyed. The records of it are scarce as most were eradicated when it became the first forbidden spell.

Supposedly, the perverse piece of spell craft would sacrifice all the People, no matter where they were, to create a living curse. The curse would then spread like a living plague on the wind to pursue and kill every dark elf.

True, it would finally win them the war, but calling it a pyrrhic victory would be the biggest understatement in the People's history.

Though the spell was stopped and the Blood Witch was believed to be killed, her disciples remained.

The blood mages became a festering wound on the side of the People. Blood mages always joined or created covens, their leader taking on the name the Blood Witch in honor of the first as they sought to reestablish their order. Though they only ever caused havoc across the Peoples' lands.

They were hunted whenever they were found, but that mattered little. Because they were most often found when the blood mages sacrificed entire villages, towns, and even a few cities to create some fowl magic.

The stories of blood mages and their abominations have become the stuff of nightmares. Stories mothers told to children to scare them into finishing their food or going to sleep.

It had been decades since the last blood mage was found, but everyone recognized what the creatures falling from above were. Or they should.

One of the worst things about blood golems was they would be just fine even if the controlling blood mage was killed. It was just that the creatures became mindless and, thus, easier to handle.

The best course of action would be to put some distance between them and the golems while they searched for and killed the mage, so the creations couldn't work in concert.

Kanieta could see that few, if any, of those by the doors had gone through this line of thought. All they knew was a blood mage, and their creations were nearby, and they needed to escape.

It was to be expected, as half of the factions present weren't known for combat, but she even saw a few of her own chieftains in the mass of people by the doors.

At least most of the ones she saw had joined the ranks of the Shimmer Scales and taken up position on the outer edge of the crowd. The center was composed of the Dark Haven, with the Twin Horn Faction pounding on the walls and door. If anyone could break them open, it would be them.

But the dark red glow of blood magic around the frame showed that the doors wouldn't give way anytime soon. Which left only one option.

Lifting her chin, Kanieta pulled on her mana to cast a spell. She didn't shout. If anything, it was little more than a whisper, but the shadows carried her words to everyone crowded around the door. "The doors are sealed, and we are trapped. Either die failing to escape or join me and fight to live."

Heads snapped to face her, but she was already turning away. They would come, or they wouldn't. The time for words and thoughts had passed.

As she turned to face the center of the room, Kanieta couldn't miss the dull red light coming off the two looming hills of the blood golems. They were quickly slurping toward her and were more than halfway between her and the center stage. Her gaze only lingered on them for a moment before she dismissed them and looked at the figure standing in the center of the ray of light.

Derg stood with an imperious look, watching the blood golems impassively. Fear might have clouded the mind of those present, but they will soon realize the consequences of today if they haven't already. Derg has gone too far, Kanieta thought with grim certainty. If he doesn't kill or make us swear to him here, the whole Conclave will turn against him.

"What's the plan," asked Hartloe, "Who was now standing by Lurta's side.

"Stab and slice the golems until we shatter their cores? Find and kill the blood mage before or after we kill Derg?" Kanieta asked more than she said.

"Kind of light on the details," Hartloe commented.

"Got a better one?"

"No, no, no. I'm just making small talk. I'll slow the left one down. You take the right." At his words, a ghostly silver light flooded the area around them.

Before Kanieta could turn to look, a pale fist-sized spark of fire streaked past her on the left. As it traveled, the fire split into four flames of equal size. Then the lumps of light in the darkness grew into large wolf-sized foxes, their firey tails trailing silver fire behind them.

The pale silver fire foxes landed before the blood golem, which lashed out with blood tentacles, only to have them burned to ash as they stabbed into the flames.

Then the foxes began racing around and leaping over the blood golem. From their tails, chains of fire unspooled and hung in the air. The fire foxes danced around the golem with quick movements, forming a cage of fire around the abomination.

Tendrils from the flesh creation tried to worm their way out of the cage through its gaps, only for the chains to shift and burn the tendril away.

"Can't hold it long," Hartloe said, his voice sounding slightly strained.

"The Firefox's Chain?" Lurta commented, "How did you have the time to cast that?"

"Not all of us were wasting our time while run—

Not wasting any more time listening to the old windbags arguing, Kanieta ran forward. Her mind split as she guided her mana to perform several tasks simultaneously.

Most of her attention was focused on preparing her defensive foci to activate at a moment's notice. While the lesser part of her mind focused on making attack spells and holding them ready for use. What's the point of killing something if you die doing it?

As mana flowed through her mind, the world around her slowed down as her mind raced. Flicking her wrist, she sent two Shadow Spike spells at the golem.

The spell circles shot forward, each one hitting the ground next to the golem.

With a pulse of mana, the spells activated, drawing in and creating thick shadows around the spell circles within a moment. Then the loos shadows condensed and surged up, a condensed shadow spike buried itself into the pulsing side of the creature.

If it noticed at all, the blood golem didn't show it. A slurp sounded as the golem stretched forward, its body moving around the shadow spears like they weren't even there.

This isn't going to work… Ahh, fuck it.

Dancing closer to the golem, Kanieta discarded her Shadow Spike spell and started forming new ones. When she got closer to the abomination, tendrils reached out for her.

Like a shadow, she slipped in and around the flesh tendrils. Kanieta swayed beneath on tendril, then leaped a second and dropped into a roll. The whole time she was in constant motion. At times she was close enough to feel the warmth of the blood golems tendrils, but never once did she let them touch her.

When she spotted a particularly thick section of tendrils, whether it was a single large one or multiple clumped together, she would activate her Shadow Slice spell, chopping it off.

Even as her shadow blade was still slicing through the golem's tendrils, Kanieta would activate a Shadow Tendril Spell that wrapped itself around the flesh and fling it away from the golem.

It was a fight of attrition. Seconds passed, and Kanieta's heart pounded in her chest as she focused on her next steps. Sweat prickled at her brow from the exertion, and fear bubbled up inside of her as she could feel death beckoning to her no more than a misplaced movement away.

But as she slipped between the shadows, looping pieces off the golem and throwing them away, she could not contain the smile on her face. She enjoyed this.

Proving her strength and skill in the ultimate contest of life and death.

Kanieta lost track of how many times she repeated the same actions. It felt like hours had passed, but it was probably only seconds before a voice boomed in her ears, breaking through her isolating concentration. "Move aside!"

Activating her shadow sprint spell, she streaked away from the golem.

When she was ten feet away, she came to a stop, her chest heaving as she cautiously watched the golem for something to happen. She didn't have to wait long.

Though she hardly noticed, the golem had been cut down to half its size. "Arggg!" Screamed someone from the side in a challenge. A moment later, a figure appeared in the corner of her eyes, their arm raised.

As the arm dropped, a flat rock wider than the golem came crashing down, smashing the flesh creature flat. The creature's meat squirted out from under the rock, splattering over the entire area.

"Ugh~." Kanieta spat as her face was covered in gore. Reaching up, she whipped the mess from her face and flicked her wrist to clean her hand. It was enough to clear her vision, but she could still feel it covering her face.

"Look out!" Someone shouted. Kanieta didn't know if the shout was for her, but she spun around, looking for danger, and activated her shield focus.

As the shadows curled around her, Kanieta saw a red and sickly yellow wall sweeping toward her from the corner of her eye.

She strained to hold the shield as the tendril impacted by dumping more mana into it, but her shield could not push the tendril to the side like it had before. It was positioned too well. Though she slowed to the tendril to a crawl, the blood golem brushed aside her defenses.

Letting out a grunt of pain, Kanieta flew backward as the tendril impacted the side of her chest.

The world around her became a blur as she tumbled over the ground. Then Kanieta smashed into something as she came to a stop.

Lifting her head up from where she lay, she quickly glanced around before her eyes settled on Derg, only tens of feet away.

His eyes gleamed with a vicious inner light as if he was excited to see her lay on the ground wounded and bloody, a sneer of derision on his face.

Sneering right back at him, Kanieta lashed out with three spells, grabbing hold of the chairs around her before throwing them.

Two of them were smashed out of the air by Derg's guards before they even had a chance to enter the platform.

"Was that meant to hit me?" He drawled, completely unconcerned.

"No," Kanieta replied with a smile, "it was meant to hit them."

Derg's brown furrowed as a voice shrieked, "Who's the fecker that threw a chair~!"