Clarity 3 – Heavenly Blue


    There was nowhere to hide and Claire appreciated that. The flat terrain of where the green around the mountains transformed into the yellow of the savannah left only the choice to fight. They had continued to run westwards, if only to maintain the fac?ade and gamble on the desperate hope that Ell would lose them in the darkness. John’s desperate hope, that was.


    Claire, she wished that they got caught. That was part of why she kept conjuring familiars, despite their red glow diminishing the Gamer’s plan. Outspokenly, because he knew that Ell missing them was so unlikely, the Gamer let her continue. Quietly, Claire continued to chant inside her head. ‘Come to me. Come to me. Come to me. Come to me.’


    It was moronic to wish for a confrontation with an Iron Maiden. A misplaced hope to try and beat one. A decade or so more and maybe Claire’s potential would have let her challenge them. That was an uncertainty that would not get resolved. There was only the present. In the events that were unfolding, Claire smiled, knowing that she would get to fight the one she hated second only to Arkeidos himself. Against all odds, the vampire just assumed that she could tear Ell to shreds. The worst outcome was that she died and that John would destroy the Iron Domain afterwards.


    That wouldn’t be so bad.@@@@


    Sickening optimism put a spring in her step. It remained when she felt that tingle again. “What do you think is the worst disease?” Claire asked a seemingly random question, signalling that Ell was around.


    “Anything sexually transmittable would be my pick,” John responded nonchalantly, as if there was nothing to worry about.


    Then he suddenly stopped. Claire kept running, jumping ahead with all her might and all her familiars, to get out of the radius. The oddly coloured silver arcane of the Gamer exploded behind her. A wave of magic, appearing almost like an expanding veil of starlight, illuminated the darkness and enveloped an invisible form. Rippling, the air ripped open close to John and a spike-headed chain launched itself at Ell – and connected. The invisibility was undone by the damage, revealing the Iron Maiden, the silver chain embedded into her side.


    Claire grinned madly at the surprise on Ell’s face. Along her entire flock, the vampire turned backwards. “I will stab you, I will tear you, I will kill you!” she yelled as she descended along a swarm of bats and wolves at the Iron Maiden. A simple knife appeared in her hand, sunk into Ell’s shoulder. The various familiars clawed and bit at the liquid body. None of it seemed to do more than inconvenience the Iron Maiden, who hastily slashed through the Mana Chain.


    About to bring her fangs down on Ell’s neck, Claire only chomped on air. Barely catching herself, while the body she had grappled onto liquified completely, the vampire sunk on all fours and repeatedly stabbed at the river of metal with the black, red-rimmed knife.


    Whether that did any damage was impossible to tell. Around the knife, the metal spilled, over and over again, consolidating about a metre away into a large blue blob, covered in black lines. Guided by Claire’s aggressive intent, her familiars descended on the shapeless mass, only to be executed by the various spikes that shot out of the roiling surface.


    “Claire!” John’s voice snapped her out of her rage for long enough to remember the plan. Their opening gambit had failed and now there was only one path to victory. Jumping back to him, she sent her remaining familiars on a suicidal charge, all to distract Ell while she jumped in John’s arms. It was not the contact they needed, but the one she wanted to have. “I’ll be at the Cardinal Bastion,” he reminded her.


    “I’ll be there, Master,” she pledged.


    Then she stretched up and she rammed her teeth in his neck. It was an odd sensation to bite him. For the first time in her life, she felt conflicted about the rush tingling through her when her fangs punctured skin. What felt like the skin of a living, breathing being revealed underneath raw pulsing energy. It was arcane, an energy that Claire had never been able to absorb before. Her powers required sentience in the target, above that of enchanted items.


    The energy underneath that skin tingled on her gums, as it consolidated into a fluid in her mouth and ran down her throat. With each gulp, she felt her own powers surge. Some of it was permanent, most of it was borrowed, the consumption brought her beyond her current limits. The skin of the gracious man turned translucent, revealing the plates of the many-layered item within.


    Claire kept drawing from him. Kept going and going, relentlessly, with his full consent to take into her all this body had to offer. The silver and purple energies within thinned into a swirling mist. Through the translucent skin, she saw that mist draw towards her fangs. Holes at the back of the hollow fangs spilled and transformed the energy into something she could digest.


    Willingly as he gave himself to her, she drained him quickly. Even the magic imbued into the metal plates was coaxed out of them. An ephemeral hand touched the back of her head. “I’ll see you soon.” With those words, the last bit of energy left the Gamer’s double. Several dozen plates of bronze metal, some tinted purple, some tinted gold, fell to the ground in an inanimate pile.


    “A traitor to everyone.”


    Claire turned to face the Iron Maiden. The last of the familiars she had made during their flight dispersed into black particles, melding with the night. “Excuse me?” the vampire asked, a smile on her lips. Part of the arcane energies still danced between her trembling fingers. “You think I betrayed my Master?”


    Claire grabbed onto the arm with her remaining right, barely able to penetrate the surface with her claws. “I totally agree,” she mused. “So how does it feel dying because of someone so stupid?”


    Amusement crossed Ell’s face, then her smile died and she turned her face upwards. Silver light reflected in her eyes. The silver light of a star.


    From the moment Claire had found out how to immobilize Ell, the vampire maid had known that there was no way she could have ever sucked the Iron Maiden dry before her power boost ran out. Even if Ell repeatedly made the mistake of getting bitten, the individual diminishment would be too little. The only road to her death was therefore to use an attack that didn’t care what form Ell was in, only that she was hit by it. Something so utterly destructive, it could cancel out a meteor.


    The Skyfall Claire had summoned had bound in it more than half the power that she had been granted by her Master. How much more might that have been than what he had used before? How much more powerful was it because it fell slower? A lot was probably the answer. Claire didn’t really care. As far as she was concerned, she had already won.


    This next part was just pure opportunism.


    Claire pulled herself forward on the arm with all her physical might. The motion ripped her stomach out completely and Ell out of her shock. Having spent hundreds of years unopposed had made her sloppy, as opposed to the rank-and-file Ironborn whose lack of relative power forced them to discipline. No one with honed battle instincts would have presented any part of themselves so closely to a vampire’s face.


    Violently, Claire chomped down on Ell’s face. Her fangs cut through nose and cheekbones, the Poseidury the same density everywhere. She drained the Iron Maiden, desperately, filling her mouth with the foul stench of victory. In impotent rage, Ell screamed like a banshee, repeatedly slamming her fist into Claire’s side. Panic, raw and pathetic panic. All that Claire could have wanted to hear.


    The silver grew to absolution. Darkened only for the short moment it was hidden behind Ell’s back. It slammed into the ground.


    Then heat.


    Then nothing.


    Claire gave herself to the moment. ‘Did I lie to you, Master?’ she asked herself, hoping for an answer. She received nothing and chuckled to herself. ‘Of course, we don’t have that connection. Not yet anyway... not yet? Do I still think I get out of this? I really am an optimistic idiot.’ The moment passed. The moment of her death passed.


    And she was still there.


    Pain settled in. A very physical, very real pain. Claire could not sense anything. She was alone with her thoughts and that pain in a motionless, soundless, absolute darkness. The cracks on her core ached. That meant that her core was still there. Blasted out of her body and sitting in the dirt.


    ‘I can do this,’ she thought and reached out to the power she had stolen from Ell. It felt almost dirty to use it. With the many steps of luck it had taken to even get where she was, she wasn’t complaining. Relying on instinct, she reached out to the dispersed parts of her body and pulled them back to her core.


    It was slow work at first. With nothing else to do, she quickly learned, however. Liquid bit for liquid bit, she reassembled herself. A layer to protect her core and mend the cracks. She remade her head first. Soon she could look around, which made her work easier. It did not matter much, ultimately. As much as she had drunk from Ell, it was only enough to recreate the basis of her bust and one shoulder.


    “Yeah, there’s just no way,” Claire mumbled, looking at the incline of the crater she laid in. The tiny stump she currently had wasn’t even enough to crawl to the nearest piece of metal. She even lacked the mana to summon a familiar. “At least you’re dead.” She grinned at the splattered bits of unmoving Poseidury all over the place. Ell had taken the brunt of the explosion for the vampire maid. “If I was a good planner, I could take credit for that.” Claire would have wiggled her toes out of boredom, had she had toes to wiggle. “I lied to Master after all,” she kept talking to herself. “There’s no way I’ll be there. He’ll have to come to me.”


    Claire could do nothing but stare at the sky. It was quickly turning purple, then blue. Even this far north, the change between night and day was abrupt. The horrid burning sphere was beyond the edge of the crater. There was only a cloudless blue sky above. As absolute in its tranquillity as her soul felt in that moment.


    He had been right. This moment of calm, of utter boredom and deep satisfaction, no one could have taken it from her. It was hers, no matter whose heavy footsteps she felt approach. This sight of the heavenly blue was all hers.


    “It’ll be alright, Master,” she pledged.