Fell Champions

Otter stretched out her Thread of the Scourge between her hands, and set her feet in a fighting stance. She’d been waiting too long for this moment, trying not to think about it too much in fear someone might try to listen in on the chaos inside of her head. Luckily, her brain was a pretty hectic place, with too many thoughts going on at any given time for her to focus on one thing for too long, but she’d been a nervous wreck.

But the day was finally here. No more political bullshit. No more worrying if her own brain was going to betray her. If some mind thief was going to pilfer her thoughts. It was time to kick some ass.

Kir stared at her and then laughed.

“I don’t accept,” Kir said. “Because you didn’t listen to a word I just said. I have to want to win. Right now, I want you to. I want you to beat me. To take control. Because I can’t be trusted to make decisions.”

Sami muttered, “Get in line.”

“Yeah, well, then I’m gonna kick your ass up and down this tower until you fight back,” Otter countered. “And if necessary, I will spank your ass in Ri Oa’s town square, or whatever the equivalent is, where everyone can see. I will strip your dumb ass naked and put my imagination to work on how to really humiliate you. I’m thinking we start with some clothespins and some cake icing and work our way from there. Maybe throw in a boat oar.”

Kir’s eyes narrowed. “You wouldn’t.”

“Try me, bitch.”

Sami stepped between them. “This is nice and all, but you’re forgetting two things. One, I’m your bodyguard, Otter. It’s my duty to fight your battles for you.”

“Your self-appointed duty. Sit your ass down, Sami. You wanna play knight with this Sua’noa crap, fine, but for once in your life, take a fucking order.” 

Otter winced. That’d come out a little more harshly than she’d intended. But it seemed to get the point across. Sami stood a little straighter, and she nodded her head, taking a step back.

“Fine. But you also are forgetting her Pact. You can’t win. It’s a bad matchup, and you know it.”

“Sami. What’s Kir’s class?”

“She’s an unbeatable tank.”

“Debatable on that adjective. What’s my class, Sami?”

Sami thought for a moment, and apparently she had a brain hamster, too, because Otter could see the wheels slowly turning behind her eyes. “You’re a caster.”

“Rock, Paper, Scissors. Now sit your ass down.”

Sami looked a bit mollified, and completely backed off. Kir still didn’t look convinced. So, of course it was Juala who found the exact thing to say that pissed Kir off enough to start a proper fight.

“Hey, did you know those stupid flying things me and Otter have are Mythwalkers?”

Kir’s eyes snapped up, looking over Otter’s shoulder where Squeak was hovering. Her hand went to her sword at her hip. Right, it was kind of her whole job to kill Mythwalkers, wasn’t it?

“Yep. Summoned up a Mythwalker than can give people power,” Otter said. “And then I taught Juala. Great way to get a power boost when you can’t get a Pact. Or just a good way to get even more power if you already have one. I bet people would pay for this kind of knowledge.”

“You’re trying to provoke me. You won’t actually do any of what you just said.”

“Yeah. You’re probably right. Why teach strangers, when I can teach Rua so she can actually defend herself the next time she gets in a fight?”

That time, Kir’s sword left its sheath. Otter was about to make another wisecrack, something to really infuriate her, but it apparently wasn’t needed, because Kir went from a stance to an immediate lunge.

The strike was angled up and away from Otter, over her shoulder, and directly at poor Squeak. The little Essence Spark didn’t stand a chance. She got speared - sworded? - right through the middle, impaled on the steel of Kir’s side sword. Squeak, well, squeaked, and then thrashed about, making pained noises.

“Ow! Pain! Woe! I am done! I have been stabbed!”

“Are you done?” Otter asked, looking over her shoulder.

Squeak huffed, and then vanished in a puff of sparks, reappearing on Otter’s opposite shoulder, seated. “Spoilsport.” 

“You can’t kill an Essence Spark,” Otter explained. “Well, you can. But you have to kill the person who has them. Meaning, if I get Rua to make one, whoops, it’s around forever.”

Kir withdrew her sword and inspected the blade, as if hoping to find blood. When she found none, she sighed. “You’re really going to insist on this, aren’t you?”

“Yep. Man, it’s gonna be fun when I beat you. If you don’t put up a fight, it’s gonna be such a public spanking. But if you put in a good showing, I promise, private show only.”

“I’m sorry for what happens when I win. I didn’t want this.”

Otter started a mock yawn, but had to duck her head when Kir immediately swung her sword at it. It was a testing blow, not one with a lot of force behind it.

Otter danced back, and looped her Thread of the Scourge around Kir’s sword, willing the golden wire to wrap around the blade and entangle it. Doing this kind of thing to Sami was just asking for it to get cut in twain, but Sami was also a Steelsinger, who could probably do weird shit like manipulate the sharpness of her sword, and also had insane perception because of her high Awareness, able to know exactly where to strike for maximum damage. Kir was built to be invincible. Both her Pact and her stat layout were dependent on making people see her as too pretty to hit essentially. And while Kir could stab Otter just as well as anyone, against the Thread of the Scourge, Kir’s sword was just a piece of steel that might as well be dull.

Otter shifted her weight, dragging Kir’s attack wide and throwing her off balance and causing her to stumble forward a few steps. Just enough to present her ample rear.

Otter smacked it as hard as she could. 

There was a small thunderclap of sound, and then absolute silence. Kir stood up straighter. Neither Sami nor Juala said anything, although Juala looked like she was resisting the urge to laugh. 

Kir whirled, pointing her sword at Otter, her face turning a bright cyan colour from that weird way Mikovians blushed. “How?”

“How did I get through your Pact to hurt you? Easy. It’s all about perception. One, if I don’t think I’m hurting you, then I’m not actually hurting you. A little spank is just foreplay, even if it stings.”

Kir seemed to think about that, and while she was thinking, she let her guard down. So Otter punched her in the face as hard as she could.

The Pact didn’t stop Otter’s fist as it slammed at Kir’s nose. Kir’s Tenacity caught it, the shield momentarily flaring into view as it blocked what it perceived as an attack.

Kir stared at the shield, as if unused to seeing it for that brief second when it came to life as it blocked damage. Otter threw another three punches while she was distracted. The first was a vicious jab with her left. It slammed against Kir’s Tenacity. Kir seemed to remember she was in a fight, but a little too slow. Otter was inside Kir’s reach with her sword, and with the blade entangled by a Thread, even if it wasn’t being held anymore, she elected to drop it instead of trying to awkwardly use it in combat that was a little too close quarters. 

Kir was still trying to block the first punch which had already completed, and was thus too slow to react to the second punch, a right cross that shot out like a freight train. It broke right through Kir’s shield, shattering her Tenacity, but stalled out after. 

But the cross was never meant to do much beyond that. The uppercut that followed was.

Kir managed to move her head just in time to avoid taking the hit full on the chin, but Otter’s fist still clipped Kir’s nose from below as it came sailing upwards. There was a really satisfying crunching noise as Otter’s fist struck, and Kir staggered backwards, holding her hand to her face. Blood gushed out from her nose, a bright cyan-like colour which quickly turned red.

Huh. That was weird. Was that why Kir blushed blue? Because that was the colour of her blood? But why did it change colour? Eh, didn’t matter.

Kir seemed to realize she needed to take this seriously, grabbed her sword once more, yanking on it to get it free from Otter’s grasp. So Otter let it go, and kicked Kir as hard as she could in the hip as she was thrown off balance. Once again, Kir’s Pact did nothing to stop the blow, and Kir let out a small grunt of pain, her eyes going even wider.

“Two,” Otter said, “Mikovians are built to take pain. I keep hearing it about you guys. ‘When you’re fighting a Mikovian, you have to put them down fast, because if you hurt them, they just fight harder.’ So, stands to reason… if I wound you, I’m not actually hurting you, am I? I’m helping.”

“You… that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“Yeah, but it’s working.” And to demonstrate, Otter swung both hands forward, a Thread getting conjured in each as she did. One lashed around Kir’s left arm, the other around her right leg, and Otter heaved, knocking Kir off balance again. She tried empowering the Threads with some of her Will to do extra damage, but apparently that was a no go. Even Otter couldn’t trick her own brain into thinking that was helpful. 

Well, it didn’t matter. Otter was pretty thoroughly winning this duel. She kicked Kir in the shin, focusing on how much harder Kir would fight with that irritant, how much more focused she’d become with her berserker trait or whatever it was Mikovians naturally had. Kir let out a hiss of pain, and then hopped up and down on one foot.

Juala snickered. Sami looked downright proud. Otter gave them both a small bow, which Kir managed to immediately exploit by stabbing her. Otter’s Tenacity took the hit, but the little red bar up in the corner of her vision told her that she couldn’t take too many more hits like that. One, maybe two. 

Otter danced backwards, a grin on her face. Even with her little fuck-up, she was having fun. She’d been looking forward to testing her theories out for a while now, combined with just wanting to smack Kir a couple of times. Kir wasn’t evil, but she was in desperate need of an ass kicking just to sort her out, and Otter was deliriously happy to be the one who got to do it. 

“You can’t win,” Kir said, falling into a perfect textbook sword stance. “You said so yourself. All you can do is hurt me. Do just enough that it doesn’t cripple or kill me, just spurs me on to fight harder.” 

“And does it. Which brings me to three. See, Rua told me about your little games you’ve been playing with each other.”

Kir paled, her eyes going wide. 

“And Rua told me the funniest little thing. Apparently you never had an orgasm before. Until her. So I asked her, ‘Hey, Rua, what’d you do to make the ice queen cum?’ And she told me the most fascinating thing.”

Kir charged at Otter, suddenly furious. She performed a classic attack pattern, perfectly textbook, everything executed with precision and skill. And maybe she was faster, or stronger. But she was also a little shaken up. She was predictable. And in a fight, the last thing you wanted to be was predictable. 

Otter cast her Thread of Sanctuary, forming a cape on her arm and shoulders, and tangled up Kir’s sword, pulling it aside as Otter stepped into Kir’s reach and then bit down on Kir’s neck with bruising force.

And rather than a groan of pain, there was a groan of, well, something else entirely. 

Kir managed to shove Otter away, but with the cape wrapping up Kir’s sword, Otter took it with her as they disengaged. Kir grabbed at her neck. The skin wasn’t broken, but it was definitely broken, an imprint of teeth left behind.

“You… you pervert!” Kir shouted, looking positively scandalized.

“Someone likes pain,” Otter chanted in a sing-song voice. “It’s fine. Masochism is a perfectly valid kink. So, not only is this ass kicking going to be positively therapeutic for you, it’s also going to be the sexiest thing that’s happened to you since Rua pinched your nipples until you came.”

Something in Kir seemed to snap at that. She came at Otter in a relentless attack pattern, the whites of her eyes turning an icy blue as they became bloodshot with rage. Otter ducked and weaved, dodging where she could, and tried tugging on the Threads she currently had wrapped about Kir, but it really was true what people said about Mikovians and going berserk. She was definitely stronger than before, ignoring the attempts to pull her off balance.

Well, looked like it was time to end the fight. Honestly, she’d just been working out frustration up until this point. People always saw a caster, and just assumed fireballs. And while Otter loved fireballs, she didn’t have access to any. Or any really good DPS spells. She wasn’t a pure damage build. She barely had any damage really.

But she had Crowd Control in abundance. 

Everyone kept thinking about the problem as Otter needing to do physical damage to Kir in order to win the fight. But that had never been the case. There was more than one way to beat a prissy ice princess like a pinata. 

Otter threw the Threads in her hands at Kir. One end was already wrapped around one arm, the other Kir’s leg. Otter willed the other ends tie themselves to Kir’s other limbs, and the wires leapt to obey, tangling Kir’s limbs up. Kir still tried to attack and charge, her face going blue with fury, so Otter used the upgrade she’d unlocked a while ago but had yet to test out in combat. 

Thread of the Scourge

Cost: 1 Will

Strike or bind, confound your foes. Threads can now lengthen or shorten according to the user’s will at no additional cost. Threads are now more difficult to cut or break.

The resistance to damage was nice, and the ability to extend the reach of her Threads was nice. But it was the shortening that was crucial, and even a little overpowered, if Otter was being honest. Otter commanded the Threads to shrink down, pouring her Will into them. They maintained their thickness and durability, but suddenly they pulled tight, forcing Kir’s limbs together into a rough tied up position. Kir let out an animal shout of fury, apparently all control lost.

Honestly, Otter could’ve done this at any point, but she’d been having too much fun. Why beat Kir this way, when she could smack some sense into her first? Honestly, Otter had been holding in a lot of frustration for a while. She didn’t see Kir as a bad guy, but some ugly part of her was furious that Rua had been taken from her, and she’d been wanting to do violence ever since. 

But now, seeing Kir on the floor, struggling against her bonds and clearly not in control of herself as she was in some kind of berserker state, making raw sounds of fury, Otter just felt… pity. It didn’t feel satisfying at all.

“I win,” Otter said. She leaned down over Kir and poked her in the head. Kir bit at her, and Otter only narrowly got her finger away in time. “Sorry. Bad matchup for you.”

Kir’s eyes narrowed, but she sucked in a breath. She shook, and at first, Otter thought it was in fury, but then realized after a moment it was in laughter. Kir was slowly regaining control of herself, but apparently wasn’t convinced she’d lost.

“You think this fight’s over?” Kir said. “This was just the warm up.”

Even tied as she was, Kir fumbled at her belt pouch, and something fell out, clattering on the wooden planks. Something that looked like a long shard of crystal, or maybe diamond.

“Stop her!” Juala shouted.

Otter didn’t need to be hold twice. She grabbed for it, but Kir was quicker. Kir took the shard, which Otter now realized was ice, covered as it was in frost, and managed to get half of it under her knee and then yank hard upwards on it, using the leverage to snap it in two.

Arctic winds hit Otter, blowing her backwards. She stumbled back, falling onto her ass, and Kir was slowly encased in ice, starting from her knee and her hand, where she’d held the shard. It formed a thin layer around her, extending outwards, forming…

A suit of armor. 

The same plate mail that Otter had seen her in before, made not of steel, but of some kind of magic ice. 

“I always win,” Kir said, but the way she said it didn’t sound like gloating, but more a prophecy of doom. A helm formed around her head, and she snapped the visor shut, the edges sealing as she did. 

Kir stood, and the Threads binding her snapped as if they were made of cheap twine. 

“Uh, guys, little help?” Otter asked.

“It has to be a one-on-one fight for my Pact to trigger,” Kir said. “They interfere, all of this was for nothing. So either defeat me on your own, or take the beating you just earned.”

Otter summoned up another Thread and lashed out, cracking it like a whip and empowering it to do damage. A small line of damage appeared on the armor, which quickly frosted over and healed.

“Oh, that is not fair.”

“Life isn’t fair. I know that better than anyone.”

Kir stood fully, and Otter realized that, with the armor, Kir was a lot taller than her. And bulkier.

Kir cracked her knuckles, and then her neck. And then suddenly she exploded forward, launching herself with a speed she hadn’t even possessed while berserking, the coral lumber under her feet cracking as she charged. 

Otter tried to dodge, tried to apply all those close combat lessons Sami had drilled into her. But her close quarters combat was only above average in the circles they played in. Mind you, that was with the elite, with the best and sweatiest gamers in the world, but this wasn’t a game.

Kir fought like her life was on the line. Or rather, her freedom.

Kir got a punch through Otter’s evasions, slamming right through her Tenacity, breaking it and driving right into Otter’s gut, and knocking the wind out of her. Otter stumbled backwards, struggling to breathe. But as she did, she managed to get a word out, suffusing her will into it. 

“Stop.”

But Otter couldn’t summon the anger she needed to form the Willcasting, to use her Will itself to force Kir’s actions. She just felt too bad for Kir, for the shitty hand she’d been dealt. And some part of Otter’s mind was reviled by the idea of taking Kir’s agency from her, of forcing her not to move with the power of her Will, even if it was just for a moment. 

Nothing happened. Otter’s Will bar didn’t deplete, Kir didn’t magically stop moving. This sucked. If only Otter had fireballs. That was where the real power was. Not this crappy…

Otter caught sight of Squeak, who was busy flitting about on her wings, chasing after what looked like a leaf caught in a breeze. Stupid useless Essence Spark. What kind of crappy elements were Wood and Water? If only…

Otter, from her position on the ground, saw Kir’s next step. She was being slower with them. And for good reason. Those first few had cracked the coral lumber. If she did any more damage, who knew what would happen.

“I’m so fucking dumb,” Otter said.

“You said it,” Kir agreed.

“No, I mean… I don’t know how Silayan coral works. It’s different than the stuff from my world. You take it out of the ocean, it dries out, dies, and then it’s super brittle. But it works differently here. More like wood.”

“I’m sure you think you’re being clever right now.”

“Oh, I know I am.” Otter shifted her attention to Sami, all while doing some really dirty math in her head. “Hey, Sami, I’m about to Wile E. Coyote this bitch.”

Sami, who’d looked worried, suddenly looked terrified. And she did about the smartest thing she could do in the circumstances. She grabbed Juala, drew her sword, and jumped over the side of the tower.

Ten story fall. Eh, Sami was probably doing that cool thing she did where she stabbed her sword into the side of the building and then let it slow her descent. Or something equally badass. 

“Huh, just realized your armor is ice. Bet I could’ve done something with that. Sorry, not used to having Water as my element. Anyway, already did the math on this dumb plan, so…”

Kir must’ve realized she’d let Otter talk too long, because she lunged. And as she did, Otter focused her Will through Squeak, who shone a brilliant blue, and then all of the moisture was ripped right out of the coral flooring, all at once.

Kir took one step, and the plank beneath her foot didn’t just crack, it snapped. She fell forward, and Otter rolled so as to not get smooshed. Kir threw her hands out, trying to catch herself, but they went through the wood as well, and suddenly there wasn’t a floor at all as the whole thing gave way.

Which was great, because it meant Kir was suddenly falling through the ground. But also bad, because suddenly Otter was falling, too.

Otter summoned a Thread of the Scourge, lashing upwards, the golden wire coming to life in her hand and wrapping around the railing above her. Her shoulder jolted in its socket, and if not for her soul power, she was pretty sure she would’ve dislocated something. 

Below, there was a lot of smashing as Kir hit the stairwell below her, but only clipped it, crushing one side of the stairs as her weight combined with her fancy ice armor thundered into it, sending her careening down another two floors where she careened into the edge of the stairs there, absolutely obliterating the coral there, and continued to fall, hitting more stairs as she went, her fall being somewhat broken up into a series of smaller falls until she finally hit the floor below.

Otter smirked at that, and Squeak flew about her, making victory screeches that were honestly more annoying than encouraging.

“Shoo,” Otter said, and Squeak stuck her tongue out and then vanished in a shower of blue motes. Huh. Essence Sparks didn’t do that before. They were normally always around in the game they originated from. Well, hopefully that wasn’t a new feature that would bite her in the ass later.

Otter willed her Thread to lengthen, slowly being lowered to the ground floor as she did. When got to the bottom, she nudged Kir with her foot. “Still alive?”

Kir groaned. It sounded particularly pained. Just to be sure, Otter sat on her chest.

“I win. GG.”

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