High School DxD: Fox of Ill Omen

Yuuto

As we moved forwards into the school grounds, I understood two things.

First, the attack force was larger than it had looked from the conference room.

Second, Kusari-san had changed more from the new release than I realized.

Magic circles created by the Magicians pulsed across the courtyard, the practice fields, the rooflines, and even parts of the road beyond the barriers.

The dark-robed enemies kept appearing in flashes of distorted light, their reinforcements spilling in before the previous wave had fully fallen from Vali’s attacks and Azazel and Katerea’s rampage.

Overhead, their clash made the night pulse in violent colors.

Spears of holy light slamming against overwhelming demonic force, each impact shaking the air hard enough that every other fight below us felt like it was happening under a storm.

When one of the attacks was dodged it hit the barrier causing it to flicker or landed on the school grounds below. 

Xenovia acted first and did exactly what I expected.

She attacked the nearest cluster head-on.

When she swung Durandal it carved a crescent of light through the dark, and two Magicians were defeated as their  hastily deployed barrier spell failed to even slow the attack. 

A third raised a stronger defensive circle and was instead was thrown back across the courtyard by the sheer force of her strike.

I came in from the flank after her attack.

My speed allowed me to follow in the wake of Xenovia-san’s strike.

With swords in both hands I moved, one blade taking the throat of another Magician as she was  half-finished with a spell. 

My other blade cut through a second man’s casting arm before he could launch an attack toward Xenovia-san’s back.

“Yuuto!” Xenovia called. “Left!”

I pivoted immediately.

Three more Magicians had formed a combined attack forming a large fireball, and it was already incoming.

It never reached me.

A black-violet bolt punched through the center of the large fireball and dispersed it as it shattered the spell’s core apart.

I did not need to turn to know it was Kusari-san.

I glanced at her anyways.

She had followed lightly on the broken stone path behind us and stood behind us to the right, her four tails flowing behind her and her ears alert and shifting with the sounds of the battle around us.

The increase in her magical pressure was impossible to miss here.

Her demonic power felt larger and smoother as she had formed her spell.

Even her stance had changed.

Her hand that had cast her Baleful Bolt seemed fine, even though she had just cast a spell that would normally make her at least flinch.

She seemed like she was more willing to push herself forward the enemy. 

Like she had more of herself to give before she retreated back to a purely support role.

A Magician tried to circle behind her.

Kusari-san’s eyes flicked once in that direction.

She must have been using her Veil Sight, then.

Her posture changed by less than a breath, and the shadow at the man’s feet suddenly surged upward in twisting, rootlike limbs.

Dark, tangled, branching growths made of shadow lashed around his legs and torso and pinning him hard against the wall behind him.

I watched as he screamed and tried to wrench free.

The restraints held but I could already see the strain in them, the slow give of force against force.

But it would hold him.

“What was that?” Xenovia-san shouted while cutting another attacker across the chest.

“New tail ability,” Kusari-san answered as she launched another bolt at one of Xenovia-san’s opponents.

She raised another hand and fired another Baleful Bolt cleanly through a magician who had just arrived through a transfer magic circle.

“Shadow Briar,” she added. “It needs shadows near the target.”

That was all the explanation she gave.

I understood its tactical value immediately.

“It binds them to a surface?”

I asked as I cut down the Magician who had finally freed himself from his shadow bindings.

“Yes.”

“For how long?”

I moved back to Kusari-san’s side to deflect a volley of icicles that had been launched at her.

“Depends on the target.”

She used multiple shadowy tendrils to snag the legs of the Magicians Xenovia-san was attacking

Xenovia-san cut them down then turned an approved look at her. “That is excellent.”

“What are the drawbacks?” I asked.

Kusari-san moved slightly dodging a poorly aimed spell.

“It’s negligible.” She answered.

I paused to look at her.

“Kusari-san, we need to know how using it affects you. You can’t pretend it’s nothing while we are in a fight.”

She looked back at me after placing one of her Stillmarks in the path of a Magician causing her to launch a spell into one of her allies as she stumbles through the mark.

“I… besides the drain on my demonic power there aren't any other drawbacks. I’m limited by needing an existing shadow and can only use it from where that shadow is. As well as its strength not being notable against a strong opponent. I… I understand that I have downplayed the effects my abilities have had on me before, but this one really is negligible.”

I summoned another sword and launched a gout of flames at two Magicians as I listened to her.

Then Xenoiva-san moved to us.

“Good, now we know what to expect in the fight. We can worry about everything else after this is over. Kusari, Yuuto, we need to focus on the fight.”

Xenovia was right.

I would have to trust Kusari-san not to over tax herself in this battle.

Three more magicians rushed us from different angles.

I moved toward the center.

That was the easiest way to protect the other two and control the nearest lanes at once.

My holy-demonic sword split a fire spell and then a body behind it.

Xenovia met another barrier head-on and shattered it by force alone.

Kusari-san remained one step farther back than either of us, but not the distant support position she had preferred before.

A month ago, she would have fought  from farther away, shaping the field and punishing openings we made for her.

Now she was still doing that.

She was also stepping into openings of her own.

Another Magician tried to catch Xenovia-san with a magic circle forming benathe her feet while she was committed to a strike.

Kusari-san vanished away in a distorted looking step that made me lose track her for a moment.

She appeared beside the attacker, one hand already lit with black-violet light, and drove a Baleful Bolt into his chest from almost point-blank range before slipping back out of reach of the man behind him.

The move was too fast to react to.

Anyone watching it, including me, was left slightly disoriented.

It was aggressive but still controlled. 

I cut down the next two Magicians I came across before they could recover and glanced at her again without meaning to.

Her backlash was starting to show.

I could see it if I watched closely enough.

There was a tiny hitch in her breathing after that last spell’s cast, the way one shoulder had gone too tight, the second she took before throwing her next spell.

But it took longer for it to become noticeable than before. 

“Kusari-san,” I called while parrying another attack, “your spell’s backlash-”

“Reduced,” she said.

That answer, in the middle of this, almost made me smile.

Then a barrage of spells was launched at us from a rooftop near us.

“Xenovia-san, launch an attack!” Kusari-san shouted.

Xenovia-san swung Durandel towards the oncoming attacks sending out a wave of energy towards them.

At the same time Kusari-san placed a larger Stillmark in the path of Xenovia’s attack.

It passed through the mark before colliding into the barrage of spells.

Instead of canceling each other out Xenovia-san’s attack pushed through the barrage and continued upwards, slamming into the rooftop where the attack had come from.

Kusari-san’s Stillmark seemed stronger than before too.

Xenovia-san looked up and laughed once, hard and delighted.

“Well done!”

“Your left,” Kusari-san said quickly.

Xenovia obeyed instantly.

Durandal came down in a brutal arc and shattering large stone a Magician had launched while we were distranted.

I drove forward again, forcing the next line of enemies back.

They kept coming.

That was the real problem.

Every time we cut a group down, another circle flared somewhere nearby and replaced them.

From above, Azazel-san and Katerea were still turning the sky into a battlefield of its own, but there were more than enough enemies below us to keep our side occupied.

I hadn’t seen Vali for a while as well.

I cut through another defensive spell and used my holy-demonic sword to send a crescent slash through three attackers at once.

Then I nearly was hit from a spell to my right.

A flaming lance had been launched at me.

I turned in time to face it, but not fast enough to defend.

Xenovia-san was able move infront of me and block it with Durandal before I was hit.

I changed direction rushed to the caster before he could retreat and attack again.

“Thank you!” I said.

“You’re welcome,” Xenovia-san said, already moving to the next enemy.

Kusari-san followed after her and launched another Baleful Bolt.

She was firing it more often now and not collapsing under the repetition.

The strain was getting worse.

She was mixing in her other abilities and using Stillmark to spread out the strain she was under.

But each cast no longer seemed to carve quite so much out of her in return.

I rushed forward to assist Xenovia-san.

Xenovia-san cut down a pair of magicians as I reached her side..

“She is firing more freely,” she said.

“Yes,” I answered.

Kusari-san now only a few paces behind us, said, “I can hear you.”

“I wasn’t trying to hide it from you, it’s a good thing that you aren’t hurting yourself as badly as I’d heard from Asai.” Xenovia-san said.

That sounded exactly like something Asia-san would worry about.

A group Magicians tried to trap us together with a combined spell circle.

Kusari-san moved first.

Her eyes seemed to brightened and she pointed not at the attackers but at the shadows cast by a broken fountain and shattered courtyard lights.

Tendrils of shadow surged across the stone in branching black growths, catching two of them at the ankles and then at the waist, slamming them against the fountain base.

The last two leapt back just in time.

I took ones head off head off before he landed.

Xenovia-san cut down the other before she struck the nearer restraint-bound enemy with a backhand slash from Durandal.

I cut the other.

And Kusari-san used the opening to place Stillmarks up ahead of us before the next wave fully arrived.

She was supporting us in the fight and setting up the path to the next one. 

She was a good teammate to fight with.

Especially since she could fill the roles in a fight that Xenovia-san and I couldn’t.

Above us, a black spear of demonic power and a rain of holy light collided so violently that the whole courtyard flashed white.

I looked up in time to see Azazel-san and Katerea tear apart another swath of sky.

It was obvious that Azazel-san was the stronger of the two, but Katerea wasn’t going down easily.

For a heartbeat their fight seemed larger than the rest of the battle put together.

Then a fire spell hit Xenovia-san and I had to drop my eyes back to the field.

She rolled once before getting up and returning an attack.

She had taken some damage from the hit, but not enough to slow us down.

“Having Asia-san here would be convenient.” Kusari-san muttered. 

More Magicians on another section of roof began a larger ritual. 

Kusari-san saw it a moment before I did.

“Up there,” she said.

We all moved, but she was already acting.

Shadow gathered at the edge of the roof and climbed as though the building itself had grown dark thorns.

Shadow Briar wrapped around the caster’s legs and torso and pinned him to the sloped tile hard enough that his chant broke in the middle.

He started wrenching free immediately.

“It’s temporary,” Kusari warned, slightly out of breath. “Take him out before he breaks free.”

I launched up first.

My sword took him through the chest before the restraint could fail.

When I dropped back into the courtyard, Xenovia-san was already fighting another group and Kusari-san’s arm was bleeding.

She raised her other arm and steadied its trembling before firing another bolt.

Feeling my gaze she glanced at me before focusing back on Xenvoia-san’s fight.

“I wasn’t able to get fully out of the way of an attack. It’s nothing.”

I nodded before moving to assist Xenovia-san.

Kusari-san had created illusions of her as she fought several Magicians.

When I arrived we only needed to finish off the few still remaining.

There were no new enemies for a moment.

A brief lull opened.

I turned to Kusari-san.

“Kusari-san,” I said quietly, “How are you holding up? You seem like you're in less pain.”

She glanced at me once, then away as another transfer magic circle began to flare.

“Less is not none,” she said.

“I know.”

It was important she was admitting it.

I turned to Xenovia-san.

She answered before I could ask.

“I am fine. But we will need to be careful, there doesn't seem to be an end to them.”

“Youre right.” I said, then to myself, “I hope that everything is going well with Buchou and Ise-kun’ side.”

“They’ll be fine.” Kusari-san said, still watching the transfer magic circle near us.

I looked at her again.

She was more stable, and more dangerous now too.

I could see why someone would be afraid of her if they had only heard stories meant to paint her in a bad light.

But she was a member of our peerage.

She was fighting alongside us and acting as a support in this battle.

She still excelled at that.

But she could do more now.

Much more.

The next wave came before I could think further on it.

We moved as one.

Xenovia-san shattered the front.

I cut through the center.

Kusari-san threaded dark violet curses through every mistake the enemy made.

And above us all, the sky kept burning with the clash of two titans.

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