Maid with Necromancy

Owlsley flashed out of the Ascendant games. The prismatic enforcer gave a little salute goodbye while coughing up blood, and half covered in the prismatic armor she’d formed when breaking her seal. One hundred seconds and she’d saved each of their lives half a dozen times, and failed with Kenny once. That evolved competitor had finally been killed, but maybe not, as he had been teleported away upon expiring, a hint he could still be brought back, still inside his corpse. A hope of revival, Harmony wasn’t given much time to contemplate.

The fake ground below shuddered. Hyacinth and others were attacking the moving mountain from below. There was no time to communicate. Trust.

A half-formed copy of Eric burst from the ground, forcing Harmony to dash forward and cleave the puppet in two, but not before it got a splash of that corroding energy flung in her direction. The shield of [Dust] she flung up only half worked, as she could feel speckles of burning across her cheek, ear, and uncovered arm. Moving through the pain, Harmony hunted for other copies of their former tribemates.

The mountainous mimic didn’t attack outside of the puppets it sent up. Harmony had to drop her new experiment with domains to conserve energy, as it became clear that she didn’t have the tools to fight what they rode on. The abomination’s rocky skin was too thick, with none of the weaknesses to her skills that other opponents had. Only Tyler, through Jessica, possessed the skills needed to defeat this challenge, as the projected spirit dove into the ground to attempt to cook it from the inside.

The game became one to protect the tank. Every ten seconds, he needed to down one of the refreshing waters to keep Jessica powered. Add in [Renew Spirit] whenever it came up to be pushed into him, and you could smell this rock cooking.  The puffs of rotten steam now gave away the emergence of the puppets.

One of the smelly devils appeared in the distance, a cloud of shimmering yellow-green air. Harmony retched at the idea of stepping into the stench again. This was on the left side of Tyler, so it was up to her to take care of it. Milo’s job was to handle those on the right side, and now they only had the two of them to do it. Forcing past her disgust, she charged toward her latest target.

Please don’t be a…. “Ashes.” Harmony cursed.

The mostly formed mimic of Socks stretched its long, clawed arms. The puppet of the giant sloth was a favorite, making up about thirty percent of the chosen puppets to copy. Its breath wheezed in and out; the puppets seemed to gestate underground, until they needed to come out and complete their lungs. They had a metaphysical connection to the giant mimic that carried them, which Harmony couldn’t touch or interact with. After killing a dozen of them, she could almost find it with her true sight, but not enough to actually sever the damn thing.

Can’t let it complete. Harmony pushed herself, with a technique she considered leapfrogging, to save [High Kick], pushing off with mental guidance of the skill, but using her vital body to expand at each step for extra oomph before shrinking back down before impact, only to start again.  Expand-shrink, expand-shrink, expand-shrink had to look a little silly, but a half step quicker mattered in these circumstances.

Sickle met a clawed hand with enough force to cut three sharp nails off. [High Kick] struck the puppet at a spiritual level, not as good as before the seals, but rippled in damaging and delaying not fully completed copies of skills.

The sloth's free hand backhanded Harmony across the fake landscape and into a tree.

[Mend] worked on her fractured bones. Vital body was sturdy but not that invulnerable. Every time she fought one of these, that left hook got her. The pain was only worth it because in the exchange, she’d sealed the Socks puppet’s fate.

Standing up, Harmony rushed back in.

The sloth tried to use its skills to dodge, but they failed. The damage of Harmony’s kick caused it to shudder.

With a tumble to get close, Harmony cut it from navel to chin, boosting her height mid-strike to gain that extra few feet to get the height she needed. The [Disintegrate] lingering on the blade dissolved the incomplete connections of sinew and other tissues inside the creation, allowing gravity to pull out all of her targets' insides, through the cut she just made.

The coppery smell of blood was more pleasant than the lingering fumes released in front of the dying mimic under her feet, but that bloody masking only lasted a moment until, with a slight whistle and that green shimmer, a new venting showed the emergence of a new puppet near Tyler.

The large man knelt at the center of a ripped-up landscape, bleeding from several wounds.  The conflicts to protect him had  left jagged furrows around the young lord. Tyler’s right arm rested deep in melted ground, well past his elbow, as he knelt, giving all his energy and concentration to Jessica as she did her work.

What puppet would the mimic bring out this time? She’d faced Yennifer, Malick, even Erin, who’d been a harder fight than Harmony wanted to admit. The woman called herself an innkeeper like Ma Bell, but fought even while incomplete, like a weapon of mass destruction. So many options, it was hard to plan how to fight. Either way, it was time to murder another familiar face.

Close to Tyler, the puppet rose, obscured by the greenish haze, had to make this quick. The attempt to leapfrog failed, catching her toe on the broken earth and forcing Harmony to stumble rather than glide. More than bad luck, that could be a puppet of Kenny? This one was too tall. The source of the misstep came from inside, a place long sore, aching in hope and confusion. He was near, but he wasn’t.  Her pet prince, the puppet, was Prince Adric. How long had it been an imposter at their camp to gather information?

The false bond gave her a way to attack, similar to when there was a puppet of Hyacinth. Except she wasn’t as comfortable with it as she was with [Familiar Bond]. It smelled like a trap, like maybe she’d reach out and the mimic would arrange for the orders to hit the real Adic. No time, overthinking it, Harmony launched herself forward again.

The puppet met her attack. Burning all its skills to make Socks look slow. Adri’s body caught her in its arms, pinning Harmony’s weapon and arms into its chest.

Harmony struggled against an embrace that wouldn’t let go. Was this the end?

The world shifted as Adric’s puppet twisted, spinning her around. It’s laughter, both joyous and wicked as it did so. A mockery of the spins her pet gave  her, with his pure puppy-like excitement.

As it slowed, Adic’s Mimic spoke in a voice that merged Adric’s clipped aristocratic undertone with an overly pleasant voice that was more folksy. “We had this one make a puppet of your pet because they’d be facing you. We’ve had so many unexpected meetings. But boy, this primal connection is special. This will either be a horrible mistake or something bloody exciting. At the very least, it won’t be boring.”

“Let go,” Harmony growled, pushing against his arms. Skills were there, but she couldn’t use them. Like the idea of harming her pet was impossible.

The grip didn’t budge. “Don’t worry, this body can’t hurt you even if it tried. Probably should have tried stopping your fiery lordling. The one with the crush on you. No, crush isn’t right, it's something more or less, now definitely different than that. How you beings change is more impressive than what we can do sometimes. The poor one only has a few moments left anyway, Harm. I like that nickname, Harm.”

The mischievous grin on that copied face went slack, followed by the body holding her, allowing her to fling it away. Not that she’d done anything to it? Not even a silence to shut it down. A dangerous issue to have.

All around, dozens of pillars of green gas shot up out of the top of the mimic. If each one represented a new they’d be facing close to fifty.

A booming spark and the pillars burst into gouts of flame. The fire started orange, but flickered slowly, shifting into the blue flame that Jessic wields.

The mountain under their feet began to deflate as Tyler wrenched his arm free from the  bubbling ground, his arm unburned and looking like he’d run a gauntlet of booze and bar fights. Without knowing the context of what happened, you’d think he was drunk to the point of being nearly unfunctional. He wobbled a little. “What did I miss?” he asked before passing out.

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