Rune Seeker

Fitch’s spear stretched out as if in slow motion for Seena, only for a curtain of black to drop down directly in front of him. A portal to somewhere. A portal he couldn’t cut—except he did. Glowing fiercely, the Spear of Clouds gathered the energy of Separation in the split second before it reached the portal, and then he sliced it cleanly down the middle. A sound like tearing paper echoed through the pounding rain as the portal unraveled, and Fitch continued his way through unhindered.

Hiral’s worry for Seena spiked like ice water running through his veins, but the woman was nowhere to be seen as the Infested cut through the space where she’d been standing. A second black portal on the ground rapidly shrank as his feet landed beside it, and he thrust his spear straight into it. Runes along the haft of the weapon flashed with power—the Rune of Connection—and Fitch’s eyes snapped across the field to where Seena stood.

More than just the thread connecting to Seena, dozens more strands glowed and stretched from the spear through the dark of night. Shining the brightest was a thick thread that ran sideways and then up to the Fallen’s crystal atop the tower—following the same path with which Fitch had attacked it earlier, from the looks of things. After that, the next sharpest threads stretched down below through the ground, likely to where the Grandfather had held the spear for so long. More than Hiral could count twisted in the wind as they extended into the distance, though they were faint, like the connections had barely survived the long slumber of the Spear of Clouds.

But… one other thread caught Hiral’s eyes. This one also extended straight down, but it was different from the others. Instead of the refreshing glow of solar energy, this one also seemed to pulse in quick bursts that shot from one end to the other. No, pulse wasn’t quite right. It wasn’t a flow of light like a ball. It was more like a… like a lightning strike shooting from below to reach the spear. And somehow, it looked…

Ripping the spear free from the portal—and Hiral’s concentration from the strands—the ground at Fitch’s feet crunched as he launched off after Seena again. He halved the two hundred feet to her in a second, drawing the sword back to strike as he went.

Hiral caught him fifty feet out, sweeping in from the side thanks to the speed boost from the Sho-Val of the Valley. Neither slowed as their weapons met at high speed, feet quick-stepping beneath them. Hiral went on the offensive, thrusting and slashing with every step to slow the man down. Like he barely cared, Fitch blocked every single attack with the spear in his right hand.

Need to change up tactics. Hiral burst ahead, then twisted and threw out a powerful burst of Rejection along with Expansion. Wide and unfocused, the cone of force couldn’t be parried or blocked. Even Fitch, with all his strength and momentum, staggered behind the wave. One stumbling step, then another, and he skidded to stop.

Hiral, meanwhile, rode the Rejection in the opposite direction to land beside Seena.

“He’s fast,” Seena said, fireballs already formed above her hand.

“Incredibly so,” Hiral agreed, dropping the Sho-Val and taking his Bestial Axes in hand.

“Go,” Seena said, hurling the grapefruit-sized balls of flame a second before Hiral leapt back at the Infested.

Again, Fitch’s sword darted out, one, two, three, four quick slashes cutting the fireballs apart like they were actual grapefruits. No explosions. No death. Not even mild discomfort. Hiral reached him in the next second, axes sweeping in and hungry for his flesh.

He didn’t even come close.

Fitch parried and pushed aside the bone-bladed axes like they were barely an annoyance. Still, Hiral didn’t give up, putting as much pressure on the man as he could until Left and Right arrived. Right’s purple-enshrouded fist came in like a flaming wrecking ball for Fitch’s head, while Left swept low with his Wing of Anella for the Infested’s legs.

Disobeying all natural laws, Fitch scissor-kicked horizontally between the two attacks while simultaneously parrying Hiral’s axes. The moment his feet hit the ground again, tentacles of solid solar energy lashed out at Left and Right, and Fitch pushed Hiral with his weapons. Axes met sword and spear so quickly it sounded like a single, constant note over the falling rain.

Right struggled against the tentacles whipping his way, only his Meridian Line-enhanced side up to the task of turning aside the blows. Left didn’t fare much better, though at least he had two shadowy claws to slap at the arm-thick ropes of energy trying to turn him into paste.

Still, the three refused to give ground, pushing at Fitch from all sides. With his weapons occupied, that would give the sisters an opening.

Hiral’s axes spun in his hands as he went low then high, left and right, attacking and parrying in quick succession. Spear and sword swatted away his blows time and again, and then both his axes seemed to get stuck on the Spear of Clouds.

What?

A glance showed the Rune of Connection glowing on the haft as Fitch dragged Hiral’s weapons out wide to the left. On his right, Fitch’s sword jerked up then down so quickly Hiral could barely react. But instead of losing his head, the weapon parted one Cinder+, then another, buying Hiral the second he needed to dart away—though he left his axes behind.

Fitch flicked his spear, sending the axes clattering to the ground, then bent forward and mule-kicked straight back into Seeyela just as she Bamf’d into position. The woman folded around the blow, the wind exiting her lungs in an audible whoosh, before she shot back to bounce and roll across the wet ground. Her health dropped to half from the single hit in the Party Interface, but a line of faint green ran down the calf of Fitch’s leg as he brought it back under himself.

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“Ha, got you,” Seeyela wheezed from the ground, where she forced herself back to a sitting position. Red dripped faintly from the tip of one of her Fangs of the Lady—she’d managed to scratch the Infested! That meant the deadly Ghost-Web Venom would slow…

The ground in front of Fitch exploded as Hiral’s Runic Blunderbuss shot slammed into it. Sure, you can cut attacks out of the air, but what if they aren’t aimed at you?Impact and Expansion shattered the nearby rock, sending dirt, stone, and force careening into the Infested from close range. Back he went—just a step, but it was enough to take the pressure off the doubles. Left and Right vaulted backwards a second before four more fireballs crashed into the earth all around Fitch.

With the wide spread, Fitch wasn’t able to nullify the attacks with his sword, and four house-sized explosions of rushing flames enveloped him from all sides. On and on the fires roiled, as if they fed off each other despite the heavy rain. Steam filled the air like a sauna for one second, two—and Hiral pulled the trigger on his blunderbuss again. Another explosion of Impact in the same place, and he dropped the rifle and called on Death Knell and Stormstrike.

As the steam began to clear, Hiral took the second to try and figure out his best plan. Fitch was quite possibly the worst matchup for him and his growing list of abilities. All his most powerful skills, including the Second Movementof the Chord of the Primal Echo—which he could barely hear—required him to get critical hits. To get a crit hit, he needed to hit in the first place.

And Fitch was preventing that on every level.

Vengeance+ had stacked up nicely—though it was also useless without being able to land a hit. Without adds, Killing Spree+ would stay at zero stacks, and even powering up Ever Changing+ wouldn’t get results until he got past Fitch’s defense.

So, I keep attacking until I do.

With that thought, Hiral jerked his arms forward, the two floating swords following his motions to slice into the cloud of dissipating steam. CLANG! Something hit Stormstrike so hard it shot out of the cloud to embed in the ground up to its hilt forty feet away. Pulling his hand back, twisting his wrist, and then whipping his arm down in a cutting motion, Hiral drove Death Knell into the ground. A thread of solar energy activated its Bloodletting Field, the red pillar spreading just as Fitch’s silhouette became visible.

If I can’t hit you with the swords, at least this field should…

Fitch backhanded the Spear of Clouds in Death Knell’s direction, the simple motion churning the earth and hurling a literal ton of it away in a vast wave. Out winked the red light from Bloodletting Field, and the sword was left buried under the small mountain of rock and dirt.

Leaving the weapon where it was, Hiral grabbed the Reinforced Blightsteel Sabre from the Ring of Amin Thett and drew one of his RHCs, then rushed forward on a burst of Rejection and fired. His bolt of Impact got slapped predictably aside by Fitch’s sword, but then Hiral was in close, swinging with his own sword. Dripping black light traced through the air as he cut up and down for a snappy combo.

Quick as ever, Fitch intercepted each slash with his spear, then countered with a sword-thrust of his own. Hiral pivoted on his lead foot, just barely dodging to the right, and rotated around Fitch’s extended arm at the same time his Lost Echo formed. A brief second of confusion flashed across the Infested’s face before the Echo exploded and Hiral finished his spin. RHC down at his side, he pulled the trigger, the barrel spitting its payload at Fitch’s knee before he dove into a roll to evade the sweeping spear aimed at his neck.

Hiral hit the ground, shoulder, back, feet to complete his roll, then spun around, sword already coming up. He parried aside Fitch’s sword three times in quick succession, then hopped over another spear sweep. There, with Hiral hanging in the air, Fitch’s lips parted in a victorious grin—he had him!

Until Hiral unleashed a full-bodied ball of Rejection. Rain, wind, and dirt ballooned out from him in a sphere at point-blank range, doing next to no damage to the Infested.

What it did do, though, was stagger him back in time for a dozen black curtains to appear all around him. To his sides, above and below, the portals were everywhere. A tentacle snapped around unnaturally fast to parry Right’s fist as he came out of a portal, and a second quickly followed to pound him flat.

Except Right used the momentum from the parry to redirect himself and vanish within another nearby portal at the same time Left reached up from below. Blacker than black, thanks to the Touch of Night, Left’s claws stretched for Fitch’s exposed gut until his sword whipped across.

Like something had yanked Left from within the portal, he jerked backward just in time to avoid the cutting blade. That left Fitch exposed on the side as Right came seamlessly out of the portal behind him. Getting closer than before, another tentacle came across just in time. WHAM! The solidified solar energy took the blow, and Right again vanished within a nearby portal.

No sooner was he gone than Left came back through another hanging curtain. Fitch spun in place to deflect the attack, but it’d only been a feint, as Left was already gone. Knowing another attack would be coming for his back, the Infested whipped around with his sword to stab where Right would appear.

He didn’t hit anything but air—no double charged him—and a white, chitin-clad arm stabbed out from the same portal Left had feinted from. With Fitch’s back to the portal and the momentum of his own thrust locking him in place for a heartbeat, Seeyela’s Fang of the Lady scored her second hit of the fight. Again, little more than a scratch. The small wound glowed green before Fitch snapped back around to defend himself.

By then, Seeyela was already gone, though Right and Left both came out of portals on opposite sides to crush Fitch between them.

Even with having to protect himself from every side, Fitch’s weapons perfectly came in line to turn back Left and Right’s attacks. Then, while practically holding the two in place, his tentacles slapped together to form a wall at his back, blocking Seeyela’s double-thrust as she appeared.

Unwilling to give up when they had Fitch locked down, all three pushed against the weapons holding them at bay.

“This isn’t enough,” Fitch seethed. “All your tricks. All your numbers. Not enough!”

“That’s okay,” Seeyela said, pushing her daggers as green energy infected the tentacles of solid solar energy, “since we’re just the distraction anyway.”

“The…?” Fitch started to ask as a flaming, leg-sized spear came out of the portal directly in front of his exposed chest.