The Achromatic Eclipse of the Psyche, part II.

[Zach Kaiser]

Having Gaia match his movements across the arena did not phase him in the least, either positively or negatively. Calm and intent on what he was doing, he betrayed nothing, and Gaia would not be able to tell if his movements were hindering Eilert or playing right into his hands.

Foolishly, he still tossed the axe even as Gaia moved, sending it sailing far behind him. In the same movement he ducked as though to avoid the coming blow, but it was not to be, and he was sent sliding across the ground into the barrier, leaving a trail of red in his wake.

At some point during the slide he must have touched his palm to the ground, for between the two combatants a glyph activated--however, nothing visible happened, and it would remain that way so long as Gaia focused on his opponent, for he would not be able to see the axe's change in direction behind him, and the way one of the glyphs on it was now lit up. Whether or not it scored a direct hit, when it got near Gaia the other glyph would be activated and the axe (or at least the area around it) would explode in a shower of dust and shrapnel.

Even as the axe was returning, Eilert was climbing to his feet, bracing himself against the barrier he'd just crashed against. And as the explosion occurred he'd begin move around outer edge of the arena as rapidly as he could with his new injuries, slowing only to scoop a pair of rocks from the ground.

[Nayt]

Three.

As well laid the plan may have been, Gaia had already established a habit of not being led into traps, especially when he was aggressive--as he was now.

It wasn't even a second following Eilert slamming up against the barrier that Gaia thrust himself into the air, effectively throwing himself up and beyond the glyphs Eilert laid upon the ground and the axe coming back for him. He remained airborne for only a moment.

It was a utilitarian act. Thrusting himself into the air, as well as towards Eilert's drop location, boosted his momentum tremendously as he crashed down feet first. Gravity dragged him down and dramatically increased the speed of his fall--a calculated, intentional fall.

A fall which would land him upon Eilert just as he began to stand from the fall to the arena floor, to land feet first before the man, with his fist thrown out as the carrier of gathered momentum and natural strength, a fist thrown out for Eilert's chest--a fist which could have put a hole through the center of his chest, and his heart, with little to no muscular or skeletal resistance whatsoever . . .

[Zach Kaiser]

Gaia's fall may have increased his overall momentum, but the act of going up in the air and coming back down was much slower than he was capable of moving otherwise--and if Eilert could keep up with those movements he had no trouble responding to the leap.

Already he'd been pulling himself up against the barrier, and as Gaia threw his punch--a punch that could very easily have been instantly fatal--Eilert lurched to the side, and the punch would either hit the barrier or stop short.

Either way, Gaia had made a mistake--he had telegraphed exactly where he would be, and against someone with Eilert's skills that was a potentially deadly mistake. The two glyphs on the barrier he'd crashed against erupted the instant he was out of the way. One wasn't a new attack so much as a redirected one: another Glyph of Attraction, which prevented the axe from planting itself in the ground and instead had it once more heading for Gaia's back.

But the greater danger was from the other glyph. The Glyph of Eruption was often mistaken as causing an explosion, which was only true in the vaguest sense. What it did was cause the outermost layer of what it was on to burst outward--it was most useful in demolition, where a wall could be quickly demolished, and while with his enhanced power it was deadly Eilert normally used it to distract and disorient a foe, it's power not enough to cause significant damage when on dirt.

Regardless of how thick the barrier was, or how many layers it was composed of, it was a solid surface of magic--and a glyph could be placed upon any solid surface. Being magic, the activated glyph would therefore send a blast of pure magical energy directly into Gaia, which because of his lapse of judgment he could not avoid entirely.

Eilert, for his part, rolled as the blast struck, as it was unlikely he'd be completely out of it himself, and as he did so he picked up the pair of rocks he'd intended to grab before.

[Nayt]

Four.

Eilert would find all too late that while he could not move through the barrier, Gaia could. His fist passed through it with ease, a barrier that was otherwise invisible to the naked eye. Something comprised the barrier that could not be described by simple magic. Two glyphs were still placed, but had they not been used, they would have faded quickly. The barrier, as Eilert came to know it, wasn't quite so complex. The only thing which could not leave this arena was Eilert himself . . .

Yet still, there was an eruption, however minor it may have been. It was much akin to a burst of air, mildly painful, but more annoying than anything else. Despite this, there was a noticeable expansion of the faults in the sky and a subtle shaking around them, but it was fairly minor compared to previous attacks of Eilert's.

The axe, on the other hand, did strike Gaia, but not quite as Eilert was hoping for. It struck his back, but not his flesh. Instead, it hit off of the wing of blades, an object upon him which simply budged a couple of millimeters, but no further.

Eilert's roll away would only lead to his gut meeting Gaia's foot, as he kicked at the man outright whilst he was in mid-roll, a blow which might well send him back first into an impassible field yet again.

[Zach Kaiser]

Eilert was kicked with great force, but not straight into the barrier. He was already alongside it, so unless Gaia moved circuitously, he would have kicked him parallel to a tangent of the barrier.

Which meant that rather than strike it he slid along the outside of it, blood from one of his wounds trailing behind him like a thick red scarf. Gaia was immensely strong--he was nearly halfway around the arena before he came to a full stop.

But he had left something behind other than a large trail of blood: two rocks rolled out of his hands as he was kicked, and the glyphs on them activated immediately after the kick. The first, the Glyph of Whirlwind, created a large tornado; the second glyph was the Glyph of Explosion.

Individually each was dangerous, but together they were downright deadly. The pressure and heat from the explosion expanded the tornado into a massive storm of fire.

[Nayt]

Five.

A glyph of eruption, this time actually useful, set Gaia off. He had to evade it, which was very possible, but paired with the second glyph, not so much.

In fact, it was outright impossible.

Gaia leaped back, but he couldn't evade the entirety of the wailing heat that erupted before him. It was a small hurricane of destructive stone and pure heat, something which could have easily killed a man. As if realizing that he could not, in fact, escape it, Gaia brought the wing of blades out, to wrap around the front of his body as he landed upon the ground and progressively backed away from the firestorm.

It was an easy success, and completely prevented him from taking any lasting damage, not even enough to alter the sky or shake the world. The wing of blades, while purposeless for offense, seemed to boast an unbreakable defense, if the opportunity to use it was available.

As Eilert's vision had a predominately red hue to everything at this point, Gaia would actually appear as a blaring red, seething, growing--a scarlet about him that would seem much more like an aura of sorts, albeit one that only Eilert could see, afflicted as he was.

[Zach Kaiser]

Time is running out, he thought as he climbed back to his feet. But even with that realization, caused by the red in his vision that was refusing to fade, he didn't let himself be bothered. He was nearly ready...

He began to run the rest of the way around the arena's edge; it was longer and roundabout, but he needed to take it--besides, it allowed him to take up the remaining weapon he hadn't touched: the nodachi.

Slapping a glyph on it, he activated a previously unactivated one: the Glyph of Eruption that was on the axe, which he intended to activate but as it never scored a good hit on Gaia he never did. As he was still near the axe, it would at the very least serve as a distraction as Eilert closed the remaining distance.

[Nayt]

Six.

There was an explosion near Gaia, as the glyph of eruption activated upon the axe, and took with it a large chunk of real estate within the arena. Dust and debris filled the air, and nearly covered Gaia. For a moment there, Gaia did nothing but halfway stand within it, until he finally took a few steps to the side, to completely conceal himself within it. There, even Eilert would not be able to see the deep crimson that had been permeating from his form.

It would be just as Eilert reached the nodachi, right before he could even grab it, that something would take hold of his leg, were he not to notice it initially--but as Gaia had disappeared just a moment earlier, it was unlikely that he would, just by virtue of a surprise attack alone.

The attack, however, was not a common one for this battle. Up to this point, Gaia's attacks had been wholly destructive. There was very little preparation behind them, simply intensely powerful attacks delivered in quick succession. Eilert would find a chain about his ankle, just before he could reach the nodachi, whereupon he would be immediately dragged off of his feet before he could grasp for the weapon, dragged off of his feet and then across the floor of the arena, back the direction he came, something which, inadvertently, would not work in Eilert's favor.

The chain was long--impossibly long, even, and seemed to be following Eilert's very footsteps in reverse order, and would swiftly drag him back that ways in a very similar pattern, all towards the cloud of dust and debris within which Gaia had previously disappeared . . .

[Zach Kaiser]

The chain wrapped around Eilert's foot, nearly pulling him off of his feet as it tugged him away from the weapon he'd been attempting to grab. Hopping on one foot to prevent himself from being dragged entirely, he listed to the right, keeping alongside the barrier as he did so, his injured hand trying to grasp at it but only succeeded in leaving a trail of blood around the edge.

Ordinarily such a situation would have been most dire; Eilert specialized in setting traps and manipulating his opponent's movements, whether he had much time to plan and execute them or not. A chain around his ankle, held by Gaia, ensured he could not avoid direct confrontation any longer--it should have been the worst possible situation for him.

But nothing would disturb his calm; that was not to say he was unaffected, but it was not the effect his opponent had likely hoped for. He had to fight to keep himself from smiling...

When he was just outside the dust cloud, he suddenly let himself fall backwards, grabbing a rock from the ground, placing a glyph, and throwing it one clean motion inside the cloud. Unlike the Glyph of Explosion earlier, that caused actual flames and was deadly with the tornado, this was another Glyph of Eruption. He'd used the glyph much during the fight, but he had not yet, in fact, used it in this way--the way he'd suddenly come up with back when he was fighting the shades, something that felt quite literally a lifetime ago.

The rock would burst into shrapnel--it had already been dangerous before, but with the way his power was increased her it was downright deadly. The shards of stone flew with enough force to tear a normal man to shreds, the individual pieces capable of cutting clear through a person and hardly be slowed.

Close as he was, Eilert himself couldn't help be on the receiving end of several deep cuts--not that it truly mattered for him at this point...

[Nayt]

Seven.

Perhaps a surprise to Eilert would be the fact that the earth did not quake, nor did the sky rupture any further. Nothing--nothing at all. There was an explosion, that much was for sure; the stone Eilert threw did activate and there was an expulsion of explosive energy, but there were no plethora of rocks and stones to fling out Eilert's direction to cut him up as he might have expected . . .

The expulsion of explosive energy did more to clear the dust and debris than it did to create more, and in the end, he would see the reason for the lack of change: the stone had cleanly struck Gaia, but as his wing of blades was still actively held before his body, the stone struck this instead, doing absolutely minimal damage to Gaia himself.

While the wing of blades allowed for a perfect, nigh penetrable defense, it did clearly limit Gaia. He couldn't push his arms out beyond it, and while he was holding a chain in his left hand, the same chain which was dragging Eilert towards him, he couldn't outright swing it with the wing before his body. Perfect defense--minimal offense. That was the nature of such a tool. The chain was another tool, one with a very specific purpose: to drag an opponent towards it. It steadfastly wrapped around a target, and fused links together near the other end of the chain at a rapid pace, lessening its length and dragging the individual closer.

And Gaia was still dragging Eilert closer. In less than a second, Eilert would be only a foot away from him--but he would not have the opportunity to do anything about this. As soon as he was in range, the wing of blades would expand and swipe out, to fold up behind Gaia's back again--and yet, in the process, it would rip through Eilert if he did little about it. It was a powerful limb, one which could have severed the man in two with little difficulty . . .

[Zach Kaiser]

In a vain attempt to pull away Eilert grabbed the chain, but it was apparent he wouldn't be able to--Gaia had a distinctive edge over him in strength. Rapidly slapping the backs of his wrists, he sprouted another pair of blades just in time to catch the wing between them--just one would have likely been sheared clear through.

Even as the wing was withdraw, however, the next move was made--a glyph activated on the chain itself, sending orange lightning into both combatants. Again, Eilert reeled from electricity (which was becoming a distressingly familiar sensation), collapsing to his knees as the energy coursed through him.

But as he dropped, he managed to retain some level of control...his hand dropped to the dirt along the edge of the barrier, attempting to set another glyph practically right underneath Gaia...

[Nayt]

Eight.

As soon as orange lightning began to worm up the chain, Gaia immediately discarded it. It fell to the ground harmlessly, while Gaia's foot moved forward. Viewed in slow motion, it would have seemed like a harmless motion, but as soon as he lifted his foot . . .

Eilert's enemy was one that learned from his mistakes. Eilert couldn't use the same trick twice. To do so was to risk immediate death, as any blow from Gaia could kill Eilert, and sometimes, those sorts of tricks left Eilert wide open for counterattack--like now.

Gaia slammed his foot down upon the ground with the utmost force. He'd drive his foot down upon Eilert's elbow as he reached for the ground, to shatter and smother the joint under his boot. The natural reflex to such a thing, the shattering of one's elbow, was to drive the forearm up. It was a reflex most if not all people had, just like kicking when the knee was tapped just right--and as Gaia jabbed his foot down right when Eilert was reaching, he'd wind up throwing his arm up instead of placing a glyph, at which moment his forearm (and entire arm, for that matter) would be kicked to the side, to find a presence elsewhere, relatively harmless to Gaia himself.

[Zach Kaiser]

Indeed, effectively destroying the use of an arm was possibly the best way to prevent him from placing a glyph; it caused his hand to lift off the ground, so he couldn't even set it before he went limp.

But Eilert had too good arms, and the instant Gaia's foot began its descent so did his other arm begin to move, not to the ground but to Gaia's ankle, grasping just as it crushed his elbow. It would be impossible for him to avoid; his arms would not reach that close to the ground, and lifting his other leg would cause him to lose his balance. Even Gaia was not fast enough to stop him this time.

As his arm was tossed out of the way the Orange Enigma got up and ran towards the center, activated the glyph as he did: the Glyph of Paralysis. An ordinary person would be frozen for several hours, and risk the shock of it killing him or inducing any number of potentially fatal conditions; thus it was not a glyph he used under normal circumstances.

But even if it lasted but a short time on Gaia, it would be long enough; bleeding profusely from his elbow, Eilert moved oddly around the arena once more--moving gracefully one second, and then darting over to another spot the next and repeating it...

[Nayt]

Nine.

Another glyph was placed, even though Gaia had put forth an effort to avoid it. To a great extent, it was something he was clearly trying to avoid. But he could not, and in the end, Eilert placed and activated a glyph upon his ankle--one meant not to kill him, but to immobilize him.

For a moment, Eilert was able to run, but not the full length he intended to. He would be stopped midway--stopped by a figure, a figure exuding a red presence in an already scarlet world. Gaia.

And there he'd stand, directly before Eilert once again, half-bent over with his right hand touching the ground. It was almost in a kneeling way, as if, although halfhearted, he had prostrated himself before Eilert. Although Eilert might have been confounded by the nature of how he escaped paralysis, especially since the glyph was still quite active on his ankle, he'd not have the time for such concerns.

He'd be cut in an instant, cut right where he stood, cut across, up, down, diagonal--cut and jabbed, straight through his body, a plethora of blows assaulting him practically all at once, as the red mist that once focused around Gaia dispersed entirely--shredding skin quickly, skin that wouldn't remotely regenerate, skin that would remain upon the ground, to leave muscle structure exposed to the elements--to the thick air, the dust swirling about, still settling, and the infections they would seem to cause.

Immediate infections.

Except they weren't infections.

They were pulsating, protruding boils. They were throbbing, growing muscles. They were the side effect--the mutations of the Plague, forced early own. That was how one died. The body deteriorated and bled out from every pore, its muscles filled with puss and mucus and tore through the skin, ripping out of even the most minor of cuts. The swelling often became so bad that it burst the heart muscle before the victim could bleed out entirely. Sometimes, it smothered the lungs. On rare occasions, the muscles of the face broke the weak sinus cavity and pushed so hard into the brain that the body shut down. That was a merciful death.

To die of the Plague was not pleasant. It was, if anything, the most gruesome death a human being could ever experience--and it was contagious.

[Zach Kaiser]

It was the end. He knew that; he'd seen it coming, felt it in the way the plague wracked his body, even as he tried to shunt away and ignore the pain of his infected system. Perhaps if he'd been able to continue uninterrupted he could have a little time left, but it was not to be; without warning and against all logic, Gaia appeared in front of him and began to tear into him, and his body was no longer healing, the disease wasting away even the effects of the Glyph of Regeneration that had allowed him to stay in the fight this long.

Infected tissue and bloated muscle were exposed and went flying, areas where he was injured replaced with boils rather than healing. But above all that was the blood; his vision was so red by this point that it could have been milk flying through the air and he wouldn't have known the difference. He wondered if Gaia was intentionally missing his vitals, to prolong his death via the excruciating disease that he'd infected him with. If so, it would be a futile gesture; Eilert Draugr would indeed die, but not of the plague.

Run through, he grabbed Gaia's arm, preventing him from withdrawing--but not, as was his mode of operation before, to plant a glyph on him. In fact, it was not so much force as a tangle that kept him like that, for he certainly could not stand up to his opponent's strength now. He leaned heavily on the supposed god, but did not let go. He looked up at him, his face beginning to bleed from eyes, nose and ears--and he smiled.

It had only taken him a few seconds to figure out what Silver had been doing; the Director could very well have been a genius, advancing so far in such a short time with glyphs, even going so far as to try and create his own--a ludicrously complex one, at that. But he couldn't complete it, he was sure; there would have been no reason to keep the Orange Enigma around if Silver could finish it himself. It had been dizzying to see; most glyphs were words or phrases composed of syllables or small worlds, with the most complex ones he knew being about a sentence. But that one...that one had been like looking at a book. More specifically, a partially unfinished book--like looking at all the sheaves of a one-thousand or more word masterpiece all at once. The human mind was simply not meant to take in that much at once, but in the back of his mind he'd slowly been going through it, working out the several words that were missing, misplaced, or downright wrong. The part of him that was still a researcher and scholar felt like a copy-editor who was sent a work that was destined to become a hallmark of fiction, if only he could comb through it and gloss over the minute errors.

And he could see how Silver did it--he approached glyphs like a mathematician, putting together values that would add up to the effect he desired. Eilert wasn't, to be sure, a better mathematician; he could not see what it was supposed to add up to, but what Silver was missing wasn't simply an error but a blind spot. Glyphs were not just tools to those that had created them; their magic was not just a formula, but a language, even an art form. And where Silver saw only an equation, a means to an end, Eilert had seen picture, a painting, a sculpture the likes of which wars could have been fought over if finished.

So while he could not grasp the whole thing in his head, he could see the pattern, the flow; he knew not what Silver was aiming for with it, but he had a guess, in the same way a person could guess at the meaning of a word by knowing its individual parts.

Blood was everywhere, but it was not blood spilled without purpose; it had already begun to take a vague pattern. Gaia could not notice it, anymore than a farmer could tell what a crop circle looked like while in the midst of the crop, only that something had flattened it here and there.

But that blood 'here and there' began to move; it was Sturm that had reminded him. Glyphs took many forms; some were carved, others drawn--Eilert himself composed his of pure mana imprinted on something. But the most ancient and potent method of creating glyphs was writing them in blood. It was not something he'd ever taught a class, nor had he ever tried it himself (he could not afford to lose any of his own blood, sick as he'd been, and would not use anyone else's), but the Glyph of Will as used by Sturm had proved it was possible, and much more effective.

If all living things had mana in them, it was theorized that blood contained the highest concentration of it out of any aspect of the body. Ordinarily it took Eilert a lot of practice to control his mana enough to imprint even simple glyphs with his hands, but in this arena his control seemed to increase many times, so that he could will even the most difficult patterns to form with little effort.

Therefore it wasn't much of a stretch to theorize that he could control his own, mana rich blood if he tried hard enough. And try he did, and sure enough the blood that had sprayed and in some places even pooled on the ground began to run. Like crimson serpents they cut across the ground, following tracks that existed only in Eilert's mind, tracks that when he focused on them caused his eyes to glaze over.

He'd already laid the groundwork; only the fine details had remained, and those were completed in mere seconds. It took the rest of his willpower to move his own blood like that, just as the last of his strength was spent holding onto Gaia as though here would be his savior, not his killer.

And then the ground lit up as the blood began to glow; what was once an arena of red was now a vibrant orange. It was now too late for the both of them. In the end, that was Gaia's mistake: he failed to account for the fact that Eilert would be willing to sacrifice his life to stop him.

The smile on his lips broadened. It was a difficult world; but he was convinced it was the right one, one that Tyrian and Icsorue could find happiness in, happiness all the more greater for having overcome adversity...for having earned it. A world, unlike the other that he'd seen and experienced, that a person could change, for better or worse. One where a person could decide their own fate, if only they thought to...

Eilert went completely limp, slumping, using the last of his will to activate the glyph which covered the entire arena. He did not know if Silver named it, but a name came to him, as surely as the name of an important piece of fiction could be picked out from an important scene without ever looking at the title.

The Glyph of Annihilation.