(111) Puddle

“Gah!” Eirene gasped, falling to the ground.

Gray blood dripped from her mouth, sparkling, as if it contained gold. Her hood fell to her shoulders, revealing horribly deformed gray skin across her hairless scalp. She was crisscrossed with scars, and most of her visible body seemed to have been burned at one point or another.

She looked up, staring into the void-black hood with a small smile of defiance.

“You really think torture will work? I’ve been tortured by my craft my whole life. What hope do you have to break me? Besides, my work isn’t even doable with a broken mind. You want to wear artifacts enchanted by an insane person?” she chuckled.

Horemheb stared down at her, the vacuous darkness within his hood revealing nothing of his thoughts. Without warning, Eirene was lifted from the ground by an invisible force, only a thin trail of smoke leading from Horemheb’s sleeve revealing that it was his doing.

He threw her across the audience hall so hard that a small shockwave blasted out from where he floated.

“Uh!” she grunted, slamming back-first into the throne and crumpling to the ground.

Near the colossal doors, Menelaus struggled against his restraints. He was stuck to the wall, glued there by some chitinous substance reminiscent of wasp paper, though it looked, and likely was, considering Menelaus’ futile struggle, much stronger.

The hall was empty save these three occupants, Menelaus having been guarding the doors. The chamber’s size, plus the constant gurgle and boil of its magma, meant this struggle would likely not attract any attention. There would be no interruptions.

Horemheb floated toward Eirene, who coughed once and looked up at him.

“It’s useless, I’m telling you. Even if I wanted to help you, which I don’t, it’s impossible. I was trapped here for two centuries just like everyone else. You think I haven’t studied this damn throne before?

“This ain’t mortal craft. I don’t know who, or what, made it, and as much as it pains me to admit, I can’t do work like this,” she lectured, standing with obvious pain and limping over to the seat.

“You see any enchantment lines here? You see any etchings? Engravings? No, this is just…solid rock. Solid rock that glows. It shouldn’t have any magical properties, but it does.

“I’m an artificer. I can add magical properties to inert objects. I can’t make the objects themselves inherently magical. That’s the realm of…if not the gods, then beings at least beyond me,” Eirene admitted with a sigh.

She seemed to deflate temporarily, but fire quickly returned to her eyes, and her chest puffed up again.

“That’s to say nothing about wanting to help, even if I could. You really think this is gonna go your way? Say you succeeded. Okay, great. You somehow managed to make yourself guildmaster and take control of Nemesis. What then?

“You think our lady is strong because of all this? Because of Nemesis?” she asked rhetorically, putting her hands on her hips and staring into his hood.

“No. We are strong because she is strong, and she would not let you rule this guild. You will be erased with a wave of her hand, bug,” she declared.

A silence passed between them, only the burbling magma breaking it. Horemheb eventually raised his sleeve, and an intense darkness began to gather at its end.

“Ha! That’s right, I’m no longer useful, and I know your plan. Better tie up loose ends,” she said, a wicked smile crossing her lips. “Nemesis! Nemesis! Nemesis! Neme—”

The darkness left his hand and consumed Eirene in a flash. For a brief moment, it seemed that all the light vanished from the hall, swallowed whole. When it returned, there was only Horemheb standing before the throne. No trace of Eirene remained.

“She is right, Nozelbub. You have doomed yourself,” Menelaus declared.

Horemheb’s hood turned in his direction, and he floated lazily toward Menelaus, as if unworried. As if he had all the time in the world. As if the world would not dare stand in his way.

“I do not know why you fight against Nephthys. The archdemon follows her, and we must follow him. It is folly to turn against one, let alone both,” Menelaus said.

Horemheb stopped in the center of the room, a small red crystal appearing at the end of his sleeve, as if held by an invisible hand. Mana began collecting around the crystal, swirling and solidifying. It seemed to reach inside the crystal with ethereal tendrils, the mana fusing within and without, collecting for some great purpose.

A slate appeared in his other hand, and he held it next to the crystal. The mana tendrils grasped it and greedily traced its intricate lines and patterns, as if hungry for the information it contained. This spell slate shined brighter than most, polished to a sheen, its owner obviously valuing it highly.

“Ha!” Menelaus laughed, interrupting the solemn, ritualistic atmosphere. “You think you can summon her back under your control? Haha! You should know that summoning is not slavery. It requires consent from both parties. Do you really think that Eirene would allow herself to be summoned back just so that you could control her—”

A crack split the air, a myriad threads of that wasp paper shooting across Menelaus’ skin, sliding like sheets of stone and covering him completely. Where he had been glued to the wall before was now a solid mass of the stuff. Without knowing better, one might assume it an abandoned hive for giant wasps.

Horemheb turned back to the slate, watching its etchings glow and pulse in time with the beating tattoo of the mana in his other hand. With a high-pitched whine, the mana disappeared, though not without a trace. The room stunk of ozone, the traces of powerful magic obvious to anyone who knew what to look for.

However, nothing happened. Horemheb looked around the room, but as seconds turned to minutes, he returned his gaze to the crystal in his hand, which began to crack, and it suddenly shattered, as if he had crushed it in his grip out of rage.

“How disappointing it is when a well-laid plan fails,” said a voice from behind.

Horemheb spun toward the entrance, where Moirenea now stood, two of her arms crossed before her, the others folded behind her back.

“It is fortunate that I spend most of my time with Akhenaten. He hears when our guild’s name is invoked, you see,” she informed.

Horemheb raised his arms, darkness gathering at the ends of his sleeves. Moirenea held up her hands, waving them before her.

“Oh, no. Combat is not my specialty. It only took me so long to arrive because I had to collect someone for whom it is,” she said, stepping to the side.

A cold fog rolled in through the door, somehow lowering the magma-ringed room’s temperature by several degrees. 

Thip. Thip. Thip.

The lightest footsteps echoed through the fog, as if a dainty, barefoot child approached. Light blue eyes pierced through the thickening mist, growing brighter as they drew closer. Black hair with blue tips fluttered about a pale blue head, whose visage was completely blank, as if uninterested in the situation.

Nebet’Khara emerged from the fog fully, and it swirled toward and around her, as if a garment she wore. Horemheb slapped his sleeves together, combining the darkness in either hand. It shot forward in a beam, accompanied by a roar that vibrated the ground.

The dread beam split Nebet’Khara’s head, which burst into mist. It continued past, piercing the stone and traveling straight through the floor. When it ceased, the impacted stone had simply vanished, as if it had been willed out of existence.

Nebet’Khara continued forward, her head reforming from the fog. Another Nebet’Khara appeared next to her, and a third. In a blink, dozens, maybe hundreds of her approached Horemheb within the fog, each walking leisurely, unbothered by his actions.

He threw his arms to the side, and a black storm of chirping, buzzing insects poured out of his sleeves. They filled the air so thickly that it seemed the room’s magma had ignited, burning with an acrid black smoke. They swirled and swarmed, and Horemheb cast his arms forward, the insects surging toward the mist in response.

Fwuh. Fwuh. Fwuh.

Insects flew through the Nebet’Khara mist bodies, blasting holes in them, yet she, each and every one of her, continued forward.

Horemheb changed tactics, bringing his arms up in front of his hood and then casting them both to the side. The insects gathered together, thickening into a solid moras before swirling around like a tornado. They swarmed over the many Nebet’Kharas, shredding the mist to nothing before moving on to the next.

Still she advanced. Her mist bodies reformed immediately after the insects shredded them, continuing as if they had not even noticed the attack.

Horemheb began to float backward, his arms still raised, fleeing the approaching spirit. Backtracking all the way to the throne, he realized too late that she was not approaching him just from the front. He was now surrounded by a dense fog, filled with her apathetic image.

Horemheb lowered his hands, floating silently, staring at the closest specter. She stopped her advance, the closest of her mere feet from him. They all turned as one, glancing at Moirenea, who was scarcely visible in the fog by the entryway.

“I cannot speak for our lady, who is indisposed at the moment, but the punishment for treason is standard almost everywhere,” she declared with a nod.

Nebet’Khara turned back to Horemheb, who raised his arms, attempting one last attack, or perhaps attempting to flee, but it was for naught. A flash of green was the only indication of her attack, and faster than one could blink, Horemheb was frozen in a block of green ice.

It began to bubble and sizzle, as if melting under some intense heat. With another flash, the melting ice ignited into a crackling green flame that sparked with lightning, as if it was so hot it ignited the air itself.

After only seconds of burning, the flames died, and the ice was completely melted. Nothing remained of Horemheb, not even a melted puddle on the floor.