Re: A Frosty Counteroffensive: Mending the Mirror
Posted: Thu Apr 02, 2026 2:47 am
“Pawn? Hardly.”
Alphonse’s voice echoed through beneath the roil of battle, Zeik’s emergence from the floor dripping in righteous bloodlust, speaking an end to the forgoes that befell the mage and the wolf. The screams of the vulpine Cerberus amplified, drowning the battlefield in the wails of the damned.
Fenri’s blades of ice carved through the carnage, laying into the beast with surgical precision, wild ferocity, shards of wind carving through the despair-scrawled flesh of the creature. By head and by tail, Zeik and Fenri seemed to put some weight into their assaults on their three-faced foe. Any mortal beast would have been felled, scrapped, shredded and scorched into nothing by elmental fire and ice.
But this was no mortal beast.
The ice and fire raged until there was no more, dense fog slipped through the hands of Zeik's spiritual construct and wafted past Fenri's body, disappearing into the onyx expanse beyond them. All that was left to receive Alphonse's haughty retort were two men of formidable stature stranded in a sea of darkness with nothing to hold on to.
"Come now, Zeik. You don't really think I'd be an incompetent tool?"
The obsidian floor pulsed with a single, roiling pulse washing over likea midnight surf. The energy passed through Zeik and Fenri without moving their bodies, in this realm of mind and soul.
"That I wouldn't plan your downfall personally after you hospitalized my dear, beloved daughter?"
Between the two of them, at the epicenter of the wave of energy, a circular spac ebegan to bubble up from below, a rumbling of viscous shadows spitting what looked like fume and spray into the air from a pit large enough to vanish both men into the inky depths by themselves.
"That you and that MONGREL who's been a thorn in my side for YEARS could just walk into the maw of the beast without being ground to dust?!"
The roil deepened, cursed wails spilled from the pit, and a ring of six eerie crimson lights ignited just short of the cauldron's rim, burning their way steadily higher in pairs looking outward.
"Zero was smart to bring you along, he wouldn't have been able to dispel the Nulgurian ward by himself, but you being right here, right now, has made up for that gaffe in spades."
The screams swelled and one of the vulpine beast's clawed arms shot out of the rumbling pit seething with its crimson-grey aura searing into the pitch back atmosphere above them.
Just its forearm extended above Zeik's ascended form breaking free of his worldly constraints, absolutely dwarfing Fenri with one of its glowing, carved markings adorning its skin.
Screams shook Fenri's body to the bone, a sensory experience drowned him in the wails of the damned, oppressing his senses with the weight of untold terror drenching him.
Drowning him.
Submerging the wolf in a surge of pain that crippled him, petrified him in an inescapable wave of pain inundating his spirit.
In the realm of the Seen, Fenri's indomitable spirit bode him well.
Here, in the pierced realm of the Traversing Mirror, the final bridge for departed souls from one realm to the next, Fenri stood naked before the Pike's strength.
"How dare you, mage? My relationship with the benefactors of my fealty is none of your concern. You see, I already had plans to wrest control of this world from the grips of chaos. The powers bestowed upon me only guaranteed my success."
A whirling mass of crimson-grey energy swirled up from the pit and exploded into a massive orb clutched by each of the creature's clawed fingers. It drew in long wisps of this crimson-grey energy from all over the expanse, licking wisps of it off of Fenri's body as it lifted him off the ground into a spiral current traveling up the arm's height.
"You have much more imminent danger to concern yourself with, since you're never going to see what this world will become without either of you."
The currents drawing up into the death star atop the pylon of despair before him etched claw marks into Zeik's ethereal form, chipping away at his spiritual armor, clipping his magnificent wings, degrading it inch by inch.
Fenri was lost, Zeik still had some fight in him, but the situation was beyond dire.
Alphonse’s voice echoed through beneath the roil of battle, Zeik’s emergence from the floor dripping in righteous bloodlust, speaking an end to the forgoes that befell the mage and the wolf. The screams of the vulpine Cerberus amplified, drowning the battlefield in the wails of the damned.
Fenri’s blades of ice carved through the carnage, laying into the beast with surgical precision, wild ferocity, shards of wind carving through the despair-scrawled flesh of the creature. By head and by tail, Zeik and Fenri seemed to put some weight into their assaults on their three-faced foe. Any mortal beast would have been felled, scrapped, shredded and scorched into nothing by elmental fire and ice.
But this was no mortal beast.
The ice and fire raged until there was no more, dense fog slipped through the hands of Zeik's spiritual construct and wafted past Fenri's body, disappearing into the onyx expanse beyond them. All that was left to receive Alphonse's haughty retort were two men of formidable stature stranded in a sea of darkness with nothing to hold on to.
"Come now, Zeik. You don't really think I'd be an incompetent tool?"
The obsidian floor pulsed with a single, roiling pulse washing over likea midnight surf. The energy passed through Zeik and Fenri without moving their bodies, in this realm of mind and soul.
"That I wouldn't plan your downfall personally after you hospitalized my dear, beloved daughter?"
Between the two of them, at the epicenter of the wave of energy, a circular spac ebegan to bubble up from below, a rumbling of viscous shadows spitting what looked like fume and spray into the air from a pit large enough to vanish both men into the inky depths by themselves.
"That you and that MONGREL who's been a thorn in my side for YEARS could just walk into the maw of the beast without being ground to dust?!"
The roil deepened, cursed wails spilled from the pit, and a ring of six eerie crimson lights ignited just short of the cauldron's rim, burning their way steadily higher in pairs looking outward.
"Zero was smart to bring you along, he wouldn't have been able to dispel the Nulgurian ward by himself, but you being right here, right now, has made up for that gaffe in spades."
The screams swelled and one of the vulpine beast's clawed arms shot out of the rumbling pit seething with its crimson-grey aura searing into the pitch back atmosphere above them.
Just its forearm extended above Zeik's ascended form breaking free of his worldly constraints, absolutely dwarfing Fenri with one of its glowing, carved markings adorning its skin.
Screams shook Fenri's body to the bone, a sensory experience drowned him in the wails of the damned, oppressing his senses with the weight of untold terror drenching him.
Drowning him.
Submerging the wolf in a surge of pain that crippled him, petrified him in an inescapable wave of pain inundating his spirit.
In the realm of the Seen, Fenri's indomitable spirit bode him well.
Here, in the pierced realm of the Traversing Mirror, the final bridge for departed souls from one realm to the next, Fenri stood naked before the Pike's strength.
"How dare you, mage? My relationship with the benefactors of my fealty is none of your concern. You see, I already had plans to wrest control of this world from the grips of chaos. The powers bestowed upon me only guaranteed my success."
A whirling mass of crimson-grey energy swirled up from the pit and exploded into a massive orb clutched by each of the creature's clawed fingers. It drew in long wisps of this crimson-grey energy from all over the expanse, licking wisps of it off of Fenri's body as it lifted him off the ground into a spiral current traveling up the arm's height.
"You have much more imminent danger to concern yourself with, since you're never going to see what this world will become without either of you."
The currents drawing up into the death star atop the pylon of despair before him etched claw marks into Zeik's ethereal form, chipping away at his spiritual armor, clipping his magnificent wings, degrading it inch by inch.
Fenri was lost, Zeik still had some fight in him, but the situation was beyond dire.