A Frosty Counteroffensive: Mending the Mirror

[The Arceneaux Family]

An irreverent laughter trickled through the multi-faceted images morphing across the expanse of darkness. The Pike pulsed sending a wave of pressure throughout the expanse, rippling through the obsidian plan beneath Zero and Fenri's feet.

The phantasmal images circling the Pike halted as Zeik's hand reached out toward the infernal tool, its aura of crimson and grey now filling the space between it and his astral body.

"Oh, Zeik. Your persistence will never cease to amaze me. Your election to bring the wolf instead of the Zero is an interesting choice but one that we will make sure not to waste."

Alphonse Arceneaux's face looked down on them from above, where the pike's almost infinite length seemed to disappear into the other side of the Veil. He stood upside down on the infinite ceiling of the realm with a smug smile painted across his hazy visage and his hands resting in the pockets of his pitch black sport jacket. The Herald counted his luck for The Axiom stepping directly into his trap, desperate for a reprieve from the treachery of the First Subterfuge that plagued every corner of Vescrutia for months.

Though his face was obscured by some unknown force, Zeik and Fenri would easily be able to gauge the satisfaction in Alphonse's voice, the depraved joy in having prey to enjoy, a spiderweb laid between a moth and flame.

"You know, I wasn't sure if either you or Zero would even return. I can only imagine your hands would be full with the numerous Scars that have since awakened, growing the forces that would bring this planet to heel while the world slowly slips into despair."

Alphonse had been working to develop more robust Arc Tek that could make better use of the various Scars created from the dearly departed of Vescrutia since his envoy brought the Pike to its rightful place, piercing the Traversing Mirror and commandeering it from the planet's natural Bridgeworks.

"But I'm very happy that you and your friend have made it here now, to The End."

Alphonse's smug laughter rattled through the pitch black expanse again as the crimson-grey energy emanating from the pike pulsed with an oppressive, ominous wave that pushed Zeik and Fenri further away from it in the first sensations of space they felt since entering the Veil. The darkness recoiled them through a mountain of space, their hair and skin whipping and shivering while the climate from the other side of the Veil slipped through for just that moment, leaving them in formless, forceless space with a single, thin glowing line stretching endlessly above and below in the distance before them.

"Your Scars will be works of art."

A pair of glowing red orbs appeared in the space between Fenri and Zeik and the Pike in the distance, and a low growl rippled beneath the perfectly flat surface beneath them.

[Fenri]

Fenri, as he stated before, was not well versed in the esoteric arts of Vescrutia. His Arbiters were what he called "Simple" but effective. He dwelled not in the realm of spirits and psychics, choosing to influence the realms he could feel and touch.

In the space where Zeik took them, he immediately felt out of his depth.

The physics of the world he knew melted away and he was brought face to face with the weapon, the portal, the force of their ire. The Tarnished Pike, sat in front of them in its eerie, red splendor, an interestingly attractive tool in spite of the destruction it caused and terror its influence produced.

From where he stood, Zeik navigated the proximity to the tool like moving through a corridor of mirrors, unmoving, sliding through shattered reflections and images of what he assumed were battles untold, some with a similar lighting profile to the battle Fenri watched from the door of Cold Frontier. As they moved around him, dancing like shattered class playing scenes familiar to him and not, Fenri felt the hair on his back stand completely on end, brought to attention by an ancient, primordial force.

He recognized the voice, he'd spoken with Alphonse Arceneaux very briefly before, but took care to remember the leader of the compound hidden in the Hyperion Mountains. They were some of his most local neighbors on the continent at the bottom of the world, and ones Fenri kept tabs on through careful analysis of the tech and tools Diamond Dust got their hands on.

Hearing Alphonse's Arceneaux's voice in this liminal space made a much greater threat of the Arc Tek genius than Fenri assumed, and made him regret not paying more active attention to the corporation's operations on the continent.

Fenri remained silent, girding himself for the battle yet to come. Zeik was correct , the trap was sprung, and as they morphed away from the Pike and peered into the pair of glaring eyes before them, Fenri took a deep breath, clenching his fists while a layer of frost flaked from his tightening skin.

He hoped that Zeik would stand and face this new foe alongside him, but was unsure of the mage's condition so he prepared for the worst.

[Zeik]

He felt tense—disarmed and, above all, afraid.

The instinct was immediate and visceral: run. Open his eyes. Tell Fenri to do the same. Abort the crossing before whatever waited here could finish noticing them. His mind flooded with regret, with the certainty that he had miscalculated—that this was a place he should never have entered, not like this, not now.

But before the miasma of fear could root itself in his being, his ring pulsed.

What had been veiled became an echo.

The voice did not arrive as sound alone. It was a whisper layered into sensation—a pressure of dread, of inevitability, of something already decided. Its presence was subtle enough to be overlooked, insidious enough to hollow lesser minds from within, to drive them toward madness or corruption simply by proximity.

Zeik closed his eyes.

Not in surrender—but in refusal.

He severed himself mentally from the realm’s influence, anchoring his awareness inward as his fingers began to move. Mudra wove at a blinding pace, hands carving meaning through the air while archaic languages—older than script, older than memory—interlocked in perfect sequence.

In a blink.

“Sansarri.”

The word thundered from him in a dual-layered tone, his voice carrying both his own and something far more ancient. A bluish-white glow erupted outward as the newly forged Boundless Rune—*Sansarri, the Great Revealer*—was released.

Illusion collapsed.

Distance unraveled.

The false separation between presence, caster, and afflicted was stripped away, laid bare beneath the rune’s uncompromising light.

“No pleasantries.”

Zeik spoke calmly as he began to weave his Ava.

His body settled—*landed*—upon a solid, white surface where moments ago there had been nothing but formless instability. Even the realm’s fluctuating nature was forced into alignment, compelled into coherence beneath the boundless gleam of Sansarri.

He moved with purpose now.

Passion tempered by discipline. Determination carved into every motion. His face was stone as his senses stretched outward, already anticipating the Herald’s position regardless of delay, distortion, or trick of perception. Where others might search, Zeik *knew*.

He was ready.

Poised.

Whatever followed would not be softened by words or ceremony.

Something about Fenri—about the tension before the crossing, the unspoken friction, the absence of reassurance—had conditioned him. Stripped him of the need for decorum. Prepared him for conflict without dialogue.

Without ritual.

Without mercy.

And so Zeik stood beneath the revealed truth of the mirror world, eyes open once more, Boundless Rune burning steady behind him—

—and waited for Death’s Herald to make the next move.

[The Arceneaux Family]

"Let the hunt begin." Alphonse said, his wry laughter echoing through the pitch black expanse while the crimson orbs floatin in front of Zeik and Fenri twirled around one another, rising into the darkness above them. The orbs were joined by another shimmering orb dancing around them.

Then another...

and another.

The original pair were joined by four other shimmering orbs, slit into sets of eyes glaring down at the ambitious pair from leagues higher, bleeding an aura that fell from the eyes and flooded the obsidian flat in a billowing, ashen gray, formless fog. The outpouring from the space that housed each pair of crimson eyes bobbed and rocked above Zeik and Fenri, with guttural moans and terrified screams from seemingly nowhere folding over one another in this endless, silent space.

The smoke bulged, belched, burgeoned in every way, birthing something from within still shrouded in the ashen fog. The obsidian floor bent under the weight of the entity emerging from the smoke, one crimson paw stepped from the shroud, a silent wave of pressure carried itself across the black expanse. It landed in front of Zeik, a single claw on its form as tall as he.

A massive tail lashed from beyond the ashen cloud, whipping the invisible ground, cracking like a whip across the silence carried by a cacophony of pained cries.

Another paw slammed down from the ashen cloud and a pair of those crimson orbs leaned down to glare at their prey with ravenous clarity. The smoke cleared from its form and a lean, fox-shaped head with oversized teeth, sabered incisors, and a number of swirled markings indistinguishable from fur or flesh coiling around its face.

Two more tails lashed from behind the smoke, slowly dissipating with the whipcrack wails filling this void, coiled with the same eerie textured markings.

Another pair of eyes shook the smoke from its form, showing its terrible fangs and lashing tongue in its side profile, scanning the air for what could only be scents of its quarry, dropping its head beside the first one to address Fenri intently, peering directly into the eyes of the Frozen Moon like cornered prey after the stalk.

Two more tails cracked in fearsome succession, clearing the smoke from around its hind paws like a curtain dropping on symphony of terror, pained groans from nowhere and everywhere raining on the men dwarfed before them.

The third and final pair of crimson eyes disappeared behind its gaping maw, wide open and aimed skyward spilling bloodcurdling wails of pain from its giant throat.

Four more whips cracked and the smoke completely dispelled in a powerful wave that roiled the obsidian flats underfoot.

Sic'em, Pike."

The three heads and nine tails of the beast before them all reeled towards the pitch black sky, its fearsome triplet of glowing jowls spilling wails of terror from its rippling form tearing through the endless expanse.

GWOOORAROOAAAAUUUUUGHH!

The multi faceted creature, seething with a persistent cowl of the grey smoke arcing high around its shoulders, reared up on its back legs with all three heads thrashing wildly towards the sky, unintelligible voices carrying through the void while its body began to glow crimson beneath the intricate, arcane sigils coiled into and around its body. Like a sinister magnet, the gravitas of the creature's overwhelming power started to pull Zeik and Fenri towards it while its paws came down on top of them, both large enough to crush ten men the size of the two of them.

Every movement the beast made was a different blend of screams, groans, wails from somewhere, everywhere all at once.

Its paws crashed down on them, producing a deafening cacophony while the crimson-grey shockwave rocked the empty world around them and the Tarnished Pike stood silent and still far behind the unholy beast.

[Fenri]

The three headed beast emerged from the ashen smoke, a similar filthy scent that accompanied Zeik and Zero when they washed up to Cold Frontier's doorstep followed by the Herald of War himself. Though he didn't announce himself as such, Fenri's deductive reasoning pieced together the connection between Akundae, Zero, Zeik, and Alphonse now staring down three faces of wailing predator towering above them.

The smoke reeked of death- cemetery soil and rotting flesh invading his nostrils, assailing his senses as the creature, a wailing mass of distraught, discontent destruction. Staring up into the face of this ungodly terror, Fenri snarled at the black beast raising its massive paw to crush Zeik and Fenri, its aura-lined paws falling like meteors toward them.

I hate magic...

He felt it in the tips of his hair standing on end, responding not to the murderous intent of the creature, but the nature of the energy stemmed from the some realm Unseen. The space they occupied, bridged by the Master Mage, made his stomach turn. Fenri, like he said earlier, had no talent for dealing with most subtle energies. Resolve, focus, determination, the realm of powers of the flesh were his domain and his limit for understanding the nature of subtle energies. Here, in this realm between life and death, somewhere that Zero and Zeik tore open and unleashed a curse upon Vescrutia he just couldn't have dealt with by himself.

His frustration with himself and the situation cracked the shell of ice that quickly grew around his body. He braced himself and raised a hand, casting a thick wall of ice, solid as iron and fortified by one of the few subtle energies he knew very well. He could feel it, in this endless space of pitch black where the pervasive force of the Horsemen permeated every inch, like a cheeky inkling, Fenri felt empowered to let his fury stain his intent in a way he rarely allowed himself to when dealing with things in the physical world. The wall was thick and glowed with a faint, green glow that matched the brangle hanging from his elevated wrist.

Both paws of the massive, accursed creature crashed into Fenri's protective dome, an igloo coursing with a separate energy like an aurora swirling around them from within while the crimson-gray shockwave rippled out around the protective field. The screams emanating from the three headed, nine tailed creature were smothered by Fenri's ice wall, giving the pair a short reprieve to concoct a plan of attack.

"We're saving the world, right mage?" Fenri asked while the beast beat repeatedly on the ice shield around them, sending muffled booms shooting through the glowing space within the igloo. He was pissed, rightfully so, but probably more eager to let his hair down and go a bit wild in this space that shouldn't even exist. He'd never seen or heard of any kind of creature like this, not in any legend or myth he'd encountered in his time as Frozen Moon of Diamond Dust, but had a strong enough imagination to take advantage of an endless expanse with loose physics.

Without any fear in his heart, Fenri's hair bristled with frosty green tips from his head and all down his shoulders and back. He cut loose and was determined to do some damage.

[Zeik]

The laughter faded, but its shape remained.

Zeik felt it linger in the space between moments—a residue that clung to the obsidian flat like cold ash. When the crimson orbs began to rise, he tracked them without lifting his head, counting by instinct rather than sight. One became two. Two became many. Their gaze pressed down from impossible heights, and with it came the fog.

Ashen. Heavy. Alive.

It spilled across the mirror-world in slow, suffocating waves, and Zeik felt the plane beneath his feet respond—subtly at first. A tension in the ground, like breath drawn in before a scream. The obsidian surface bent under a weight that had not yet arrived, and his Ava adjusted without conscious command, anchoring him against a pressure that rolled outward in silence.

Then the paw emerged.

Crimson. Vast. A single claw as tall as he was, planted before him with deliberate finality. Zeik did not flinch, but his mind registered the scale, the certainty. The pressure wave washed over him, and he let it pass through the spaces between breath and bone, refusing to be moved.

The tail came next.

He felt it before he saw it—an absence snapping shut, a violent displacement of nothing into sound. The crack tore through the void, layered with pain that did not belong to the beast alone. Zeik’s jaw tightened as the cries followed, not singular, not unified, but stacked atop one another like broken glass.

More mass pressed through the fog.

Another paw. Another set of eyes. The fox-shaped head revealed itself—lean and wrong—its oversized teeth catching what little light existed and bending it into something predatory. The swirled markings across its face crawled at the edge of perception, refusing to settle as fur or flesh, as if the creature itself could not remember what it was meant to be.

Zeik’s focus sharpened as more of it emerged.

Tails—plural—lashed and coiled, each crack punctuating the void with fresh waves of suffering. Not echoes. Not illusions. voices. He felt Sansarri hum in quiet response, peeling back layers he almost wished would remain hidden. Within the wails, beneath the animal fury, were remnants of cadence. Breath. Panic.

People.

Once-living beings, stripped of form and bound into function, screaming through borrowed throats.

That was what unsettled him most.

Not the size. Not the teeth. Not even the way the obsidian ground warped beneath the creature’s weight. It was the knowledge that this thing was not merely accompanied by suffering—it was composed of it. A choir of the damned, forced into unity, their terror weaponized and given shape.

When the second head lowered—when its eyes locked onto Fenri with that ravenous, assessing stare—Zeik shifted half a step. The third head’s maw opened skyward, and the sound that poured from it clawed at something deep and ancient in him—a resonance that remembered death not as an ending, but as captivity.

The creature reared.

All three heads thrashed, sigils igniting beneath its skin as crimson light bled through etched arcana. The pull came then—gravitational, nearly inexorable—dragging at Zeik’s mass, his will, the spaces between his thoughts. He set himself against it, stoic and unmoving, letting the terror crash and break against a mind that had long since learned how to endure.

When the paws came down—when the world screamed and the shockwave tore outward—Zeik remained standing, protected by a sheet of ice with the strength greater than any metal.

Only then—only after the last echo of that impossible roar faded into the void—did he tilt his head slightly toward Fenri, eyes still fixed on the towering horror before them.

“…So,” he said lightly, as if commenting on the weather, “am I looking at one of your relatives?”

The tone was entirely unfit for the horror they were experiencing—but that was intentional. In a space that responded to emotion and thought the way waves respond to the tug of the moon, one had to be careful with fear. With intent. With will.

The creature pounded against a barrier of ice fashioned by Fenri.

The blows came in waves.

Each impact drove a dull, thunderous boom through the ice, the sound swallowed and reshaped by Fenri’s shield until it became something felt more than heard. The igloo glowed with layered frost-light, stress lines spiderwebbing across its inner surface as the beast hammered at it from the outside—paw, claw, tail—each strike accompanied by that same chorus of stolen agony.

Zeik did not look at the wall.

He listened.

Not to the impacts, but to the timing between them. The rhythm of the creature’s anger. The micro-hesitation before each swing—when mass, momentum, and will aligned. His right arm lowered slightly, fingers relaxed, palm half-open, as if resting at his side rather than preparing his Arbiter.

Fenri’s voice cut through the din.

“We’re saving the world, right mage?”

Zeik’s eyes flicked once toward him—calm, unhurried, reflecting the fractured light of the ice.

“That,” he said evenly, “is my intention.”

Another blow struck. The ice howled.

Zeik exhaled.

The air around his right arm collapsed inward.

Naten did not gather so much as it was judged—measured, stripped of excess, compressed into a singular intent. Sigils ignited along his forearm, not circling but aligning, snapping into place like the final verdict of a long trial. The glow was not warm; it was stark—blue-white, edged with hard geometry that refused to blur.

“Execution.”

The sound came first—not an explosion, but a shriek of space being forced to agree. A high, keening resonance layered with a deeper, subsonic crack rattled the ice from the inside out.

The beam erupted from Zeik’s right arm in a blinding lance of condensed judgment—white-hot at its core, veined with razor-thin threads of cerulean light spiraling forward with surgical precision. It did not flare or fan. It held perfectly coherent—a line drawn through reality itself.

The ice wall did not shatter.

It parted.

The beam punched through Fenri’s shield without resistance, a clean, circular aperture forming and sealing with frost-light in its wake—the structure recognizing intent and allowing passage. Outside, the creature’s arm was already in motion—mid-swing, claws descending in another furious strike.

The timing was exact.

The beam met the limb at the moment of collision.

There was no spray. No mess.

Just a sudden, violent silence in the creature’s rhythm as the lance of light bored through flesh, sigil, and bound suffering alike—carrying on beyond it in an endless line until distance once again became meaningless. The impact produced a concussive crack, like a fault line snapping open, followed by a delayed roar as displaced force caught up with consequence.

Zeik held the beam for a heartbeat longer than necessary.

Then he released it.

The sigils dimmed. The air rushed back into place. Frost settled.

He lowered his arm as if nothing of note had occurred, gaze already lifting to reassess what the beast would do next.

“Our shared intent,” he added calmly to Fenri, “was well-timed.”

[The Arceneaux Family]

Zeik's beam of light blasted out of Fenri's frozen dome and collided with the summoned creature's meteoric paw, carving through the creature's forearm and shoulder and shooting off into the void. The beast recoiled once, a cacophony of wails oozing from every twitch of its sinew, but it only reeled back in surprise. Zeik's Execution seared through the condensed darkness, leaving little more than a glowing blemish that quickly dimmed as the crimson-grey energy seethed from its wounds, whispers of uncertainty interlaced between the wails of its apparent presence.

GWOOORAROOAAAAUUUUUGHH!

Hellish screams suffused the airapace around the frozen orb as the beast leaped back into the darkness, gaining a league of distance between it and the defensive orb.

With all six eyes trained on it, three mouths snarling and gnashing at the bit, it lowered its heads and the texture of its outermost layer bristled. The wails condensed into a whisper spilling from its body and its nine tails began whipping at the ground in front of it, charting a wide bombing path towards the frozen orb that protected the foolish mortals, only serving to belay the inevitable.

The obsidian floor rippled under the brunt of the onslaught, craters warping under the weight of the amalgam of dead blasts raining down in a wide line of craters, each dwarfing Fenri's protective dome, clearing the path towards the cornered Pillars of Vescrutia's feeble will.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~*KHRAAHBOOM*AAAaaaAAAH!!!~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~*KHRAAHBOOM*AAAaaaAAAH!!!~~~~~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~*KHRAAHBOOM*AAAaaaAAAH!!!~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~*KHRAAHBOOM*AAAaaaAAAH!!!~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~*KHRAAHBOOM*AAAaaaAAAH!!!~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~*KHRAAHBOOM*AAAaaaAAAH!!!~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~*KHRAAHBOOM*AAAaaaAAAH!!!~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~*KHRAAHBOOM*AAAaaaAAAH!!!~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~*KHRAAHBOOM*AAAaaaAAAH!!!~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

All the pain, a multitude of suffering unleashed with every snap of the creature's tail, waves of crimson-grey smoke cascading towards the bauble protecting the two washed over the battlefield, a tidal wave of despair washing the poor souls adrift with the rumbling, crushing tides.