Chapter 222. Control

[ late again, ty for patience <3 it's a long one to compensate~ ]

Maria growled and ignited her body in a pillar of flames, heedless of the damage to her wardrobe. If the sand was solid–and not falling out from under them–she’d be able to use the End techniques she practiced on Ian. Perhaps she’d even be able to snare everyone present in an offensive oath array.

Even if many people present were strong practitioners, there was no way that they could all be peak practitioners. She and Ian would have an absolute advantage in power over their superior numbers.

This is fascinating, Ian transmitted, interrupting her thoughts. Of course that’s what Ian would think about as they careened into a pit, dragged down by crazed practitioners and assailed on all sides.

She was surprised that Ian initiated nonverbal communications–he hardly ever communicated over their bond. She suspected it had to do with his guilt over their being a bond in the first place, a permanent reminder of what he’d done to her.

What’s fascinating? She asked, kicking out with ascendant energy at a trio of practitioners that resisted her flames. A potent aegis flared to life around them, but buckled after a moment. They flew back and crumpled upon impacting the wall of the sinkhole.

Ian was oddly motionless as he fell through the air, as though he were gently sinking to the bottom of a pool. Unlike her, he didn’t lash out with physical attacks. Instead he controlled bones seized from the two unfortunate practitioners who first grasped his legs, turning them into a whip with rapidly-rotating spines. At the same time, he controlled others who came close to him with his practice. She could tell he was trying to do something with them, but didn’t know what.

They’re all so powerful, Ian explained. It’d be impossible on our world to have such a high concentration of peak practitioners.

Maria’s eyes glinted with interest. How can you tell?

I can see their vitality, Ian replied. The way it flows generally gives me a sense of what kind of affinities they have. But I’ve been working on increasing my finesse in reading vital signatures since leaving the loop. It’s not a science, but I can at least roughly tell that half the people here are peak practitioners.

Maria felt like her eyes were going to pop out of her skull. Half? She exclaimed. So many...

Ian continued: And the ones who aren’t peak are all just a smidgen less powerful, hovering in the 80’s.

Ian’s face was one of intense concentration, his lips curling up slightly at the corners. He reminded Maria of a cat playing with its food.

What are you doing with the practitioners under your control? Maria asked. She knew the limits of his range, and numerous practitioners lay therein. But rather than puppeting them to attack their companions, Ian let the practitioners move freely.

There have been some things I’ve been wanting to test since leaving the loop but didn’t want to experiment on human subjects, Ian replied, skirting around the question.

With each passing second the sand fell progressively faster, as though sucked in by a vacuum, outpacing the natural speed of their descent. Drawing farther away, the sand was like a golden dust, with flashes of darkness shimmering in negative space.

Shouldn’t we be trying to leave this pit? Maria asked. Feels like we could be falling into a trap. I can sense a large End mandala where this hole comes to an end.

I thought you had more of a sense of adventure, Ian retorted.

Maria frowned. Ian was acting uncharacteristically lax, almost like he was playing a game. If we get trapped here because of some End array, it’s going to be your fault.

I doubt we’ll get trapped for an extended period of time. This isn’t real, Maria–none of these people are. We’re trying to find an artifact from this place. I’ll be damned if falling into the pit isn’t exactly what we’re supposed to be doing, trap or not.  I have confidence in your ability to break any hostile arrays that may bind us.

Ah, Maria thought to herself. So that’s what this was all about–these people weren’t real. It was like the loop, the magical sandbox where actions had no consequences. She couldn’t disagree with his logic, though–they were still looking for an artifact.

Besides, Ian continued, everyone knows that in games, the prize comes at the end of the level.

So this is a game, then? If these people around her were Karanos’ contemporaries before his ascension, they were long-dead in reality. But the mindless, snarling people coming at them now were once eminent figures. She could see it in them–the way they moved was trained, sinuous, like people who had been groomed from an early age to fight. Whether the long-range elementalists from afar or the close-range combatants, none seemed a stranger to the battlefield. In Selejo, each one would be considered a valuable asset.

These noble individuals were reduced to this bestial, primal state of rage, as though being frozen in glass had irreversibly ruined their minds. The reanimated Life practitioners Maria spotted–their manipulation of Life energy was obvious with her new ability to sense vitality–remained ravenous and inhuman, suggesting that their impairment wasn’t something that could be healed by normal means.

Ian’s subtle smile faltered. I don’t know if I’d call this place a game, but it seems like someone made it for a reason. Ascendants have too much time on their hands.

Last time you thought something was a game, you were wrong.

The sand began to settle, finally reaching the pit’s nadir. Maria halted her momentum by blasting fire from her hands and feet. Ian glanced down, an expression of realization coming over his features. He stopped his fall gracefully with his practice–Maria could even see how he did it, muted gray Death energy swelling around his skeleton, especially around his back and legs.

The pit was dark–the practitioners above blotted it out as they descended. The veritable swarm of death was backlit by the sun, casting them as glowing silhouettes, their features obscured.

Maria’s heart skipped a beat. The scene of practitioners entering the pit, their eyes aglow in rainbow hues as varied as their powers, was arresting.

Now’s your chance to make an array, Ian said.

That was all the reminder she needed to get to work, skating artfully across the sand and crystallizing the loose mineral into glass.

Suddenly a blast of void enveloped the center column of the pit. Tens of nearby practitioners retreated from the friendly fire, only saved from extermination by defensive aegises. They seemed to be standardized and carried by every practitioner.

Glancing over, Maria saw a man who was clearly under Ian’s control, his hands held in front of him, head drooping down, as though half-asleep. Traces of murky Dark energy lay upon his fingers.

Maria froze. To her eyes, the man wasn’t yet dead, his vitality gray-tinged white. How did you do that? she asked. Are you able to thrall him because he’s lost his mind? Decemancers could only use thralling to control exceedingly primitive living creatures like insects. While Ian used thralling in the early days of the loop to gather information, he had few uses for it.

But that thralling explanation still rankled. A good Remorse practitioner could incite someone to insanity without too much time lost. Paired with a decemancer who could thrall those compromised practitioners, they’d be able to create an army of practitioners... Except Maria had never seen such a thing.

Ian sneered and spoke out loud, his voice barely audible over the cacophony of practitioner howling. “Maria, I’m so far beyond the point of thralling it’s almost funny. You’re forgetting something important. You died, and yet you practice.”

I am aware that you made me into a lich. But the Dark practitioner still lives, she retorted.

He laughed darkly. “And who said that someone needed to die for me to use necromancy?”

Suddenly all the practitioners within Ian’s range–there had to be at least thirty of them–swiveled around and faced the mouth of the pit. Ian held them in place against the pull of gravity so that they floated in the air.

As one, the puppetted practitioners attacked. Fire, ice, darkness, light, wind, sand...all crashed like a tsunami on the practitioners above.

The farther-away assailants retreated to the rim of the hole or hovered in the air, temporarily at an impasse.

“I can’t control them well at all,” he explained, taking in a deep breath, as though winded by exertion. Sweat beaded on his brow. “But the ethereal body...it’s connected to our practice as practitioners. I realized this when Euryphel devised the technique that he used against you during our final stand against Ari. Remember when he forced you to drop your oath bindings on us?”

“Oh, I remember,” Maria grumbled under her breath. With no more practitioners in the vicinity to trample, she jetted herself over to Ian’s side. As she hovered on gouts of flame, a foreign influence tugged lightly on her arm. Ian’s practice. The unspoken question was obvious: did she want Ian to hover her in place with his practice?

She gave him a nod. Being controlled was uncomfortable, but so was the exertion of keeping herself aloft with elementalism. Her fire wasn’t meant for stationary hovering. Killing her flames, she fell an inch before Ian’s practice seized her skeleton and kept her afloat. With the roar of fire gone, the only sound was the echoey screaming of practitioners above.

“Euryphel’s technique only worked if someone was directly attacking him with energy. Projectiles were immune, for instance, but my Death energy was susceptible. End and Remorse were most vulnerable to the technique–both rely on direct connections. My thinking was this: If I could string tendrils of ethereal energy between myself and these practitioners, I could find a way to forcefully activate their practice. As for simply moving and positioning them, decemancy would suffice.”

The implications were terrifying, but at least Dunai was on her side, now. “Is this something that just any necromancer can do?”

“Maybe. I don’t know many of them.”

Great. One more tool that Achemiss might have in his offensive arsenal outside of his artifact collection.

“I’ll ask Soolemar when we get back.”

Ian suddenly gasped and doubled over. The practitioners formerly under his control began to gnash in place, as though barely restrained. Then, as though a spell had broken, they turned around and surged toward the bottom of the pit. The other practitioners joined in the charge, peeling off the rim and darting down from the smoky sky.

Maria began to fall, Ian’s practice no longer holding her up. She suppressed the urge to scream and summoned her flames, buoying herself before she fell too far. Beneath her, the half-finished glassy oath array beckoned. She’d abandoned it when Dunai single-handedly dominated the battle, but that was apparently a mistake.

As Ian clawed at his head and chest in agony, insensate, Maria raced to finish the array, drawing multiple long, fiery lances like quills across the sand, simultaneously writing multiple words and sigils.

Her entire body trembled with instinctive fear at the approaching army above. Maria could use ascendant energy, and she was technically immortal as a lich, but her fire elementalism wasn’t anything special among other peak practitioners. Her End affinity could give any of them a run for their money, but that was only with the proper setup.

Maria wasn’t really a combat fighter–she didn’t thrive on battlefields. Her whole life she’d trained in martial arts and pushed herself through the specialized training that Selejo put all peak practitioners through, but she was like a spider: She excelled when she lay her web, carefully and deliberately layering her threads on one another, and then swooping in later to harvest prey caught in her absence.

Maria had gained more practical combat experience than ever while in the Infinity Loop, but she’d never quite mastered her fear of death, of being overwhelmed and overtaken. The hoard of practitioners awakened that primal fear within her, but she continued to scribe her array.

The problem isn’t being afraid, Kaiwen had once told her. It’s being frozen.

The Eldemari, paralyzed by fear? Maria thought, swelling with indignation. You wish.

Just then, Maria completed the oath array’s outer circle and activated it. It was a variant of the oath array she used to send Ian and Euryphel fleeing toward Pardin and away from Cunabulus. The practitioners above suddenly began to flee from the way they came, all except for a small handful that struggled in place. At least they weren’t coming closer.

Maria jetted over to Ian and grabbed onto the man’s shoulders, shaking him. “Ian?”

He was breathing shallowly, his chest heaving. His vitality seemed okay–had he done something to his soul again? She couldn’t forget how he’d died over and over again after savaging his soul on the lightless plane.

Ian whimpered. With great difficulty, he opened his eyes, taking in the remaining few adversaries. With a glance they fell silent and still, doubly constrained by her array and his decemancy.

“Are you okay?” she asked, eyes wide with concern.

“Seems I’m not the only one who's thought to control the living with necromancy,” he murmured. “There was a decemancer–maybe even a necromancer–who retaliated against me. They did it quickly enough that it felt practiced, like they’d needed to fend off a necromancer’s control before.”

“All it took was one person to incapacitate you?” Maria wondered.

He shook his lead limply. “No, that was only the trigger. I was too ambitious going after so many peak practitioners–I lost control.”

Ian lowered himself down onto the mound of sand, a cloud of dust puffing up around him.

“The sand’s going to get stuck in your clothes,” Maria pointed out.

Ian snorted. “If it’s difficult to clean off I can just kill myself and come back sand-free. Problem solved.”

Maria rolled her eyes and touched down next to him, reposing on her arms. “Not going to lie, that technique was quite impressive before you collapsed.”

“Thanks.” He sighed. “You were right earlier, by the way. Your warning.”

“Oh, about treating this place like a game?”

He nodded by turning his head back and forth on the sand. “I just–I want to be able to practice freely, without moral compunctions. But I feel like a key way forward relies on experimentation on living things. I thought Eternity was a place where nobody died, but that applies only to ascendants. But besides that...I don’t want to hurt ascendants, either.”

“You want to hurt things that aren’t real,” she reasoned.

His expression fell. “I’m starting to feel like such a thing is impossible. In normal dilation loops, I wouldn’t be able to use my practice properly–those loops just make an approximation of the real world for training scenarios. The people therein truly aren’t real, but I also can’t use my practice on them to push the envelope.”

Maria considered his quandary. “While ethically questionable at best, you could always inflict harm on people and then remove their memories.”

“Do you think I’m that kind of person?”

She gazed deeply into Ian’s eyes. She didn’t sense indignation in them, but genuine curiosity. Placing her hand on his splayed forearm, she replied, “No, I don’t.”

The tension was palpable as they looked at one another. Maria swore that she wouldn’t look away first, but she felt like Ian made a similar promise to himself as the seconds ticked on, neither willing to avert their gaze.

“Do you remember Yuma Tai’s gala?” she finally found herself saying. “I enjoyed that one night we shared together.”

Ian smiled. “I think I knew it was you the whole time, but I didn’t want to accept the possibility. I was supposed to be avoiding you at all costs.”

Maria chuckled softly. The moment was tender and called for lowered voices.

“How intoxicated were you?” he asked.

“A bit buzzed. You?”

“Dunno. I didn’t really feel drunk, but I wouldn’t have ever been so bold without the magic wine’s influence.”

Maria raised an eyebrow. “Ever?”

“Fine, I wouldn’t have normally been so bold. It would take rather extraordinary circumstances.”

“Why is that?”

Ian was silent for a moment. Maria wondered if perhaps she’d asked about something sensitive when he finally spoke: “I don’t normally care much for people.”

Maria felt hot as she asked the next question: “Do you care about me?”

“Cared enough that I couldn’t let you die.”

He pulled her arm gently so that she was leaning over his torso. He used his practice to angle himself up as though being popped up by pillows.

She leaned in closer and cupped his cheek. Ian flinched slightly under her touch. With Cayeun’s circlet still overhead, her skin should seem warm, lifelike, so she wrote it off as his inexperience at being touched by another.

Soon their heads were scarcely an inch from one another, the closeness intoxicating. She wanted to kiss him badly, but fear held her back. She wasn’t back in Selejo, where she could hold “consort discovery” parties and get together with beautiful men every week if she wanted. Ian wasn’t a simple young man for her to lavish with gifts and have fun with. Somewhere along the way, he had grown to become one of the people she most respected.

While she was caught up in her thoughts, Ian leaned in for a kiss.

[ hope people enjoyed this chapter and the continued development of ian and maria's relationship! ]