88

--TheirWorld--

Then she shook her head. “What are you planning on doing, exactly?” Guin asked, looking him over again. “Is this… connected to the spell that you cast?”

The flames flickered and rippled around him. She didn’t want to admit it, but his appearance was striking beautiful, as if he were some sort of mythical creature. But then, she remembered Tea’s words, I guess that’s what the Undying are.

“It is,” Ibraxis nodded. “If you must know, I’ve taken a large quantity of sun spirits and wrapped my body in them until I’m ready to use them. Focusing them on whatever point I choose should, at best, kill him in a pit of lava. At worse, it will make him very, very uncomfortable. Other than that, I’d settle for reducing the effectiveness of that armor,” he told her nonchalantly. Then he shouted down: “Paw, come up!”

Paw was sending a flurry of punches accosting Othren. Guin gulped as she sent Ibraxis a glare so venomous that she was afraid that her version of ‘coming up’ would involve an [Earthquake] to his face. Ibraxis clicked his tongue following with a “Yeah, yeah.”

“She’s gonna kill you later, isn’t she?” Guin grimaced.

“Oh, she’ll certainly try,” he answered candidly.

“I got in a critical hit that damaged his breastplate,” she then told him, pointing to the place on her own chest. “I’m guessing that attack of yours will be far more effective if you use that as an entry point.”

Ibraxis gave her a toothy grin. “Look at you, being useful!”

Tsking at him, she crossed her arms and turned her attention to BronzePaw as she gave a mighty leap that had her plopping down on the other side of Guin. She nodded to them.

Ibraxis’s tail did a whip-like flourish as he jumped down on his own. A set of Magic Missiles and flaming arrows rained down on the area before his paws touched the broken ground.

Othren heaved himself up to stand tall. Though he was starting to look a little worse for wear, his expression was one that was more of anger and ego than of injury.

Watching from above, Guin held her breath — but she wasn’t sure if it was out of fear or anticipation.

Stella’s agitated face appeared in a window. “Guys, what’s Ibraxis doing down there?”

“Seriously,” Drakov came into view as well. “Do we fire on him or not?”

“What’s going on?” Tea went, wide eyed on his screen. “Ibraxis just like… burst into flames and just kinda… left.”

“What?” Drakov went.

Stella rubbed her hands over her face. “A little late with that notice, Tea,” she said, and pointed down in the box of the screen. “He’s in the hole.”

“Hole? What hole?”

“The one BronzePaw made with her fists,” Stella drawlled causing Tea’s mouth to drop.

Shoving her teammates voices to the back of her mind, Guin watched as Ibraxis and Captain Othren circled each other. Othren lunged at him — Ibraxis sidestepped quickly, reaching out and placing his hand on the hole that Guin’s spear had left in the Captain’s armor.

The flames along Ibraxis’s scales and feathers flickered, then pulsed toward his hand. Once. Twice. Again — faster. The armor began to glow. First it was just the area around Ibraxis’s hand, but then it spread. Rather than taking action, Othren looked confused — then he began to sputter and scream. Steam rose from the weak and open areas of the suit. The sword fell with a clatter as he started to squirm away.

Guin’s hand flew to her mouth as the man’s screams stung her ears.

She had thought claws were scary.

This was horrifying.

The white garule didn’t waver as the armor around his hands began to drip away in large, red hot globs; he merely stepped back. His work, it seemed, was done.

The smell of burn meat filled the air, but Guin was too horrified to gag. His arms open, and skin blacked, Othren’s eyes rolled up to the back of his head as the screams died away.

And there he stood. Silent. Lifeless.

Ibraxis crossed his arms.

Guin choked.

Countless things had been killed at her hand since she had entered the world of TheirWorld. People, even. They had just killed six of them without remorse — but this, somehow, this was worse than any of it.

“Why…?” BronzePaw asked her in a soft, trembling voice. “Why did you bring him here? Why couldn't you have just left well enough alone?”

Guin didn’t bother with the tears she felt running down her face. “I-I… he was a healer…”

“He is an Undying!” BronzePaw shouted at her. “He is anything he wants to be!”

“Bahena!” Ibraxis scolded as he deftly landed back up next to them. “Leave her be.”

“‘Leave her be’?” Paw scoffed. “Leave her be? And what should I do with you? Why are you bothering to cooperate with us?”

“Why are you so pissy?” The garule asked looking at his hand. Guin could see that it was even more blacked and burnt than Othren’s body — but she also saw it healing before their eyes.

BronzePaw pointed down at the dead Captain. “How could you? We did not have to fight that man!” she told him. “That was a fight that you started!”

“And ended,” Ibraxis said. BronzePaw’s eyes went wide. “He’ll respawn. Probably still hate me, but he’ll respawn.”

Guin very dearly wished she wasn’t standing between the two of them. A great, rumbling growl rose from deep within BronzePaw’s chest.

“H-Hey, now. We lived, right?” Guin went. “A-And Ibraxis is right. It’s not like he’s dead. The area will reset a few minutes after the battle ended…”

“And us?” BronzePaw said in a pained voice. “How are any of us supposed to measure up to an Undying?”

Oh, thought Guin as she opened and closed her mouth. The garule were a very territorial people. That included other people and the roles they played.

TeaforaDragon didn’t mean anything to her because his gender and beta personality aside, Tea made it very clear from the start that he wasn’t about to challenge her authority. Ibraxis — or Sathuren, himself — was a very different story. Not only did she see him as a rival, she may not have even seen him as male. Guin may not have known him very well, but she could see it in the way that he spoke and acted that, in the game, he was like her; acting out the part that he wasn’t as free to act out in their real lives. Compared to Sathuren, Ibraxis was far more careless with both his choice of words and his actions. Free to lash out when he wanted, in the way he wanted — and that’s why the battle had happened.

And then, as if on a whim, he ended it. Forget all the effort that BronzePaw — and the rest of the group for that matter — had put into the fight. Ibraxis the Undying had just casually walked over and made it all pointless.

Looking at her feet, she realized that the Dassah part of her felt far more guilty than the Guin part of her — which, in turn, made Guin feel even more guilty. It was as Tea had told her earlier: the Undying were a weapon. Though the power was horrifying to witness, the reality was that Ibraxis was a weapon that she would be readily willing to throw at her enemies. Reckless, near, god-like power like the Undying’s, could only help them in the fights ahead.

But BronzePaw treated the game world just like she did the real world. This group had been her place. Her place to grow. Her place to try new things without the judgement of others. And Ibraxis wasn’t just a random person they had brought into heal. He was her brother. Her rival. She would never use her brother as a weapon, and she believes with all her heart that she is not his equal. But she wants to be. That’s why she’s a mage. Guin looked up at her bronze scaled friend.

“We don’t have to measure up to him,” Guin told her. We just have to use him, she thought, though she knew she couldn’t say it out loud. Afraid that BronzePaw might see those kinds of thoughts in her eyes, she looked at Ibraxis — who probably knew right away what Guin was thinking, as his mouth twitched into a knowing smirk. “We just need to work together. No one person should end up doing more than the other.”

Ibraxis snorted. “If we all acted as weak as you are, we’d never get anywhere,” he told her.

“I’ll get better!” she told him stubbornly.

“A girl who cries as much as you do?” He chided, pointing at her face with a flick of his tail. “Good luck.”

BronzePaw jumped back down to the ground without a word.