The Whirling City

Esther's lullaby was gone. In its place, an ear-splitting roar filled the air, an awful like the din I heard back at the butterfly temple near the beginning of the Nightmare. I craned my head backward to see what was causing the commotion. Behold, a pitch-black void the size of a city surrounded by the biggest whirlpool I had ever seen in my life, perhaps even bigger than the one beneath the Observatory. The maelstrom extended as far down as I could see. Its walls churned violently like a leviathan's mouth ready to devour all who stood in its path. Monstrous, twelve-foot waves raced across its surface like one of Jupiter's many storms. Each wave looked powerful enough to tear a dreadnought in half with ease. The whirlpool was dangerously close, no more than a hundred meters away in any direction. I shuddered to think what would happen if I drifted into its inescapable grasp. Then a dangerous idea popped into my mind.

I wonder if I could use it to charge my magic, I thought.

Before I could calculate if my ward even had a chance of surviving such immense pressure, something grazed my left cheekbone. The cut immediately burned like salt in an open wound.

“Ow!”

I immediately strengthened my flickering ward. I had weakened it to save on mana, but it seemed I wasn't safe quite yet. Moments later, my ward began to crackle with energy as thousands of razor-like projectiles bombarded its mirror-like surface. To my alarm, the projectiles actually began to chip away at the ward’s integrity, something only possible if they were hitting with considerable force. In a panic, I began to absorb as much kinetic energy from the withering attack, channeling it back into maintaining the ward. The energy I salvaged was immense, exceeding the amount needed to fix my shield, resulting in a net positive from the whole interaction. Good news, since I was now down to my last third of free magic thanks to the two wards I had made previously.

What is that? Is that her bow? I thought, remembering the crates of magick bow ammunition she had packed earlier at the forge. What kind of ammunition is she using?

I looked over at the whirling wall of water now about sixty meters away from me. Then I looked at the film of water that now covered the entire surface of my ward, the kind you only got when the rain really began to pour. Then it dawned on me.

“The rain,” I cried in disbelief. “The rain cut me!”

A piercing screech filled the air, like the cry of a vulture. I scanned the dark sky above me for signs of danger. Nothing but thick darkness. Not a glint or a shimmer from any of the Night Terror's weapons. Yet I knew in my gut that she was close, looking for an opportune moment to finish me off. After all, I was in a vulnerable position at the moment. Uneasy with my lack of information, I raised my hand to send out a sonar wave but caught myself. The whirlpool around me would distort any information I got back, rendering my one scouting tool all but useless.

I'm in trouble, I groaned.

My descent soon stopped speeding up. I had reached terminal velocity. Thankfully, the ground was nowhere to be seen. The void seemed to extend down forever. I remembered I could stop my descent whenever I wanted, as Gordon had informed me. But I continued my blistering descent. I wanted as much distance between that monster and me. I still hadn't the foggiest clue as to what I was going to do when the Night Terror finally did find me.

Maybe it's time to surrender, I told myself.

I had proved that my barrier could withstand the worst Esther's arsenal could throw at me. That was the point of all this, wasn’t it? To see if my barrier was as powerful as they believed it was?

I almost stopped my descent then and there. But as I moved to do so, a tiny dot of light appeared in the distance. The dot soon became a shimmering platform, much larger than the one Esther had just dismantled, though it was hard to be certain from the distance. Its surface was green and glass-like. Etherealite, the same material that made up the walls of Cathedral of Eternity.

I’ll surrender there, I thought, relieved that my ordeal was coming to an end.

I prepared a Null Momentum alteration, my preferred method of landing softly from a rapid fall. A Null Momentum alteration allowed me to safely remove all momentum from my body instantly while converting any excess velocity into free magic. Now, one may ask why I didn't bother using this alteration back in the Observatory when I jumped into the void then, and the answer is that I didn't have enough magic to make it then. A Null Momentum required at least 15% of my maximum magic to perform safely. At the time, I was hovering a little over 5%, nowhere near enough to create the life-saving magic.

When the platform was seconds away from impact, I activated the Null Momentum. My descent halted almost instantly just a few feet off the ground, yet I did not feel the crushing sting of a sudden stop. The Null Momentum kept me suspended in the air as if held by an invisible hand. I released the alteration and hopped down onto the glass floor, a big smile plastered on my face.

Never gets old! I thought.

I dusted off my borrowed coat with my free hand and I quickly surveyed my environment. The starred sky was gone, swallowed by the colorless void. The air was surprisingly chilly, well below freezing. I was glad to be wearing Gordon's temperature-regulating coat. The whirlpool carved the edges of the glass platform like a powerful tornado. The maelstrom was essentially shrieking in my ears, prompting me to plug my ears with kinetic magic to keep myself from going deaf. The killer rain continued to bombard my ward fiercer than before. I held my ward firm lest the deluge tore me to shreds. My free magic reserves continue to hover above 25%, just enough to block one more powerful attack from Esther’s endless arsenal of overpowered weapons.

Iris, I cried. I'd like to make a formal surrender-

The platform shuddered violently. Massive cracks spider-webbed the glass surface beneath my feet. The platform held firm, but another hit like that would likely shatter it completely. I looked up to see the Night Terror hunched over at the other edge of the platform. Her face was now completely veiled by her black butterfly mask, her diadem nowhere to be seen. The Night Terror gripped Ascalon in her right hand as if it weighed nothing. The swordspear's three-foot blade was still ablaze with that accursed purple flame.

My opponent began to pace her side of the platform like a lioness fed up with chasing her prey. After sizing me up, she marched straight toward me, her polearm pointed directly at my heart. Her shadowy veil swirled behind like like a forest fire. The very light around her flickered like a dying candle, as if the very light itself was afraid of her.

“Esther!” I gasped involuntarily.

I covered my mouth.

I couldn’t hear my own voice over the roar of the whirlpool.

There was no way Esther would be able to hear me.

“Esther," I cried again, desperately trying to make myself heard. "Wait up!”

Instead of waiting, Esther charged toward me at full speed. She would reach me in no more than ten seconds.

I looked up at the cold void above, knowing I only had one card left to play.

“Iris, time out, please!” I yelped. “You know I can’t fight without my barrier. I’ve already proven that it works, right? That’s all you wanted? I’m fine with throwing in the towel right here. I don’t have anything left to prove!”

The relief I felt when she actually answered.

Is that so? she said, sounding mildly disappointed. Very well. Throw down your weapon and let Esther finish you off. I promise it will be quick if you stand still.

That’s not the answer I wanted! Not to mention you’re being unnecessarily cruel! Did I do something to you?

Now you're asking the right questions. Still, it’s going to happen whether you like it or not. So why not at least try to survive?

Esther sped towards me like an oncoming train, no more than five seconds away. I strengthened my final ward and raised Kairos half-heartedly in front of me. Manaburn seeped deep into my veins, dulling my senses. My entire body screamed at me, warning me that death was imminent.

Why? I cried. What do you have to gain?

Esther’s first strike came from seemingly nowhere.

It glanced off the left side of my ward just beside my stomach. My ward cracked with electricity, on the verge of failure, but it somehow held firm. Before I could celebrate, a quick second strike to the same area shattered my sole defense completely.

I immediately activated my Spider Boots and jumped to the other side of the platform, a good, two hundred-meter jump. I activated a Null Momentum just in time to soften my botched landing. I tumbled head over heels several times before coming to a stop on my face dangerously close to the edge of the platform. I looked up instinctively. The whirlpool gnashed at me like a pack of ravenous jackals, threatening to swallow me whole. The worst of all, the maelstrom was actually pulling me toward itself like a giant watery hoover.

"Why?" I cried.

I activated a hasty kinetic push and fired it off just as my feet made contact with the edge of the storm. The push sent me a good twenty meters away from the edge of the whirling wall of water, enough that it was no longer dragging me in. My entire body felt as if it was on fire. A quick glance down confirmed that I was indeed ablaze with the purple flame from head to toe. Instead of struggling, I simply rested my head on the ground in defeat. Once dragon's bane sunk its teeth into a victim, nothing could douse its flames.

Well, that’s it, I thought, thoroughly fed up with the unfair fight I had been thrown into.

As I prayed for death to come quickly, the burning sensation vanished as quickly as it came. A small blizzard surrounded me as the Winter Shield’s ice enchantment kicked in at full blast. It was stronger than any reaction the coat had given before. The purple flames fought to stay alive, but it wasn’t long before even they were smothered by the magical snowstorm.

An icy aura surrounded my battered body. It left me feeling refreshed, soothing the severe burns the purple flames had left on my arms and legs. When the mini snowstorm subsided, the wicked flames were gone, but so was the Winter Shield. Gordon's prized coat had sacrificed itself to keep me safe one last time.

I stared at my hands, stunned that magic had doused dragon’s bane. Such a feat was unheard of since dragon's bane burned hotter than an oil spill set ablaze. I shuddered to think of how much the Winter Shield cost to produce in the real world.

It’s literally a priceless relic, I marveled.

Searing pain in my left abdomen snapped me out of my reverie. Though I was no longer on fire, the swordspear had cut clean through Gordon’s coat like paper mache. It left a wicked, four-inch gash on the left side of my stomach. The cut didn’t look too deep, thankfully, but it stung worse than a barbed arrowhead. From the looks of it, I was going to bleed out within a couple of minutes if I didn’t patch it up.

“Hey, Priscilla!” I called out before realizing that she wasn’t here.

I laughed at my mistake.

Where are you, friend? I thought miserably.

Thankfully, I had some tools to deal with serious wounds. I placed my hand over my wound. I grit my teeth, mentally braced myself for even more pain, and created a kinetic abdominal tourniquet. A kinetic tourniquet functioned exactly like a normal one, it stopped a wound from bleeding by applying pressure over it. The only difference with one I made was that it was magical in origin. I yelped as pressure quickly built around the wound like a vice grip. After a few seconds of literally seeing red, I made a visual check of the wound. It looked awful. I could still see the gore through the thin translucent kinetic tourniquet, but the bleeding had completely stopped.

I removed my hand and painfully stumbled back up to my feet. That’s when the pain hit me like semi-truck. I screeched as I dropped Kairos and collapsed back onto the ground. The pain paralyzed me for a good five seconds. As I lay there wondering if this was the end, a dark shadow appeared over me.

Before I could even cry out for help, I was staring at the business end of Ascalon.

The Night Terror's butterfly mask melted away, revealing Esther's cold face in the low light of the glass platform. I reached out to Kairos. She promptly kicked it out of reach.

"That's enough," she said. "Please, stay still. I promise to make this painless.”

I looked at Kairos out of the corner of my eyes. It lay flat on the ground about a good ten feet away. Its final kinetic strike was still attached to the blade, shimmering with power, begging to be unleashed. I could activate the alteration remotely, something my opponents always seemed to overlook. Esther was close enough that she would be hit by it at full force even from the distance. Sure, the Night Terror veil could simply absorb the attack and all I would accomplish would be enraging her. But, if wasn’t she wasn’t expecting the attack, there was a chance she wouldn’t become intangible in time, possibly securing the fight for me. The question was if I wanted to win that badly.

“It seems like Iris wants me to die here,” I said, coughing violently. No blood came up though.

“Yes,” Esther said. "She does."

“Why? Did I do something to her?”

“No, at least, nothing I’m aware of. But your death serves a purpose.”

“I don’t like where this is going.”

She pointed to my wrist. I remembered the watch she had given me not too long. I took a glance at the plain timepiece. My blood stained its glossy face, but I could still make the single glass orb resting beneath the quartz cover. I noticed that a vibrant green light now lit the orb instead of its ominous purple.

“The Shi-gan," she said. "What do you think it does?”

“I don’t know, turn back time?” I guessed, raising my wrist. “If it can, am I allowed to use it right now?”

Esther smiled humorlessly.

“It allows you to create one Save State, a point in time you can always return. You’re familiar with such things, I presume?”

My eyes widened.

“Like a digital save state? That’s what this does?”

She nodded.

“No matter how far off the rails the Nightmare has gone, you can always return to the point in time the Save State was made. A powerful tool for us. There is but one condition to its use. Its wielder must die while in sole possession of the Shi-gan. Then and only then can a Save State be forged.”

My heart skipped a beat.

“Not a true death, right?” I asked.

“Of course not,” Esther scoffed. “This is exactly why we are making a Save State for you in the first place. You don’t have second chances like the rest of us do. With this, we at least have a way to reset the board should the worst happen to you.”

“I’m flattered, to be honest," I gasped. "Still a little uneasy about the whole “having to die” part, but it would be nice to have a contingency.”

Esther nodded.

She tossed Ascalon up into the air. It morphed into a million beads of light before vanishing into the aether. With her other hand, she summoned the bow she had shot me in the heart with, the one with the plain wooden frame.

I knew what was coming next. Once again, the ethereal arrow lodged in my heart appeared. Tied to the end of the arrow was a single golden thread of magic held in Esther’s free hand. She shouldered her bow and pulled out a pair of spectral scissors from within her veil. She casually lifted the scissors to the thread, opened its blades, and held it over the thread I presumed was keeping me alive.

She knelt beside me and held out her hand for me to take. A moment of anger prompted me to slap it away given the pain she had put me in. But let the moment pass, allowing reason to govern my actions. This was a gesture she entirely didn’t need to do. Besides, the last thing I wanted to do was die alone.

I took her hand.

It was surprisingly warm.

She squeezed my hand firmly.

“Glad I don’t have to die alone,” I joked.

She placed her hands over my eyelids and gently closed them. I felt an immense rush of relief, a feeling that now, I would finally get a chance to rest.

“You are going to be okay,” she said in a soothing voice. “Iris and Gordon have prepared a lovely meal of ribeye steaks, mashed potatoes, and red pepper quiches, Gordon's specialty. For dessert, we'll have chocolate-covered strawberries."

"I love strawberries."

"And of course, there will be plenty of nectar to go around for all of us...”