That the blast hadn't killed her outright she attributed half to the testament of her ideal powered armor's defensive strength, and half to the fact that it didn't seem to have been centered directly on her nor intended to kill her. Aided by a prodigious leap, she took to the skies, held aloft by the gravity manipulation devices built into the hips of her armor. She looked down at the billowing explosion cloud below her, the interior of her visor lighting up statistics and information on her heads-up display.
The back of her armor buzzed, the tactile sensors alerting her of an incoming threat. She spun to face it as what looked to be a streak of light charged toward her; The Other finally catching up to her. Her visor analyzed the attacker's stance, slightly edging out her own ability to read what it was doing, and allowing her to choose her response. She steadied herself in midair with her gravity modules, allowing herself the stability to meet The Other's charge with a crescent kick. Her kick met the elbow strike of the shadowy being with a blast of ki that snuffed the fires of the explosion and Ifrit's vision far below them.
It was the elbow strike that allowed her to pinpoint the persona that The Other hand taken on for this engagement, even before she'd stopped its attack cold with that of her own. True enough, the silhouette of the shadowy being matched that of her cousin--the martial miqo'te Ku Fei--even down to her flowing cyclas garb. Oddly, she felt as though this impersonation of one of the closest people she had ever known was a sign of respect from The Other; especially given her surety that Ku had perished in the Reckoning.
"Finally, we fight on equal terms, Reclaimer," it said as it broke contact, but wasted no time in launching a flurry of fists and feet at the miqo'te, a fusillade that the engineer was hard-pressed to counter and parry.
It really was almost just like facing off against her cousin again, but she knew that it was simply The Other drawing on her memories. Even still, the thought of Ku Fei brought fresh the memory of her second-hand information of the Reckoning, the sorrow pulling on her heart.
The Other capitalized on that memory, but instead of an attack, it drew that memory from her subconscious and shifted the entire cityscape beneath them, changing it to an image of her home in Doma, in flames and under assault by the Garlean Empire. She hadn't been present for the Reckoning, trapped as she'd been by Garlean conscription at Castrum Meridianum, but she had enough of an active imagination and knowledge of Garlean tactics to figure how it had probably gone. The Other didn't let up one moment from its assault, however, several times forcing Chao to activate her magitek energy shielding to ward off a blow that snuck through her defenses.
"Look closely," The Other told her. "Savor it. Remember it. This is the source of your power! Your first impulse, your first motive! Your original memory!"
Her gaze flickered for just an instant to the environment around her, but she thought herself covered in that moment of inattentiveness by the presence of her magitek barrier.
She thought incorrectly.
Blossoming fire of pain exploded in her ribs as she suffered one of her cousin's signature elbow strikes, blowing right through her barrier with a strength she knew from observation could disintegrate boulders. Blood fountained from her mouth at the strike, and another blow destroyed her gravity devices, sending her falling to the ground far below.
"But, with that strength alone, you will never succeed," its ominous voice chased her, the creature itself remaining high above to watch her fall.
Even the most powerful armor configuration I could envision... Chao thought, her vision blurring; whether through blood loss or the smoke rising from the Doman cityscape, she couldn't tell. But then, I already knew that strength alone wouldn't be the deciding factor, didn't I...
"This, finally, will be the end, Reclaimer." The Other's form had shifted again, the size indicating a lalafell, and there was only one lalafell she knew that had any kind of combat ability. "Veniant spiritus glaciales obscurantes...."
Oh, now that was cheating. Stealing the appearances and abilities of others was one thing, but now it was going to finish her off, using Zoey's ice powers and her own incanted style of magic combat. But surely enough, aetheric ice in the appearance of ice shards began to swirl around the lalafell, coaelscing into her partially-cupped hands.
"Cum obscuratione flet tempestas nivalis!" Massive surges of aether surrounded the lalafell, swirling snow and ice shards around her as a brilliant blue glow built that forced the visor Chao wore to automatically dim to protect her vision. "It won't be so bad. Your path to greater magic will be forever barred, but you will have your friends to protect you. It wouldn't be so bad, to live out your days in relative peace in that Academy. Nivis tempestas obscurans!"
The Other in Zoey's form drew its hand back, coalescing all that energy into a single spiraling storm of energy which it then proceeded to hurl down toward Chao, the air before it dropping to subzero temperatures as it closed in on the magitek prodigy. Its words, however, and even the threat of that powerful ice spell, barely registered in the back of her mind, her thoughts still following the path of what she had learned, or rather, failed to learn, here in Phantasmagoria. But at its mention of her friends, something tweaked in her mind. Did she not already know? Was it not in the words she had heard from those close to her?
"If you're faced with a difficult problem, don't try to get over it," Zoey had once told her. "Hold it inside you and move on with life."
"Be a woman who can always move forward," Cid nan Garlond had given her his parting words when she'd made her ill-fated attempt to flee from the Garlean assassins. "No matter how dirty you become."
And the words of wisdom from Satomi, her truest friend: "Whether it grew from a need for vengeance, or from deciding to run from something, your strength is still your strength."
And so that was it, wasn't it. Almost of her own accord, her left hand came up, but it was not a futile gesture to ward off an implacable foe. A magic circle flared to life in front of her palm, catching and halting the spell on its surface. She felt the strain all through her body in her effort to maintain the spell circle, not as a shield, but as a gate.
"Magia Erebia," she murmured to herself, using her remaining gravity device to brace herself as she talked herself through what she was attempting. "Good and evil. Strength and weakness. It's the power to accept everything as it is and take them all in, exactly as they are."
As she spoke, a small sphere of magic energy had formed on her side of the magic circle, the condensed core of the spell revealed to her. She snatched the sphere in her hand, crushing it and absorbing its power into herself as she incanted, "Complexio!"
The power of the spell coursed through her body, surging through her like a wild river as she reached the ground, angling herself to land on her feet. Power, raw and pure, filled her body, leaking into an icy aura of white and blue that threw harsh shadows across her face. Her eyes lit with an unnatural blue light as she gazed up toward The Other.
"Fantastic," it remarked, shifting form once more, into that of the elezen she had dueled in the desert to show off her fighting style. "So you have solved the mystery of Magia Erebia. Excellent work, Reclaimer." It formed an aetheric blade of pure energy over its right hand and dove toward her. "Now show me your results!"
Chao braced herself, directing and flowing the absorbed energy through her body. A pair of smaller magic circles appeared encircling her right ankle, signifying the directed source of her new power as she met The Other's aetheric blade with another crescent kick.
The explosive force of this impact was more than quadruple that of their earlier strike, engulfing the entire area in a blinding sphere of light.
The back of her armor buzzed, the tactile sensors alerting her of an incoming threat. She spun to face it as what looked to be a streak of light charged toward her; The Other finally catching up to her. Her visor analyzed the attacker's stance, slightly edging out her own ability to read what it was doing, and allowing her to choose her response. She steadied herself in midair with her gravity modules, allowing herself the stability to meet The Other's charge with a crescent kick. Her kick met the elbow strike of the shadowy being with a blast of ki that snuffed the fires of the explosion and Ifrit's vision far below them.
It was the elbow strike that allowed her to pinpoint the persona that The Other hand taken on for this engagement, even before she'd stopped its attack cold with that of her own. True enough, the silhouette of the shadowy being matched that of her cousin--the martial miqo'te Ku Fei--even down to her flowing cyclas garb. Oddly, she felt as though this impersonation of one of the closest people she had ever known was a sign of respect from The Other; especially given her surety that Ku had perished in the Reckoning.
"Finally, we fight on equal terms, Reclaimer," it said as it broke contact, but wasted no time in launching a flurry of fists and feet at the miqo'te, a fusillade that the engineer was hard-pressed to counter and parry.
It really was almost just like facing off against her cousin again, but she knew that it was simply The Other drawing on her memories. Even still, the thought of Ku Fei brought fresh the memory of her second-hand information of the Reckoning, the sorrow pulling on her heart.
The Other capitalized on that memory, but instead of an attack, it drew that memory from her subconscious and shifted the entire cityscape beneath them, changing it to an image of her home in Doma, in flames and under assault by the Garlean Empire. She hadn't been present for the Reckoning, trapped as she'd been by Garlean conscription at Castrum Meridianum, but she had enough of an active imagination and knowledge of Garlean tactics to figure how it had probably gone. The Other didn't let up one moment from its assault, however, several times forcing Chao to activate her magitek energy shielding to ward off a blow that snuck through her defenses.
"Look closely," The Other told her. "Savor it. Remember it. This is the source of your power! Your first impulse, your first motive! Your original memory!"
Her gaze flickered for just an instant to the environment around her, but she thought herself covered in that moment of inattentiveness by the presence of her magitek barrier.
She thought incorrectly.
Blossoming fire of pain exploded in her ribs as she suffered one of her cousin's signature elbow strikes, blowing right through her barrier with a strength she knew from observation could disintegrate boulders. Blood fountained from her mouth at the strike, and another blow destroyed her gravity devices, sending her falling to the ground far below.
"But, with that strength alone, you will never succeed," its ominous voice chased her, the creature itself remaining high above to watch her fall.
Even the most powerful armor configuration I could envision... Chao thought, her vision blurring; whether through blood loss or the smoke rising from the Doman cityscape, she couldn't tell. But then, I already knew that strength alone wouldn't be the deciding factor, didn't I...
"This, finally, will be the end, Reclaimer." The Other's form had shifted again, the size indicating a lalafell, and there was only one lalafell she knew that had any kind of combat ability. "Veniant spiritus glaciales obscurantes...."
Oh, now that was cheating. Stealing the appearances and abilities of others was one thing, but now it was going to finish her off, using Zoey's ice powers and her own incanted style of magic combat. But surely enough, aetheric ice in the appearance of ice shards began to swirl around the lalafell, coaelscing into her partially-cupped hands.
"Cum obscuratione flet tempestas nivalis!" Massive surges of aether surrounded the lalafell, swirling snow and ice shards around her as a brilliant blue glow built that forced the visor Chao wore to automatically dim to protect her vision. "It won't be so bad. Your path to greater magic will be forever barred, but you will have your friends to protect you. It wouldn't be so bad, to live out your days in relative peace in that Academy. Nivis tempestas obscurans!"
The Other in Zoey's form drew its hand back, coalescing all that energy into a single spiraling storm of energy which it then proceeded to hurl down toward Chao, the air before it dropping to subzero temperatures as it closed in on the magitek prodigy. Its words, however, and even the threat of that powerful ice spell, barely registered in the back of her mind, her thoughts still following the path of what she had learned, or rather, failed to learn, here in Phantasmagoria. But at its mention of her friends, something tweaked in her mind. Did she not already know? Was it not in the words she had heard from those close to her?
"If you're faced with a difficult problem, don't try to get over it," Zoey had once told her. "Hold it inside you and move on with life."
"Be a woman who can always move forward," Cid nan Garlond had given her his parting words when she'd made her ill-fated attempt to flee from the Garlean assassins. "No matter how dirty you become."
And the words of wisdom from Satomi, her truest friend: "Whether it grew from a need for vengeance, or from deciding to run from something, your strength is still your strength."
And so that was it, wasn't it. Almost of her own accord, her left hand came up, but it was not a futile gesture to ward off an implacable foe. A magic circle flared to life in front of her palm, catching and halting the spell on its surface. She felt the strain all through her body in her effort to maintain the spell circle, not as a shield, but as a gate.
"Magia Erebia," she murmured to herself, using her remaining gravity device to brace herself as she talked herself through what she was attempting. "Good and evil. Strength and weakness. It's the power to accept everything as it is and take them all in, exactly as they are."
As she spoke, a small sphere of magic energy had formed on her side of the magic circle, the condensed core of the spell revealed to her. She snatched the sphere in her hand, crushing it and absorbing its power into herself as she incanted, "Complexio!"
The power of the spell coursed through her body, surging through her like a wild river as she reached the ground, angling herself to land on her feet. Power, raw and pure, filled her body, leaking into an icy aura of white and blue that threw harsh shadows across her face. Her eyes lit with an unnatural blue light as she gazed up toward The Other.
"Fantastic," it remarked, shifting form once more, into that of the elezen she had dueled in the desert to show off her fighting style. "So you have solved the mystery of Magia Erebia. Excellent work, Reclaimer." It formed an aetheric blade of pure energy over its right hand and dove toward her. "Now show me your results!"
Chao braced herself, directing and flowing the absorbed energy through her body. A pair of smaller magic circles appeared encircling her right ankle, signifying the directed source of her new power as she met The Other's aetheric blade with another crescent kick.
The explosive force of this impact was more than quadruple that of their earlier strike, engulfing the entire area in a blinding sphere of light.
Chris Ganale | R'tahz Tia | Yuuna Akashi | Chao Lingshen | Seno Nakakami | L'dran Cresnoble | Garon Crayson