Sometimes, Riven dearly wished he could be an Essentier like half the people in his life were. Really, how unfair was it they had these great powers to yield at times like this and he had at best the ability to curse the Scions for granting him nothing? Flying would be nice. It wasn’t much to ask either. He could flap ethereal wings, and get away from the madness of a Deadmage trying to envelop the whole world in a tornado.

“Paltry,” shouted the Deadmage. “You cannot fight me, you cannot defeat me. You’re all ants. It’s time you died, already!”

When Riven looked up from his crouched position over Rose, dust, rocks, and air had formed a smaller maelstrom around the Deadmage. And in this cloud, Viriya had jumped in like the reckless idiot she was. Her viridian star flashed everywhere like fireworks.

Riven blinked, then focused on the matter at hand. Rose. He needed to get her to safety, probably all the way to the hospital where she could be given proper treatment.

But the air pressure had risen, throwing its weight around like a rampaging mountain. The ground cracked, little flecks shooting up and away as the air crushed the life out of them. Behind Riven, the edge of the tornado had nearly solidified, the insane centrifuge of air so compressed the outside world had disappeared from view. There was nothing but this tornado. Nothing but death. His hair was whipping everywhere, and any moment now, his clothes would be ripped from him. If only Riven had the time to be worried about the potential embarrassment.

Imminent danger was always the biggest priority.

Gently, but still pacing himself, Riven pulled Rose away by the armpits. Viriya was still keeping the Deadmage busy, so he had the perfect opportunity to get away, if the wind would stop trying to tear him to shreds. Every step was harder than the last, and he had to keep a low profile. He had picked up his gun but it would be about useful as screaming at the Deadmage and his pet twister. Damn, but his Spirit of Air was powerful.

Rose coughed. She jerked in his grip and looked up. “What the—Riven?”

Riven paused. He almost relaxed his grip on her at the wash of relief at seeing her awake but kept himself tense. They weren’t free yet. “You all right?”

She tore her gaze away from Riven, then stared around at everything else, or whatever remained of everything else, before settling on the Deadmage’s shadow in the cloud. “We have to stop him.”

“Rose, where are the others? Where’s Glaven?” Riven asked. She tried to struggle out of his grip and get up, but he kept a tight hold on her. “Don’t move so much, you’re hurt.”

“Damn it, we have to fight.”

“Do you see yourself?”

With surprising strength, Rose pulled free of his hold on her. It took a couple of tries, but she stood up, legs trembling but gaze unwavering from the flashes of green within the cloud of dust. How was Viriya still alive in that chaos? “We need to stall him so everyone can leave.”

“But… he’s just a Deadmage.” Even as he said it, the last Deadmage popped into his head. All the fire. Had it been closer to the more populated areas of Providence city, the damage and destruction would have been untold. “You can’t stop him in your condition.”

“Get away, little brother. Before this spills out of control and everyone dies.”

And with that, Rose charged into the fray.

“Get back Rose!” Why wouldn’t she listen? She’d just get herself killed in her condition. “You’ll die, you idiot.”

She paid him no mind. As if anyone ever did.

Rose stopped at the edge of the smaller maelstrom, then thrust her bloody arm forwards. A section of the maelstrom siphoned off and began circling her, and she stepped back. More and more of the maelstrom began leaving the Deadmage and taking on Rose as its new mistress until the scuffle was fully exposed.

Viriya looked terrible. Her hair was a mess, her jacket missing and her shirt torn and untucked. One boot was lost to who knew where. Only good thing was that there seemed to be no severe wounds or injuries. The set of her face was fiercer than ever. A large fissure had opened up between them. It separated her from the Deadmage, with a starburst of fractures snaking out in every direction and one lone fault line stretching oof into the northern horizon.

She had her gun pointed at the Deadmage, who was mostly unharmed, but she didn’t fire, her eyes flickering to the growing funnel around Rose. Of course. All the green of her Essence was swirling around Riven’s sister, and any shot from her would veer straight towards it.

Rose didn’t care. Her own twister grew, its burgeoning strength pulling loose rocks into the whirl. It made the ground crack all over, the fractures merging with that of the large fissure. The Deadmage stepped backwards, and Riven copied the motion. No way he’d be safe here. What in the Chasm was Rose’s Essence? Everything she had gathered spun faster and faster, the vortex now stronger than the Deadmage’s twister sealing away the rest of the world.

It was getting harder and harder to breathe. Rose’s brown-and-grey cyclone, that twister of immediate death upon touch, rose higher and higher into the sky, a drill for the heavens where the Deadmage’s was for the land.

A rock shot out. Not a tiny pebble pulled from the broken earth, but a mass bigger than his fist. It shot at the with too fast for Riven to react save for a blink, but like all else, it too was deflected away by irrepressible wind. Where in the world had it come from? One moment it was all tiny dust, the next a big chunk of earth blasted out.

Then Riven saw it. In Rose’s smaller but fiercer tornado, the dust from the ground was coagulating, all clumping together to form rocks of various shapes and sizes. All forming dozens of different shots, though the twister didn’t become clearer. As the swirling dust got pulled together, more earth was sucked up from the ground and added to the funnel to keep the stock of dirt full.

Rose fired. Rock after rock shot towards the Deadmage, who shielded himself with more wind. One blasted towards his head, but it exploded just before it hist his face. Immense pressure. Had to be.

Rose was undaunted. The rocks circulating around her were growing larger, now nearly as big as Riven’s head and easier to spot as they were carried marginally slower than their smaller brethren. Riven had to shade his eyes and nose. The dust was starting to irritate him, and he kept his eyes screwed as near to close as possible while still seeing the fight. They had better end this soon, before Riven passed out from sheer irritation.

More rocks cannoned towards the Deadmage. One for his head, one to shatter his legs, one to cave in his stupid chest. But his shield was impenetrable. They shattered before getting close enough to hit him, the pressure making the rocks burst soon as they were close enough.

“See!” the Deadmage crowed. “All you do is annoy me with your little nibbles.”

Rose, however, only grinned. “Now!”

Viriya fired. Her golden-green bullet blazed towards the Deadmage, who was shrouded by a cloud of dust that had cropped up from the rocks his shield of pressure had crushed. The bullet tore through the cloud and passed straight through his shield, contorting and flattening in the process. It hit its mark, albeit with the momentum too decreased to cause any severe damage.

Riven grinned. Damage had never been their intention. The bullet had transferred Viriya’s Locking Essence onto the Deadmage, and now his cloak was slowing being enveloped in a film of shimmering green.

“Fire!” Rose shouted.

Viriya did so, but the Deadmage reacted too fast. Air twisted and whirled around him, a and Viriya’s second shot met a whip of air so compressed, Riven stared agog at the ripple in space that contorted the light passing through it. More shots rang in the air, all repelled by those strange curls of air.

With a yell, the Deadmage shot them outwards.

Rose shouted for Riven to duck and he threw himself to the ground, unheeding how his elbows protested at the contact. Just in time. The whips of air hit everywhere, little shockwaves blasting out at their passage, booms ramming into his ear at the impact. Riven gripped his head. Though, what protection would his hands provide, when those whips tore through rocks like a knife cutting through cheese?

He looked up, thanking the Scions with every silent breath that he hadn’t been hit. Where were the others? Not torn to shreds right? No. Viriya had also followed Rose’s advice, and was picking herself off the ground, a little grimace twisting her mouth. Rose was surrounded by her personal twister still. Hopefully still alive. Around the Deadmage, the air was twisting again, compressing into little sickles ready to scythe through everything.

Rose’s little tornado exploded outwards. Riven was thrown back to the ground, the dust clouding the land. He coughed, covering himself up again. Chasm, he’d been nearly screwing his eyes closed, and now it was impossible to open them in the first place. So difficult to breathe too. After the first cough, he kept his breaths short and his mouth covered with his hand. Riven shook. Blinded and hardly breathing, he was more helpless than a plant. He’d die like this. But no, he could still hear. With every other sense dulled, sound was all that he could depend on. And it sounded insane.

Screams shook the air, the swish of sharp things slicing through the air thrumming along in discordant beats. Riven focused, trying to make out individual notes, separate out the ones he needed to hear from the ones that filled all the space. Impossible. All he heard were more swings and thugs, interspersed with the occasional grunt and curse.

A shriek pierced the air, then horrible, echoing silence. Riven’s heart went silent as well. Had Rose died? If she had, the Chasm would he, powerless as he was, do about it?

Then the fight restarted, the grunts and swings dancing with each other. Riven sighed, then coughed. Damn dust.

Light grew behind his closed eyes. He opened them, just a cinch to see that green ruled the world, tiny stars dotting the clouds of dirt floating in the air. A shot rang through the air. Riven turned, only catching the tail end of the golden-green bullet bursting away. But he did see the dust cloud floating away a second later, devoid of wind in the eye of the Deadmage’s tornado but propelled by Viriya’s Essence. Scions, but she was ingenious.

The Deadmage was revealed in all his faltering glory. Rose had advanced with her Coral rapier drawn, and around her swirled those same air curls, scythes of compressed air whizzing around her like protective bees. The with had conjured more air scythes, though he had frozen. He was exposed to everyone in the vicinity.

With a shout, Rose charged. The Deadmage shot his air scythes at her. Some she dodged, some collided with the air scythes orbiting her, and the rest joined the others to circulate her. Rose was unstoppable. The ground ruptured all around her feet as she dashed forwards, blood flying from her injured arm. But as she neared, she slowed. The air pressure was rising. Rising too high. Riven couldn’t breathe again, and his ears popped as he bowed down, stomach churning. Good thing he’d missed his meals. Two blocks of air had met—another smaller tornado that had formed around Rose and the shield of compressed air in front of the Deadmage—and Rose’s progress was checked. She pushed harder, step after step, her hair and uniform rippling all around her but the progress was minuscule.

Viriya charged in. She fired, but the shot went wide. The Deadmage had discarded his cloak as soon as he’d seen Viriya moving, and it floated high in the air, the bullet shredding it to pieces. “Damn it,” she cursed.

She shot the ground, and a carpet of green enveloped the area. A second later, the earth shattered and rose, leaving an untouched circle around Riven. In moments, the land was swathed in shadow. Riven looked up. The earth had coagulated to the bullet in the sky, forming a huge boulder slowly sinking to the ground. Viriya was about to drop a literal mountain on the Deadmage’s head.

“Now, you die,” she said, firing again. The Sept bullet blitzed forward, a golden green dot that was pulling down the bolder above with the sudden force of a meteor.

“Hah!” The Deadmage laughed. “Foolish.”

The witch’s tornado died. Before Riven could properly register it, much less react, all that air caught up in the twister rushed towards the witch. Riven’s heart wrenched as he was pulled towards the Deadmage, his back pummelled by the voracious wind. He was even pulled off his feet for just a second. But only for a second. All the air had formed an impenetrable cocoon around their master, a shield through which nothing could be perceived. Riven should have passed out at this point at the continuous lack of air.

Then the air exploded. The detonation hammered Riven, shockwaves tearing through him as he flew back and collided with the ground. He lost awareness of everything. The world had reduced to just him and his impenetrable agony. His back was on fire, his shoulders feeling like they were not where they were supposed to be. Ferocious stings raged through cuts on his face and across his chest.

He didn’t know how long it took before he could open his eyelids past the film of tears gumming them closed. Breaths. He had to focus on his breaths. It took ages, but vision slowly returned, and with it came other awareness.

The sound of guttural screams. Very familiar ones at that.

Gritting his teeth, Riven forced himself up. His sight swam, but he blinked to regain focus, turning his head everywhere to find the source of those awful, soul-ripping screams, no matter how much his temple pounded. Damn it, why was there so much dust? And then he found it, his heart squeezing hard at the sight.

Rose was lying a bit away, prone and unmoving on the ground save for her heaving chest blowing scream after scream. Her one arm was mangled, twisted, sheathed in more blood than what could have been possibly there. The free one was clamped over one eye. One eye that was spewing blood past the fingers trying to stop the flow.

No. Oh Scions, no.

Riven crawled forward on all fours. There was no way he was walking in his condition and there was no time to attempt to do so. No time for failure. Rose needed him, Her screams rent the air, and the closer he got, the harsher they sounded. He glimpsed at the Deadmage as he moved, or where the Deadmage was supposed to be. In his place was more air. More of those white scythes, whirling and swirling in the air all around, so many that they obscured him completely.

But there was no time to pay him any mind. Rose needed attention.

The rent that had opened up in the ground was in his way, and he paused at the edge. It was far deeper than he’d imagined. What had looked like a fracture deeper than the ones snaking out all around it, was actually a chasm in and of itself, its bottom lost to darkness. It almost reminded him of that huge hole he’d seen beneath the dead Sept mountain. If he focused, there was even a draft coming up from it. If he focused, he was sure there was a sound too. A moaning, almost a voice.

Riven pulled himself back. What in the Chasm was he doing getting distracted by a damn fissure in the ground. Rose was waiting. Rose was dying. He forced himself onwards, pulling himself over and past the large crack.

“Shit,” he muttered, as he came up to her, knees and hands drenching in her blood. “Shit.”

Rose’s eyes found him. That lone eye closed shut, and her face hardened, teeth digging into her lips to stop herself from screaming. Riven grabbed her free hand, the wet and warm contact with her blood making the skin of his hand want to leap right off. He had to get a grip on himself. It was just some blood.

A lot of blood. Hopefully, not too much. Not yet.

“You’ll be fine, Rose.” With his free hand, Riven placed a calming palm on her blood-matted dark hair, stroking it as gently as he could. His hands were shaking, but he’d be damned if he hurt her accidentally. “I’ll make sure of it. Trust me.”

There was little indication she heard him. That lone dark eye opened for a second, and something flitted there for the briefest second. Recognition? Appreciation? Or was he seeing things he wanted to see, rather than what was there? Too little time. Rose shut her eyes tight again, and appeared to focus on getting past the pain.

Riven looked at Viriya, his head protesting against the motion. “We need to get her out of here.” She was staring at the Deadmage and his swirling air. “Are you listening?”

She stared back. “We can’t.”

Riven followed her glance back. Holy Scions. The Spectres were coming in, marching in ranks upon disordered ranks. So terribly many. Hadn’t the military taken most of them out? Where had all these Spectres come from? How many in the damn Chasm had this Deadmage killed?

“There has to be a way,” he whispered. Who was Riven talking to? Viriya couldn’t hear him at this distance, and Rose was too busy trying to manage a balance between screaming her lungs out and not collapsing to unconsciousness. Where was Rio? Where had he gone, or his bastard of a brother? “We’ll find a way. We’ll figure something out. We’ll—”

“Watch out,” Viriya yelled.

“You see!” The whirling air scythes around the Deadmage was twisting. They spread out, forming an orbit around the witch like the rocks had done with Rose. “Fight against me, and that’s all you’ll ever achieve. Death.”

He was going to attack soon, just as Rose had done. And Riven had nothing to defend himself with

That fissure in the ground seemed to wink at Riven. A dark eye filed with insinuation. Something seemed out, a sound at the edge of his hearing, a familiar voice reduced to a mere whisper. The same voice he’d heard less than a week ago, that awful, impossible echo coming from nowhere, now little more than murmur at the edge of his hearing. Yet, the words were clear.

Fight.

“Who—who are you?”

Survive.

Riven stared up. The air scythes were whizzing around fast as bullets now. What in the Chasm was he going to do? How was he going to live past this?

Survive. He had to survive. He had to make sure Rose survived. The air was growing pressurized again, and he bent over Rose’s prone form, his hair matting to his head, skin and flesh compacting at the weight, bones creaking until he was sure he’d be flattened. He’d felt this pressure before. It wasn’t just from the air outside, it was rearing up from within, filling him up until he was sure to burst any moment.

Survive. He’d survive, no doubt about it. He’d do it.

Survive.

The Deadmage sent his conjuring of scything air straight at Riven. All of the air curls rippled together, tumbling over another in a frothing, slicing mixture, ripping through the ground as they charged straight for Riven and Rose with the force of a train. Viriya shouted, but she was too far to do anything. The pressure within Riven had possessed him whole. With a thunderous roar, the mass charged, the air in between popping. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move. Now or never.

Survive. He had to survive.

Just as it hit, the pressure burst free. He saw it this time, lines of golden light shooting out everywhere like he was some crazy star. They melded into the space, turning the air to sunlight and shading the ground with an auric sheen. The earth rose, forming a twisted cocoon around Riven and Rose.

The air rammed in, and the area shook. Riven clutched Rose tighter and bent lower. The cocoon shook, little rocks and dust raining down and striking him everywhere. Damn Deadmage. His assault was relentless, the shaking unceasing. Shit. It was going to break apart, and he had no idea how to call back that immense pressure. No idea how to keep Rose safe. Chasm he was useless. He was—

Rose squeezed his hand. He was so close to her now, her harsh breaths grated against his ear, and she trembled all on her own without the shaking the Deadmage’s air scythes were causing. “It’ll be fine.”

“It’ll be fine,” Riven whispered back. “It’ll be fine.”

The Deadmage’s laughter thundered like crashing boulders.

A large rock fell on his head and he bit his lip to stop the scream, but no, it’d be fine. The very ground was tearing itself apart. But it’d be fine. Cracks shot through the earth curled over his head. It’d be fine. It’d be fine.

Everything would be fine.

“Rise.”

The attack ceased, and there was a horrible shriek. Riven shot up. Rocks stopped falling on his head, dust stopped raining down, and the cracks ceased threatening to break apart his amateur shield against the Deadmage’s attacks. He shot a grin at Rose then peered between cracks. That shout. Riven would recognize it anywhere. Safety.

Glaven. The bastard had finally come.