Safe within Riyxia’s small recluse, having been removed from the cage that had inspired her slumber, her sleep gradually wore off naturally. Feeling her body awaken finally, she set the coat aside and returned to her own body.

Riyxia rushed to consciousness, fully aware of her own circumstances. She now had access to her full ability, but knew her hunter was far too capable, and would have also had time to prepare. She pulled the book from the abandoned coat and added it to her own possessions, determined to still look into it further at a later time. Nothing else present would be useful for her, both now and later, it would all only slow her down. She was really hiding in a pile of useless junk, after all, leaving her with nothing else to depend on but herself. With that realization, she left her dark sanctuary and returned to the light outside, dashing to go further along the corridor with her own two feet. Almost right after she began, she was forced to halt before a gate that opened invitingly before her, not falling for the same trap twice. She then leapt over the gate, touching off from the ceiling of the hall as she pressed forwards. A distance ahead of her, a gate opened before the doorway of the hall, Ieqyisa stepping out from it.

“I brought you here to get some answers, and all you’ve given me is more questions. Even in your sleep, you’ve managed to manipulate your own results, but I managed to figure out that you must not be working here alone, someone else is here with you. I will catch both you and them, and then I will have some answers. Even if you really are Khyzae, I will even save you from yourself.” Ieqyisa looked both irritated and kinda tired, herself having missed any opportunity to sleep so far. Riyxia had actually gotten plenty of rest from her own forced slumber, a turn that had gone in her own favour. She also took account that Ieqyisa seemed to believe that she was working with someone else, having confused her specter for someone else. Actually, was that completely wrong, considering she had two essences? She was effectively her own partner, which was even more clear with her newest discovery. She knew her real essence was of her spectre, but that implied that her partner was Khyzae herself. This was exactly where Khyzae ended, and Riyxia begun.

“There is no way you could hope to save anyone, without understanding what’s going on. There is no hope in controlling anything you don’t understand. There is no way you could control me, contain me, confine me, if I didn’t want you to.” Riyxia glared defiantly, taking account of her circumstances as she stepped forward spectrally. Ieqyisa gasped, feeling Khyzae in those very words, her face growing pale in that moment. Taking advantage of the hesitation, Riyxia’s spectre dashed behind Ieqyisa and possessed the door, forcing it open dramatically and slamming Ieqyisa hard against the wall in surprise. Riyxia then rushed through the opening, picking up her spectre as she passed through the opening into the much larger hall on the other side, the hall itself mostly empty except for an assortment of decorative suits of armor standing guard. All the exits however were instantly enveloped in a gate, Ieqyisa having shown up again to cut off any further retreat, making it obvious that she would have to confront Ieqyisa before she could escape.

The metal plates of Ieqyisa’s power armor shimmered as the protective barrier around it came to life, having been previously neglected in that moment of rush and then hesitation. Ieqyisa then opened a gate directly under the immobile Riyxia, something Riyxia barely managed to dodge in time. Riyxia was concerned about her options, knowing just how powerful her opponent could be. She could try to catch up by building her rage, at the cost of her mental clarity. However, her opponent still had her outclassed either way, her barrier being effective against anything she could have done. Riyxia had really counted on committing enough force previously to knock Ieqyisa unconscious, but it seems even the rudimentary defenses of the power armor had protected her from that. No measure of force was going to get through at this point, no matter how far into her rage she sunk. Her fists would still bounce off such a barrier, her gift similarly unable to pierce it. Strength wasn’t going to win this for her, but that’s not the only resource she actually had, she was also rather clever. Still, this was going to be quite a trial by fire.

Realizing that a single gate wasn’t going to cut it, Ieqyisa started forming an acrobatic obstacle course of gates for Riyxia, leaving her to dodge rapidly with no room for error. Worse, Riyxia was keenly aware she couldn’t depend on her augmented state, she needed her mind to remain as clear as possible. In addition, it was not just herself that was left to dodge the onslaught of gates surging forth in rapid succession, her spectre was left on its own course of dodging, trying to break a distance away from the course. Ieqyisa however didn’t know about the spectre, and had no way of seeing it, so once there was enough of a distance, the spectre was free to float around with less concern. Riyxia knew this was exceptionally dangerous, because if she slipped into a gate, the distance between her and her spectre would exceed her limits, something which could be very dangerous. Her only backup in that was to be ready at any moment to have her spectre snap back to her in an emergency. This strained her concentration, something she knew which was already challenging when she was already left with precision movements for both her body and spectre at the same time. The whole thing made her genuinely thankful for the simpler exercises she had been given by Ayzherie before, a thought she had never suspected she would have ever had.

As she physically continued her dance among gates, her spectre advanced upon Ieqyisa. She reached the barrier, pressing against it in an effort to pass through. The barrier instrument Khyzae and her friends had developed could endure many things, but it had failed once before against one thing, the astral flame. Riyxia wasn’t herself aware of the same circumstances, she just knew that her spectre was neither physical nor related to the gift, adding a new angle that the barrier would not have accounted for. Ieqyisa was startled in a moment when her barrier broke asunder momentarily by the pressure, the barrier reforming an instant later. However, even in that time, it was too late, Riyxia was inside. Once again, she was faced with an instrument, and her gift could not reach it, not with such a barrier still up. The previous solution was still just as valid, as she once again located yet another black crystal within the same system. Having it removed caused a reaction, but didn’t shut the thing down. It was quickly obvious why, the complex system had a multitude of backups, more things for her to disconnect. She spectrally dove through the complex network, disconnecting everything one after the other. Ieqyisa’s gates stopped coming, as she quickly noticed something was going wrong with her power armor, but no signs of why something could have possibly gone wrong. A short while later, with several more parts disconnected, the power armor finally shut down.

Rejoined with her spectre, Riyxia picked one of the doors and dashed towards it, only once again to find herself intercepted by Ieqyisa. Rather than taking the time to climb out of her armor as Riyxia had expected, Ieqyisa had just teleported from it, leaving the armor behind. Then, she teleported gear onto her, warping two massive disc blades into her hands at the same time, holding them in the center in a posture half like a shield and half like a massive throwing star. Ieqyisa had no idea what had just happened, she had personally tested the armor and barrier for vulnerabilities before. For the whole thing to have suddenly failed with no visible reason, just what had Riyxia done? Most likely, this had been due to tampering, the noise she had heard before probably being the culprit having done something to the power armor. She had to be careful, her opponent was brilliant. It was becoming easier and easier every moment to see Khyzae in Ryixia, like a true successor. Fortunately, she wasn’t without her own abilities, she had an advantage with the location, and her opponent had nothing to defend herself with.

Riyxia took account of her circumstances and realized she had an absolute advantage at this point. If she turned to her rage, she could probably block that weapon with her bare hands and throw Ieqyisa across the hall, leaving a crater on the other side. However, she was liking her mental clarity a lot more, it was a problem she would have to look into in the future. Instead, she still had an advantage even discounting that, having had plenty of regular weapon training with her bare hands, having access to using her gift on Ieqyisa directly, and having her newest discovery of her own ability. Riyxia’s spectre stepped out, drifting over to one of the armor suits set up in the room behind Ieqyisa, and stepped inside. Having possessed the armor, she brought its massive halberd down on Ieqyisa, catching her by surprise. Ieqyisa fell to the floor, having been unable to defend herself from such a surprise attack from behind, as the armor towered over her fallen form. Ieqyisa wondered when the other opponent had found time to hide in the armor, and was surprised by the level of foresight this would have required. It also implied she was outnumbered. She couldn’t call for backup either, both of the others would be sleeping at this hour. Actually, she still had one other option.

Another gate opened nearby, as a lion-like beast stepped forth. The beast then pounced on the armor, pinning it to the floor. She still had a vast armada she could call to aide her, she wasn’t exactly as outnumbered as she had seemed. Ieqyisa teleported to her feet and rushed at the now secluded Riyxia, the weapon lunging at her very quickly, leaving Riyxia to wonder if Ieqyisa was still considering the idea of bringing her back alive. Ieqyisa brought her other weapon to bear against Riyxia, the second strike moving considerably slower as Riyxia’s gift came into effect. Meanwhile, her spectre considered her other circumstances, the beast pinning her to the floor.. at least pinning the armor to the floor. Leaving the armor, she took account of the beast there, its suspicious collar standing out as a strange instrument. Of course, these things were being controlled, and an instrument was involved in that as well. Diving into the collar, she went about shutting the instrument down. Even leaving the beast to go feral was more in her advantage than leaving it to Ieqyisa’s command, much like when Ryixia had to face off against her own friends in an uncontrolled state. Soon after, the instrument’s light faded, and the beast looked up in surprise, its own will having returned to it. It had little care for the boring armor beneath it, but the elven prey in the room was something it had a taste for. The beast roared before charging, its massive talons coming down to bear upon the two girls in combat.

“No, stop! Sit, back off, listen to me!” Ieqyisa shouted commands in futility as she teleported away from its initial attack. The beast cared nothing for such demands, instead it took such mockery as compulsion to just keep attacking her. This left Ieqyisa on the defensive, having to chain teleport to avoid the overpowering beast. This made Riyxia curious, wasn’t this the same girl who had walked into beast nests fearlessly in the past? She turned back to the power armor sitting in the middle of the room, still disconnected. Of course, maybe Ieqyisa had grown to depend on such things far too much, and even then had been working with some instrumental augmentations to improve her own performance. When stripped of such resources, she was far less capable, even if she wasn’t completely vulnerable. From a distance, Ieqyisa had started to throw her discs towards her foe, the blades sinking into it before warping back to her own hands. The beast was taking injury from such an attack, but it was rather minor. Her teleportation still had an advantage in defense, leaving the beast to grow tired of this prey and turn to its other.

Riyxia knew that confronting the beast would be impossible without her rage, calling upon it as the beast turned to her instead. Ieqyisa teleported off a safe distance, settling on the concept of watching instead of interfering, knowing this situation was getting really bad very quickly. The last thing she wanted to do was to provoke the beast further, especially one as powerful as this. Riyxia however was not quite so intimidated, her feral state taking over as she roared back at the beast. Ieqyisa was compelled to claim Ryixia was being an idiot, trying to face such a powerful foe, but she wasn’t willing to make a sound anymore. Riyxia faced the beast with all of her fury, noticing that this might be a nice opportunity for a mental victory as well as a physical one. The details were difficult for her to ponder, so she just focused on the obstacle in front of her. The beast’s paw alone was far larger than her, let alone everything else about it, but she braced for its impact, grabbing its paw in motion and using its own momentum to throw it into the wall behind her. The beast got up in a daze, this was clearly no simple pray, its cunning eyes focusing intently on her. It lunged for another attack, letting its paw be grabbed before extending it’s claws into her arm in the process. This injury forced her to stumble, failing in her fall-through, giving the beast an opportunity to swat at her with it’s other paw. This time it was Riyxia herself that went flying hard into the nearby wall, presenting her with even more injury.

She had faced numerous beasts in the past, but this one was a beast of beasts. Even with her gift in use, it had still managed to cause such considerable injury, and it was far smarter than any beast she had ever faced before. Worse, she didn’t have Vwyx for healing, she didn’t have either of her friends for backup. However, she was still her own backup. Her spectre took to the suit of armor left neglected by the beast, bringing it’s halberd down on the beast’s tail as it was left distracted. Such a weapon wouldn’t have been capable of much injury, but the location was rather delicate, leaving a much better effect than attacking anywhere else with something so simple. Actually, why was she left with such measures of simplicity? Her spectre had no gift, that was true, but it was the pure embodiment of her traces of the astral flame, the very source of her power when she was enraged. She let her rage flare over her spectre as well, leaving the armor to seem to smolder in a faint haze. Setting her spectre in an object even made it easier to sustain the split separation in an enraged state. Meanwhile, the beast had turned to the armor behind it, smashing into it with its paw once again. The armor however brought the halberd to bear, smashing back into the oncoming paw with a ferocity of its own. The direction of the paw was reversed in mid air, sending the beast sprawling backwards. Meanwhile, it had left it’s back opened again, leaving Riyxia to come in with an attack that tore the end of the beast’s tail in half.

The beast knew in this moment it was outnumbered, but it still had a chance. It was still a mighty beast, refusing to be captured once again. It would defeat its foes and escape, as long as it kept its guard up. It knew it could not underestimate its foes, but that its foes had best not underestimate it in turn. The beast turned to a set of five armor suits in the room, danced to the other side of them, and bashed them in a rush in Riyxia’s direction. This sent a rush of debris in the wake of its charge, pummeling into both aspects of Riyxia. The armor suit lost its halberd in the process, while her physical form was left flailing projectiles. The beast first smashed into Riyxia herself, it’s paw sending her flying once again into the ceiling before then smashing into the floor. She couldn’t even dull the later impacts, as the structure of the hall was immune to her gift. The beast then turned on the suit of armor, left without a weapon. She braced to intercept the beast with the armor’s bare hands, only to find herself quickly overwhelmed in that front. It wasn’t the same as using her own hands skilled with such a thing, a suit of armor’s hands weren’t designed to be as capable, the gauntlets shattering in the process. Even with the whole structure augmented by her spectre, this beast was still impressive in its own might.

However, in that physical contact between the object she was possessing and the beast, she felt it. She wasn’t quite certain what she felt, she wasn’t even certain she could call it ‘feeling’, but there was a contact and connection. In that moment, more than any kinetic contact from the armor she had managed to pick up from it, it was as if her spectre itself had picked up something of substance to itself, an idea that even seemed perplexing. In that state, she herself wasn’t even a being of substance, that’s how she was able to possess objects and pass through walls. She wasn’t really anything more than her own essence at that point, so what could she… It dawned on her at that moment what she might have felt, the only thing that matched her style of substance, another essence. All living things have their own essence, all living things inhabit a husk of a physical form that they manipulate, much like she was with this armor, but they in turn were bound to their form, and could inhabit nothing else. Her actual body over there still had traces of her own essence, something she herself could never pull from it, as it was bound to it. If her physical body perished, her spectre would probably simply fade away too, unable to sustain itself. That is the way of all essences.

The beast in turn continued to bear its weight onto its foe, in an effort to crush the armor. It even brought out its talons, which began to also tear into the armor. Riyxia inside felt a form of pain as a result, her possessed object being ripped apart leaving a semblance of the same feeling in her, a feeling that was rapidly draining her strength. However, rather than discard the armor, she reached further into the beast trying to crush her, feeling out for the traces of what she felt in it. Instinctually, she was getting an impression of what this connection was offering her, she had the opportunity to affect the essence of the beast before her, and she knew it was only because of the astral flame, itself a pool of essences that manipulates other essences. She had a connection to this essence, but was unaware of her options or choices. Without any other objective, her traces of the astral flame did what they do best, consume and destroy. It was a trace thought, like a subtle impulse, that came up in her state of rage beyond the constraints of her own will, like a short lapse in her sense of control, and it was only after that moment had passed that she was aware her alternatives had been stolen from her. By that point, it was too late, a faint light started to pulse over the beast, all sense of color seeming to drain from it as a faint purple hue started to glow all over it. The beast backed off in alarm, instinctually aware that it was in big trouble in that moment. However, it was also too late, the rapid loss of color consuming all of it, until nothing was left but the pale husk of the body it had left behind. The beast’s essence had been engulfed and consumed by Riyxia’s astral flame, leaving death behind.

Riyxia’s spectre pulled back to her body in shock of its own actions, keenly aware of what it had done, but given little room to consider it. With the beast defeated, Ieqyisa had stepped in to salvage what little opportunity was left, herself having grown pale by the turn of events. That beast, it had just.. died, not even from an injury. Ieqyisa had been worried that the beast would have been too much, but it seemed that even Riyxia had been holding back against her this whole time, commanding death itself. At least, the person stuck over there in the suit of armor commanded death, leaving Ieqyisa to hurry to deal with Riyxia before death climbed free of the corpse. Ieqyisa was practically panicking at this point, all sense of logic lost, putting her at an equal level of clarity as Riyxia held. Riyxia however held an almost feral clarity, even instinctually shocked by what she had achieved. Her body could influence other bodies, but her essence could influence other essences? No, it wasn’t quite so easy, she had only gained such because she had filled herself with the power of the astral flame, caused by her own rage. Her essence though wasn’t without ability, not as she had expected before today’s events, she was still keenly capable of possessing objects.

Aware of her most fundamental spectral ability, Riyxia reacted almost in impulse to the thrown projectile, intercepting it with her spectre. She slowed down her movement, hovering over her body in a menacing spiral. Realizing that her first disc had been stopped, Ieqyisa threw the other. Still in a form of a daze, Riyxia reacted again with her spectre. Things had a link, a connection, and her essence could leave traces of itself that she could manipulate, much like she did with her own actual body. In this way, she left a link to her spectre in the one weapon and dove into the other, leaving both of them hovering in the air above her body. Her rage quickly parted from her as the pile of shock in what she had done overwhelmed her thoughts, bringing her back to a state of clarity. She was commanding two objects at once, even that was something within her ability. Clearly, she had underestimated the vast potential of her spectral self, it was absolutely amazing. Actually, in that way, she could possibly learn to carry her own weapon. She would just need to possess it, command it to hover around her, control it while she fights with her bare hands. She wouldn’t even be limited to one or two weapons in this way, she wasn’t even yet aware of the terms of her own limitations in this area. Two would be enough, for now at least, as it also denied Ieqyisa any weapon of her own. She turned both discs to bear against Ieqyisa, leaving Ieqyisa to realize that she had finally been left without any resources. To command the weapons of your enemies, that was like a mixture of what both Khyzae and Liyuzhe were capable of, and it was something she had little defense against. Sure, she could teleport around, but that pile of death was bound to stir soon, and then things would get even more dangerous. Ieqyisa was even finding her stamina draining from her rapidly in her concern, unaware that such was being caused by Ryixia’s gift. In surrender, Ieqyisa took down all of the gates barring an escape.

“I give up, just go, you win. You were right after all, clearly I’m not as prepared for this as I thought I was. I will find another way though, you can count on that.” Ieqyisa teleported far away to safety, knowing she was in the position to do nothing more. She would instead be forced to hide until the others awoke, so that they could confirm there weren’t any other dangerous traps left in Riyxia’s wake. Riyxia accepted the circumstances, taking the opportunity to leave as it was offered to her. She continued her navigation of the halls on her own, in search of the way out of here. After a long search, she eventually confronted the exit, a windcraft hanger peering over the edge of a drop into the clouds below. She was really high up, leaving her only escape to be by windcraft. She took a moment to regret not having paid more attention to how these things worked in her only other experience, but fortunately the smaller ones seemed to be designed with simplicity in mind.

She got herself familiar with the controls before setting off, at least certain that her enraged self could still probably survive a fall from such a height, leaving her with less to worry about. She still took an opportunity to look back at the floating fortress she left behind on the way out as she plotted where she should go from there, taking account of the twelve spires towering over the floating fortress.