Spatiomancy — Maribelle

I dodge and weave through a barrage of icy spears. The slippery frozen surface of the lake makes it difficult to find footing. I shatter the ice with my entropomancy to make pits that I can kick off from. The only light comes from the many glowing fish that have been frozen motionless in the crystal clear ice, each one still shining with the light of the sun. The air is utterly frigid, as there’s no source of heat in the enclosed space to counteract the effects of the cryomancy. My eyelashes freeze like little icicles and my fingertips turn black with frostbite.

As I close the distance to my opponent, a thick wall of ice forms to block my way. I stab my blade into it, discharging an explosion of pure destructive power. Huge chunks of stone fall from the ceiling, the ice beneath me shatters, but the ice comprising the defensive wall holds, only a few cracks forming in its magically enhanced structure.

Parson teleports behind me. His staff hits me in the back, smashing me into the wall of ice.

‘Iceblood Infestation!’

Ice crystals form inside me, worming through my body as the sharp edges grow and burrow through my flesh in every direction. I am ripped apart from the inside. The crystals tear through me like a thousand daggers. Blood red spikes erupt from my body, piercing out of my chest, my back, and even my eyes.

‘Divine Retribution!’

The ice inside me shatters, explosively purged from my body as it is reduced to a snowy dust. In the same instant, my body comes back together, the wounds becoming black lightning that surges around my blade. I turn around to deliver my attack, slashing with all my might.

The only thing my blow destroys is a body double made of ice. The real Parson has already teleported away.

‘Avalanche Palm!’

I am hit in the temple with a skull-cracking impact that freezes half my head. The momentum sends me flying into the wall of the cave. I am too dazed to properly respond to his follow-up

‘Fist of the Ice Giant!’

I try to leap out of the way, but only partially manage. The giant fist of ice smashes my legs into the wall of the cave, reducing the entire lower half of my body to a pulp.

My legs and hips reform as I push the damage into the stone, but while I do so, I’m briefly immobilized. It takes too much time.

‘Storm of Frozen Fangs!’

Dozens of icicles piece into my body, pinning me to the wall of the cave. At least I managed to avoid getting hit in the head.

Parson teleports in front of me, forming an icy ball of spikes on the end of his staff. He pulls back his weapon, preparing to unleash a mighty swing. With tremendous force, the heavy ice mace slams into my face, crushing my head against the wall and shaking the whole cave.

I black out as my brain is crushed. My spirit manages to push the lethal damage out of my head, bringing me back to consciousness a moment later. It’s an instinct forged by my years of brutal training with Bez. I’m still pinned in place by icicles, and Parson is winding up for another attack with his mace.

“Is that all you got?” I ask, spitting out a mouthful of blood.

Parson responds by immediately delivering another brutal, face-smashing blow. Once again, my head is embedded into the wall of the cave, my brain briefly pulped. I regain consciousness as cracks form in the cave wall. I push out whatever damage I can, expelling all my wounds except for the dozen holes through which icicles still pin me to the stone.

Maybe I should focus less on trash talk and more on getting out of this situation.

I concentrate my destructive aura in the icicles that are pinning me to the wall, trying to damage them. I fail to do so. They are even stronger than his ice wall was.

My efforts are interrupted when Parson’s ice mace slams into my face for the third time, once again robbing me of consciousness for a second or two. This is starting to really piss me off.

I push forward, forcing the spears all the way through my body. The holes in my flesh are torn wider as they stretch over the thick ends of the icicles. With a gruesome ripping noise, I flop onto the icy lake, landing on all fours with viscera trailing behind me. The ice beneath me cracks as my intestines slither back inside, the bloody holes sealing up a moment later.

Parson roars, bringing his staff around in an underhanded swing which catches me in the belly and sends me flying into the roof of the cave. Fortunately, the stalactites are made of limestone too soft to pierce my flesh. They are pulverized when my body impacts them. I drop down, hitting the frozen surface of the lake with a dull thump.

Parson leaps forwards, raising his huge ice mace over his head to smash me again.

I roll out of the way of his strike, countering with a stab of my blade.

I hit him in the armpit. The tip of my sword pierces a weak point, slipping between two plates of his armor. After my blade is through, I release a blast of entropomancy from the tip. He shouts out in pain and teleports away.

His right arm hangs limply by his side. He quickly produces a vial of glowing liquid, bringing it up to his lips.

I snap my fingers, shattering the vial. No healing potion for you.

With no intention to let him rest, I leap forward, slashing with my blade and releasing a wave of destruction. He teleports away. I have no idea where he is. He isn’t in the cave.

A couple seconds later, he reappears. His arm is functional again. He must have teleported out into the nearby cave system to drink a healing potion without me interfering.

“Annoying,” I say.

He lets out an irritated snort.

“Says the petulant child who somehow heals with entropomancy. I would have never believed someone could be so strong with so weak an aura. You’re an abomination.”

“I’ll consider that a compliment.”

“I suppose you would.”

I crouch down and ready myself, taking deep breaths. The bone-chilling air freezes the moisture in my lungs each time I inhale. Parson tenses up and raises his staff. As our eyes meet, there is an unspoken agreement that intense violence is about to erupt again.

I jump forward, the ice shattering behind me from the pressure of my leap. The world blurs around me as I rocket towards my foe. My spirit roars with power and I swing my sword. In a swath of destruction that follows the tip of my blade, the cave wall explodes, becoming rocky dust that fills the air. Parson teleports out of the way of my strike, but my newly developed spatial sense allows me to track his movement. He’s on the opposite side of the cave.

I land sliding on the ice, slowly coming to a stop. Then, I feel Parson teleport again. He’s behind me. I spin around just in time to block his staff. I kick him in the stomach, denting in his armor with the explosion of destruction that comes out of my bare frostbitten foot. He’s sent flying backward but I leap forward, already on him before he hits the ground. I stab towards his neck, but he parries my attack, countering with several ice spears that hit me hard. I am impaled in three places, but it doesn’t slow me down. Without hesitation, I deliver another strike with my blade, hitting him in the side of the head. There is a thunderous bang and his helmet goes flying, revealing a mangled ear and popped eyeball, the effects of my magic.

He teleports away. I track him again. He’s around fifty meters through the stone to my right, in a different cave. I click my tongue. I can’t get there before he has the chance to drink another healing potion. If he keeps running away to heal, it will be hard to kill him. Though, now that I knocked off his helmet, his head might be vulnerable.

While he heals, I take the time to pull the the icicles out of my body and expel my wounds.

He reappears with his face back to normal. He wears a vicious scowl as he points his staff at me. His spirit crystalizes into yet another manifestation. How many does he even have?

‘Snowflake Flayer.’

A very long and broad, yet paper thin blade of ice forms, extending from the end of his staff. It’s so thin that it’s almost invisible. It looks so delicate that it would break from a gentle breeze, but from the magic emanating from it, I know it’s nigh indestructible, a fearsome cutting tool.

“I’m ending this,” he says.

I open my mouth to say something cocky. He teleports behind me and swings his blade towards my neck. I spin around to block his attack. Mid-swing, both his arm and his weapon teleport slightly ahead, jumping past my sword to come inside my guard. My eyes go wide as the snowflake flayer passes through my neck without a sound.

My head starts to slide.

Before I can do anything about the decapitation wound, his palm hits my chest and my body is gone. My head flops onto the ground. With no body to reattach to, blood pours out my neck onto the frigid ice. I try to push out the damage but nothing happens. Something is blocking it.

“I noticed you can’t regenerate like true healers can. Instead, your body repairs itself by reassembling its pieces, no matter how damaged they are. That means that all I have to do to kill you is teleport your body into the other cave. Goodbye, Maribelle. You were a worthy foe.”

‘Oh, so this is what it feels like to be in two places at once.’

For a glorious moment, everything clicks into place. Spatiomancy aligns with entropomancy as my magic tries to pull my body back together again. There is the me on the ice, and the me across fifty meters of stone. We are the same.

Parson, with a victorious smile, forms a huge block of ice in the air above my head. He drops it.

Just in time, I finish creating a metaphysical bridge between the two pieces of my body. I pull.

As my head reattaches to my body and the wound in my neck moves into the stone, my mind expands. This new cave is completely dark, but I see my surroundings anyway. There is a sphere, more than one hundred meters wide, in which space itself is mine. I can see everything. Parson has a satisfied expression on his face, thinking for a moment that he has finished me. Wilson has sneakily pulled Cynthia’s frozen body into his burrow, and is busy sucking on her like a popsicle. There is a complex network of caves all around me, of which Wilson’s lake is just one small pocket.

With an instinctual twitch of my will, I teleport on top of the giant cube of ice that covers the area where my head had been. I appear, sitting on the edge, looking down at my not-victorious opponent.

He looks up at me and his eyes go wide. The expression on his face fills my heart with joy.

“I really should thank you. Separating me apart like that was the perfect training exercise.”

I hop down from the block of ice, landing gracefully on the ice of the lake.

“Now, you get to train me in how to use spatiomancy in combat,” I say.

He takes a step back.

“No, you don’t have a choice in the matter.”

I feel his magic churn, a bridge forming between his body and another cave.

Is he trying to run away?

“No.”

My divine voice pressures his spirit as I try to disrupt his teleportation spell with my own spatiomancy. It works. His magic wobbles out of control and fails. He stays put, a terrified expression on his face.

“Interesting, so I can block teleportation too?”

“How did… you can’t,” he stutters, pointing his snowflake flayer at me.

I teleport behind him, swinging my blade towards his unprotected head. He tries to teleport out of the way of my attack.

“No.”

Once again, I disrupt his spell with the combination of my spatiomancy and my divine voice. He almost manages to teleport this time, his metaphysical bridge barely failing to take hold.

Almost isn’t good enough, though. My blade hits his head, and my entropomancy tears it apart. With no enchanted helmet to protect him, my attack shatters his skull and pulps his brain completely. His body flops onto the ground, utterly lifeless.

“What a shame. You lost your cool at the end there.”

I didn’t get nearly as much spatiomancy training out of him as I should have. I didn’t expect him to just drop dead from my first attack. Did he never face an opponent who could block his teleports? Maybe it’s not a common thing. I’ll have to ask Cynthia.

I look around the cave and my stomach sinks. The light from the frozen fish is growing dimmer, barely managing to illuminate the devastated icy hellhole that was once a beautiful sanctuary. Huge boulders have fallen from the ceiling, littering the shattered ice of the lake. Ice spears, ice walls, and other cryomantic constructs are strewn about the area. The walls of the cave, once smooth, almost artistically sculpted, are now sloping piles of rubble. The air is filled with dust and snow, and it’s so cold that every breath makes ice crystals form inside of my lungs. It’s so cold I’m impressed Wilson is still alive.

Actually, he seems completely fine. He’s not even frostbitten. Maybe he’s immune to the cold.

I put my sword back into my flower and I walk over to Wilson’s den. It’s a hole in the ground at the edge of the little island where I woke up. With my spatial sense, I can see him still sucking on Cynthia in there. She’s starting to move slightly, making quiet, indistinct vocalizations as the last remnants of Parson’s curse are sucked out of her.

I sit down on the rock, the frozen moss crunching underneath me.

“Wilson, I’m sorry. Because of me, your home was destroyed.”

A low grumble comes out of the den.

“I’ll help you find a new cave, if you like.”

The salamander crawls out of his den. He puts down Cynthia. The slime-coated girl seems to be unconscious, but she’s starting to stir.

“I will repair this cave. The ice will melt eventually. I expect a few of the suncarp to survive after they thaw. They will repopulate in time.”

“Won’t that take forever?”

“I am patient.”

I snort at him. He’s so weird.

Cynthia rolls over, wiping the salamander slime off of her face.

“Maribelle, what happened? All of a sudden I couldn’t move, and I blacked out, and…” She trails off as she looks around the cave, her eyes landing on the headless kingsguard.

“Holy shit,” she says.

She snaps her head towards me with an intense expression.

“How did you kill him?”

“I figured out spatiomancy just in time. When I blocked his teleport, he just stood there like an idiot while I smashed his head. I was kind of disappointed, actually.”

She gives me a flat stare. Her expression slowly morphs into something I don’t understand.

“What are you? Are you even human?”

I giggle. Is she serious?

“The future queen of the universe.”

I’ve said this several times, but I think this is the first time she actually believes me.

Before I realize it, she is hugging me.

“Cynthia, you’re slimy.”

“Shut up.”

I hug her back, reluctantly allowing myself to be slimed.

“I’ll help you, Maribelle. We’re going to take over Salsvale.”

“Yeah, we are.”

She starts to laugh. It’s the laugh of someone who just let go of a heavy burden, the laugh of a slave who is finally free. Her joy echoes through the dark cave. I can’t help but laugh too.

“You may be strong, but you’re still a newbie when it comes to spatiomancy. Let me train you.”

She has a playful smile on her face, rather uncharacteristic of her usual demeanor.

“Sounds fun.”

“Follow me.”

She teleports into another cave, and I follow her, appearing by her side a moment later.

“What’s your range?” She asks.

“My range?”

“What’s the radius of the sphere in which you can teleport?”

“Oh, the distance? Maybe a little farther than the dead end down that way,” I say, pointing through an opening in the cave.

“Wow, that’s like sixty meters. Okay. I’ll keep that in mind.”

“What’s about you?” I ask her.

“Me? A little over one hundred meters. It improves with practice.”

“Cool.”

She disappears, teleporting to a cave that’s just at the edge of my teleportation range. I follow, the magic taking a little extra effort to activate.

She leads me in a complicated path through the cave system that only a spatiomancer could follow. Only now do I realize just how deep underground we are. We teleport straight up at least twenty times, and the surface is still nowhere in sight. Through my sphere of perception, I see the occasional monster living in the caves. They’re big, slender, long legged things with tentacled mouths. Cynthia avoids them.

“Earlier you said you blocked the kingsguard’s spatiomancy? How did you do that?”

“It wasn’t through my spatiomancy alone. I used my voice.”

“Try it on me.”

“Sure.”

I feel her forming a teleportation bridge.

“No.”

I manage to disrupt her magic. To my surprise, she nearly teleports anyway. I doubt that I would be able to block her if she had a second try. Perhaps Parson was easier to disrupt because he was under stress.

“That’s really impressive. It’s a good tool to be sure, but it doesn’t feel quite as effective as spatial wards. It felt like my magic just barely failed.”

“It almost didn’t work on you.”

She smiles proudly.

“Have you tried teleporting other people? I imagine you’ll pick it up easily, considering you instinctively knew how to teleport with your clothes. I swear, it took me a week to stop leaving behind pieces of clothing when I first started teleporting. To be fair, I was only nine at the time.”

I shrug, grabbing her wrist and pulling her along for a teleport into a different cave. I choose one which has a monster, appearing right in front of the thing.

The creature hisses with wet, sputtering breath. Its pale white skin is illuminated by glowing eyestalks. Hundreds of tentacles come from its mouth, writhing and reaching towards us.

Cynthia lets out a high-pitched scream as she realizes where I teleported her. She tries to teleport away.

“No,” I say, blocking her teleport easily.

She looks at me with a horrified, betrayed expression as a tentacle wraps around her neck.

“I was right. Stress does play a factor.”

“Maribelle! Help!”

I laugh.

She is freaking out as she tries to pull the tentacles off of her body. The monster is surprisingly strong. Somehow, I resist the temptation to find out what happens if I stand back and keep blocking her magic. I summon my blade. With a single swing, the monster is transformed into a terrible smelling, slimy pile of dead meat.

“Maribelle, that was horrible!”

She looks like she’s about to cry.

Did she have a traumatic experience with one of those things in the past?

“Sorry.”

She stands up, clearing her throat and returning to what would be a dignified posture if it weren’t for the piece of tentacle meat stuck in her hair and the salamander saliva still covering her body. Honestly, she looks like a mess.

“Don’t do that again.”

I snort with laughter.

“I’m serious!”

“Okay, I won’t feed you to any more cave monsters.”

“Thank you.”

“That was just me getting even for you feeding me to Wilson.”

“Oh yeah, sorry for saving your life.”

“Is there really no way to remove curses that doesn’t involve getting covered in slime?”

“Not one that I could teleport to directly from long distances.”

“So there are alternatives.”

“Yeah. If you’re going to fight the other kingsguard, we should stock up on purging charms.”

“Purging charms?”

“They’re items that remove curses. They’re one time use only, though.”

“Yeah, I definitely need some of those. Do you know anything about the other royal guards?”

“Well, you just killed Parson Bluedane, and earlier you killed Harvey Wellward. If I remember correctly, the remaining three are Vanessa Larkmane, Zenithus Hale, and Dickson Daldry.”

“I was more interested in their abilities and stuff.”

“Well, Vanessa is a venomancer and shadowmancer, Zenithus is an electromancer, and Dickson is a physical fighter with healing.”

“The trident girl, the lightning swordsman, and the mace guy.”

“Yes.”

“I’m most worried about Vanessa.”

“That makes sense. She’s the best suited to counter your abilities.”

“Alright. It’s decided. I’m going to fight her first.”

I hammer my fist into my open palm. Cynthia chuckles.

“You’re quite murderous, aren’t you? Why do you want to kill them all so bad?”

“They’re Theonius’s guards. It’s common sense that I need to fight them before Theonius.”

“The common sense of normal humans is to assassinate Theonius while avoiding his guards.”

“Maybe, but I want to crush his forces completely. An assassination wouldn’t satisfy me.”

“Also, if you’ve decided you’re the empress, shouldn’t you consider them your guards?”

“They don’t seem particularly loyal to me.”

She snorts.

“Well, I might be able to find some people who will be willing to help you.”

“Really? I assumed I would be Salsvale’s number one fugitive.”

“Oh, you absolutely are, but that’s exactly what will make you so popular.”

“Who are you introducing me to, exactly?”

“The revolutionary army.”