“Surrender!” The Master commanded, his words infused with magical energy.

The spell slammed into Shaya’s ward like a fist punching thick glass, her defenses shattering and sprinkling to the ground before evaporating into aetherplasm.

The compulsion hit her mind, but most of its energy was sapped away by her ward and resisted.

Her axe howled through the air as it descended toward the apostate, who moved a forearm to intercept the blow. Magically enhanced giant strength drove the axe down, the bronze blade biting into the arm with a deep crunch.

And stopped, the arm not even budging.

The weapon’s sudden stop blasted displaced air, the gust causing robes and water to ripple out.

Shaya was stunned.

The Master took the opening, punching her in the chest. Shaya flew backward from the force of the blow, the wind knocked out of her lungs. Years of training let her keep her grip on the axe, which wrenched out of her enemy’s arm like a lumberjack’s axe caught in a knot of wood. The wall stopped her flight, chains and manacles jangling as she smashed into them, and she crashed to the ground, rolling onto all fours and gasping for breath.

“Oh my,” the Master murmured, agitation turning to excitement, “they really sent a mere child to hunt me down?”

He gave a deep-throated laugh before continuing, “I guess I will enjoy my evening just as well.”

The Master removed his baggy robes like he was attending a dinner party, tossing them over the torture table with casual ease. Shaya was thankful for his hubris, managing to take in a shallow breath in the time allowed her, but she flinched when he turned towards her and she saw his unveiled form.

He no longer appeared human, despite his fine tunic and trousers and his neatly trimmed autumn red hair. His face was a literal mask, his skin hard and bark-like, his expression stiff as if carved from wood. All of his exposed skin was the same, his fingers looking like sharp twigs and his arms like branches, yet each appendage moved with the normal dexterity one would expect of a human limb. It all glowed a faint Jade, with small whorls of Azurite swirling where there were knots in the wood, as if what she was looking at was more esper than man.

“Poor lamb,” he continued, rubbing his forearm where her axe had barely bitten into it, “sent to the slaughter, ignorant of everything.”

Shaya heard his grin, but the lips of his mask barely moved.

‘I need reinforcements,’ she transmitted across the tele-pearl, ‘I have the head apostate pinned in the back of the dungeons.’

‘On our way,’ Apricot replied immediately, ‘we’re still clearing out the troops.’

Aether began to drain from her as her fear set in, but she shook her head and focused on the situation. She clung to the Amber and began tracing another ward, knowing she couldn’t afford to have her mind manipulated. He was walking towards her, all she had to do was survive until help arrived. She wasn’t going to be able to psyche him out at this point, so she needed to change her tactics.

“Why...?” She murmured, arm wobbling as she pushed herself up, “Why use all that power for personal gain instead of doing any good with it?”

“Really?” He snorted, “Do you expect me to gloat now that I have the upper hand? Reveal all of my secrets and grand plans?”

“Honestly?” Shaya smirked, channeling as much of Azreon’s antagonism as she could, “Yeah, you remind me of every other dumbass Imperial noble I’ve met. The notion you think you’re any different from them is laughable.”

“I’m going to wipe that smirk off your face,” he retorted, “and see how well you can laugh after I tear your lungs out through your ribs.”

Shaya pushed back as he kicked at her torso, grabbing her weapon with both hands and swinging down on the rising foot to leverage both her strength and his. The bronze axe took the front half of the foot off, the man roaring in rage and pain as he stumbled from his missed kick. With a twist, she chopped her axe into the leg he was standing on, the force of the blow taking it out from beneath him.

His cursing turned into burbling as he fell into the water and Shaya rolled on top of him in an instant, a pulse of Jade activating the barbs of her cloak while another shrunk her weapon down to the length of a hatchet. She shoved his head under the water with one arm and chopped at his thrashing arms with her axe. Wooden splinters flew through the air from her assault, but so did bits of bronze from where her axe chipped itself against the unnaturally hard skin. A surge of cold Azurite from him reminded her to finish casting her ward – with only a heartbeat to spare.

Phaedra folded her wings around Shaya protectively, leaving a sheen of light across her body. It lasted only a second, as spiked pseudopods rose from the water and battered her. Despite the physical nature of the attacks, each pseudopod that struck the ward dissipated into splashing water, conveying none of the force behind their swings. Fractures spider-webbed across her ward wherever the magic struck her, the sound of cracking glass echoing in the small watery chamber they battled.

I thought Azurite magic was only supposed to be enchantments and illusions!? Shaya thought, surprised that the Azurite assault came in the form of animated water.

She shelved her questions for later, focusing her energy on crippling the apostate beneath her. Despite his greater magical strength, he lacked the leverage to buck her off, but his use of magic suggested the immediate panic of drowning was wearing off. Her axe skipped off his limbs, and she realized that bronze just wouldn’t cut it against whatever his new spiritual form was.

The Master’s thrashing stopped and Jade energy surged through him.

Shaya tensed, preparing to respond to whatever he did, fearing there was no way she could take him in alive, at least not without getting herself killed.

He braced both hands on the floor and pushed up with all his strength, even greater than it was before. Shaya let herself get thrown off rather than resist, grunting as the torture table jabbed into her leg. The Master wheeled faster than she expected and she glimpsed a regrown wooden foot briefly before it struck her in the chest and launched her across the room.

Stone crumbled and chains rattled as Shaya bounced off the far wall, her head cracking off it as well. Her vision swam momentarily, then everything went dark as she fell face first into the water. Pain paralyzed her, her thoughts screaming at her unresponsive body to do something to get out of the water.

Rage answered her call, fury burning away the pain and giving her the strength to push up out of the water on trembling arms. She gasped for breath, thankful to inhale even the disgusting air of the dungeon, and with oxygen her senses returned to her. Darkness still encroached on her vision and, distantly, pain thundered in the back of her head.

“Prostrate yourself!” A staccato command demanded.

Her ward shattered. The force of the command stabbed into her mind like a stiletto, and she threw her force of will against it. She sensed the power behind the command was only a fraction of the power that Rea wielded when driving her berserk in their training sessions and her instinctual defiance kicked in. Some of her muscles tried to force her head back under the water, wanting to scrape her forehead against the stone floor, but more resisted.

“Drink spit, you worm,” she muttered, already tracing another ward spell as the first faded from her spirit upon breaking.

She tried to stand, collapsing against the wall and using it to prop herself up. Pain thundered in her head, but she managed to finish her ward. Glancing toward her enemy, she caught sight of a hand surging toward her just as strong, hard fingers curled around her throat and lifted her off her feet. The Master’s clothing was torn apart from her barbed cloak, revealing that his entire body had been changed into the twisted bark.

“I’m going to break you like I’m going to break your little empire,” the Master snarled, his hideous face proving capable of twisting with hatred, “already so fractured, so vulnerable.”

Shaya kicked at the smaller man, but he simply ignored her feeble attacks and closed his fingers around her throat tighter. She tried to get her hands around his wrist and twist, but his strength was still greater than hers. She wanted to chop his arm off, but she had lost her axe somewhere and she knew that bronze would be of no use against this monster.

“While your leaders drive you apart, our alliance is only growing – larger than you can ever imagine.

“Now, stop resisting,” he commanded with power, Azurite leaving his eyes.

Her ward held against the first spell, but aether surged and waned as he kept repeating the command with more and more intensity, favouring rapid fire spells instead of his usual haymakers. The ward issued high pitched cracks as he applied more and more magical pressure against her mind.

“Have you ever tried... saying please?” Shaya wheezed.

Her hands fell to her side as he pushed her harder against the wall, a sick pleasure dancing in malevolent eyes that bore into hers as he squeezed the life out of her.

Just as she had hoped.

She snapped an iron manacle over the outstretched wrist pinning her to the wall. The spiritual wood sizzled wherever iron touched it, melting like wax in an attempt to escape the anathema’s touch. The Master screamed, but made the rational snap decision to kill her while he held her in his power.

Wooden fingers crushed down on her throat... with the strength of a mortal man half her size. Her neck muscles bulged as they resisted and her hands clamped over his, twisting his wrist until even his mortal strength relented its pressure. Wooden claws raked at her throat in a desperate attempt to open an artery, but opened only shallow scratches instead.

With a shove from her, he stumbled backwards and she stood on her own two feet again. He held the manacled wrist, a keening wail building in his throat as he tried to claw at the iron. But his hand recoiled whenever it came into contact with the iron as well. In a panic, he tried to use what strength he had left to wrench the chain from the wall so he could attempt to escape again, but it held against his meagre strength.

“You’ve won,” he screeched, slumping to his knees in defeat, “now kill me.”

“Oh, I’m not going to kill you,” Shaya smiled down at him, voice hoarse from the choking, “I’m going to capture you. Afterall, your gloating barely revealed any of your actual plans.”

Shaya picked up another chain from the wall, feeling Phaedra’s discomfort at the iron touching Shaya’s skin and how the anathema drained the aether from her spells. Within moments, her ward evaporated and she felt her muscles weaken to their natural state. The connection to her weapon’s haft was broken, the bronze scraping along the floor as the weapon returned to its normal length.

With an effort, Shaya quelled the rage within her and resisted its desire to beat the captive to death with the chain. Instead, she moved to manacle his other arm.

“No, please, mercy,” he begged, eyes wide as the iron manacle moved toward him, “no more.”

“How many of your victims said the same to you?” Shaya asked. “And did you show them any mercy at all?”

She snapped the iron over his other wrist, knowing the answer to her questions, then pulled the chain tight so he was forced against the wall.

Are you satisfied? She asked Phaedra, fishing her axe out of the water and slumping against the torture table as the pain encroached on her again. As she settled in, she kept her eyes on the squirming form of the Master, curious to see that he didn’t sever the connection to the spiritual wood he was bonded with.

“You can’t withdraw your spiritual connection, can you?” Shaya murmured. “It’s permanent, isn’t it? More than even a binding ritual...”

She trailed off, her field of vision narrowing on her prisoner, watching as a sense of gloating returned to his eyes. The cool metal felt great against the back of her head, but quickly warmed for some reason. A chill crawled through her body as limbs grew more leaden, and some part of her mind cautioned her about it. Urged her to do something, recall some training that would help her.

But a larger part of her thought she deserved a good nap, given all she had been through that day.