Across the ruined edge of sector B4, Eryndra found her target. Azzemude hovered a few inches above the shattered cobblestones, his translucent lower half swirling like thick mist. He looked like a nightmare assembled for a stage play, his skin tightly woven from braided sinew over a barrel-shaped torso draped in faded carnival attire. A flat, featureless white mask covered his face, marked only by a simple painted red crescent smile that seemed almost too bright against the blank surface. He angled his body toward her, extending his long arms in an open, theatrical posture.
"Welcome to the grand stage. My name is Azzemude," he announced, his voice echoing from behind the mask as the painted smile widened by a hair. "Please, take your mark."
"Shut up," Eryndra said.
She closed the distance instantly and drove a devastating punch directly into his chest.
The kinetic force should have caved his ribs inward. Instead, Azzemude absorbed the raw physical momentum and converted it entirely into sound. A deep, bass-heavy rumble echoed out from his woven body, shaking the loose debris on the ground. The monster tilted his masked head and let out a booming, resonant laugh that vibrated right through Eryndra's armor.
She threw a blistering combination, hammering his ribs and jaw, but every strike merely amplified the acoustic tremor rolling off his frame. The red smile on his mask shifted into a flat purple line as she began pummeling him relentlessly, driving him backward through crumbling stone walls and smashing him deep into the dirt. Yet, no matter how much kinetic fury she unleashed, she could not inflict any damage. Azzemude simply continued to rumble and laugh, turning her violence into a symphony of mockery.
Roy keyed his comms. "Eryndra, I am watching you on one of the drone feeds. You just keep hitting him and nothing happens. Try something different."
"My hands kind of hurt," Eryndra growled back, "but I am going to hit him even harder!"
"I thought you would say that," Roy replied smoothly. "Feel free. I guess we will just have the strongest member of our crew come save you right afterward."
"What?!" Eryndra screamed, her pride instantly stung.
Ignoring her outrage, Roy switched his attention to the sky. "Zehrina, do you have a moment?"
"Kind of busy, can it wait?" Zehrina answered, her breath slightly strained.
High above the chaotic battlefield, the subterranean sky darkened. Storm clouds blotted out the ambient light, replacing it with jagged flashes of lightning. The Sixth Witch ascended into the tempest, floating upon a swirling pillar of twisted dark mana laced with brilliant blue and yellow accents. Her massive black robe seemed woven from pure shadow, and the heavy back lip of her bizarre, wide-brimmed crown draped entirely down to her lower spine.
Zehrina rode a spire of black dust up to meet her. The mage was already annoyed by the breach below, and her trademark cool demeanor was beginning to fracture.
"I have to admit, the dramatic lighting is a nice touch," Zehrina called out, her tone sharp with frustration. "But that hat is absolutely ridiculous."
The Sixth Witch glared down at her. "Insolent speck. You will learn to revere the dark."
The Witch raised her hands and cackled, unleashing a sharp, maddening sound that warped the air around them. Reality began to fracture and bend under her power as her magic twisted the elemental laws deep within the cavern. Gravity inverted locally in sweeping arcs, trying to tear Zehrina upward into the crushing pressure of the storm, while searing lightning rained down in concentrated grids.
Zehrina commanded her Navi'N dust to form massive, swirling spherical shields around her body. The black powder caught the lightning strikes and ground against the spatial distortions, holding firm against the onslaught. Still, the quantity of spells forced Zehrina onto the defensive. She found herself pinned in the sky, gritting her teeth as she poured all her concentration into manipulating the dust just to survive the cackling nightmare's barrage.
Down on the ground, Eryndra ran out of patience. Rather than stopping, she pivoted her weight and launched a massive, looping spinning kick that sent the laughing monster crashing backward into the remnants of a stone wall. She closed the gap in a heartbeat, slamming punch after blistering punch into his woven torso. Each blow vibrated harmlessly off his body, reverberating right back through her own bones. When she stepped back and looked down at her hands, her armored fingers were lightly shaking from the acoustic feedback.
"Fine," Eryndra muttered. "Let's do this differently then."
She reached forward and grabbed Azzemude firmly by his woven collarbones. Every vent on her armor snapped open, hissing violently as heat built in her core. She planted her boots against the shattered earth and ripped her arms outward.
Azzemude's torso stretched and violently vibrated, fighting the pulling force with a deep, unstable resonance. Eryndra's grip held, but the acoustic pressure began shaking her arms and rattling her chest cavity. The painted expression on his flat white mask bent from a purple line into a simple blue frown as the sound pouring out of him lost its rhythm.
She let out a furious yell, but the vibration warbled her voice until the sound came out mangled and ridiculous.
"If this was not such a dangerous situation," Orin chimed over the comms, "I would be dying laughing right now."
"Get off the comm, Orin!" Roy barked, instantly silencing the apprentice.
His focus snapped back to the vanguard. "Eryndra, do not stop. Push straight into the capital city gates right now. FDR, Lutrian, and I will take care of the worm and that other girl that showed up."
Roy glanced across the drone feeds before continuing. "She does not seem to be doing anything aggressive right now, so we are giving her some distance. There are still two Cuuy leaders inside that wall, and we cannot allow them to come out and join this mess."
"Understood," Eryndra acknowledged, forcing the word through the fading resonance as she tightened her grip.
Azzemude kept laughing as Eryndra pulled, the sound rolling through his woven torso in thick, bass-heavy waves as his body tried to absorb the pressure and scatter it through the air the same way it had scattered every punch. His red painted smile held for another second, bright and smug against the flat white mask, until the laugh hitched and the expression snapped into a purple line.
Small cracks ticked through his body. Threads of sinew began to tear like old carnival fabric pulled past its limit, and Azzemude kicked uselessly at Eryndra's armor before shoving both hands against her face, trying to force her away from him. Eryndra shook her head fast, brushing his hands off like a nuisance, and kept pulling.
The purple line bent into a blue frown as Azzemude reached for her head again, fingers clawing for purchase. Eryndra slipped under his arms and drove the crown of her helmet into his chin, forcing his head backward until it nearly touched his own spine. His body bucked in her grip, mist churning beneath him as he failed to pry himself loose, and his panic shifted into frantic body shots that rang harmlessly against her armor.
A ragged groan forced its way out of Eryndra's throat as her arms trembled and heat screamed through every open vent on her suit. The woven monster stretched wider and wider, his rumbling body fighting to turn the pull into sound and failing by inches, until her voice broke into a final yell and she ripped her arms apart.
Azzemude tore down the middle with a long, ripping shriek of fabric and bone. The flat white mask snapped free from his face and launched high into the air as his two halves split open, revealing a black skeletal frame hidden inside the layered sinew. Eryndra threw the ruined pieces aside, one half skidding across the dirt while the other tumbled through broken stone.
Breathing hard, Eryndra stood among the remains for a moment while the last tremors faded through her armor. One heavy sigh pushed out of her, and after a quick look across the battlefield, she turned and charged toward the dark city.
The white mask tumbled end over end through the drifting dust far above the ruined sector until a small pair of hands caught it. Orden held it in front of his face and looked it over with quiet fascination. "What a peculiar thing this is."
He placed the mask over his face, and the red smile returned at once, stretching wider and wider until it slid past the edges of the white mask and curved across empty air.