Chapter 91: Zahkriisos, Circuits
"Ready when you are, Toni."
*FOOOSHHHHHH*
Like a breaching shark demolishing a dumb and blubbery seal, Zahkriisos exploded out of the water with a giant splash and raised his arms in introduction. With a wail of undeath, he refused words and fired two beams of twined and twisted lightning in a ramrod beam of blue and purple luminescence.
One beam hit a shield and the other, thin air. Beside the priest masked in a dark iron copy of Dukaan and Azhidal, a woman with crossed blades had appeared to stand on the water beside him and motion to cleave him. Lightning arose from his skin and wrapped him in a shapeless storm to defend, arcing in the water uncontrollably.
But Tonilia kept pushing through the arcs like they merely tickled and moved too close for his comfort. Zahkriisos stopped trying to pin the shield-clad woman and teleported away from the swordswoman.
But a beam of red energy flew in a vertical line to his new position further back. A beam he was all too familiar with. Showing less composure than before, the priest bent himself away from the beam and dodged it narrowly.
If masks could frown, this one would. The priest immediately flashed to the back of the shield-bearer and raised both hands to end her as fast as he could. But even behind her back, Alera managed to raise her shield and block the coming beam with a glistening shield of ancient power. Ally flipped her sword in reverse grip and managed to gouge a bit off the side of the priests abdomen before an arrow found itself in his upper chest. Ally spun back to her other side to give her sword momentum and forced the priest to teleport again.
Another conspicuous but unavoidable arrow came to him to join the other one. Fire, both the arrows managed to start a burn in his dry flesh. The priest had to pull them both out and dive into the water again to put himself out.
Toni reeled her bow in, this time attempting to use Light magic which she was less familiar with to make the most effective arrow.
The priest erupted out of the water and aimed at the archer first, but Ally came and performed like a proper tank. More of his lightning magic was sucked into the shield like a pebble vanishing into a pond.
Zahkriisos didn't like whatever that archer was brewing. A wave of his hand and 4 High Seekers were summoned to surround the shield-maiden as he teleported behind the archer to interrupt her plans.
The archer looked panicked! Tilting awkwardly to aim at him would do her no good, Zahkriisos was already swinging his thunder-ridden hand into her fleshy neck.
A puff of black smoke was all that registered as his bony hand passed through the archer, followed by agonizing pain erupting from his mid-chest. A spear of light burst from the point of his pain and threatened to leak his 'vitality' like a breached hull.
Zahkriisos needed to teleport out of there quickly, so he did as fast as he could and arrived at the exact same time a beam of red energy met the same location! The wielder of his most hated sword had already killed his seekers and pointed out his teleportation pattern by exploiting it.
A red and throbbing gash drew a vertical line across him and a burning hole in the center made him look an awful lot like the door to get into his tomb. Through sheer Magicka, the priest flushed his injuries out till they weren't spreading and leaking his life out and redirected a mirthful and hidden gaze to his assailants.
Slowly they walked forward in complete confidence, along the water with their water-walking boots they strode on either side of the pool to meet him.
Another wave of his hand and eight new seekers murked his pool with green bile as they rose to his aid. He raised his hands and orbs of pure electrical power started to float around him and fork into the air and the water looking for release. He scattered them around him and shielded himself with a ward to prevent proximal teleportation, then started charging.
In less than a second, the duo tore through the seekers they were all too familiar with and advanced to him.
"Those orbs have a lot of juice. Should we try to dodge whatever he tries or attempt to break through that ward from a distance?" Ally asked Toni.
"I doubt we will have time to dodge all day from a lightning spell while he's in there, but he's not the only one who can make wards."
Almost a minute later, the Priest found that he was nearly charged up while his two assailants just stood there preparing for what was to come. He chuckled lightly to himself, for they would die here after causing so much trouble.
'But who the hell are they, anyway? Those artifacts are Aedric, and they both feel too powerful for run-of-the-mill dungeoneers. Especially that archer, she feels ridiculous. And that other one, have the Nords already mutated the Thu'um so far where I don't even recognize it?'
Zahkriisos was ready during his ponderings. He bent his arms together like he was performing the technique of a certain Turtle School, then pulled them forward together and the horrible sound of a thunderstorm shook the cavern and a blinding light wiped out all sense of vision.
But as the beam approached the image of the girls standing there, his vision started showing cracks in front of him and the beam showed slight resistance, pooling across a globe of air. The priest frowned deeply and knew something was wrong.
The air dome shattered and revealed a series of repeating domes of varying colors wrapping a blurry image of two girls laughing while seeming very relaxed. The ward they set up first showed an image of them being relatively motionless while another person projected the notion that validated it to his head, but he couldn't feel them setting up the first ward or his mind being tampered! How could someone be so skilled in mind arts and wards to trick him without noticing? Mental projection was typically a conjurer's tool, not something that could slip through a ward!
A great trick, but it appears they didn't set up many wards. He could shield himself mentally if he gave up ESP, so he decided to do so while he was safe in the ward and protect from further manipulation.
Like a bullet through thin books, the beam of blue and purple thunder tore through the shoddy wards and reached their location just before he ran out of Magicka! He had them no-
The open air they were in was actually another ward! It cracked and revealed more wards in the same sequence and the same giggling women! Zahkriisos knew something was about to happen to him from behind despite feeling nothing there, so he retracted his beam and flew out of the perceived threat.
'God damned book only helps me when I'm about to die! How would she kill me in one hit through this ward?! How did she leave her own without me noticing?! Why aren't my nodes striking her?!'
A brush of air that only Zahkriisos felt flourished menacingly towards him and swung in an arc. He rushed forward and avoided the hand of death and blasted a small wave of lightning after turning around. He hit nothing.
The other girl teleported out of the ward right in front of his face and raised her shield to bash him in his face, but where was that sword?!
Zahkriisos sent a node towards her but was immediately sucked in by her shield for being too weak. As Alera slammed her shield down, all the lightning it had accumulated rushed out to meet him, blowing him back in a tide of blue shocks. The ward had barely kept up after he deactivated his nodes and focused on it, but it didn't matter.
That wind was back and he was catapulting towards it. Without his ESP he couldn't teleport, and he ran straight into the wind of change.
Something cut a hole through his ward seamlessly, as it hummed in delight and popped the rest like a bubble being consumed in black and crimson flames. Its wielder drove it forward and he could finally tell what it was after it was already through his chest.
The Bloodskal Blade, charged with blood-red and orange energies and wrapped in eldritch and dark magic that added a will to corrupt, or consume, or bring about disorder, had finally sheathed itself in the one who betrayed it. The last son of the Bloodskal clan, and the reason for their ultimate fall, driven through by his heirloom.
Zahkriisos, The Blood Sword, was scattered to the winds in a flurry of red fire and black ashes. Toni gingerly came back down to the floor and handed Ally the blade back, who put it in the Traveler's Grimoire along with the journal. A kerplunk sounded out and Toni was reminded that Yuri would probably want that mask, so she pulled it out of the water with her burgeoning TK and Ally stored that too.
The duo exited the pool and opened a chest overflowing with gold belonging to those who had gone before them. They stored the gold in a coin pile slot before taking to their right. The spiral staircase leading back up to an exit had a waterfall shooting right down the middle and into a grate at the bottom, right behind the short and plain black pedestal holding their next Black Book.
"Man, even in Nirn these books never get stored properly. Any other book would already be soaked to the bone."
"Hey, I think this is the first book that Yuri hasn't read before us! Quick, before he gets here!"
The girls both grew a giant eyed look and leapt out with their arms like a horizontal basketball tip-off. The two of them and the book tumbled to the floor in a messy free-for-all and eventually, Ally managed to bite Toni's hand before she could leverage her greater strength. Ally had earned herself the honor of getting hentai'd first.
Yuri giggled, and a few bubbles managed to leak out of him and float to the surface of the pool where he had been under since right before the end of their duel. He was testing how long he could hold his breath now, and was still comfortable after ten minutes despite never having trained his lungs.
Thirty minutes later, Toni had started to twirl the Bloodskal blade on her index while seriously questioning when Yuri would show up. Yuri was well past uncomfortable, but was pressing on as a challenge. Ally finally woke up and gave the book to Toni, letting her complete it before reading it herself.
"How was it?"
"Uh, less enemies and more puzzles. I had to run through quite a few dead-end corridors because I can't use ESP there. It was also quite windy, which played a role in moving some of the paths continuously."
"Neat. Thanks for the tip, now its my turn..."
But before Toni could open it, a *BOOOSH* sounded from the center pool and startled the hell out of the two of them who abruptly got off their ass and armed themselves.
Only to find a wet and grinning boyfriend doggie paddling in the pool fully clothed.
"Yuri?! How long have you been under there?!"
"Uh...45 minutes?"
Toni jumped in and started wading while Ally joined her closely behind. Toni got up to his wet face and palmed it, sharing a watery and cold kiss as he brought her to his chest.
"You should've told me, I could've made your little challenge much more entertaining," She flashed him a lustful smirk and he grew hard almost instantly.
"Now I'm wishing I did, damnit," He playfully regretted.
Ally got in the guard of the other two and it turned into a three-way hug, letting Yuri take her wet lips for himself as well as she gave him full and affectionate access, differing slightly from Toni's greedy submissiveness.
"Haha, alright, sorry for the distraction. Go ahead and read the book, Toni, and we can all hold a class on it when you get back to learn it together."
"Excellent. Things always make more sense around here when you teach me," Toni flashed out of the water and picked up Winds of Change before leaving the other two alone for a bit.
"Hey Ally, can you pull that sword out for me?"
"The one we just got? Sure," The pair waded out and Ally brought attention to the fact that the Grimoire wasn't susceptible to water as real books were, thankfully.
She pulled out the Bloodskal Blade and set it in Yuri's hands, who inspected it closely. The runes didn't look like they were carved or embedded, but they were, underneath the blade like tunnels in an ant farm. The glow arose when the energy passed through them like hot metal.
"Interesting..."
"It is. It felt so cool to throw those energy beams from it."
"These aren't runes, it's acting like a circuit through which the energy the wielder provides is augmented and cycled through to then project. I can use this circuit theory to do the opposite with whatever energy I wish," Yuri dried them both off while in the midst of his tangent, "including siphoning soul power through every swing or just much better vitality steal efficiency than current enchantment can do. This opens up a brand new world, if I give this to the college I should put a contract on it. Better yet, maybe the whole arcaneum."
"If its a circuit then that must mean the blacksmithing has something to do with it too."
"You're right, this is a dual project. I'm sure we can do better together, the trick will be making other enchantments work together with the circuit."
"Does the material have something to do with it as well? That red coloration looks natural in the metal."
Yuri looked closer and by god she was right. He didn't recognize this metal, or perhaps it was a new processing method for a known ore. He would have to tear apart the original product to expand on it, and he had a hunch circuits weren't going to just apply to weaponry.
{Gonna go a bit faster to get through the Black Books and start on vs. Apocrypha}
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