Chapter 47: Boss Fight – Alyssa?

With Alyssa turning and walking towards the ballroom the party followed behind keeping their distance however while she stated she wanted to fight in the ballroom the party didn’t trust her enough to walk closer than 50 paces behind the Kitsune mage. After a short walk she stopped in front of a set of double doors before throwing them open and striding into the middle of the room before turning back and facing the doorway to see the party walk in shortly after her.

“I am not interested in most of you, only the floating mage. Come forward dear, let us dance without distraction or interruption.”

Alyssa held her hand out towards Lexa inviting her and her alone to come forwards and take it. With a mix of reluctance, nervousness and fear Lexa floated towards the outstretched hand of the Kitsune, before reaching it Alyssa lunged forwards to take Lexa’s hands and began to dance with Lexa as her partner.

“Hmm, you do not seem to know how to dance dear. That is quite alright though as you will make a lovely addition to my collection of dolls. Your party would not dare attack a friend so once I turn you, I will have accomplished everything I will have needed to for the King’s success. However, I am afraid once we are done here you will have to face some punishment for eliminating the entire Dark Army and then Burasu and Ogre.”
“And what makes you think I won’t fight back?”
“Are you able to fight back?”
“Of course, why wouldn’t I be? Did you seriously think I had to use my hands to cast?”

At Lexa’s words Alyssa’s face turned a deep shade of red, partly from embarrassment over making such an elementary school mistake, but mainly from rage that her plan wasn’t working as well as she had wanted.

“So what now? I see you’ve gone from being a Kitsune to a Red Fox, that probably doesn’t help much in this situation though.”
“Shut up, human mage and dance. No matter, my plan will work it will just take longer than I had planned for.”
“Is that so? Well while you’re doing that I’ll be playing to win as well.”

The pair continued to dance in the middle of the ballroom with the rest of the party standing just within the doorway watching on at the strange sight before them. From where they were standing not a whole lot seemed to be going on between the pair apart from them dancing, little were the party aware that the dance they were watching could change the course of the quest they were currently on. As the music in the ballroom ended the pair in the center of the room stopped moving and glared at each other, nothing happening but the air filled with an electric tension.

“So? Guess the little red fox was unable to do a single thing.”
“Huh!? You insolent human, neither were you able to do anything to me.”
“Well I didn’t want to interrupt you when you were looking so serious and focused.”
“You are hard to break human mage, I will give you that but after this next routine it will be over.”
“Sure, let us see who can cast their winning move first. I’ll even be kind and won’t start until halfway through the song.”
“How kind.”

Alyssa finished the conversation through gritted teeth, and the music starts up once again and the pair being to dance once more, this time with Alyssa beginning to cast one of her curses onto Lexa. Who as per her word did nothing in terms of preparing an offensive counter to Alyssa for now, however as the music reached its mid-point Lexa still appeared to do nothing to counter the Kitsune at least from an offensive perspective. This led Alyssa right into the trap that Lexa had set.
“See foolish human mage, there was nothing you could have done. Now let us get you attacking your friends now shall we.”

As Alyssa dropped her guard and freed Lexa’s hands, Lexa finally prepared her offensive spell after putting a bit of distance between herself and the mage. Seconds later Lexa’s binding spell held the Kitsune in place as Lexa walked towards her.

“Looks to me like you failed to fulfil that promise. As much fun as this was, I think it’s about time to wrap this performance up.”

Punctuating her sentence Lexa cast a drain spell on Alyssa to recharge her own mana and slowly eliminate Alyssa, but at some point, through that process Lexa decided to cut the final act short and cast a stream of water blades at the immobile Alyssa. Before those blades stopped short of their mark.

“Lexa stop playing with your food.”
“I’m not, give me a moment.”

Lexa walks towards the immobile Kitsune.

“So, Alyssa. I assume you would rather live on, therefore I’ll give you a choice between three options. The first is dying here, the second is helping us out with our quest and then we go our separate ways, or third you promise to turn over a new leaf and use your magic to help this world.”

The Kitsune doesn’t speak, at least not straight away.

“Why would you need my help? You are my equal in terms of power and mana. What could I possibly offer to you?”
“Well you’re the only one who can completely dispel your curse, and I’m going to need that to get Isla back. And if it comes to it we can use you as a bargaining chip when we meet the Dark King and try to negotiate our way out of having to fight.”
“You do speak the truth there, but I have a fourth option to table.”

In that instant the room is filled with smoke, as the haze clears the figure that belonged to Alyssa was nowhere to be seen within the haze. Instead, a new figure’s shadow could be made out through the haze, a shadowy figure that lunged at Lexa swinging some object still hard to make out within the haze at her. Lexa retreated back to where the rest of the party were waiting and like them waited for the haze to clear so they could make out their opponent as well as locating the position of Alyssa. But as the smoke and remaining haze cleared the only figure standing within the room was Isla.