Witch VS Sell-Out

 In the blink of an eye, the number of occupants in that courtyard had exploded. What had started as five against five had soon become five against fifty. And the vast majority of them moved a bit too smoothly to be organic, had a fluctuating number of fingers, and then there was that yellowish tinge.

But where in that whole mess was Niles?

The battle began soon enough, Nibbles charging at one of the Soul Stealers and biting it in the face. A few more tried to tackle her, and she was trying to fight them off. Millie wanted to help her, but noticed one of these things coming at her from the corner of her eye and swung at it with Final Draft with a primal screech. Amaia had jumped into the fray soon after with their spine whip, and Sara...well, she still didn’t have a weapon, exactly.

The best she had at her disposal was webbing and what she hoped counted as ingenuity. What she figured she could do was take to the walls and provide something to the effect of air support. She skittered up the nearest wall, trying to decide where the best place to aim first would be.

To be honest, this was never something the drider had imagined she would be a part of. She always anticipated that she would stay in the forest, living a peaceful existence. But the first time that changed was when Niles rolled through. They’d had a brief fling with each other, and she had that little clutch of eggs somewhere in the woods. She’d left them to hatch a while back, and had kept considering reconnecting with their children…

But knowing what this guy had been up to around there, how much destruction he’d wrought all on his own...did she even want to find those kids that would almost certainly have at least some resemblance to him? They’d probably find their own way out there in the forest, and so she left well enough alone.

Noticing a particularly hulking creature advancing toward Nibbles, she had her target, firing some of her webs at the creature in question. She, after all, had learned the hardway that messing with that werewolf was never a great idea.

Speaking of Nibbles, she was chewing on one of the monsters, grumbling a bit. As another advanced on her, she clawed at it, wanting to enjoy her chew toy.

Amaia had been doing a decent job with the first two attackers to come for them. But it was the next two that caused their blood to run cold. Both of them looked nearly identical to Amon. Both were taunting them just by being there, the eyes turning from a solid red, to blank sockets, to bloodshot and heterochromatic.

So that was what it looked like when a soul got ripped from the Underworld...They were trying to muster the wherewithal to attack these creatures, knowing that they weren’t really their brother. But they still had portions of their brother mixed in, causing the younger dullahan to freeze. The pair advanced on them, ready to pounce…

Only to be violently repelled by a shield of pure pink energy, as Millie rushed forward to protect Amaia. The cursed constructs were bounced back into more of their kind, distracting them from their intended attack on Talia and causing them to merge into something else.

“I...I don’t know if that’s better or worse,” Millie breathed.

Amaia shook themselves off a bit, coming back to their senses right there.

“Thanks,” they told Millie, the shield coming down.

She smiled at them, as another creature tried to swipe at her head. It was taken out immediately by a spine-whip to the neck.

Talia had been slicing and stabbing at the creatures that came at her, hesitating once the amalgamation of her mother and cousin sprang at her.

But then, the webbing hit, knocking that horrific mix hit the floor and sticking it there. With its face obscured, Talia stabbed it in the back and watched it fade.

Little by little, the group whittled their opponents down just enough to see where the mastermind was. He was leaning against the nearest doorway, a cocky little smirk on his face. He snapped his fingers, more monsters popping up to take the place of the ones the group had already destroyed.

“I can do this all day,” he said, his voice strained a bit.

Did that newest spawning drain more life out of him?

As they saw this, Millie looked to the others. “I’m gonna try to go for the source!” she told them.

Amaia was fighting off a few more, dodging their attacks, but their head managed to float above the fray.

“Just be careful, okay?” they said, before their attention turned back to the ongoing fray.

Millie rushed forward, dodging when she could, swinging the scythe when she couldn’t. Along the way, one of them grabbed onto Final Draft’s blade, managing to get a hold of a surface Nibbles hadn’t licked. At which point, their hands took on almost the same shape as her scythe. But it was a bastardization, the blade changing sizes by the second. It swung the blade at her, which she met with her own. That was enough to take it down, as she continued fight her way to Niles.

She eventually got to the former champion, her eyes taking on a pink glow.

“You never did tell me just what was wrong with you,” she growled, as the fight raged on behind her.

Niles chuckled, his eyes glowing orange as he used his own magic to slam Millie to the floor. Part of her had to respect that he used his own magic for that task rather than more of his chosen tech. That at least came from what last vestiges of a soul he might have possessed.

She went to stand, but more glowing orange energy reached up from the ground and held her down, the former champion smirking down at her.

“Well,” he began. “It all started when I lived in the human world. I was a painter, but I wasn’t making much bank from it...got summoned here to deal with their threat. I was so happy at first, thinking I’d found a new purpose. I made a few friends along the way, eventually got killed by one of the threats, and then I stewed in the afterlife for a bit. Couldn’t deal with being there and broke out to find what killed me. I found the guy that was controlling it. It was this tech bro that got caught up in a Fae Circle, broke out of the blood banks, and started taking his rage out on this world. But then he told me all about how it could also be used to create beautiful things. It could enhance my work, and I was just so happy to give it a shot. You’ve seen the pretty things I can do with it, right? You appreciate my artistry, don’t you?”

Millie processed this guy’s words. So, he was an artist that turned to this soulless atrocity? This system that stole from everything it touched and hacked up something worse than the source material could ever hope to be?

Well, that simple fact just incensed the witch, her eyes glowing an angry pink. The energy bonds holding her to the floor exploded away, as she leapt to her feet, Final Draft clutched in her hands. She was growling.

“Hey, I have an idea...ditch the armor and fight me,” she said. “Witch vs Sell-out…”

He balked at her nickname for him. “I’m no sell-out…” he said.

“Coulda fooled me!”

Glaring, he relented and pulled off his armor. Beneath it, he was just this side of emaciated, his bare arms looking like he hadn’t seen water in a good long while. She almost pitied him. But he’d caused so much damage already.

“You know, I’m pretty sure that armor was leeching all the liquid from your body,” she said.

He held out a hand, summoning a weapon to it. The only reason she was pretty sure it wasn’t just a generated copy was that orange glow that appeared around his hand. But otherwise, he was holding a replica of her own weapon, that he swung right at her.

She swiped right back at him with the real Final Draft, which he intercepted with the false one.

“Can’t even come up with your own weapon, huh?” she growled, kicking at him with one of her ginormous platform boots.

As the pair of them fought and the quartet faced off with the throng, however, more fighters entered the fray. Anton and his group had arrived, rushing forward with their weapons drawn to help. Millie just barely noticed Shay flying above to provide air support. She also hadn’t noticed that her friends had been getting exhausted just yet.