Alexei came too slowly and with a colossal headache.He hadn’t felt this badly since he’d been forced to take on the Nilbog in his dreams. It was as if every part of his brain had been shut down all at once and only now were the various bits and pieces coming back to life again. Then he remembered his final conscious moments and realised that was pretty much exactly what had happened. He’d been absolutely and completely thoroughly trounced by the person he’d been fighting in practically a single hit. That had never happened to him before. In previous fights, he’d always been the one that had pulled off the clever tricks and traps that lured enemies in and then took them out of a fight instantly. For once the opposite had happened to him, and he had to admit that it wasn’t an experience that he’d enjoyed. The assassin he’d been fighting had lured him in perfectly. He’d used a big hefty weapon that couldn’t be maneuvered quickly or delicately and had drawn Alexei into a close-ran
After dinner had been served and eaten in the grand main hall of the Assassin’s Guild castle, the High Matrix had once again taken Alexei away from his two companions and deep down into the bowels of the castle itself. She had taken him to a room that he thought looked to be a lot like the rooms the Mage Temple had used to check whether Neave had any potential in magery.It was a space that was clearly suited for one person, not two, and so the fact that both he and the High Matrix were standing in it made things quite cramped. It was a dark and cylindrical room with only a dim torch sticking off from above the door frame. Intricate writings lined the walls and all led down to a slight dip in the floor where a knee pillow had been placed. “You haven’t explained what exactly I’m doing here,” Alexei said. “To put it simply, Alexei, while you have the potential to be a great warrior you simply are not one yet,” The High Matrix said, “You rely on trickery and subterfuge to win all of
Alexei’s mind followed the trickle of power down its path toward his staff and his mind blossomed with potential. It was like discovering a part of himself that he’d never even known was there, lurking in the background, now thrust out into the fore to be observed in all of its resplendent beauty. It was enough to almost take his breath away, but no, his breathing stayed strong and steady, for that was the link and tether binding him to his weapon. The potential of the thing stretched forward into the future and into the past, and far beyond even both of those. He saw weapons that made no sense at all. Handles with blades of light humming from the tip. Handheld things that launched gouts of plasma across a room. Large sticks that could send out powerful explosive blasts that would eviscerate anyone in the immediate vicinity. His weapon wasn’t just a staff, it wasn’t just a foci, it was a rumbling orb of energy and potential buried away at the heart of the wood grains ready and w
Alexei’s training at the hands of the Assassin’s Guild continued for weeks that stretched into months. Every day he became a little bit faster and a little bit better at allowing his weapon to make key decisions at key moments. He found that his weapon was a lot more adaptable than most others, pulling from a wider range of forms. The High Matrix said to him one afternoon in the depths of winter, on a day when the sun barely crested over the horizon, that most people’s weapons eventually found three or four forms that they liked better than any other and then stuck to them. She called them the weapon’s bread and butter transformations. Alexei’s weapon took longer than most to settle into them, but eventually, it did. A light blade that could slash through seemingly any substance that was put before it depending on how high the dial was turned. A projectile thrower, that Alexei had discovered was called a gun, which could fit in one hand and spit out bullets at an incredible rate
Alexei touched down as if he had jumped from the curb at the side of the road and not off the side of a mountain face. His bracelets that had allowed the gravity manipulation morphed into a single staff, which he held ready to be attacked at any moment. An attack didn’t come. Whoever had perpetrated the colossal crime against Estie clearly hadn’t seen him launch himself into the situation, which was good, that meant he was still undetected and surprise was on his side. He allowed his weapon to morph back into his body and yanked up the hood that the Assassin’s Guild had given him. It was one of their specially enchanted hoods, the ones that wouldn’t let you see the face underneath them no matter how intently you looked at the person and no matter what angle you were looking at them from. He still wasn’t quite sure how they did it, but that was a thought for another time. The part of the city he had touched down in was relatively untouched by the destruction. There were a few bi
The front of Alexei's shield rocketed across the street toward his target. He had no idea what the boys powerset would be. He had no idea what level of training the boy had. All he knew was that the boy had to go down hard and fast, and a surprise attack was the best way to go about that. Of all the things he had been expecting, what happened next wasn't among them.The boy stood stock still as a writhing pillar of ants clambered onto of one another to stand strong a few feet in front of him.The shield ploughed into the stack and discharged its energy blast. It fried every insect in a one foot radius, but it wasnt enough to reach the boy.Instead his shield retracted back into place, the front panel covered in a smear of insect blood and still twitching body parts. "You control insects?" Alexei retorted, he couldn't help himself. "It's rich to talk about weaklings when your own Power Divine is so pathetic."The boy smirked, "You've no idea what an insect controller has the poten
The blast of telekinetic power slammed into the boy at full strength, and the effects were devastatingly destructive. One moment the boy was standing there with a shocked and terrified look on his face, the next a mist of red was all that remained. The boy had been completely and totally obliterated, disintegrated by the telekinetic forces into a fine mist of blood where nothing else remained. The blast of power continued onward for a few more meters before finally fizling out into nothing. “You would sacrifice your own teammate so callously?” Alexei called out, “That’s not the sort of behaviour that we were taught in the academy and you know it.” The woman smirked, “Yeah, well maybe that’s why so many of the Royal Defence Corps end up dead.”Alexei shook his head, he knew that wasn’t the case, he knew that it was because the Administrar was betraying each and every one of them, but somehow he didn’t think that the woman in front of him would care. She was too far gone for that.
If a mountain could be said to have a heart, Alexei was sure that was where the High Matrix was taking him. They’d gone down corridor after corridor, staircase after staircase, until the carved walls of the castle gave way to what was essentially just a cavern tunnel. And yet still they walked, their path only lit by the flickering blue flame of the High Matrix’s weapon as she forced it to shift over and over. “We don’t usually come down here,” The High Matrix remarked, “Usually there is no reason. As you have long since found out, the Assassin’s Guild is not usually a group for taking prisoners… however, in the event that someone did need to be contained for whatever reason, we have built an ultimate prison deep under our castle.” As the High Matrix had been speaking Alexei had noticed that the temperature had been steadily increasing. The High Matrix allowed her weapon to sink back under her skin, and Alexei prepared himself to be awash in darkness, but after a moment for his e