A Wolf's Howl, A Fairy's Wing-Chapter 803 - Up against Gabriel [2/2]

Six deadly spinning plates sliced unbothered through a howling thundersnow storm and strange dark mist, aiming straight for the weak points in Erik’s armour.

Erik himself appeared unconcerned. He stood still in the heart of the storm, eyes closed, hammer in one hand, icy-white magic circle in the other, pulsing dark-blue runes covering his fur.

Mere moments before the plates hit home, the runes flashed one last time and everything changed.

Six dark-blue, tentacle-like appendages burst out of Erik’s back and rushed at the six plates. After six violent impacts, the plates were significantly slowed down and deflected to the side. The tentacles appeared to be made of swirling energy, slightly transparent, and yet were clearly solid.

At the same time, Erik crushed the magic circle in his hand. This conjured a thundersnow blast around his fist, just before he turned slightly to the right and punched forward with a roar.

Ting

The metal of his armoured glove smashed against the tip of Gabriel’s sword, which had been aiming straight for one of his eyes. A thundersnow explosion followed, and Gabriel screeched as he was blown back by the combined force of the explosion and Erik’s fist.

"Hmpf," Erik smirked as he pulled back his fist, eyes still closed. "Look at the tricks you need to try and engage me in close-combat. Ascended or whatever you may be, but you still can’t really match a Runebound’s physical prowess. Pathetic."

"Curse you!" Gabriel cursed after stabilising himself, quickly wiping some blood from his nose. His eyes were narrowed and spitting fire, focused on the dark-blue appendages. "You still have more abilities?! How dare that bitch keep this from me!"

By now, all his superficial class and pomp was wiped away. His suit was crumpled and a little torn. His expression, twisted in anger and frustration.

"Please," Erik chuckled as he started strolling in Gabriel’s direction. "Did you really think I’d not make any advancements since then? Your power may be stagnant, and fully dependent on your master’s gifts, but mine is not!"

Gabriel roared in a rage and stepped forward, seemingly intending to charge Erik again... but then suddenly held himself back and got his anger under control. Scowling, he didn’t answer. Instead, he launched another barrage to make Erik halt in his steps, and then quickly retreated back out of Erik’s thundersnow storm.

Truthfully, Erik didn’t actually know that much about how dependent these confessors actually were on Imogene. Did she find them, then build them up through resources and knowledge, or did she somehow create them from previously pretty talentless individuals?

How stagnant was their power, really? Most Arcanists and Runebound could still improve their abilities after discovering them, by investigating them further—that was how Emily improved her enslavement spell before.

Could these confessors do the same? Or were they fully beholden to Imogene’s whims? There had to be some drawback to gaining power that other Arcanists didn’t have, right?

Erik himself suffered from slower advancement due to being both an Arcanist and Runebound, something he’d only recently started truly compensating for.

Regardless, he didn’t know, but Gabriel’s furious reaction surely meant something.

After these thoughts flashed through his mind, he quickly focused back on the battle.

Now that Gabriel had actually retreated out of his storm’s range, Erik had also lost visual of him. The mist was still in place, so Erik’s only way of sensing his surroundings were the storm, and his ears. It took him only a moment to figure out Gabriel’s next plan, when the plates came zooming back at him, accompanied by a barrage of white beams.

A derisive smirk pulled up Erik’s wolfish lips and exposed his sharp teeth. "Really? You want to make this a battle of endurance? Challenging me in my strongest category seems like a doomed effort." 𝑓𝑟𝑒𝘦𝓌𝑒𝑏𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝘭.𝒸𝘰𝑚

Although he couldn’t use Elorium reliably in battle yet, it was essentially an endless well of energy he could draw from. The notion he’d run out of it before Gabriel ran out of aetherium was laughable... but Erik’s opponent didn’t know this, of course.

Gabriel didn’t answer, unwilling to give his position away through sound, so Erik shrugged and prepared to defend himself. His newly gained appendages lashed out furiously at the midnight plates, slapping them around to deflect them away. At the same time, the storm around his body diffused the white beams until they could do no damage to his armour.

As this chaos raged around him, Erik simply stood still, hammer resting nonchalantly on his shoulder. He’d already tried moving, but it became immediately obvious that the mist moved with him, and there was little point in running around blind hoping to catch Gabriel.

So, he stood still and waited for Gabriel to either run out of patience or aetherium.

"You stand no chance, little hunter," Erik grinned casually. "It appears I am the perfect counter to all of your spells. As soon as you realise I won’t run out energy before you do, you’ll have no choice but to engage me directly again, or flee. Yet, either option will result in your death!"

Sure that he could hear the gnashing of teeth, his eyes snapped over to that direction and lightning flashed over there. Unfortunately, he found nothing and could only continue waiting.

Of course, he was well-aware this situation only worked because it was just the two of them, and they were in Erik’s home-territory. Erik wasn’t in a rush and no one would be able to interfere in the battle without his wives warning him first.

So, right now this worked, but he was still more helpless against this mist than he’d like.

Time passed as the barrage continued. Seconds turned into minutes, turned into many more minutes. Nearly an hour of this monotony passed before something finally changed.

"The barrier is coming down!" Elora warned him through their bond. Naturally, Erik had used this downtime to inform his wives of everything that happened, and they’d done the same in return.

Erik instantly snapped into focus.

He couldn’t simply let this chance go.

It was time to capture a confessor and get some more answers.