My training as a Valkinvar-Imdvarce guides me, knocking me aside her spell's trajectory. Her masterful control splits the four-coloured winds apart. Flaming winds, steam and a fog of static shocks chase after me. Scorching the ground as much as they soak it black and grey.
I burst around the impact sites, breaking out into the open to deliver another blow against her block. Fire bites back against my ceremonial armoured shin, daring to melt the metal. I spin away, sliding along the molten décor of the Parade Ground. The redstone bricks crack and I sprint for her, breaking the rush to move around her lightning bolts.
Golden snakes scaled in ruby fire and envenomed with sapphire-dripping fangs. I can't hear anything other than the four noises. The hiss of steam. The shake of the electricity in the air, so seemingly random but so clearly malicious in its attempts. All to the greater backdrop of a truly terrifying emerald wind.
Unondsburic Emerald.
Any other circumstance and it might be funny. Take away her attempts to kill me and all the ideas the Crown of Conceptual War is feeding me to save my life and it would be hilarious... It was practically right before us. Hidden in plain view and known only to someone with a great understanding of riddles and more.
The traitor's magic is the colour named after the heretic capital. A power I've seen in use before. It sent a mobile fortress flying along with an airship. It shattered a mountain into millions of pieces and slammed them all back together. Denser than they ever were before.
But, that's the thing.
I flinch to the side so perfectly, avoiding the dart-like projectile of intense potency. My eyes take a light-like glance at the point of impact. The redstone is unharmed. My fingers dig into the ground, cracking the indestructible rock of the Redstone Canyon. Earth blessed by the God of Thunder himself.
My hand shoots up, twisting about, and I peel the ground up, throwing it ahead. The wall-like projectile soars ahead, bound to physics in a way its physical form isn't. The arch-traitor's magic stops it. Barely.
I run through the rock, fracturing it galore and hurling another blow for her. She catches it in a perfect mitten of shredding power and the air pops with a sonic boom. I slide along the ground, my eyes on my ceremonial armour. The power from the Crown of Conceptual War is for me alone. What is on my person is exempt.
It's not going to hold on at all. While I have faith, more faith than I've ever had before. Especially in the face of such overwhelming power and fine-tuned, multi-element control. My just recent spin through a pair of spells is certainly indicative of that!
My armour will not hold. I cannot rely on my blade. I cannot rely on anything. But I must, whatever I can to keep my life as safe as I can.
The Crown of Conceptual War is telling me so much, gifting me so much. But it only has what I have to work with. It keeps reminding me of things. Three things. Three equal, divine omnipotences.
The armour. The greaves. The battle-axe... The war gear of War himself.
Lighting strikes at my prior spot, lashing out around me and trying to catch me off guard. Gusts of fire burst out along the length of the lightning. Heat so intense the artefact keeps warning me of things beyond my sight. The civil war of the Valkinvar cannot handle such power.
The Zaphadren-Valkinvar may have got her position through less than traditional means. But she is certainly living up to the mantle of what the Valkinvar of the True Emerald Wind means. Traitor as she might be, arch-traitor crowned. She earned her place as a Point of the Compass...
And it only makes her actions now and up to now all the more heart-breaking.
"SOMETHING ON YOUR MIND, VAPOOLIAR!?" Gemorli demands to know, a moment of peace suddenly breaking out between us. I spin to a halt, slamming my foot into the redstone ground to stop myself fully. I walk up and out, leaving the fractured, holy-touched rock to dribble away. I watch her face slightly twitch. She knows full well this is no façade. Redstone is famous for its near indestructible nature. Only near now because of what I am doing.
I, the lowest of the Valkinvar, a mere Valkinvar-Imdvarce... I have redefined what it means to be an invincible material. Not through incomprehensible technology, but the limits of my own body. I continue to show off this body, walking about barefoot as it settles in only my flesh can handle the strain.
The ground is almost covered in glass, steel-edged glass from a mould of master-crafter armour. Valkinvar armour. Finest on the continent. Some of the finest in the world and it's broken like glass.
"Why?" I ask the arch-traitor, coming to a halt as she keeps some spells close and active. Mines, traps and more continue to spill from her across our battlefield. But I do not care. The Crown of Conceptual War paints such a hopeful picture in my instincts and more. I am safe from harm should I follow the plan. A plan I've nothing but the utmost faith in.
"Why...?" she asks back, laughing away as she so brazenly passes another lightning-wreathed storm at me. I lean aside, letting the spell blow apart pointlessly as her cheap potshot proves to be just that.
"You trained to be a Valkinvar. You spent as much time as I did as an initiate. As much time as any of us." I point out, accuracy be damned.
"Did I? The last I checked... I did so well I was fast-tracked into becoming a... Valkinvar-Staguiffmani." she explains, her tone haughty and full of disgust as it shifts about the facts. When it's solely her, there's nothing but ego. Nothing but contempt as it becomes what she is... Was.
"You betrayed us. For what? A promise of a kingdom? Servitude to a physical power? A less humiliating death!?" I demand to know, crossing the distance somewhat with redstone-breaking steps. She maintains the distance, even flying up a bit to keep the breaking ground away from her. Our heads shift towards a snap.
I continue to stare at the broken sheath in the ground, the ceremonial assembly for a Valkinvar before she heads to battle. Though it is wide for swords, deep enough to accommodate the full length of a Wiswipide blade... A special round slot to accommodate the handles of war-hammers and the artistic length of Staguiffmani staves.
None of my attention goes to the composite spell headed my way. I step ahead, avoiding it so inconceivably well, and it flies away. My hair shuffles towards the arch-traitor, the immense power and mixture of elements making the explosion all the more so. Debris of all-sorts rains down and about the Grand Temple of the Four-Winded Valkinvar.
Perhaps now the Three-Winded if the betrayal of an entire Ordoar amounts to anything...
"I turned my back on a failing faith. One that didn't even understand how to fight its own war." Gemorli speaks, her tongue whipping an almost visible amount of venom.
"A war you sabotaged." I point out, refreshing my memory with an unending avalanche of memories. Memories gifted to me by the artefact. Memories of her starving out monasteries of much needed supplies. Sending out armies to die needlessly and losing it in the tabletwork. The intentional promotion of incompetent officers and helping them build up fake reputations.
A complicated web, decades in the making, so it never seemed so complicated at all. Everything from the changes in policy to the changes in ceremony. It was all for this day. No, the Cycle of Screaming Witches. It wasn't a great catastrophe for the Valkinvar, it was a saving grace.
An unmistakable horror bearing the name Atarifuge, the menace in the south. Destroyer of the Dual-Republic of Thrurstradtur-Suhurlodst. That giant's awakening... By... Nin... It saved my home from a betrayal that should've happened during the First Siege of Thurn's Forge.
No... The Last Siege of Thurn's Forge.
"Ohohoho... Thinking something naughty, are we, Valkinvar-Imdvarce Vapooliar? Bitter, how I sent you to die all those grand-cycles ago? Do you loathe the idea that I wanted you dead for so long? That Sister Ogawa had to fill in your place and die for you? Oh, my lover makes so few mistakes... It's such a shame his cockiness saw you live." the arch-traitor goes on, her lips curled about so sinisterly as she continues to throw out more spells.
I walk and stumble through them all, untouched even as she warps them to catch me, "No. I'm thinking about a world away, so unconcerned with us for the time being. How actions unrelated stopped your betrayal when it should've happened."
"Ah, yes... That call on the wind. His Lunar Majesty's request to his eldest active son. Save the Jhermonikra...! Save the Jhermonikra!" she mocks away, cackling with such evil enthusiasm it makes me truly wonder, without the artefact's help. How did someone like her ever hide her true self? How was the Valkinvar so blind to it? Is this an act or was she always like this?
A life of a killer, so perfect for a prodigy whose ego never got humbled. At least... Until *he* came. He humbled her, humiliated her. She saw herself as so great, probably destined for the position of the Zaphadren-Valkinvar, regardless.
Then Prince Jhrartur made his challenge. A sickly man, heir to the greatest empire of modern Jherikra history. He came into her life, the power of the very Emerald Awakener himself flowing through his veins. He humbled her, he humbled the Ordoar Staguiffmani and seeded more than a young man's claim over a terrified woman.
He made a crack and worked it bigger and bigger. As rain traps in the mountains, freezing under the strain of the snow-belts. He got through to us. Weakening us from within as he fooled our entire armed forces into stagnancy and an arrogance of its own.
"You betrayed us all... For the man who humiliated you." I point out, watching her expression of mockery twitch into something worse.
"You wouldn't understand." she insists, her smile coming back, though invisibly weaker.
"I understand, more than anyone here. I know what humiliation does to people. I know how it changes them..." I say, closing in on a sigh and mutter as I put a hand near my chest.
"Ah, of course. Your deserved misery. How was it, 'Valkinvar'-Imdvarce Vapooliar? How was it having an osibindah cock make its way up to your sacred virginity? How did you feel, bleeding in the one way you would never be forgiven for?" she asks, each question even more nasty than the last. For all the strength I have physically, it does not stop my eyes from watering. Even as I dodge more and more spells, closing the distance between us.
I appear before her, fist cocked back, and I drive it forward. Her spell-shield shatters wide open and she spins out of control. She scrapes along the innermost walls of Thurn's Forge. Coming so close to the Valkinvar Gate itself.
I appear before her again, a gentle step to my movement, "Terrified. I was terrified."
"Heh... Certainly believable," she scoffs.
"And I came back. I came back to the war to save my home. I came back to fight. I keep on fighting. Even after you made my secret public." I explain and she bursts into laughter.
"HAHAHAHAHAH! You blame me for letting it out? Your fragile emotions let it all out. You. You did it. You pathetic freak." she snorts again, her fingers dancing about with spells.
"A freak? For having a heart? For having a heart that understands the trust given to me when I call myself Valkinvar? Call me it all you want, then. I am the freakiest freak to ever live. And I will wear that slander with pride. For at least I'm a freak, and not a traitor!" I answer, running to her once again to get us back to the core problem of our time. Civil war.