The man cried out in pain as the blast pushed him back, breaking through the wooden book self and concrete wall. In the next moment he fell to the floor with a loud thud.
In the room filled with the scent of burnt wood and dust, Diana stood up and strode toward the ragged hole. Looking ahead, she carefully watched the man lying on the giant storeroom floor as the burnt flesh on his bare chest and arms smoldered. A vicious curse had begun to ravish his body.
"Maybe that was a little overkill", Diana muttered
However, her expression turned ugly as something unexpected happened.
The melted flesh caused by the curse had started shedding from the man's body as new flesh formed to cover his arms and chest. That wasn't the end of it though.
As his body was reforming, the shadow creature beneath him slowly started to devour the curse to recover the damage it sustained in the blast!!
A dull, burning ache then radiated from Diana's right arm. As she glanced down, she noticed the skin and muscle from her knuckles to her elbow was seared, slowly reforming.
'The cursed explosion was effective, but I'm not sure if I should thank or curse the gods for the power of regeneration', Diana thought with a sigh.
In truth, she had been quite lucky, channeling that much spiritual energy from Lady Morrigan was like holding a live power supply. Without taking the necessary precautions doing so possessed an inherit risk of getting affected by the skill or spell she was channeling through the link.
Diana took a few deep breaths before saying,"The strategy failed."
In less than ten seconds Rosa stepped through the shattered doorway behind her. Her gaze swept the room for a moment and found the recovering man. Without hesitation, she lunged forward, cutting through the hanging dust like a thrown blade.
As she landed, her left palm struck the cold concrete.
A wave of jagged, blue frost erupted from her hand, racing across the surface with a sound like shattering glass toward the man's prone form.
Suddenly, the man's eyes snapped open.
Moving quickly his body coiled and launched up just as the frost sealed the spot where he had lain on the ground
He surveyed the spreading ice with a dark, calculating glint, then uttered a wind spell under his breath. Instantly winds gathered beneath his feet, forming a compressed current of invisible force that held him aloft.
Now facing 'Harvey', his right arm swung in a vicious, horizontal arc.
The air itself ripped.
Four parallel slashes of condensed, invisible force tore across the short distance, aimed squarely at 'Harvey's' chest and head.
On instinct Diana's left hand shot up, as she released translucent dome of spiritual energy around Rosa just as the air-slash connected.
THWUMP-CRACK!
The slashes struck the barrier like hammer blows. Fractures cut across its surface like cracks on mirror's surface, but the shield held.
In the same breath, Rosa, raised her right hand toward the Contractee and clenched her fist.
Her iris flashed a piercing, glacial white.
Ice answered her call from every direction. From the walls at his sides, the ground below him and even from the ceiling, towering pillars of blue ice erupted.
They shot inward with terrifying speed, leaving no chance of escape.
Sensing the encroaching trap, the contractee reacted with immediately. Another wind incantation escaped his lips, and a violent vortex unfurled around him.
The newborn tornado shrieked, shredding every ice pillar that dared touch its whirling edge.
With the howls of the wind ringing out, the duo watched as the tornado grew closer, shattering all the empty wooden crates in the room yet they didn't panic.
Muttering a low chant Selyrian, Rosa applied a reinforcement spell to Diana's barrier. The runes pulsed briefly across the fractures as the dome strengthened.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
With each impact the dome struggled to hold under the barrage of slashes.
Just then Rosa's gaze sharpened. Having studied the spiraling funnel of wind, its rotation and the intake of surrounding air, she quickly reached a solution.
'A sudden, catastrophic drop in temperature at the tornado's core would be enough to suffocate it....'
She increased her output to seventy percent, channeling her spiritual energy into the floor and immediately the world exhaled frost.
A chilling wave swept outward as Tundra Temperance awakened. The air inside the tornado thickened, slowed, and then began to crystallize. Frost crept across the spiraling winds, freezing them mid-rotation.
The man's instincts screamed danger once more.
He hurled himself backward with a burst of wind, shattering the half-formed ice before it could seal shut, escaping by the thinnest breath as splinters of frozen wind exploded in every direction.
'I have the Elemental advantage here but ice user's becoming a real nuisance. I'll need to sperate him from the fire user to tilt this battle further in my favor'. Formulating a plan of attack, the man gazed down at them and bellowed out
"By thy decree, Dissolve HE that invokes ice in this territory!!"
This was one of the few skills, a contractee had access to before they formed any contracts with other creatures. By selecting aspects of the target, he could affect their soul enough to forcefully impose a limited contract condition, destabilizing the target's body and soul. The only downsides to this ability were he fact that it could only target one person at a time and its effectiveness was determined by how correct the aspect identified was.
It didn't take long for the Man to understand that the men before him weren't Harvey or Anthony, as such he opted to target the traits of their abilities instead of their identities.
Rosa's core shook violently as she heard the contractee shout. She suddenly felt a burning within her chest and lost the ability to think straight. Sweat begun to run from every pore on her body as if her entire body was being melted from the inside out.
However, her eyes quickly snapped back into focus. Since she had never revealed her true gender, the man triggered the skill under the pretense that the ice user was a man. As result the ability had a limited effect on her.
While the contractee hadn't expected this failure, a clear path to success arose in his mind. Before Rosa could completely restore the damage done to her body, the man reached into his brown pants pocket and hurled out a talisman he had prepared.
After he received word of a potential attack, he had the talisman modified to amplify the shadow creature's innate skill to shift forms and physical capabilities.
'I lost a subordinate in the process, but it was worth it if I can receive That man's continued support.'
Sensing his spiritual energy building up, Diana impulsively leapt up to intercept the talisman, but as she drew closer to the golden paper, the man's shadow suddenly lunged out.
Before her very eyes, the shadow quickly absorbed the Talisman and its form instantly shifted, compressing into a figure she knew all too well.
In the next second, her gaze froze.
She saw her father.
Taking advantage of her shaken Will, the shadow hurled a clenched fist towards her, yet she didn't even attempt to evade.
Gazing up at he father's visage, Diana felt her ribs collapse as it's fist struck her square in the center of her chest.
Crack!
A cracking sound erupted within her mind as her bones and organs smashed apart under the sheer force of spiritual energy. The recoil of the attack sent shockwaves through the room so great even contractee suspended in midair had no choice but to hastily doge them.
Rumble!
As Diana plunged downward, the collapsing floor groaned. Half of the masonry gave way entirely, exposing a concealed level beneath and a hidden underground floor was now visible.
Her body struck the shadowed floor below with a resounding thud.
A cold numbness quickly spread through her limbs, leaving her incapable of any movement. Through the haze clouding her vision, she could only stare upward, powerless, as the final fragments of ice and shattered concrete descended toward her.