Terror was a weapon, and I had just turned it against its masters. The shadow puppet, a perfect silhouette of the boy Erica had vaporized, rose from the smoking crater. Its violet eyes, devoid of life or memory, fixed on its former teammate—the Wardcraft user who was still scrambling to his feet.
The remaining members of Derek's team stared, their bloodlust momentarily frozen by a primal fear. They had dealt death, but they had never seen it twisted and thrown back at them like this.
"What... what is that thing?" the Wardcraft user stammered, stumbling backward.
My shadow puppet didn't answer. It simply obeyed my will. I pointed. "Attack."
The creature lunged forward, moving with an unnatural, silent speed. It didn't have the full power of the boy it once was, but it carried an echo of his abilities. A faint, sickly green mist began to leak from its shadowy form as it closed the distance—a phantom of the Toximancy it once wielded.
The Wardcraft user screamed, throwing up a shimmering barrier. My puppet slammed into it, its shadowy claws scraping against the magical shield, the weak poison mist corroding the energy field.
That moment of horror was the opening my team needed. Rina, her face pale but determined, rushed to Jin's side, her hands glowing as she began the arduous process of healing his battered body.
But Derek was not a man to be paralyzed by fear. He was a predator, and his rage quickly burned away his shock.
"It's just a puppet!" he roared, his voice snapping his teammates back to reality. "Forget the shield-wall! Kill the puppet master! He falls, they all fall! Focus on Dante!"
His command galvanized them. Their symphony of ruin, though missing one instrument, began to play again. The Maleficium user, a gaunt boy with sunken eyes, turned his attention from Erica to me. "Curse of the Leaden Mind," he hissed.
A wave of mental fog crashed into me. My thoughts grew sluggish, my commands suddenly feeling distant and slow. At the same time, the Phantasm user—a wiry boy with a cruel twist to his lips—gestured wildly. The battlefield shimmered, and suddenly, three more versions of Derek's charging brawlers appeared, their paths designed to confuse and overwhelm my protectors.
"Dante, watch out!" Eric yelled, planting himself in front of me, a living mountain of defiance.
The injured Graviton user, clutching his bleeding thigh, pointed a trembling hand at me. The air around my feet grew heavy, trying to root me to the spot. It was weaker now, but combined with the mental curse, it made coordinating the battle nearly impossible.
"We have to protect him!" Masha shouted, launching a volley of ice shards to intercept one of the brawlers, real or not.
Talia, a silver phantom, danced between the illusions, her Kinetic Eye struggling to track the true threats through the disorienting magic. She parried a blow meant for Masha, her rapier ringing out in the chaos.
Our support members, Neil and Juno, were now our most vulnerable assets. They stood behind the frontline, desperately trying to provide the intelligence we needed to survive.
"His greatsword has a flaw!" Neil shouted, his eyes wide with the focus of his Lore Archive skill. "There's a sigil on the hilt—it's an artifact that grants him strength, but it drains his stamina with every swing! He can't keep this pace up!"
It was a vital piece of information. But in shouting it, he had made himself a target.
One of the brawlers, a hulking brute who had been ignored in the chaos, suddenly broke off his attack on Eric. He had been an illusion. The real one, masked by the phantasm, had circled around our flank. He charged out of the shadows, his mace raised high, his target clear.
"Neil!" Juno screamed, seeing the real threat on the edge of his vision.
But it was too late. Neil looked up from his analysis, his face a mask of sudden, final understanding. He had no combat skills, no time to react. The mace came down with a sickening, wet crunch. Neil collapsed without a sound, his vital knowledge silenced forever.
A wave of collective shock and horror washed over my team. Erica screamed his name, her voice cracking with grief. The loss was a physical blow, staggering us.
And our enemies capitalized on it.
"One down!" the Maleficium user cackled. He turned his malevolent gaze on our other analyst. "Your turn, artist!"
He flung another curse. "Hex of Shared Pain!"
Juno, who had been frantically sketching Derek to find a weakness, suddenly cried out in agony. He clutched his arm as if it had been struck, a sharp crack echoing as his own bones snapped under the sympathetic magic, mirroring an injury Eric had just sustained. He fell to his knees, his sketchpad tumbling from his nerveless fingers, his skill now useless.
We were falling apart. We had lost our intelligence network in the span of ten seconds.
"Dante!" Derek's voice was a triumphant roar. He had finally pushed past Eric, who was now fighting off two other brawlers. "Your little tricks are over!"
He charged directly at me, his greatsword held high for a killing blow. My mind was still sluggish from the curse, my feet heavy from the gravity spell. My shadow puppet was still locked in a struggle with the Wardcraft user. I was defenseless.
Masha tried to form an ice wall, but the Phantasm user created a shimmering distortion in the air, causing her spell to form a foot to the left of its intended target. Talia was too far away, locked in combat with the gravity mage and another brawler.
This was it. My strategy had failed. My cold calculations hadn't accounted for the sheer, brutal efficiency of their savagery.
Derek's blade began to fall. I could see the cruel victory in his eyes, the reflection of my own shocked face in the polished, blood-stained steel.
Then, a spear of pure, white-hot plasma screamed past my head. It wasn't aimed at Derek, but at the ground right in front of him. The earth erupted in a blinding flash, the force of the blast throwing him backward, away from me.
I turned to see Erica, tears streaming down her face, her expression a terrifying mixture of grief and pure, unadulterated rage. Her hands were held together, the air around them crackling with an unstable, overwhelming power. She had saved me, but she had poured all her remaining energy, all her pain for Neil, into that one, desperate blast.
The battle was not over. We were still alive. But we were crippled, grieving, and standing on the very edge of annihilation.