The army behind them- Valeria and mike who inhabited her body- shuffled their feet nervously as she made the declaration. Where once there had a window of mercy, there now had none. Across the battlefield, the smile on Darian's face disappeared as he looked at her with barely concealed pity, as he took his weapon from off his shoulder and held it in his left arm.
"Do you have the confidence of walking out of this duel with a shred of your life on you?" she heard him ask. Valeria smiled.
"Let me give you a bit of context Darian...…."
Darian had given a speech about his history which decayed the morale of her army and sowed dread in their hearts and which benefitted his via the workings of his << Influence >> ability. she was going to tell one that would do the opposite: raise the faith of her army in their chances of victory. It may not reverse the effects of Darian's << influence>> ability, but it would raise the chances of their survival and eventual victory by a lot.
"...…there exist a family line of no names. Throughout history, most of them minded their own businesses, most of them led ordinary lives. But their family existed for the very reason of ensuring the continuity of order and to also ensure that the whole of the Zu race is not wiped out by a murderous tyrant. In each generation, a torch bearer was chosen to keep the mandate alive. Over the eons, tyrants that threatened the natural order and balance fell to the blade of these torch bearers. Some of these tyrants wielded powers beyond the natural. Even then, they still fell to these ordinary men and women. This was because every generation of them wielded the family heirloom, an augment known as the Symbiotic one of Negation.
Where there was no threat to balance and order, the family and it's torch bearer lived their lives in the shadows as normal people. However, they never failed to elect a new torch bearer in each generation after the previous one died. In this generation, the torch bearer happens to be a young girl named Valeria who is a member of an organization called the Order of the Mystical Alchemists. Just three years into her induction into the organization and one year into her research which was in line with her family's preoccupation, she was called into the case of a tyrant named Darian with the alias the skull crusher.
"
Her voice, while not as loud and far reaching as that of Darian, was loud enough that the soldiers of the two armies closer to the Darian and herself heard them. The expression of Darian at this point was ugly.
Valeria took out a small ball from her side bag. Along with the ball, she took out five rectangular bars of ordinary looking metal.
"Fusing one of the augment with any weapon able object grants that object the ability to rob it's target of their mystical powers." She pressed one of the metal bars, selected at random, on the surface of the ball. The bar of metal liquefied in a surprising turn of events and disappeared into the ball. Darian must have felt an uneasiness rise from within him when this happened because many signs of uneasiness were already spilling into his previously confident persona. But he did not move from his place because the time he granted her to think had not elapsed.
"Fusing two of the augments into one object grants it the ability to rob Beings of their power." She said as she repeated the same action as the first time.
Darian's uneasiness visibly grew, his instincts probably telling him to fight or take flight now. There were still five seconds more and his pride would not let him to go back on his words. As if just remembering that the time was short, Valeria decided to speed things up.
"Fusing three four and five augments with one object grants it the power to rob Authorities, Powers and Influences respectively, and of any sort, of their power." She explained as she fused three of the metal bars at once into the ball. Mike was yanked out from Valeria's perspective as he experienced the memory from then on from a third party's perspective.
For the first time since his battle with Han the Hacker, Darian felt fear in all it's revolting glory. he could not stand it, not then, not now and not ever . He did not need to either….
…the time was up.