Chapter 54 – The Battle of the Study

The door slammed against the wall, and standing in the doorway was the hooded figure in a tattered cloak, the hood pulled low over its face. It was the same figure Valentina had seen so often in recent weeks but had never been quite able to catch.

In one hand he held something bronze, and in the other he held an open vial, whose oily, iridescent contents the figure was already pouring into a raw and malevolent Viur pattern.

Valentina felt as though she had seen that exact pattern before, an eternity ago, in another life. At the Greystone Competition.

Johann was already spinning around, but he was half a breath too late.

A brutal fire lance shot from the figure’s pattern, aimed straight at his face. Johann immediately hatcheted a hasty and inelegant defensive pattern out of Ard in front of him, but the impact still hurled him away from Innogen and into the bookshelf.

The attacker followed right away. The bronze object in his hand, which Valentina recognized as the Eye of Deceit, pulsed repulsively, and then it seemed as though someone had twisted reality itself in the room by a few degrees.

Through the Sight Valentina saw how the figure with the Eye of Deceit was distorting their perception, and Johann had no idea what was happening to him. His eyes searched for the attacker, but the attacker suddenly seemed to be standing in three places at once, and the next attack came from a direction Johann seemed to have simply forgotten even existed.

Johann growled like an animal and defended himself with a new massive Ard pattern that almost completely surrounded him, but the moment of confusion had cost him his position, and he now stood with his back against the bookshelf, wedged between the wall and the desk, while the attacker controlled the doorway and the space between them.

The figure threw back his hood. The face that emerged beneath it was gaunt, with sunken cheeks, a shaved head, and a wild, shaggy full beard. But up close, the arrogant features were unmistakable.

It was Faustus Boarfend.

Valentina’s shock almost made her forget all about the pain and fear. Faustus?

Innogen, curled up on the floor with her mangled hand pressed to her chest, stared up in disbelief as well.

But Faustus didn’t even look at them, for his full attention was on Johann, and his voice was rough and hoarse. “Enough of this!”

He hurled another wave of distortion through the Eye, and this time Valentina felt the effect firsthand. The room seemed to literally fold in on itself, and Johann, who now had his hands full defending himself against this unexpected and dangerous opponent and who was holding the very artifact he had come for, apparently deactivated, whether intentionally or not, the demonic patterns that had been binding Valentina and Innogen.

In an instant, the invisible grip on Valentina’s hands loosened and the sensation returned with painful pricks shooting from her wrists to her fingertips.

Valentina spun around and scanned the shelf where she kept her supplies. Some of the small vials of Distilled Essence were still in place. She hastily grabbed a few of them.

Behind her, there was a crash as Faustus hurled the effect of another Viur pattern at Johann, scorching one of the shelves against the wall. Valentina ducked and dropped to her knees beside Innogen.

Innogen was as pale as death. Her left hand lay in her lap, its fingers grotesquely swollen and bent at all sorts of gruesome angles. Thick beads of sweat trickled down her forehead, and her eyes were glassy with pain, but she was conscious, and when Valentina cupped her face in both hands, her gaze focused.

“Don’t,” Innogen gasped. “Help him fight.”

“Shut up, Innogen.”

On her second try, Valentina uncorked one of the vials with her trembling fingers and let Distilled Essence flow into a hastily made makeshift Leb pattern, which was completely frayed at the edges and wasted a great deal of energy, but it would have to suffice. She directed the effect into Innogen’s shattered left hand and Innogen groaned as the Leb Essence seeped into her broken bones.

Valentina lacked the concentration and the time needed for a proper healing, this was only an emergency measure, but she needed to somehow hold the worst fractures together, relieve Innogen’s pain, and prevent her from fainting from the shock.

The tense twitching in Innogen’s face subsided, and Valentina pushed her as far away from the line of battle as was possible in the small room and pressed the half-empty vial into Innogen’s uninjured right hand.

“Stay here.”

Innogen looked at Valentina with what looked like equal parts gratitude and anger. “Help him already, damn it!”

Johann and Faustus were engaged in a brutal, close-quarters life-and-death struggle across the center of the room.

It was absolutely obvious that Johann was the far superior Essence Weaver. He was operating closer to the Grundgestalt level than Valentina had ever seen someone, except Gladder maybe. Definitely much closer than she herself could dream of. But Faustus had the Eye of Deceit.

And Faustus, as much as became clear to Valentina in those few seconds, had not spent the months since his escape idly. The gaunt, shaggy-bearded young man who defied Johann with clenched teeth and bloodshot eyes bore little resemblance to the pompous flour-sack of a spoiled nobleman’s son he had once been. What remained was an exhausted but relentless tenacity.

The Eye in his fist created a nauseating veil of disorientation, and for Johann, who almost certainly did not possess the Sight, it must have been far worse than for Valentina. His senses could rely on nothing, neither the direction from which the attacks came, nor how far away they were, nor even what patterns his opponent or even he himself was currently weaving.

But Johann adapted by weaving, apparently, purely from memory and instinct, placing the effects haphazardly around him and with far more power than was necessary in most cases.

One of his Viur patterns struck Faustus on the arm with a hissing jet of flame, singeing his fabric and skin. Faustus growled in pain, but he did not flinch.

Chairs shattered, countless books were hurled from the shelves and flew everywhere like sharp-edged projectiles, and the Essence lamps flickered wildly.

“Valentina.” Vyxara’s voice penetrated through the chaos in her head. “Listen to me. Do exactly as I say.”

Valentina straightened up despite her slight dizziness, and the pain in her swollen eye, her split lip, and the throbbing pressure at the back of her head receded into the background.

“Move a little to the left, a bit toward the door. And now a Viur pattern, as aggressive as you can, right at his flank. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy, just make it as loud and as intense as you can. It has to be impossible to ignore.”

Valentina obeyed, uncorked another bottle of Distilled Essence with unsteady fingers, drifted to the left, and wove a Viur pattern, directing its beam of concentrated heat toward Johann’s left side.

Johann spun toward her immediately and parried her attack with hatred in his eyes and a careless Ard pattern.

But that moment of distraction had given Faustus an opening, which he promptly exploited, landing a hard blow on Johann with a Luvt thrust that sent him staggering backward.

Johann was now fighting on two fronts and was growing increasingly strained.

“Good,” said Vyxara. “You have to keep up the pressure from the left, but retreat immediately as soon as he turns toward you. Just like that. Now a Wazzer pattern, it has to come from above him, make him look up.”

Valentina executed everything exactly as Vyxara said. The demon had something in mind that she couldn’t yet see, and Valentina trusted Vyxara.

Her attacks weren’t strong enough to seriously endanger Johann, but they forced him to defend himself in different directions, and not least to use up his own reserves of Distilled Essence.

Out of the corner of her eye, Valentina saw Innogen sit up in her corner and, despite her exhaustion, with her shattered hand pressed to her chest, weave small Ard patterns with her right hand instead. Those patterns were normally used as shield patterns, but Innogen used them to place stumbling blocks in Johann’s path of retreat.

And indeed, as Johann attempted to dodge Faustus’s next wave of attacks under the influence of the Eye of Deceit, he collided with one of Innogen’s barriers, causing him to stumble dangerously.

“Now give it everything you’ve got,” Vyxara commanded. “Push him back toward the wall and take away all his room to maneuver.”

Valentina obeyed, but Johann was no easy opponent. The impact of a Luvt pattern hit Valentina like a battering ram and hurled her against the window frame. The blow knocked the wind out of her lungs, and for a moment she saw stars.

But she got back on her feet, and Johann had paid dearly for the hit he managed to land on Valentina, because in return he’d taken a searing Viur strike from Faustus, had nearly tripped over one of Innogen’s barriers again, and now stood with his back completely against the wall next to what was left of the bookshelf. Blood was streaming from a laceration on his forehead, and he had a nasty burn on his neck. He screamed in rage and pain. He didn’t have much Distilled Essence left.

“It’s about to happen, Valentina. He’s about to use the demon,” said Vyxara with a nasty undertone in her mental voice. “I can feel it. Keep him right where he is, don’t let up! And if he tries to tamper with the ring, attack him with everything you’ve got, right from where you’re standing now.”

Valentina’s blood ran cold in her veins and she swallowed hard. Her entire body was a single carnival of pain, and her eye had swollen so much by now that she could practically only see out of one eye and had trouble aiming, but she held her ground, gave it her all, and hoped with all her heart that Vyxara’s plan, whatever it was, would work.

And Vyxara was right. Under attack from all sides, badly wounded, and with barely any reserves left, Johann raised his hand with the ring and opened the binding channel to Narzoz even wider. The demon’s terrifying presence suddenly flared up in the room once again.

“Now.”