With a loud crash, the portal linking the demi-plane to the real world had just shattered. The company found themselves trapped on the other side with no way to return. Among the members, none possessed dimensional powers. They had no choice but to face their jailers.
Anna and her team stood at the center of a vast circular Sino-Roman peristyle made of white marble and white wood. In the middle of the courtyard, framed by smooth squared columns and latticed partitions, lay a hexagonal lotus basin. Reliefs with floral, avian, and celestial motifs covered the edges of the basin, the pedestals of statues, lanterns, plinths, and gutters in a palette of gold and larimar. It was around this immense basin that the confrontation was taking place.
Anna caught her breath between attacks, increasingly cornered. Further away, their tank Markus lay unconscious. Gael wielded his huge bloodied hammer menacingly, protecting the rest of the group. At his feet lay the Berserker he had just defeated. An assassin and a paladin now faced him.
Esper's vegetal dome was under constant assault from a duo of mage archers, one of whom possessed the fire attribute. The druid resisted, burning through her mana at an alarming rate. Samuel, the little mage, hid behind her to assist. His mastery of water strengthened the vines protecting them. The child attracted all the attention of the mage archers, who understood his absence would cause the dome to fall.
Cristina was in a pitiful state, forced to stay back. Her cursed blade had been sealed. Unlike her usual temperament, she remained strangely silent, which worried everyone.
As for Yùjīn, she was meditating. The previous ambush had drained her strength. Now, her only mission was to retrieve her energy. She had no choice but to entrust her rear to her comrades. But their opponents were not fooled. They knew very well that the woman had to be neutralized as quickly as possible. Without her, they would never break the encirclement. But if Yùjīn returned to the fight… then nothing would hold them back.
Finally, Anna faced their leader in a duel to her disadvantage. The athletic woman leapt across the room like a wildcat. In her hand rested a drawn bow and an arrow. The projectile leaving the string was automatically replaced by another. The shaft shot out silently, never missing its target.
Unlike her acrobatics, her opponent remained motionless and impassive in the face of her volleys. The man with mahogany skin, the charisma of a Greek statue and a chiseled face adorned with a playful smile, countered each projectile with a simple gesture of the hand. The shafts were intercepted in the air, in an electric shower. Malick remained indifferent to the concert of sparks constantly bathing his silhouette.
Anna continued her relentless assault under the pressure of the lightnings threatening to strike her. The current transferred to the ground upon impact had turned the entire area into a minefield. Every step became a dice roll, ranging from a simple tingling to an electric shock. The shocks gradually became more dangerous, threatening to paralyze her.
She kept in mind the advice she had been given and did everything not to put both feet on the ground at the same time. But the longer their fight lasted, the stronger the electric field became around her. She quickly realized she had no choice. She had to pull out some aces from her sleeve.
After a deep breath, the Aether around the archer concentrated into a new arrow. This one did not radiate the same aura of silence as the previous shots. Malick still smiled, but a tension creased his bushy eyebrows. He could feel the danger coming.
The recoil threw Anna backward. The shaft went straight for the electromancer's heart. For the first time, the man dodged. A deafening impact shook the gallery and toppled a column. Malick whistled in admiration.
— You never pulled that one on us before, joked the mage, as energy gathered in his fists.
Anna started running again, fully aware the fight had just escalated. Electric arcs danced around Malick, and their points of contact with the ground emitted a worrying crackle.
— My turn! he laughed.
With a roll, the ranger dodged the blast that pulverized one of the cardinal statues. The smell of charcoal spread through the peristyle. The fire quickly spread across the lawn and the embroidery¹ that the incessant attacks had dried out.
— Anna! shouted Gael, still unable to join her.
Surrounding him, the assassin-paladin duo formed a formidable pair that left him no openings.
— I'm fine! replied the archer, loading an arrow.
This time, she did not aim directly at Malick. A fragment of the overhang collapsed on him. The man was forced to move, the exact way she intended him to. A third, more powerful shaft than the others left her bowstring. The target dodged it, not without feeling its caress, and it penetrated the palace amid a cacophony of successive booms.
The excessive use of mana began to take its toll on the woman, but she had no choice. She had to persist and take the initiative back. Malick, distracted by the falling debris, did not see the woman loading the fifth arrow, but he suddenly felt the AEther around them disappear, as if siphoned.
— You leave me no choice, he said, gathering AEther as well.
A thin layer of energy covered his body. Malick transformed into a being of light in an instant. Barely had he finished when the fifth arrow came at him. With a growl, the mage intercepted it with his hands. The arrow disintegrated on impact. Malick slid twenty meters.
His smile had not vanished from his face. He plunged his hand beneath his tunic to pull out a chain with a ring hanging from it. When the man tore the chain off, Samuel gasped in surprise from the other end of the garden. The aura of the jewel left no doubt…
— …Artifact! he shouted.
A pink Spinel engraved with a rune adorned the solitaire. And that rune...
'Nied!' thought Samuel.
Nied. The symbol of restriction, the verb of silence! Malick slipped on the ring and injected his mana into the crystal, which lit up. He pointed at the archer and prepared to recite. Anna wasted no time. She shot three silent arrows, the only ones she could release quickly enough to reach Malick before he finished. But the unconcentrated arrows lacked the power to penetrate the mage's electric aura. They ricocheted without even scratching him. Then Anna heard him:
ᚦᛗᚾ
Thur Mania Nautis
No sooner had the words echoed than she felt the bond of her contract break. Her connection with her guardian Goddess vanished, leaving only spiritual traces behind.
— Kaly…! she gasped in shock.
'Kalypso!' she screamed in her mind.
But no presence answered her call. Immediately, the effects of the rupture were felt. Her power, which depended on the contract, vanished as if it had never existed. With it, Anna lost her perceptions of AEther, the fluxes, and the Mist. Silence enveloped her senses, and with it, Anna… became…
The next attack almost caught her by surprise. It was at the last moment that her instinct and hearing allowed her to dodge. But the lightning was so close she still felt its effects and collapsed. She rolled several times before recovering. The assaults followed one another, and she barely managed to get through. But after two minutes, the indirect damage began to penalize her.
Cristina, trapped in the dome unable to do anything, watched Anna with horror.
— Damn, what's happening to her!
— She lost her power, explained Samuel while continuing to support the dome.
None of them knew exactly what their friend's power consisted of. But judging by the difficulties she faced, they guessed she depended on it more than they had imagined.
Even without their power, transmigrators remained superhuman. Their learning of magic and their physical development remained separate from their Gift. The longer a transmigrator lived, the more they learned to do without their power, since counter-spells like Nied became more common among the powerful. Yet, their comrade seemed completely paralyzed by Nied. What did that mean?
Even their opponents grew intrigued by this turn of events. The ranger narrowly avoided the electric arcs she had previously danced around. Anna finally collapsed, under the silence of the crowd, stunned on both sides. Malick looked at her with a complicated expression.
— I understand better why you wanted Nied, noted Kacper.
The Polish mace-wielder could not believe the ranger who had so easily beaten him last time was now so powerless.
— Everyone always wanted to know what the power of the Phantom of Thulé was.
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Embroideries: In French formal gardens, refers to the geometric layout of low hedges.