21. Solution
(co-written by @redmatches)
The attack on the Thatcher house was the final straw - unbeknownst to Keiran a few days after the struggle at the farm, the Thatcher siblings, with the help of Cyrille and Natsumi, set a plan in motion to finally resolve this dispute.
Perhaps Anselm needed another opportunity to lick his wounds and see the error of his ways.
Drake and Cyrille were still recovering from the ordeal, which left Ayla and Natsumi the only combatants left to track down the wayward Thatcher. The two of them scanned the streets of Ul’dah, winding through Sapphire Avenue. The petty thrills and despairs of capitalism went on around them as they wove through the evening crowds. The two of them didn’t look too out of place amongst the travelers and wanderers making their way to the Quicksand and other inns, looking for a place to rest after a long sojourn. Ayla was kitted out in some simple light armor, a red cloak draped over her shoulders and concealing the blade and focus at her hip. Nothing too fancy, nothing that would make her stand out more than usual.
Natsumi chose to wear clothing of a relaxing adventurer, wanting to appear to fit in more to the crowds of adventurers in Ul’dah. Fitting in was a better part of a disguise, keeping herself light and hoping to rely on a full ambush or surprise to her advantage, but…
Ayla glanced around, noticing the prevalence of eyepatches the further they walked down the avenue, and then turned down a side street.
“Shit’s not right. We’re walkin’ into a trap,” Natsumi uttered. “Y’sure we don’t need to call for backup? Like, Elise or somethin’?”
Ayla watched as those suspicious men milled around, “We don’t have much time. There’s a limited window of opportunity. If you think we should wait for backup…” The bard left the decision up to the shinobi. They’d always been fine as a duo, but the intel on Anselm was slim at best.
“All I’m sayin’ is that I don’t know Ul’dah like the back of my hand, and everyone here always looks ready to stab you over nothin’ when they’re walking around with eyepatches,” Natsumi murmured, “It could be us two versus your dipshit brother, or it could be a whole fuckin’ pack of jackasses and it gets too messy, I don’t know,” Natsumi conceded, “But fuck. We get the jump first, we can do it.”
“Let’s see if we can just get in and get out cleanly,” Ayla said quietly to Natsumi, “If you see a red haired son of a bitch, call him out.”
Through the sea of faces, eyepatched or not, poor or not, many bits of Ul’dah did not seem to really care about the two waltzing through, trying to seek a soul in the chaos of the city of coin, but a handful always seemed suspicious. Keen. Always watching, staring. Every raised hand to a linkpearl made Natsumi suspicious– a shinobi’s sixth sense. But given that she was the blind one this time, this was risky.
The pair turned down Quartz Avenue, a small, empty wasteland of a throughway with nothing but abandoned buildings and warehouses. And fortuitously, one man stood at the dead end of the lane - red hair, shaved on the sides, in fancy silks, and holding a relic from an age long past. It roiled angry aether like a tidal wave.
“There! The fuckin’ piece of shit is there– the fuck is that? That ain’t his staff,” Natsumi gritted her teeth.
“Guess big brother got an upgrade?” Ayla said quietly, “Ready?”
“Yeah, and waitin’ on the end of the fuckin’ alleyway screams he wanted this shit. Be careful, he’s gonna use fire. For sure.” Natsumi reminded, before exhaling. “Ready.”
The bard nodded, pulling a long piece of cloth from her bag. She tied it around her head, blinding herself, “Okay. Let’s go.” She led the way, knowing where to go and where to step based on sound. The bard unleashed a thin string of aether, latching it to her brother and using it to pull her in, sword drawn!
Anselm felt that tug from the lure, easily batting away the sword and kicking Ayla out of the way. The bard hit the ground hard, tumbling in the dust, “Thought it would be so easy, huh? Oh, you even brought the slavering dog with you. Wonderful.”
“Shit,” Natsumi watched as Ayla was knocked away from her charge. Midrun, Natsumi leapt into the air, knowing full well that all bets were off. She shifted positions, creating two other clones of her as she dove forward, using the last second to blast lightning into Anselm, trying to buy Ayla time to recover.
It was clear that Anselm had never fought a shinobi before. His eye stuttered in panic at the sight of two clones appearing, not knowing where the real Natsumi was until it was much too late, getting struck with the lightning. The monetarist grunted in pain, before upcasting a fire spell at Natsumi, “Get the fuck away from me!”
Ayla quickly got up to her hands and knees, hopping to her feet and suddenly assembling her staff, firing off a jolt, verthunder combo at her brother to create another opening for Natsumi.
The shinobi reached forward, a gust of wind flowing with her hand, cutting the flame in two and dissipating it. In other words– almost basic aetherology, nullifying the flame with the dominant aether. The wind grew, and the downward gust attempted to keep Anselm suppressed in place before she landed down and tried to stick her knife into Anselm’s rib.
Anselm swiped the red magic away, only to be buffeted by wind. Instead of fighting the suppression, he moved his staff, letting leylines appear beneath his feet. He caught the glint of a blade coming his way, and slid far out of Natsumi’s reach with the knife. In retaliation, he cast thunder of his own at her.
Ayla shouted, “I don’t think so!” before casting another jolt, veraero combo, this time it landed, pushing the man off balance.
Here, Anselm could see a glint in Natsumi’s eyes. A seriousness and levity that screamed murderous intent– something she always had towards Anselm, but one brought out fully. “Runnin’ out of room, y’little ingrate,” Natsumi hissed, shadowstepping behind Anselm to keep him pincered before she slammed her knee into his back straight in the center, her knee charged with electricity, before she brought down her knife with one hand and hurled ice shurikens from the other in a perfect barrage in an attempt to bring Anselm down while he was off balance.
Anselm was clearly showing some ineptitude at live fighting, succumbing to the knee to the back. He stumbled forward, but reacted just in time to slide back into his leylines, letting the shurikens fly unimpeded. Ayla, using her newfound aethersense, dodged the shurikens that flew her way even while blindfolded.
The bard unleashed yet another combo, jolt and verthunder, which was yet again swiped away by the black mage.
“You haven’t trained enough, Ayla,” Anselm said, seething, before loosing another upcast fire spell, right at her.
She sensed what that was, felt the death and screaming careen straight toward her, but she slid forward on her knees, avoiding the haze of fire sent straight toward her. Not seeing it happened to be a huge benefit against a man who seemed dead set on setting her on fire.
Natsumi growled in fury. As the beat upped in tempo, so did Natsumi’s relentlessness. Anselm would need to withstand a growing amount of pressure from the shinobi and her increasing speed. No knife, not yet, as she appeared in a burst of sound right beside Anselm, bringing a sudden ball of lightning surging forward and attempting to jam it into Anselm’s chest.
The black mage wasn’t expecting straight lightning to enter his chest, but it did. The smell of burnt flesh and the sound of a surprised scream rang out, “Fuck! Fuck fuck…” He reached out, feeling for that familiar aether…
There’s a blast of aether, with Anselm being the midpoint– not that Anselm is affected. It hurls Natsumi against the wall and Ayla flying out of the alleyway, as a hooded man appeared from the darkness, clutching the staff that Anselm held. Slowly, he tilted his head, before activating some of the latent energy within the staff that suddenly reversed the damage of lightning on Anselm, the same aether that lashed out at him returning to the staff in equivalent exchange.
Kurax breathed in the air, snickering, “I see, I see. Fret not, my new friend, we can even the scales.” He snapped his fingers, and the space between the two seemed to slow, the world moving at a snail’s pace. “Listen in deep, Ambrose. To your heart. Close your eyes and see the new experience. The technique.” Kurax remarked.
Whatever this feeling was, it was a surge of knowledge. Power. It was unlike what Anselm’s current soul crystal ever gave– it was a true burst of knowledge, widening his mind. It all flooded Anselm’s mind, before Kurax disappeared, apparating in the air above to watch this unfold, smiling with confidence to Anselm.
And then– time resumed.
The bard got up from her spot on the ground yet again, “What the fuck… how is he even keeping up with this?”
Anselm called out, “You should have handed that soul crystal to me. Clearly it’s not being put to good use. I could’ve done more with it than you ever will.” “Shut the fuck up!” Ayla shouted, bracing herself into a sprinter’s start, the blade in her hand seething crimson aether. She’d done as Asharielle told her, absorbed the remnants of the aether around her. She figured the next step was to stab him with it. Again, she zipped toward him, quicker this time, and sliced thrice - an upstroke, transverse, and then a stab, which was parried by the powerful staff.
Natsumi stood back up, grunting and huffing, rubbing some blood from her lips from the sudden explosion of aether she just took in utter surprise. She squinted. She didn’t land the hit? The fuck just happened? She felt herself nearly stabbing her fist through Anselm’s chest. It didn’t add up. Still, back on her feet, another thunderclap before she was above Anselm, trying to axe kick down onto him with slicing wind buffeting her momentum and lightning crackling at her heel.
Ayla supplemented Natsumi’s lightning with thunder of her own - the two of them a complete storm. Though it didn’t seem to take, due to the shimmer of a new shield around the black mage. Anselm smirked at the two women, before unleashing something even he didn’t know he could do - a flare. As the aether burned up into a lethal conflagration, hissing in a peculiar way, Ayla grabbed Natsumi by the back of her armor, yanking her down behind some crates, “TAKE COVER!”
And then, the aether exploded outward.
Natsumi’s eyes widened– having sensed some sort of powerful magic. But before she reacted, Ayla did, and she was yanked down unceremoniously to cover. Wind did not work, ice would melt, and she slammed the ground in desperation, raising a mudwall through the stone around them to block the powerful spell. But the Flare still burned through, blasting the duo out from cover and skittering onto the streets.
Nearby, panicked civilians and cries for help began to sound. Terror set into the air.
And those terrified screams terrified Anselm. He had never once had to face the grim reality of the power he coveted so heavily. The highly illegal power he held in his fingertips.
Ayla crawled up to her hands and knees, singed by the flare, “Anselm. For fuck’s sake. Stop! Stop this! I don’t know why you’ve been on this power trip. I don’t know why you would want to act like this. But you need to stop, before you cause even more mass panic! Don’t–”
Before she could get out the rest of her words, he flung sharpened ice crystals toward her. In her impassioned speaking, she didn’t sense them coming. They hit hard, going through her chest, shoulder, and abdomen, and the words she was going to say only came out as croaks, blood trickling from the corner of her mouth. Slowly, the bard slumped over…
Natsumi rose up, witnessing the ice crystals. She had surged forward, screaming Ayla’s name– and with no recourse, she leapt in front of Ayla before any of the lethal vitally aimed shards hit Ayla. These shards cut through Natsumi’s hand, ripping across, through her left shoulder as she attempted to redirect it elsewhere. Panting, she gripped her knife with her good arm, furiously hurling the knife towards Anselm in an attempt to bulls-eye it through his head in a scream of rage.
The knife soared across the field of battle, doing only a little damage. It grazed his temple, cutting the eyepatch which covered his eye, revealing an empty socket. No eye was housed there.
It only held the soft glow of materia.
Natsumi collapsed to her knee, turning and desperately cradling Ayla, “No! No, no no no! Fuck! Fuck!” She whipped around, forcing her bad arm up, blood dripping as she flared up a surge of blue flame soaring towards Anselm.
He wasn’t expecting the blue flame again. It hit him, consuming the flammable cloth on his body and singing his flesh. But it didn’t hurt as much as it could have - perhaps that had been Kurax’s doing. He lifted his staff, aiming toward Natsumi and the bleeding bard in her arms… but the staff shook. Trembled. With hesitance.
Anselm looked at Ayla. Stared. For a long time. His mouth twitched. His breath rattled, “I… I…”
Kurax landed beside Anselm, placing a comforting hand on his shoulder. “You can claim your legacy. Right here.” He urged, a firm reminder of what Ayla had done. “Fix what she has done. What murder she commited, what–” There’s a sudden gasp as a sudden string of aether wrapped around Kurax’s throat, his eyes widening. It lifted him up in the air, before throwing him against the wall. A shadowy figure appeared in front of Anselm, standing between him and Natsumi and Ayla. It was a white-haired Viera, whose aether roared in front of Anselm. It made him, and even Kurax, look dim. The very same trick that was employed to heal Anselm, was used here. Asharielle tilted her head, staring Anselm down.
“You wish for true power?” She asked. “You’ll see it.”
She snapped her fingers, and a shadowy cloud wrapped itself around Kurax’s eyes. “For you, you shall never see my splendor. I vow to you that I will burn your soul into nothingness. For auracite is not worthy enough for my crusade in seeing you die,” Asharielle hissed in envenomed passion. One aetherial blade suddenly impaled through Kurax. Her free hand snatched Anselm by the chin, ripping his face in the direction to watch Kurax. Another blade. And another. And another. He is then ripped apart through a chain of elements, from wind to flame to ice and lightning, before raw purple aether engulfed the body.
But there was not enough time, even if she bought it herself, to finish the job here, and to rid herself of everything. The raw amount of aether to do all of this was limited. Kurax was the immediate threat over Anselm. The obliteration of Kurax’s body was a beguiling act to draw attention to the fact that she had teleported Ayla and Natsumi to her own island to tend to their wounds. Her final aetherial gift to Anselm, was to instead, suddenly blast him through the alleyway with the raw aetherial power– a purple aether of absolute, primordial darkness that blasted him into a wall, before she was forced to recede time and teleport away to tend to the duo’s wounds.
Anselm slumped over in the rubble of the wall he was sent through. Other eyepatch adorned mages ran out to gather his broken body. Though still alive, Anselm was not conscious.
“Fuck…” one of the men, a roegadyn, said, “...Boss is not going to be happy about golden boy getting his ass handed to him.”
Although a corpse nearby was utterly decimated, it was instantly vacant of a soul. In the destruction wrought, a new body rose from the rubble. Still donning the same garments as before, albeit in a different body, Kurax stepped forward. Ignoring the other cultists for now, he squatted down near Anselm, snapping his fingers and bestowing enough of a heal to awaken Anselm and settle some of the pain.
“Awaken,” He urged, “This is what we must contend with. The threat we face.”
The former Gridanian groaned as he came to, “Kurax. That… was her? How do we… how do we defeat something like that? She’s… improbably strong.”
“Those with the element of surprise will have the first attack.” Kurax exhaled, gesturing towards his former broken down body, utterly obliterated and decaying into aether. “But I am not without tricks. We must plan, my boy, we must plan.”
Anselm nodded slowly, “We… need to plan. To… take her down. To steal back… my… legacy.” He spit a bit of blood, “Thank you. For coming to me when I called.”
“Rest now, Ambrose. Think not of it. Just think of your new future.” He smiled, as Anselm succumbed to his wounds and fell unconscious once more– but in a stable state.
