WM [9] Confrontation

True teleportation magic was a complex and highly specialized type of darkness magic. Sure, Blink and Flash Step were pretty standard for mages and material users, but those were personal short-range effects that usually moved them no more than a few yards at a time. They were extremely limited in utility outside of combat. Tanisha’s Arcane Shift was closer to actual teleportation and Blink hybrid and took far more visualization than a traditional Blink.

By this point, the swirling and condensing darkness magic was the culmination of two days of work on Loki’s part. Teleporting himself and Ingrid over five hundred miles to the frontlines was significant. The room they were in was designed for darkness teleportation magics and would aid in the stabilization of the complex and powerful portal he was building with his magic.

The room was silent aside from the bubbling archway, slowly forming from what looked like a pool of absolute black. The door of the chamber opened, and Tanisha stepped inside. Ingrid glanced at her from a book she was reading in the corner of the room. Loki was too engrossed in creating the portal to notice Tanisha enter.

The girl had purposely waited until Bjorn was asleep to confront the anti-magic mage alone. She wasn’t going to do anything drastic; she knew that if Ingrid wanted to, she could kill her in a second. She just knew this was something she had to do by herself.

Tanisha hadn’t used the seiðr to suppress her emotions like she did with maya before the evolution. The extreme emotions she had to force herself to feel to create her new core soured her opinion of the ability. So when she saw the woman and the man who caused her and her friends so much pain, she had to take calming breaths to keep from doing something regretful. She didn’t even look at Loki; she didn’t trust herself to not lash out at him. Instead, she beelined to Ingrid, who sat cross-legged at a coffee table.

Ingrid didn’t look up at Tanisha as she approached. The woman casually turned the page in her book as if the girl didn’t matter. Tanisha stopped right in front of the snowfallen woman and towered over her mother, who looked even smaller in comparison while sitting down. After her transformation, Tanisha had grown a foot taller, making her closer to Joha than the five-foot-ten woman.

Ingrid sighed after a moment, “Can I help you, demon?”

Tanisha wrapped her tail around the book and threw it across the room. Ingrid lowered her hands that a moment before were holding the book that was apparently far more interesting than Tanisha. The woman didn’t look up; she kept her head down, and her raven hair covered her face.

“You don’t even care about the pain you caused, do you? You are just upset your crazy genocide didn’t go according to plan,” Tanisha said through gritted teeth.

“Demon. I. Suggest. You. Leave,” Ingrid bit off each venom-filled word.

“Or what? Are you going to kill me? You already tried,” Tanisha said. “Your whole fucking army tried; your Hand tried. But after all that, look who is still here. Is it me or Thyra?”

Ingrid looked up at Tanisha for the first time. It disarmed her for a second how red and puffy Ingrid’s face was, and it was apparent she had been crying. Her expression quickly changed to anger the longer Tanisha stood over her, but there was no fight in the former Sword of the Salstars.

Tanisha was off balance; this was not what she expected from the woman who always told her those with power had every right to do as they pleased. Ingrid believed a person is only as important as the power they wielded, the men and women they controlled, and the land they could dominate. Yet now she was a pathetic husk; she lost one battle and was crumbling.

Tanisha’s heart pounded as she fought the urge to strike the woman. She was almost sure that if she wanted to, she could wrap her hands around Ingrid’s neck, and Ingrid would just let it happen. This woman had torn apart her life, uprooting everything as she was finally living a life she could be happy in. This was the woman who started a pointless battle that killed innocent people, that killed Helena. She felt hatred bubbling inside her, but seeing Ingrid like this, so broken and defeated.

“What do you want from me, demon?” Ingrid asked, her voice softer than Tanisha had ever heard it. “You want to kill me? Now is your best chance. Loki can’t move from that spot while channeling so much mana. I am already dead, anyway. So, go ahead, what else is there for a broken sword like me?”

Tanisha pushed Ingrid out of her chair, and the former noblewoman clattered to the ground. The action activated her Identify ability.

Identify

Name: Ingrid Salstar
Species: Wendigo
Level: 317
Vocation: Sealing and Binding Warmage
Highest Stat: Magic: 1000+

It was so pathetic that Tanisha just grew angrier. She opened and closed her fists, struggling to hold herself back from summoning her daggers and getting it over with. Her anger continued rising as the ambient mana, ordinarily invisible, streamed as glittering sparkles. It circled her, creating a ring and then an event horizon as power flooded into her. The tattoos on Tanisha’s body started to glow and move as if alive.

Ringularity Sage Core 
Seiðr cost: Variable 
Chaos, mana, maya, and aether compose the inner workings of your soul. Their coalescence in one body created seiðr, an energy seeking to uncover the nature of the world around it. You can control all aspects that make up your core. Exerting your will over seiðr controls mana, maya, and aether. You can use tools from any of the energies that make up your core. You will briefly dominate mana, maya, and aether outside your body and use ambient energies for your arcane machinations.

I have been through so much pain; all of my life, I was an outcast, and she is just—just giving up after one setback? How could she? I bled, I struggled, I fought for everything.

The cernunnos’ eyes glowed with a golden light as her gaze sharpened. The magical imbalance in the room started affecting Loki, who grunted as he struggled to correct the rapidly destabilizing ambient mana around his unfinished portal. If he failed, it wouldn’t just cause the portal to disappear. No, with the amount of mana he had poured into the spell over days, destabilizing now meant an eruption. It was likely that the compressed darkness magic would quickly destroy this wing of the Fort Palace. Tanisha didn’t care; she could barely see anything beyond the poor excuse for a mother in front of her. She had to force herself to step back from the former noblewoman.

“You don’t get to give up!” Tanisha said, her voice trembling with anger. “You don’t get to take the easy way out. You get to live with everything you lost. Your name, nobility, status, marriage when Ulfar learns about this debacle.”

Ingrid looked up with dull, lifeless eyes. “I know. If you were seeking to make me plead for my life, you won’t get any satisfaction.”

Tanisha took another step back as the room grew ever so slightly wobblier. Her tail flicked back and forth in agitation. The woman before her was not the influential, unyielding figure she had always known. Ingrid was stripped of everything and reduced to a shell of her former self. Tanisha wanted to hate her and see her suffer, but the First Princess had already stolen that pleasure.

Tanisha’s voice was soft but as cold as a winter’s gravestone. “And you called me a failure. I pray you have a short life, and for your sake, we never meet again.”

Ingrid looked up at Tanisha, her eyes widening as she recalled the last time she heard those words. Tanisha knew she would; it was the last thing her father said to her when they left her for dead. Ingrid just watched and did nothing to help as her daughter was bleeding out on the ground. When Tanisha cursed her family, she wished every unspeakable evil upon them.

“Freja?” Ingrid asked.

Tanisha was gone before Ingrid even finished saying her name. She activated her Arcane Shift and teleported to the hallway outside the room. Then twice more down two floors of the Fort Palace for good measure. After the last Arcane Shift, she collapsed, punched the ground, and screamed. The wooden floor splintered, and the stone beneath cracked. Luckily, no one was around, as she failed to compose herself and punched three more times. The walkway was all but wrecked by the time she was done.

The floor glowed, and a magic circle flashed for a split second where the damaged section of the floor was. Tanisha could feel the ambient mana get sucked into the magic circle, and after a few seconds, the damage was gone as if it had never happened.

Tanisha stood, and tears came to her eyes. She tried to hold them back, but they just kept coming. She leaned against the wall, then slid down to her butt. She curled up with her knees drawn into her chest and cried.

Tanisha felt better the next day after being confirmed that Ingrid and Loki were officially gone. She was in the banquet hall, and she and Bjorn were both eating some of the most delicious steak she had ever tasted. Bjorn seemed kind of out of it, too. His emotions were probably as frazzled as hers, so she decided it would be a good time to do something away from the palace.

“Tanisha,” Tyr’s voice caught her attention.

Tyr was holding Lif, his baby sister, trying to get the little girl to stop fussing so he could feed her. He looked like he was struggling, so Tanisha came to his rescue. She had little experience with babies but knew how to hold and feed them well enough. Lif seemed to like her, and Tyr had been bringing her to Tanisha when he couldn’t get her to stop crying. After a few seconds, she finally rocked the little girl into a comfortable enough rhythm for her to take her bottle.

“Thank the Forest Father,” Tyr said exasperatedly. “I have been trying to get her to eat all day.”

“You were holding her wrong,” Tanisha said while showing him the right way. “Where is Eydis? Is she still not getting out of bed?”

“I have tried, but ever since the funeral, she…” Tyr paused, deciding on a different line of conversation. “Are you and Joha still leaving?”

“Yeah, after everything the First Princess promised me as a reward,” Tanisha responded. “Joha doesn’t want to get drawn into another conflict, and I agree.”

“You all are going to Mesha?” Tyr worded it like a question.

“That is the plan. I have a human friend from there, too.” 

“You—you could stay here, though. I can pay you for your services as an alchemist, and as I rebuild the Isi…” His voice trailed off. “Look, you are just as much a part of us as anyone. Everyone would be dead if you, Joha, Helina, and Owen weren’t there for us. Even as a vassal of First Princess Sigrun, I would rather have you here, too.”

“Vassal, eh? You took her up on her offer,” Tanisha said with a genuine smile. “That’s good; I was worried you wouldn’t.”

“It would have been a bad idea not to. If—ehem—when Her Majesty becomes Queen, I am guaranteed nobility. It is what my father and grandfather always wanted for us. For the Isi to gain nobility through our ability and dedication to Yuhia.”

“I wish it were so simple for me,” Tanisha said with a longing smile. “But if what Joha said about things coming after me and Bjorn is true, I can’t stay here. I would only draw more and more problems to you and the Isi.” Tanisha looked down at Lif in her arms. The toddler had quickly fallen asleep. “Joha is going to train me to be stronger, but I have a long way to go to even be on Thyra’s level.” Tanisha handed the sleeping Lif back to Tyr. “It’s not like I will be gone forever—a decade or two, then I will be back.”

“I’ll hold you to it,” Tyr said.

“You better. Oh, and Bjorn and I are going into town. You want to come?” Tanisha asked.

“Let me get her to bed and get one of the maids to watch her, and sure,” Tyr responded, then squinted his eyes in suspicion. “Wait, are you going to the herbal shop again?”

“It was on the list, yes,” Tanisha said sheepishly. “But there are other places too.”

“Last time I went with you there, we were there all day, and you got me roped into helping you and Drew with a potion. By the time we were done, we just happened not to have enough time to go to the other locations on this list,” Tyr said with air quotes on the word list.

“No-no, there are others,” Tanisha swore with a salesman’s smile. “And you already said you would help… I mean, come with me.”

Tyr sighed, “Fine, but we are going to the other places first.”

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