Technomancer: Birth of a Goddess

Chapter 254 253 - Sparring

Emily disembarks from Calypso, slipping into the familiar halls of Eimdon's docks. She passes through the crowd of faceless people, their heads turning to follow her as she goes, and steps out onto the street beyond.

Looking up at the rumbling storm clouds above, she's hit with a sinking sense of foreboding and breaks into a run, unable to clear the haze in her mind and work out where she's going but knowing she needs to move. Buildings close in around her, shifting and expanding like a breathing beast as she sprints through what's now a narrow alley, the walls shooting up to eclipse the sky. The brickwork pushes closer and closer, threatening to crush her and nearly succeeding before she stumbles out into an open clearing, ringed by wrought iron fencing.

Each twisted fence post bears a living head impaled on their vicious spikes, their eyes trained on her as their mouths move in silent reproach, leaking trails of blood onto the smooth stone below. Some faces are human, and some are not, but Emily's gaze is drawn away from one that's an inhuman mass of writhing worms, over a man with his lips distorted by a jagged scar running the length of his face, and towards a face she could never forget: her sister.

Anna is glaring at her fiercely, blood seeping from her eyes as well as her lips, and, unlike the rest, her words come out fully formed, cursing Emily and driving a dagger into her heart.

"Traitor. Looks like you can't escape your true nature."

Emily can't move once she meets the corpse's eyes. After what feels like an eternity she deserves, she feels arms wrap around her waist from behind and a sharp stab of pain in her neck, then her vision fades to black.

***

Emily wakes with a shuddering breath, one hand moving to clasp her chest over her aching heart as the other finds Silica's head on her stomach, burying her fingers in the soft fur to ground herself.

"Just a dream," she mutters as the cold edge of her mechanical processing eases her distress. "Haven't had one of those in a while."

Then again, it's also not like I've let my full cortex sleep in years.

She turns her head to the tea set still perched on the table beside her bed, turning up the room's lights that have dimmed at some point during her slumber, and wondering if it's the cause or if her newest talent is to blame.

Emily slides out from under her sleeping daughter and makes her way to her room's bathroom, waving off Mensacus' concerned glance as she passes him. She strips and climbs into the shower, activating the jets of water above with a press of a button and letting the heated stream wash away the remnants of her slumber, relaxing as she tries to decipher a greater meaning behind her dream.

I didn't recognise, and can't even remember, half of the faces there, but one of them was certainly Yorn. Traitor… that could be my guilty conscience, but I feel nothing at the prospect of backstabbing my new Captain, so I doubt that. A glimpse of what's to come, however…

A knock on her door breaks her from her musing, so Emily steps out of the shower and dries herself with a sharp burst of machina. She slides back into her armour and moves to greet her visitor.

"Vice-Captain? To what do I owe the pleasure?" Emily asks as she comes face to face with the woman, a half-head taller than her, standing in the corridor wearing a new set of robes, again white, but these are adorned with flowing red patterns that resemble clouds.

"Ha, please," the ship's Vice-Captain scoffs, grinning and flashing her sharpened fangs. "Just call me Silvia. I came to extend an invitation to spar with me: I'd love to get to know our crew's newest… curiosity."

Emily raises a brow at the odd address but nods.

"Sure, why not. I haven't yet had a chance to properly stretch since my recent ascension."

"What a coincidence," Silvia says, waiting for Emily to turn and bid her children farewell - by telling Mensacus to keep an eye on his little sister - before leading her off towards the ship's training rooms. "I'm also yet to fully adjust to my most recent jump in power. Though I doubt you'll provide enough challenged to help me adjust."

"Oh? You only recently stepped into the seventh phase?"

"Indeed. I don't know if Eidecht told you, but we're on our way back from stealing a secret realm from The Federation, about six months ago by the universal calendar. In the process, I defeated and drained a seventh circle mage, completing my growth at sixth stage and pushing myself over the cusp of ascension."

"Drained?" Emily questions, watching Silvia politely nod to all the crew members they pass.

"Why yes, drained," the silver-haired woman responds, stopping before a training room's door and tapping out several commands into the screen beside it before stepping in. Emily follows her into a white void, with a black grid covering the floor and walls to give a reference of distance. "Of every last drop of blood in their body."

The door slides shut behind them, and Emily shivers at the sultry rumble in Silvia's throat as she turns to face her with a manic grin, her crimson eyes practically glowing with bloodlust.

"You see, I come from one of the greater vampiric races. We gain our sustenance and bolster our strength through the consumption of blood. That mage, well, she tasted simply divine. And it's odd that, given how delectable a treat she was, you can smell nearly as rich with but a fraction of her cultivation."

Silvia vanishes from her place several paces ahead of her, and Emily's instincts scream danger, a phantom sense of blades cleaving through flesh tingling against her neck. Machina floods her body faster than thought, and she falls into full assistive processing for the first time since her ascension, slowing time to a crawl in her perception. Her left arm aches as she nearly overloads its joints with Overdrive, but she just about manages to throw it up to protect her throat, deflecting Silvia's sharpened nails with the outside of her forearm.

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"That won't be enough," Silvia whispers directly into Emily's ear, her breath ghosting over Emily's skin in a sensation lacking the bite of her predictive instinct but equally dangerous.

Emily ejects a blade from her palm and spins, dropping low into a defensive stance as she swipes at the woman at her back. She hits nothing but air. Silvia's standing several paces away, without even a ripple in her robes as if her previous speed was a lie. Her gaze bores into Emily's soul. One of her hands is tucked behind her back, while the other hangs by her side, tensed, the nails extended into sharpened, blood-red blades.

"Surely you can move faster."

Silvia vanishes again. Emily feels a fleeting ghost of pain again and meets an attack aimed at her right thigh with the flat of her blade. She tries to follow the line of Silvia's hand to strike at her arm but misses as the woman slides past.

"What is your secret?" the vampire purrs into her ear.

Emily spins and swipes again, this time drawing the Spitter from her belt in the same motion and firing a burst of shots towards where she expects her opponent to retreat. None of the bullets land and, as she halts her motion, Emily sees Silvia holding one of them up to inspect.

"Nice try. You almost caught me off guard."

She flicks her wrist, throwing the bullet back as fast as Emily fired it, and, as Emily raises her mechanical arm to deflect, Silvia disappears. Emily twists her mechanical joints, flipping her arm down from its raised position to protect her left side while she spins the Spitter in her right palm, turning it to brace the barrel against her forearm and use it as a shield against her right flank. Her gun's barrel cracks as Silvia's nails are drawn through it, and the surface of her left arm splinters as it just about catches a second attack at an awkward angle.

"Good! Though, I'm sorry about the damage."

"It's fine," Emily replies as she pivots towards her opponent's voice, dropping the Spitter and firing the Claw fixed to her right wrist. "I was due for some upgrades anyway."

Silvia deflects the blade, and Emily tugs on the connected wire, swinging the machina-charged weapon in a wide circle to force Silvia to keep her distance. The grinning vampire hesitates for a fraction of a second before bursting forward and slipping under sharpened wire. Emily retracts the blade from her left palm, switching the internal attachment in the blink of an eye, and fires a metal bolt, drawing the Stream and following the powerful single shot up with an indiscriminate spray of gunfire.

Silvia meets each bullet with a sharpened, bloody nail, splitting them and sending their shards harmlessly into the wall behind her. The distraction slows her approach just enough for Emily to follow with her eyes, meeting another attack targeting one of the arteries in her legs with the thicker plate of armour on the back of her left hand.

Unfortunately, Emily isn't fast enough to react to the vampire's second hand snapping out, targeting a thin gap between her armour plates. Her instincts warn of the attack, but she's still too late to react as a thin line is carved along the outside of her right leg while Silvia slips past. The cut parts the reinforced fibres of Emily's trousers and her skin with equal ease, splitting the subdermal armour beneath them, drawing out a few drops of blood before the metal knits itself back together.

Silvia slows to a halt behind her, and Emily turns to see the woman licking the blood from her fingers. Her eyes widen a fraction before drifting down Emily's face to focus on the shifting patterns curling up her neck.

"Those are some beautiful tattoos," Silvia purrs, tilting her head with a knowing smile. "Did you do them yourself?"

Emily drops the magazine from the Stream, firing another bolt from her left palm before drawing another mag from her belt and sliding it into place. Her instincts scream of another attack to her throat, so Emily spins her gun and uses its stock to deflect the blow before turning and raising the weapon to her shoulder in one motion, unleashing another wall of projectiles as Silvia continues her taunting pattern and stops several paces away to observe her. This time, when the woman slashes through the bullets approaching her, they burst in a flash of sound and light.

However, instead of delaying Silvia's next assault, the surprise only seems to spur her on as she lets out a soft laugh and appears before Emily in an instant, pushing aside her gun and brushing her fingers gently over her exposed neck.

"That's still not enough. You know, this room is fully insulated against any unwanted outside observation, and I disabled all the cameras before we entered."

Emily releases a burst of machina, attempting to fry the digits curled around her throat to no avail, failing to penetrate the faint, bloody qi coating Silvia skin and only making the woman's grin stretch wider as she tightens her grip.

"Come on, we both know that isn't the best you can do."

Gritting her teeth, Emily weighs out her options before coming to a decision and releasing the cage of machina surrounding her heart. Her body erupts with lightning-charged mana, and Silvia leaps back, breaking contact and shaking out her lightly spasming hand.

"There we go," the vampire beams, raising both hands with her blood-clawed fingers splayed and dropping into a bestial stance.

Emily wraps herself in several spells formed from wind and lightning, boosting her speed as much as possible without entering a full elemental state. This time, when Silvia leaps forward, Emily can follow her movements, still half a step behind but able to parry her dual slashes at the last moment with two earth and metal-enhanced blades, sending her opponent's arms wide as she strikes back with a rising windswept knee.

Silvia kicks off the ground and spins, raking her claws along the length of Emily's blades before landing behind her in a crouch. A magic circle in the small of Emily's back fires several lightning-charged metal blades the moment Silvia touches the ground, and she dashes sideways to avoid them, closing the distance once again as Emily pivots to meet her head on.

Their rapid-fire exchange continues uninterrupted for several minutes without Emily managing to land a single blow, gaining several small cuts in the process and losing a few chunks of material from her left arm. Finally, their spar ends when Silvia charges forward, letting the blade from Emily's left palm sink into her right, drawing blood but locking their hands together. She bats Emily's other blade aside with enough force to send shudders through Emily's metal bones, and sweeps her legs out from under her, taking them both to the floor and landing with her left forearm pressed to Emily's throat, grinning madly as she straddles her chest.

Emily tries to buck her off, ignoring the pressure on her neck that would kill a mortal, but finds herself unable to push back against Silvia's strength even with several spells boosting her own. She retracts her Claw and taps Silvia's side, indicating her surrender, and the woman understands, removing the arm from Emily's throat and sitting back, sliding her hand off Emily's blade but not moving from her position pinning her down.

"That was fun. If I hadn't ascended recently, I dare say you would've stood a chance," Silvia says with a teasing smile, the intensity in her eyes fading as she raises her hand to lap up the blood surrounding the already-healed wound.

"Stood a chance?" Emily responds with a blank, unamused expression, glancing down at the cracks covering her left arm, her bruised, aching right, and then around them to the damaged weapons scattered across the training room's floor. "Hardly."

"Aww, don't be upset," Silvia chuckles, finally pushing herself off Emily's chest and holding out a hand to help her up. "Even as a dual-awakened mage and mechanic, it's very impressive that you even half kept up with me in a close-quarters spar. You won't have much experience to go off, but a gap of two major levels is a lot to make up once you're past fifth level. Not to mention the gap in physicality between martial artists and your chosen vocations."

Emily accepts the hand up and sends out a wave of spatial mana to gather her scattered weapons, starting with slight surprise as Silvia turns and heads for the door.

"That's it? We're done?" she questions with a furrowed brow, her head spinning with all the questions she wants to ask.

"You look like you could do with some maintenance before our next round." Silvia glances over her shoulder, her eyes focusing on Emily's damaged prosthesis. "Come find me when you're ready to go again. But don't worry, your secrets are safe with me."