Evelyn’s dark eyes glimmered with amusement. “Oh, don’t worry about me.”
Scorio hesitated and glanced at the others. They were equally caught off guard. There were seven of them. Scorio wanted to protest, argue that it wasn’t fair, but then grinned.
“As you wish, Dread Blaze.”
The main room in the Flame was large enough for over a hundred people to dance and crowd around the bar. With Evelyn standing in the center there was ample space for them to radiate out around her.
Scorio reached out with his senses and felt the turgid Coal mana that filled the air, shot through here and there with slivers of Copper. The others were already drinking deep, rapidly depleting the room’s reserves. Scorio did the same, envisioning his great paddle and swirling the Coal about the chamber and into his Heart.
They Ignited almost at the same time: the great hexagonal club appeared in Leonis’s fist; Naomi shifted smoothly into her horrific Nightmare Lady form; Zala extended both palms so that glowing butterflies began to stream forth, radiant in the gloom. Jova, Lianshi, and Juniper had no overt changes. They entered combat stances and began to approach.
Scorio suffused his Heart as best he could and then willed it to Ignite. After months as an Emberling he’d grown used to straining to Ignite, but his Tomb Spark Heart lit up easily, dense with power, and with it came a flood of might and change.
Scorio felt the black scales erupt across his hands, down the length of his arms, across his shoulders, down his back and the front of his thighs. Horns speared out from his brow, two larger ones flanked by two smaller spikes, and his fingers distended and became wicked claws, massive and glowing bright yellow-white at the talons. He grew some six inches even as his body became even more ripped, his muscles swelling as the fat melted away.
Feiyan dragged Helena out through a side door, and a second later Memek hurried out after them.
Evelyn stood with her hands on her hips, slowly taking them in, nodding to herself as she took note of their powers.
There were so many of them that they hesitated, but then the Nightmare Lady cracked her bladed tail and bounded forward, lithe and inhumanly quick, and with a snarl, Scorio threw himself right after.
Leonis let out a shout and charged, Nezzar raised, while Jova closed in from the far side, fists raised, eyes narrowed.
Scorio knew Evelyn was a Dread Blaze. Even so, he couldn’t imagine how she’d handle them all. He’d have to be ready to call out for them to stop when she grew overwhelmed.
But then Evelyn changed.
Or, more accurately, her mane of caramel hair came to life, growing so rapidly it flowed down to the ground in moments, lifting her up off the ground, a hundred locks bursting out in every direction.
One moment the Dread Blaze stood waiting, expectant, the next she’d risen to hover at the center of a great web made of her own hair, a three-dimensional mass of tendrils and gleaming ropes that swept out at them without end.
Scorio snarled and slashed his talons through the thickest ropes that came swimming toward him, and the locks singed and slashed apart easily, but there was no end to them; hair wrapped around his ankles, coiled about his waist, snarled about his neck, each tendril impossibly fine but with the tensile strength of steel.
And everybody was attacked at once.
Scorio’s arms blurred as he raked his claws over his own body, severing the hair so that he could plunge closer to Evelyn. The chamber had rapidly filled with hair, not lying about in luxurious locks but stretching from the floor to the walls to the ceiling like a million strands of webbing. He slashed his way through it all, straining against the hairs that endlessly caught against him, slowing him till he severed them again.
The others were having just as much if not more difficulty. Everybody but for the Nightmare Lady was caught by ever more ropes of hair, sweet-smelling and corded into thick ropes, braided into living chains that lifted them off the ground so that they wrestled and struggled without being able to break free.
The Nightmare Lady, however, was made for this.
Her tail slashed and swept about her as she fought closer to Evelyn, her claws raking through the caramel webbing.
Then Scorio sensed a wave of power come from Jova. Evelyn stiffened in the center of her web, made an expression of distaste, and then simply turned her back to where the Tomb Spark struggled. “Nasty,” she said. “But… yes. Sight based. I’m not looking at you again, honey.”
Jova strained, furious, then let out a cry of rage as she failed to break free.
Zala’s butterflies continued to pour forth from her palms, glowing in radiant pastel pinks and yellows, sky blues and soft green. They flitted erratically toward Evelyn, negotiating the maze of hair with bumbling innocence.
Scorio felt his mana venting out of his Heart at a terrible rate. Furious, he fought on, slashing and lunging. But the Nightmare Lady reached Evelyn first, each sweep of her tail cutting through entire swathes of the hair-webbing, and with a cry, she leaped and struck at the Dread Blaze.
Who didn’t even flinch. She raised an eyebrow, and at the last second, the Nightmare Lady withheld her attack so that she crashed down past her having missed her opportunity.
What the hell?
Scorio heaved forward, his brute strength causing hairs to snap about his ankles and waist, and got in range of Evelyn. He didn’t know why the Nightmare Lady had chosen not to strike, but following his ascension to Tomb Spark, he now had other options.
With a flexion of his will, he activated his new and mysterious power field. It swelled to encase everything within five yards, washing over Evelyn, and he exerted his will upon her.
Again Evelyn stiffened, her body growing taut, but instead of resisting she changed. Her caramel hair cocooned her with terrible speed, bundling her up in a tight wrapping of golden strands, and then the bundle she’d become shrank and fled along the ropes of hair to unravel at the far end of the room to reveal Evelyn anew, now a good ten yards away and high up by the ceiling.
“What by the ten hells…?” asked Leonis, who had ceased to struggle.
The Nightmare Lady was panting and slashing at the hair that sought to enmesh her. “Got a plan?”
“You’re all doing quite well,” Evelyn called down. “Don’t lose heart. Unless you want to give up?”
Scorio dropped his field and jerked to one side to slash a rope of hair apart. “Why didn’t you hit her?”
“I couldn’t. Mental block. My hand refused to swing.” The Nightmare Lady leaped and tore through a curtain of caramel hair that had been about to drape over her.
Jova had also ceased to struggle, but now she called out to them. “Zala’s butterflies will get her. Give her time!”
And indeed, the glowing butterflies had continued to pour out of Zala’s palms, an unending stream that now oriented on Evelyn’s new location, fluttering and dipping as they flew toward her.
“What do they do?” Scorio called back. “Never mind, don’t answer!”
“Let’s flank her,” hissed the Nightmare Lady. “We have to hurry. My mana reserves are running out.”
Scorio didn’t waste his breath replying. Instead, he led the charge, wading through the hair like a man powering through knee-deep water, slashing all about him and occasionally running his talons down his body to sever whatever had snagged him. He had moments left before he ran out.
Zala’s butterflies were starting to coalesce around Evelyn, who frowned at them, curious. She blinked, her eyelids growing heavy, then again formed into a gleaming cocoon and flowed along her own webbing, as quickly as a hurled stone to appear behind the bar.
“Damn it,” hissed Scorio as his Heart guttered out. His scaled form disappeared, and in moments he was trapped by countless ropes of hair.
The butterflies began to stream toward Evelyn, but they were slow, steady, inexorable. The Nightmare Lady cut a swathe toward the bar, straining with all her might, but when she reached Evelyn she found herself unable to strike, reduced to whipping her bladed tail at the other woman again and again only to deflect her own attack at the last second.