Two actors, center stage.
I held Lightbane's gaze for a few moments. Just long enough for the girls on both sides to feel the pressure.
Then I turned away from him sharply, theatrically, my cloak of black goo snapping behind me.
I jumped back up to where my girls were standing - stiffly.
I did it in one jump, and the landing cracked the stone again.
They stood at attention when I approached.
I could see that they were a bit afraid or tense.
Medea fidgeted; Regan was like a soldier on a battlefield, but Morgan was completely blank, which freaked me out a bit.
"Master," Regan said, inclining her head a little. "Give the order."
I let silence stretch heavy over them until they held their breath.
Then, in a deep, hollow growl, I said:
"Capture his followers."
They almost flinched.
Medea looked up sharply, her fox ears turning up. "Capture them?"
"Yes." I let the word roll. "Just because they are blinded doesn't mean they can't see the truth with proper… education. Entropy delights in conversion." I leaned in a little. "He delights in potential."
I said it again, because I didn't want any mishaps. "Alive. I don't care if they're injured."
I'm sure Lightbane told his girls the same. We didn't want anyone dead. If they were hurt, we could heal them, but death wasn't healable, and I haven't come across anything that resembled a resurrection spell.
Regan nodded first, taking my order as gospel. "Master," she said, "consider it done."
I softened my posture - not visibly, not to them, but just enough to breathe again. The armor was uncomfortable and pressed me like a corset, but I had to utilize the goo as best as I could with my current abilities.
It was like a kind of power armor, and it made me pretty tall, even compared to the average guy.
"Good."
Then I reached into my armor like it was still goo - if you channeled chaos magic, the goo would revert to its non-solid state for as long as you channeled - and pulled out a small glass vial, holding it between two fingers so the moonlight glinted off its contents.
The dye shimmered inside - dark, thick, but harmless.
But in the girls' eyes, it was death incarnate.
"Tonight," I said, "Astar drinks oblivion."
That earned three sharp inhales.
Perfect.
They needed conviction for this to look real.
I lowered my hand and tucked the vial back into my armor.
"I will take care of the Father. Now go."
They bowed their heads deeply.
"As you command," they said in unison and jumped into the fray.
Lightbane jumped up to me, wrapped in holy light, standing exactly where he needed to be, Sol burning through the seams in his armor.
He gave me the faintest nod.
Time to begin.
I stepped forward, letting the goo-armor ripple up my spine and out across my shoulders. A plume of dark magic - entirely cosmetic, but dramatic as hell - burst upward like smoke erupting from a volcano.
Lightbane lifted off the ground in a column of white brilliance.
I answered - hardening the armor at my legs - and launched myself into the sky.
A gust of wind tore tiles from nearby roofs.
Up above the city, with the harbor stretching like a blue-black mirror beneath us, Caleb and I hovered at equal height - two lights in the dark, one black, one white.
He raised a hand.
"You will not poison Astar," he declared, his voice booming across the housetops.
"Watch me," I snarled.
The plan was surprisingly simple.
I would poison the water supply of Astar. Not really, but that's what the girls thought.
They believed that it would be a good thing, and I'd tried very hard to keep the details vague.
They thought that Astar - actually, the whole country of Asolar - was overtaken by evil people who worked with the state and the church, and the church was evil, or not right, controlled by the gods, who forced mortals to do 'bad' things.
I didn't tell them much.
It was the simple 'church bad' narrative, and the people of Asolar and Astar were in on it.
It was the prime time to do that. There was a plague going around in Astar that people didn't know much about yet.
People in this world weren't ignorant or unaware of illness, not in practice. They bathed, usually scrubbed their hands before meals, and kept their homes clean.
They knew that a dirty knife invited infection, that wounds had to be washed and stitched, that fevers called for cool cloths and rest, and that broken bones must be set straight and kept immobile.
But for all their experience and the magic they used to heal someone up quickly, they didn't truly understand why any of it helped. Cleanliness was something they followed because tradition said the unclean fell ill.
Their knowledge was practical, not scientific; a collection of habits passed down through generations, repeated because they usually kept people alive.
They didn't seem to know about bacteria or viruses.
But recognizing patterns seemed to be good enough in a world where you can heal mangled body parts.
Anyway, I had my finger on the pulse of the city to know anything that was going on.
My smuggling network had taken control of parts of the city in the three years we were active, and I advised Gullyman, who I made leader of the ring, to tell me anything important going on.
So, if I won or lost, either one of the two of us would win.
He fired first.
A sphere of blinding white slammed toward me - a mix of Sol and Ra and just a tiny bit of chaos magic to empower it.
I raised an arm and dispelled it; the impact rippled across my armor with sparks of inverted color, rainbow-dark crackles that fizzled outward.
We both knew the spell wouldn't hurt me.
But it needed to look like it did.
I threw myself backward as if struck, spinning mid-air, then righting myself with a whip of black goo, like Venom's webs or Deku's Black Whip, and swung myself to another building and shattered parts of its side.
Stone shattered and wood splintered.
I winced a little, and the person inside shrieked - a man. At least he wasn't dead, but that might have been a little too real.
Lightbane raised an eyebrow at me through his helmet.
I could practically hear him, dude.
I shrugged and whispered, "Momentum. Sorry."
I lifted both arms and flung a wave of dark energy skyward. It burst like a black firework, then cascaded downward in streaks - terrifying to anyone watching, harmless to the actual structures below… hopefully.
Lightbane sliced through it with a huge arc of white light that sheared the illusion cleanly in half.
A few people below screamed.
Lightbane and I rose higher - far above the rooftops, out of collateral damage.
I looked down and could spy the girls fighting and jumping around in the streets and on the rooftops of the city.
We landed on the tallest building around - a clocktower.
I rolled my shoulders, cracked my neck, and let my cape dissolve back into my armor. My limbs thickened subtly - the way we practiced - giving me the silhouette of a walking siege tower.
He angled his head.
I punched first.
Our fists collided with a shockwave like two storms slamming together. The blast expanded outward, clouds of dust.
His armor absorbed most of the force, but he spun backward in a wide arc for effect. He righted himself, then came at me like a comet.
He punched me across the jaw.
A second explosion cracked the sky - this one loud enough that I felt it in my teeth. My armor cushioned the blow, the impact distributing across the goo - or gooey, I wasn't sure - structure. It only stung a little.
Honestly? It was fun. Like sparring - only we were allowed to be flashy about it.
We met again in the middle, trading blows in rapid succession. Each hit detonated outward with a sonic thump that echoed across the city.
To anyone below, it must have sounded like thunder trying to shatter the sky.
To me?
It was the best workout I'd had in weeks.
Caleb swung at my head; I ducked under it and uppercut him hard enough to send him spiraling upward like a thrown spear.
He stalled mid-air, then dove again, his armored fist cocked back.
Good, I thought, bracing myself theatrically. Make it look brutal.
He slammed into me.
The shockwave blasted downward, flattening a cluster of market stalls along the waterfront. A few boats rocked hard against their moorings.
We separated, floating a dozen feet apart.
"Having fun?" Lightbane muttered under the booming silence the clash left behind.
I rolled my shoulders again.
"More than I should," I whispered. "You?"
He snorted. "Yeah."
I surged forward and drove a punch into his midsection.
Another blast thundered through the sky.
My knuckles tingled. His armor sparked white.
There was a drunk man close by, and he yelled, "The heavens are coming down!"
Close enough.
Lightbane twisted his head slightly, giving me the signal.
Right. Time to escalate.