70 - The Hybrid

The stranger’s skin felt reptilian, like polished leather, dry, firm, and a little scaly.
Arielle stared into his eyes and immediately stilled.
It wasn’t paralysis. It wasn’t hypnosis either because she was in full possession of her physical and mental capacities. Shewas aware that he was her enemy, and she was to battle against him.
But she was also supposed to be discovering his powers, and right now, all her senses were attuned to that. There was a cool pulse in the air that drowned out sound, including that of Vittoria’s voice in her head.
Nothing else happened besides an atmospheric emptying that was barely distinguishable, yet wholly momentous.
It appeared his powers were…void?
No, not void. It was in the opposite direction of void. If void were zero, this was a negative one. It was like nothing shecould describe outside of the silence.
An encompassing silence that had only been rivaled by [Bound Mute] or the sensation of drowning in the bog. Arielleinstinctively welcomed it despite the situation and was primed to appreciate it.
“You.” When the creature spoke, its voice was a hoarse whisper. “You’re one of us.”
“What?”
“You’re a hybrid as well.”
Arielle shook her head. She wasn’t a hybrid, whatever that was. She was a Mossborne.
“Shame that I must kill you now, sister,” he hissed.
Yes, that would be a shame…wait, why did he have to kill her?
Oh right. Because they were in a battle.
Arielle instantly tried to [Repel], but nothing happened.
She frowned in confusion, finally noticing that none of her orbs were around her. They had all drifted far away, outside a virtual dome that encompassed Ari and the hybrid.
Understanding crashed like a wave.
His powers had not just driven away the noise. It had also driven away her orbs.
Some of her spells outside the dome were still active as they had taken on a life of their own, but she could not make new ones. She could not connect with the orbs anymore, the closest of which appeared trapped in a web and kept out by the invisible barrier.
He stopped my magic, Arielle realized with equal parts horror and awe. How?
She didn’t get to ponder for long.
His hand tightened around her neck.
The violent act snatched her gaze back to his. She grabbed his wrist, but did not have the strength to force his hand off her. She gritted her teeth, calling to the orbs once more with her hand out, but even then, her connection was too faint.
Arielle’s breath caught.
She was in trouble.
Essences had been a part of her world for as long as she’d known them. The spirit orbs had always naturally populated every environment she’d ever been in, and she’d never experienced life without them before.
How was this happening?
A magic blocker? She’d never heard of such a creature capable of creating fields that repelled orbs.
He was also doing something to her internally, or attempting to do something to her that she didn’t understand.
However, whatever it was appeared not to work, as it made his forehead wrinkle.
“You,” he said. “What are you?”
She blinked slowly at him. “I could ask you the same thing.”
Her answer puzzled him even more. “You don’t fear me.”
“I do a little.” Although there was some fear, there was also an overpowering curiosity. “I’m more interested in how you’restopping my magic.”
“You’re a special sister.” He shook his head, almost sadly, and said, “What a waste.”
His fingers around her neck tightened, squeezing her airways, and she finally understood that he was trying to strangle her. To kill her.
She fought him, clawing at his hand, attempting to kick him in the chest, but he absorbed the blows like he didn’t even feel them. Meanwhile, she felt everything. His cold grip, pushing into her skin. His steady gaze.
Her burning lungs.
Beyond his shoulder, she saw some orbs going haywire, attempting to break out from their bonds and break through his barrier. But they couldn’t. They were as trapped as she was.
Arielle wished now that she had trained her physical body along with her magic. She had cautioned Riorke for only training his physical skills, but she had made a similar mistake in reverse, only focusing on magic, never thinking of a time she might not have it.
She now employed every single trick her brother had taught her. She dug her thumb into his eye sockets and attempted to get her fingernails in his nostrils. She struck his vital points on his neck as hard as she could.
She even drove her knee between his legs with perfect accuracy.
He did not flinch.
Drat.
She was running out of air. Her vision was getting blurry, her strength flagging.
She might be about to die.
Her mind flitted to a lot of different things.
I hope Lyra passes her test without me.
I hope my family enjoys the gold even if I’m not there, and Elric doesn’t get sent on any dangerous missions.
I should have sent Maus’ mother some gold, too.
Then even her thoughts began to disappear too, allowing her to focus on nothing but his eyes.
The blacks were getting darker, swallowing her into the sea of vacant tranquility.
She felt an acute disassociation, like her soul was parting itself from her body and she was falling through a thousand portals, witnessing the phantoms of her past passing beside her, connecting to ghosts of those who had died in this very same way.
Shing!
Arielle landed in a sprawl on the floor, coughing as a rush of air flooded her lungs.
Someone picked her up under their arm and leaped back, out of the sphere of influence.
She felt everything more intensely than before, the grit of the sand and buzzing of orbs, the essences rushing to surround her, desperate for the contact after their rude separation.
“I’m okay,” she told them as she was dropped on the ground again.
After a second of recovery, she picked her head up in time to see the creature standing feet away from them now, one arm lying on the sand, staining it with a violet liquid.
His arm had been sliced off at the elbow. He must be in a lot of pain, but he didn’t look like it. He simply stared at them, at Arielle, getting back to her feet, and at Vittoria, standing with a golden sword outstretched, aimed right for him.
She drew back her arm and launched her weapon like it was a spear.
The creature disappeared, the sword stabbing into the ground with a force that caused the sand to jump.
In the ensuing silence, Arielle observed the environment. All the villains were gone, though their belongings remained.
“Where are they?” Arielle asked, her voice hoarse. She cleared her throat, swallowing, then winced. It felt like she’dswallowed sand.
Instead of answering her question, Vittoria turned on her with an angry expression.

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“What is the matter with you?”
“What do you mean?”
“I gave you an express order not to let that creature get close to you.”
“It wasn’t my intention to. He was simply faster than me.”
Vittoria didn’t appear mollified. “No. You should have been on alert and rushed away the second I gave you the order. And even after he caught you and disabled your magic, you did not fight to escape.”
“I fought as hard as I could.” She did not appreciate the insinuation that she had put in no effort. She had tried all the dirty tricks that her brother had told her to do in situations like that. She had used all her strength. “I did what I could.”
“Then you should have screamed for me to help you.”
“That would have disrupted our plan of me pretending to be you. Then I would have failed the test.”
“Test?” Her eyes went wide. “Who cares about the test? It stopped being about a test the second you were on the verge of death.”
Arielle did not like the screaming, so she said tartly, “Perhaps you should have clarified that earlier.”
“Why would I need to clarify something like that if you weren’t as daft as a doorknob?”
“You sent me in there with minimal instruction,” Arielle shot back. “I did not truly know what I was facing or why. Mydaftness is as a result of your inadequate instructions.”
Vittoria ran her hand over her face and gestured with her hand. “Come here.”
Arielle begrudgingly went closer to her, and Vittoria put her hand on her shoulder. Arielle felt her healing energy run through her body.
The bruising at her throat disappeared. So did the slight pinch at her side from where Vittoria had dropped her…twice. Everything except the lingering sensation of bareness within her remained.
Not to mention, the memory of her impending death was still stark in her mind.
“You seem otherwise unharmed,” Vittoria said.
Arielle nodded.
“Perhaps I should have done things differently,” the other woman allowed. “Occasionally, my boredom drives me down unwise paths and makes me hasty. You should have had more preparation, but I also wanted to see what you were like when unprepared.”
Arielle was unsure why Vittoria was telling her these things. “Is that the beginning of an apology?”
“No,” she said firmly, ”It is an explanation. And a promise to prepare you better next time.”
“Next time? There are going to be more tests?”
“Yes. Especially now that I’ve seen what you can do. That was…” She shook her head. “You surprised me. A lot, and I will tell you that I’ve lived long enough that almost nothing surprises me anymore. Your skills were incredible. And you copied my spell from seeing it once. How?”
“I’m a fast learner,” Arielle said, and hoped Vittoria wouldn’t press more.
The other woman smiled knowingly. “Yes, fine. I’ll let you have your secret for now. We have more important things to talk about, like your illogical response to danger.”
Ari blinked. “I thought I was being perfectly logical.”
“That might be the problem. It was too logical.”
Arielle drew her back. Was that not an obvious contradiction?
“Survival instinct is born from emotion,” Vittoria said. “In war, that emotion, the abject fear of death, is sometimes all that keeps you holding on to the jagged edge. You don’t have that. You don’t even know when your grip is slipping, and you almost welcome death.”
Arielle thought about how her words mirrored what Selena had said to her.
“What if I’m not afraid to die?” she asked. “What if that’s just a natural state for me?”
Vittoria took a step back and let her hand drop from Arielle’s shoulder. “Then that’s a problem. Despite what the odes and epics tell you, a good hero is never fearless. I cannot send a fearless soldier into battle. Fearlessness can make you careless. If you do not fear death for yourself, you must find the thing that you do fear and let it anchor you.”
“I see,” Arielle said. There were plenty of things she feared. Bogworms for one. She wasn’t a fan of poison crickets either.
“Perhaps with time, I can teach you to cultivate a healthy amount of fear,” Vittoria said.
Arielle nodded. “What about our plan? Did it fail?”
“No. I had already dispatched the rest before I appeared,” Vittoria said. “As for the hybrid…I’ll take care of him. I doubt he’ll be rejoining the others to tell them what he saw.”
“What exactly is this hybrid?”
“They are beastkin of mixed origin,” she said. “When different races of beastkins procreate, their offspring get a combination of their abilities, or some other unique talent. These are called hybrids. Hybrids can mix with other hybrids to further specialize and develop even more unique abilities, and some of them group themselves by those powers. Thereare rare hybrids that have magic-cancelling powers. Simply by being within a certain distance from them, they can disableyour cores. We’re not entirely sure how, and it seems to be both a passive and an active skill at the same time.” She shook her head. “In all my years, this is the first time I’ve actually met a hybrid. I wonder where this motley crew found him. They tend to keep to themselves for the most part.”
“I see.” Arielle was attempting to understand how his power worked and how he had disrupted her connection to the orbs.
He’d kept the orbs far away from her, but even with the distance, Arielle could still have cast a spell if not for the blockage. Her connection was there, but it had been too weak.
It wasn’t core suppression. She still felt her cores even though she thought perhaps he had reached in and tried to do something to them. However, when that had failed, she’d nevertheless struggled to communicate with the orbs, like they were on two different sides of a thick, soundproof wall.
Then she remembered something else about the hybrid.
“He said I was a hybrid too,” she said.
Vittoria frowned. “You’re not a beastkin, are you?”
“No. I’m a Mossborne.”
“Ah. That might be what he was referring to. You know the origin of the Mossborne clan, right?”
Arielle nodded. It was one of the first things they learned in school.
The first ones to discover the Vitae essence were said to be a nomadic tribe who had routinely prayed and meditated in the field in order to save their dying forest and ward off the famine. The descendants of these had eventually become farmers who had eventually become the Greenfingers. They took care of the forest, protecting it from destruction wrought by many threats. Humans. Wolves. Mossgiants. Dryads.
However, the tribe was not strong enough to fight off invaders.
So, the Lifetree and the Sentinel, in their infinite wisdom, had selected and boosted the physicality of another forest tribe on the condition that they were to guard the Greenfingers. Those were the Mossbornes.
“Some don’t consider Mossbornes to be entirely human,” Vittoria said. “It’s not a popular sentiment, and it’s quite offensive to say, but they consider them only a step above beastkins and claim that they mingled with those that they were supposed to guard against. Perhaps that was what he meant by calling you a hybrid. It was his way of insulting you.”
“Oh,” she said, although it hadn’t sounded like an insult. She only recalled surprise in his voice when he said, “What are you?”
Just then, her system screen finally decided to prompt her with the spells she’d used:
NEW SPELL DETECTED
Name: Ensoulment Minor
Tier: Adept
Points: 3
Would you like to incorporate it into your Grimoire?
Arielle was contemplating it when Vittoria spoke.
“Oh, by the way,” she said. “My spell that you copied, only use that when in disguise. It’s a very rare spell and can be traced back to me.”
“Professor Woden has a similar spell. He makes our desks gallop.” Or at least he used to. Not anymore after the last incident.
“Yes, but [Ensoulment] is a spell I made myself. It’s practically a bloodline spell, though it has no signature. It’s not in any other spell books, and if you use it, everyone will know we’ve met. Understood?”
Arielle nodded.
“Let’s go back to the cottage,” she said. “Magic suppression can sometimes have long-term effects. I want to make sure you’re truly okay before you go back.”
“What about the gold?”
“I already took care of it. I will have it donated to charity.”
“What about the thieves? Did you deliver them to the council?”
She made a face. “Of course not. I sent them on their merry way. They’ll be back soon, probably.”
“Why not get them in custody?”
“Because, little one, I’m not a hero. I’m only a hero maker.”

---

Vittoria reclined in her seat as she monitored Arielle for signs of fatigue or depression.
She hadn’t wanted to alarm the girl, but typically, an encounter with a magic-cancelling Hybrid could be disorienting, and that feeling of abject powerlessness had traumatized many a mage.
But Arielle moved around as normal, seemingly already forgetting the entire experience. She ran her hands over the walls, fascinated by the texture, and occasionally organized objects in her path, putting away a cup and arranging a stack of books in order of slimmest to thickest.
What an odd person.
She treated the death as if it were a trivial inconvenience easily forgotten.
At the same time, she wasn’t quick to dispense that fate on her opponents. She’d embarrassed an entire legion of thieves, assassins, and barbarians, made jokes out of them, but never moved to kill any of the people she was fighting against.
She could have.
Vittoria could tell from her skill that she could have easily slain them in a few quick moves, but she’d merely toyed with them instead, reversed their attacks, and used them against them in such a beautifully poetic way that Vittoria couldn’thelp but want to applaud.
She had carefully tracked Arielle’s spells, some of which she didn’t have a name for. That was unheard of for a mage as old as her, but that was the least of the surprises that the girl had had in store for her.
Her casting speed and her focus were also at an elite level. It was clear that the only thing holding her back was herself.
What shocked Vittoria most was her quick grasp of [Ensoulment].
It was a spell that had taken Vittoria herself weeks to craft and learn, and she was something of a genius herself.
It had taken the girl maybe a minute.
She was absolutely incredible.
Terrifyingly skilled.
If she even showed a single sign of villainy, Vittoria might be tempted to take her out right now, surprising her before she knew what had happened.
But Arielle didn’t look the least bit concerned about that possibility, even though she didn’t in fact know Vittoria at all. She innocently wandered through the cottage, her curious eyes touching everything it could. Fearless one.
Vittoria had seen trauma break strong men and women alike, and while Arielle’s condition might seem like a gift, it was just as much a liability.
She was a danger to herself, and she didn’t even realize it. Her inexplicable talent, plus her lack of fear of death…if the council caught wind that someone like her existed, they would exploit her. She would be used as a weapon until there was nothing left.
That damn High Ascendant would chain her to him like a dog.
They would get her killed.
Now she saw why Elric was so worried. It was worrying to know someone like her existed. He had massively undersold her talent.
At the same time, Vittoria was excited and maybe hopeful for the first time in a while.
Maybe she had finally found the person she was looking for.
Someone who had the power to lay legions to waste, yet worried over not being there in person for her friend’s test. Someone who considered Elric’s word more important than that of the Commander.
Arielle Blacksoil, I think I quite like you.
“What’s this?” Arielle said, picking up the scrolls Elric had left behind.
“Reports gotten from the demonic sect concerning something Elric is investigating,” she said. “He tried to use Living Light, but some of the memories are cloaked with a curse spell. If I try to break or tamper with it, the scrolls will autodestruct. So I’m testing out ways to bypass it.”
Arielle observed the scrolls for a few seconds, then nodded decidedly. “I think I can bypass it. Shall I try?”