Baroness Artheim moved directly to the servants' quarters. To the room assigned to her new butler. Sebastian Bronze.
The door to Sebastian's room was slightly ajar. A sliver of light escaping into the dim corridor. The Baroness didn't knock. She kicked it open with a resounding crack. Sending the wood splintering inward.
Sebastian Bronze was seated at a small writing desk. ticulously polishing an ornate silver locket. The very locket Neone had described. The one that held the key.
He looked up. His flint-like eyes widening in surprise as Baroness Artheim stord into the room. His carefully composed, obsequious expression vanished. Replaced by a flicker of malice.
"Baroness?" He began. Feigning innocence. Even as his fingers tightened on the locket. "Is there a problem?"
"The problem, Sebastian..." Baroness Artheim retorted in icy voice. "... is that you are a murderer and a traitor. You tortured and murdered my brother."
Sebastian's smile was chilling. "Such accusations, Baroness. Unfounded, I assure you. Perhaps you've had a bad dream?" He began to rise. His movents were fluid and quick.
The Baroness didn't give him a chance to finish. Her hand shot out. A surge of crackling, supernatural energy appeared. In the form of lightning fairies.
Two arcs of crackling, azure lightning erupted as the fairies moved. Snaking through the air like living serpents. And striking Sebastian with blinding speed and force.
The butler yelled. A guttural cry of pain. But he did not fall. As the lightning coursed through him, his skin began to shift. To harden.
His body shimred. Transforming with unnatural speed. His flesh turned into a dark, tallic substance. Sharp, jagged spikes erupted from his forearms, shoulders, and chest.
His eyes glowed with an eerie, internal light. He was no ordinary man. This was a supernatural power. Primal Sorcery. A defensive mutation.
"You can't harm , Artheim!" Sebastian roared. His voice was now tallic and distorted.
He lunged forward. His spiky tal fists aid at her. He was faster, stronger than his human form suggested.
But Baroness Artheim was prepared. She was both a Primal Sorceress and a Mystic Scholar. And her combat experience was far from trivial.
She sidestepped his charge with practiced ease. Her movents were graceful amidst the chaos. Another bolt of lightning, larger and more potent, erupted from her hand. In the form of a hawk. One that flew and struck Sebastian directly in the chest.
The tal butler staggered. A shower of sparks flying from his hardened form. The lightning seed to overload his newly ford tallic body. Causing visible cracks to appear in the dark plating.
He snarled. His eyes were burning with hatred. He was powerful. But Baroness Artheim's attacks seed to bypass his tallic resilience. Striking at whatever supernatural core animated his transformation.
He continued to press his attack. His movents beca more erratic. Fueled by desperation and pain.
He swung his spiky arms, attempting to impale her. To rend her to pieces.
But the Baroness was too agile. Too precise. She summoned more creature-shaped lightning bolts. Each strike chipped away at Sebastian Bronze's defenses. Causing him to scream in a chorus of static and agony.
He was being overwheld. His spiky form began to falter. Flickering between tal and flesh.
Baroness Artheim prepared a final, devastating strike. About to end Sebastian Bronze's life. But then, a new presence erged.
There was a dark ripple in the shadows behind her. Unnoticed in the maelstrom of crackling energy and tallic roars. A figure, cloaked in black, materialized silently. From the deepest corner of the room.
He moved with the fluid grace of a predator. A hidden blade glinting in his hand. Aid directly at Baroness Artheim's exposed back.
Jack Mystery, invisible and silent, had been observing the entire confrontation. He watched Sebastian Bronze's transformation. Baroness Artheim's powerful lightning constructs. And the brutal, one-sided fight.
But his spectral senses were always attuned to the periphery. He had detected the flicker of another presence. A subtle shift in the room's arcane energy. Just monts before the cloaked figure made its move. This was a backup. An assassin.
He reacted instinctively. There was no ti for subtlety. No room for a asured response. The Baroness was in imdiate, mortal danger. Jack focused all his power of mystery.
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His [Mysterious Anomaly] trait flared to life. Surging in extre waves. Concentrated into a single, devastating telekinetic strike.
The air around the cloaked man compressed violently. Without a sound. Without even a ripple in the visible reality... An invisible force slamd into the assassin's head.
It was like being hit by a baseball bat in full power. The cloaked man's attack stalled mid-air. His body arcing unnaturally.
A sickening crack echoed in the room. Obscured by the ongoing struggle between Baroness Artheim and Sebastian Bronze. The assassin was driven sideways. Not by his own montum. But by Jack's pure, unleashed power.
He was violently thrown into the room wall. Crashing against it. Bone cracked. Not his skull. But ribs, probably.
He slid down. Then crumpled. For a heartbeat, he was still.
But the assassin was not easily put down. His head snapped up. His eyes, feral and unblinking beneath the cowl, fixed on the Baroness. The hidden blade had fallen. But another glead in his other hand. A wicked stiletto.
He pushed off the wall with a grunt. Ignoring the pain. A primal snarl escaping his lips. This was a professional. Driven by more than just orders. It was a pure, unadulterated kill-instinct.
He launched himself forward again. A dark blur of motion. Weapon gleaming.
Baroness Artheim, still focused on Sebastian Bronze, was montarily oblivious. To the renewed threat at her back.
Jack Mystery chose that mont to materialize. Spectral. Yet undeniably present. The ghastly masked magician. An unnerving distortion in the air.
Beside him, suspended in the air, floated his spectral grimoire. Ethereal and faintly glowing.
Rune, in her spectral will-o'-the-wisp form, zipped around Jack's head. Her orange glow pulsed eerily.
Jack's voice was the first to act. A resonant whisper that seed to echo inside the assassin's skull rather than directly hit his ears. [Vicious Taunt] flared.
"Purity Cult huh? What did that dumb goddess want this ti?" Jack's voice hissed viciously. Attacking the opponents' reverse scale. Their belief.
"So, are you guys masochists?" He continued. "Or, is it your dumb goddess? She wants to fail again, doesn't she? What a pathetic deity..."
"You Bastard!" The assassin stopped on his track. His charge faltered. Affected by a flicker of irrational fury.
And it was not just him. Sebastian Bronze was also affected.
For fanatic cultists like them, mocking their belief was an insult worse than any wound. More crippling than any physical blow.
The assassin's montum stalled. For a fraction of a second.
That fraction of a second was all Jack needed to activate his second spell. From the floor beneath the assassin, spectral vines erupted. They were dark, shimring, impossibly strong.
[Vine Entanglent] coiled around the assassin's legs, his arms, and his torso. Pinning him mid-stride.
He struggled. A guttural roar ripping from him. His muscles straining against the translucent bonds. But they held fast. He was caught. Ensnared by sothing that felt both insubstantial and unbreakable.
Before he could even grunt out a curse, Jack's next spell struck. A wave of pure transformative magic washed over the struggling figure. [Forceful Frog-morph]...
The assassin's face contorted. Not just in pain. But in hideous, involuntary change. He shrank. Getting smaller while the spectral vine kept entangling him.
His skin began to erupt with slimy pustules. His eyes bulged. His mouth stretched. Widening into a grotesque, amphibian maw. His fingers elongated. Thickening into webbed claws.
The transformation was incomplete. And utterly disorienting. He choked on his own changing throat.
His mind was reeling from the impossible physical alterations. He was no longer a clear-thinking killer. But a squirming, partially-transford horror.
And then, Jack delivered the finisher of the spell combo. As the spectral grimoire glowed, glowing motes of energy appeared. Around Jack's spectral form.
Like miniature phantom cots, these energy balls shot toward the assassin. [Magic Missiles].
They streaked across the room. Solidifying into blunt, forceful projectiles. Ones that slamd into the assassin's chest, his head, his transforming limbs.
Each hit wasn't ant to kill. But to batter, disrupt, and drive him further into helpless chaos. He groaned. A half-croak, half-human sound. The impacts drove him back against the wall again. Sending tremors through his writhing body.
Rune darted around the missiles. Adding her own sharp, white glows to their trajectory. A silent, enthusiastic participant.
Baroness Artheim, in the midst of her own climactic assault on Sebastian Bronze, had registered the sudden appearance of the spectral figure. And the bizarre, rapid incapacitation of the second attacker.
Her concentration had fractured. She saw the masked entity. Saw the assassin change. Saw the ethereal bolts. Her lightning constructs flickered. Montarily losing their coherence. A lesser mage would have been completely undone.
But Baroness Artheim was no lesser mage. She was a Master of Mysticism. Forged in fire and ambition. Her eyes, wide with montary surprise, narrowed instantly.
The distraction only lasted a heartbeat. She processed the information. Jack Mystery had intervened. And he was on her side. The details could wait. The imdiate threat remained. She refocused with a vengeance.
Sebastian Bronze felt the montary hesitation. He pushed a surge of dark, corrupted energy outward. Not the supernatural power of his Primal Sorcery. But energy from Acolyte's Fallen Faith. A desperate, final counter-attack.
It was a mistake. Baroness Artheim's rage, briefly diluted by surprise, now boiled over. Intensified by the audacity of his resistance.
"This filthy power? You dare?!" She roared. Her voice was cracking with pure, electrical fury.
She brought both hands together. Gathering all the power she could command. The air around her turned molten. Crackling with electric power.
A single, colossal bolt of pure, white-hot lightning erupted. In the form of a flood dragon. Far more potent than anything she had unleashed before. It wasn't just a strike. It was an annihilation.
The lightning slamd into Sebastian Bronze. Not rely hitting him but consuming him. His tallic form glowed incandescently for an instant. Then, it shattered into a million superheated fragnts.
He was gone. Utterly obliterated. All that remained were a cloud of black ash, slling of burnt tal... and the silver locket he had been holding.
Without a pause, her gaze snapped to the assassin. The struggling, partially frog-morphed assassin. He was still tangled in Jack's spectral vines. Still convulsing from the magic missiles. Choking on his own transformation.
He was pathetic. But still a threat. Still breathing. The Baroness extended a single hand. A secondary, precise bolt of lightning appeared. In the form of a bird.
It was smaller but equally lethal. It flew and struck the assassin's head. His struggles ceased. His partially changed body slumped. His head disintegrated into a pile of charred skull.
Two threats... Eliminated.
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