As she aimed her spear's tip at Eleonora, lilac-colored flames took shape and undulated around Jezebel's form. The ground cracked around her feet, and her lustrous black hair fluttered at her back. However, before Eleonora could meet the challenge, Ailith stepped forward.
"Insolence. Is my esteemed mistress someone you can casually aim your spear at? Mistress, let me handle her," Ailith offered and raised her right hand. One thousand scarlet vortexes formed across the cavern, and from them emerged the barking heads of monstrous red mastiffs, each more than a match for an Archon, each ready to gnaw Jezebel to pieces.
However, numbers alone often didn't make quality. Even if five times these numbers banded against her, Jezebel had no fear.
"Although your Dra Control far exceeds hers, you haven't recovered enough of your strength to bring this to a swift end. Take the hounds and track the gate, consume all Fehls on the road, but if you come across one of our own…"
"I understand, they're off-limits," Ailith replied, bowed toward Eleonora, and vanished from the scene. The hounds left alongside her. But while they mirrored the Blood Kins' typical hunt beasts, in Jezebel's mind, those hounds and their mistresses overlapped with a painting she often saw her mother admiring.
The painting of a white-robed woman with flaming-gold hair and eyes, surrounded by a horde of burning feral beasts, with a submissive maid standing by her side. Ashera called that woman "the kindred I had to kill," but better than anyone, Jezebel knew her mother had no relatives beside her two children. Moreover, only thrones possessed flaming eyes and hair. So bright was their gaze that with a glance, they could directly reduce mortals to ashes.
Why was that woman so similar to…
"I give you one last chance. Back off, and I will spare you," Eleonora offered, but in response Jezebel tilted her head to the right.
"Will you give up the Fortress?" She asked.
"Impossible, I want it for someone else." Eleonora shook her head.
"Welcome to the club," Jezebel said, and like a lightning bolt, hurtled at Eleonora--driving her murderous spear in a frontal thrust.
"Can't say I didn't try," Eleonora said, and stretched out her right hand. A sanguine longsword appeared within, but instead of sweeping it at Jezebel, Eleonora let the spear pierce her throat--or so it initially seemed. A second Eleonora appeared at the initial one's left, and the victim of the spear thrust vanished in an afterimage. Eleonora raked her sword at Jezebel's waist, while the hulky purple snakes hissing around her lunged at Jezebel's eyes, neck, chest, wrist and knees.
"Time Hold!" Too slow to retreat, Jezebel activated her Arcane Bloodline's Time Sovereignty, forcing the time flow around Eleonora to a halt. With the gap in dra and thaumaturgic level, Jezebel believed that even if Eleonora could break her hold, she'd require some time. Still, for safety's sake, Jezebel reduced her flame shroud to protect the targets of Eleonora's attacks while forcing her body to fight against the momentum of her thrust and sweep her spear at Eleonora--a wise move.
"Break," Eleonora whispered, and the Time Hold collapsed before it could halt her moves. Unfettered, her sword bashed into Jezebel's spear, meeting the ancient weapon in a deafening clang while the purple snakes' fangs clashed with Jezebel's flame shroud. Avoiding a contest of brute force, Eleonora whirled into Jezebel's back and thrust at her nape.
Pushing her dra to the limit, Jezebel leaped out of Eleonora's sword reach, but before she could regain her footing, Eleonora appeared at her left and kicked at her collateral ligament. Knowing she could neither avoid nor block in time, Jezebel gritted her teeth to shrug off the blow.
Bang!
From the ordinary kick erupted a strength able to effortlessly split a tree, Jezebel's knee snapped, but holding the pain in, she shoved her spear at Eleonora's heart. As graceful as a swan, Eleonora whirled to Jezebel's right, and hacked at her neck!
Anticipating the move, Jezebel brought her spear into Eleonora's trajectory, betting on the weapon's unrivaled resilience to sap the strength in Eleonora's move.
"Break." The same word left Eleonora's lips, and for an instant, Jezebel felt her body lose all energy. Eleonora's sword became a tyrannical typhoon that smashed into Jezebel's spear handle with its full berserk might. Unable to shoulder the impact, Jezebel flew toward a cavern wall and encased herself within.
"The...Hierarch Break," Jezebel muttered as her body dropped on the ground. As the sovereign masters of dra, Hierarch-level magi possessed many unique abilities, one of them being the Break. With the Hierarch Break, magi could turn their dra into invisible needles to prick through spells, barriers and arcane abilities. If aimed at the opponent, the Hierarch Break would ruin their defenses, rob their strength, and leave them vulnerable to the Hierarch's abuse.
Unless they possessed Hierarch-level dra control, no one could resist the Break, and as gifted as she might be, Jezebel was still far from that level.
"Correct," Eleonora rested the flat of her sword against her shoulder and casually replied. Although with her current condition she couldn't freely use the Break, to handle someone below the Astral Master rank, this was more than enough.
As she already suspected her opponent to be a Hierarch-tier magus in hiding, Jezebel wasn't much surprised. Sword in hand, Eleonora closed on Jezebel, cleaving at her neck. While her current Dra Reserves couldn't compare with Jezebel's, through her incomparably higher Dra Control, Eleonora could put the tiniest bit of dra particle in her body to superb use--enabling her to display terrifying physical abilities.
However, as the blade neared her neck, Jezebel's lips flashed a psychotic grin.
"Sixth Circle Spell: Truth Alteration."
"Sixth Circle Spell: Elemental Cataclysm."
Jezebel's body and spear split into dozens of light filaments, rematerializing into sixty identical versions each aiming a spear at Eleonora. Six lilac-colored circles flared beside the Nargozi Queen, the ground quaked and the air shrieked as hurricanes, firestorms, tidal waves, ice hails, earthen spikes and thunderbolts of an unprecedented magnitude barreled into Eleonora from all sides. At their back, the 60 Jezebels stod ready to ram their spears into Eleonora.
The Hierarch Break had two obvious weaknesses. First, it could only target one point in space. Second, there was at least a one second lapse between each successive use. Even if Eleonora could open an escape path east, the tsunami of destructive arcane might north, south and west would reduce her to ashes.
And if by any miracle she could survive it, the sixty spear wouldn't miss their target. But as flames, thunderbolts, wind blades and more readied to obliterate her, Eleonora's gaze hardened. Her snake hair became serpents of golden flames while her scarlet eyes too burned in a blinding golden hue.
"Divine Providence," Eleonora said, and the last thing Jezebel saw was a magnificent flash of golden light that instantly erased her spells, offenses and defenses, sealing her in a cage of powerlessness.
With that one move, Jezebel realized who she faced, and before the Solar Prominence enveloped her, whispered:
"Fuck, it's Hel..." Jezebel's eyes vaporized first, but as her body prepared to follow them into nothingness, Eleonora's face twisted into a frown--and she shut her eyes--forcefully stopping Jezebel's extinction.
Though spared from an irreversible death, Jezebel didn't have any strength left to hold her spear and fell face-first.