...
From out of the dark, violet clouds that surrounded the top of the Acropolis, a bright, white light began to peek out from within, like a lighthouse in a storm. It built and built, not only breaking through the clouds but overpowering them, replacing them, forming a brilliant sun in its place, rising from the darkness as if a breaking dawn. Like a bursting bubble the light grew to a breaking point, then erupted into a shower of starlight as Geryon broke free of Dionysus's domain, platinum wings spread wide, sword strong in hand.
"Caster!"
He pushed his wings back, a breaking echo announcing his fast approach,
"This ends here!"
Caster, Dionysus, Bromios, slid his hoof across the marble cobble, turning his dark grimace towards his opponent, the runes in his hands breaking into empty sparks.
His sharp teeth arranged themselves into a wicked grin, "Radiya! Welcome our guests!"
The shadow of the Parthenon leaped out, her tattered cloak leaving a trail of darkness behind her, her empty smile and wide, forced-open eyes peeking out from the cover of her hood.
Within the sea of his mind, 'Who is that? A human? His Master?'
'No. She's just a pawn. Not even human anymore.'
'What's the point of that?'
'To test our resolve. He thinks we'll hesitate to kill an innocent.'
'Why should we hesitate in putting her out of her misery?'
The once-person, the maenad called Radiya, leaped into the air, her left hand cloaked in pure death: a miracle, a technique of her clan. A touch that guaranteed the end. She laughed wickedly, as if this were all just a game-
A shield appears between them. Its large, red eye stares into what's left of her soul. Instantly her body goes limp, totally paralyzed by the eye of the Gorgon. Her momentum, however, keeps her forward. She faceplants into the shield, falling backwards and, as the shield evaporates, Geryon charges through the hole it left, raking out with his sword, catching her abdomen and continuing up her body, slitting her down the middle from her pelvis to her jaw, all without breaking stride.
Caster's eyes darkened. He summoned his thyrsus, his staff topped with an iron pinecone, to his hand.
The white light of Geryon's eyes gleamed briefly through his blindfold, "You're next! You'll pay for what you've done to her! To us! To everyone!"
The corners of his lips curled towards his ears, even as his final opponent careened towards him at rapid pace, "We'll see about that."
Geryon raised his sword, washed in white light that poured off the blade like a crashing wave, bringing it down with the full, titanic might of a tsunami upon Caster- just in front of the pillar of light, the tabernacle.
-But the blade failed to find purchase. Cutting uselessly into the marble cobblestones, Geryon was left crouching in the place where Caster had just stood, apparently alone.
The hair which formed Geryon's blindfold untangled itself, falling aside and revealing the full brilliance of his piercing white eyes, whose irises seemed to refract infinitely within themselves. He quickly surveyed the area, searching for his quarry, but as much as he searched, high and low, left and right, he was alone. Caster was neither invisible nor hidden by an illusion so far as he could tell. Indeed, he wasn't there at all.
-And yet, his voice rang out, as if echoing inside his own head, "Insolent brats. I've offered you Heaven on a silver platter, and yet you insist on fighting on Hell's behalf. You will regret this day, I promise you that."
"No more distractions! You think I can't see through your parlor tricks?"
"In fact I do. I'll admit I was surprised when I learned that your eyes weren't those of the Gorgon, but rather had the ability to see through lies. There's only one issue, you see-"
A sharp pain in his- no, her- back. A blade that shot through Geryon's façade into Athena's back, piercing her stomach from behind. The pain went through her body into his mind, the shock threatening to split him in two.
"- I'm not lying."
Geryon steeled himself, raising his wings behind him and sent a shower of daggers exploding through the air and across the stones in an attack which would surely catch anyone in his blindspot, but the blade in his/her back was gone, and not one of his daggers found any purchase.
Caster's voice echoed once more, "Ah, I wasn't expecting physical resistance. It was nice. It's been too long since I felt the bend of flesh beneath my blade."
The sword in his back removed, he was forced to a knee from the pain and shock. A gold mist hovered around his back, restoring the place where he had been stabbed, but the serious work was within; Geryon sent all his available energy to healing spells for the sake of the woman who made him.
"Geryon" was the being composed of Athena and Chrysaor together, a union so seamless that Geryon became a wholly separate entity: a third person distinct from the two who made him. As such, any damage he took, even if he were stabbed through the chest, was HIS damage. No harm would come to Athena's physical body so long as he remained strong. And yet this attack, this blade, pierced through not only his body, but through HIMSELF, as a person, stripping the protective layer between him and the woman who was also himself, as well as his Master, and also a stranger.
It was, in other words, his weakness.
Anger and indignation boiled within his breast, "Show yourself! Coward!"
"Oh? Am I not? How would you know? Who's the say the person called 'Caster' was never more than a little voice in your head? Who's to say he ever existed at all?"
There seemed to be credit to the claim, at least. No matter how he scoured, he could find no sight of Caster anywhere around him. But he refused to believe a single word that came from his enemy's mouth: he had to be here somewhere. With the assumption that his opponent was invisible around him, waiting for the moment to land an even-more devastating blow, he took to flight, easily ascending over twenty meters with a single beat of his platinum wings. He went upwards in a spiraling motion, ending with his breast pointing back towards the ground. He threw out his hand and the knife-feathers off his back all turned in unison, aiming towards the ground-
They all burst forth at once like a shower of meteors: silver bullets with golden trails, descending like hail upon the hard cobbles, sending up showers of stones and sparks, each chain retracting a millisecond after contact with the ground to return to its place and then repeat its assault all over again. The rounds of attacks were impossible to count, and, as they went their way, the spread of the attack became gradually wider, encompassing a greater and greater area, in some attempt to flush out his enemy, all the while he kept his eyes peeled towards the ground for any sign of movement.
You can imagine his surprise, then, as a dense and heavy object thudded onto his back, turning his body askew, dumping the mystery object. Half his knives ended their hailstorm in the moment, such that he was left with two, broken wings, his body turned to the clouds overhead.
He could never have believed what he saw, except that his eyes confirmed their truth. This was no lie-
Raining from the clouds overhead, now surrounding him in their fall, were innumerable human forms, silhouettes, shadows, but with shape, form and weight, like ragdolls made of coagulated blood. They rained past him, bursting onto the cobblestones in splashes of dark red. The skies were impossible to navigate, and before he realized it he was being beaten down towards the ground. It was all too much- what was he supposed to do? The corpse-rain didn't damage him in any particular way, but it made mobility impossible, and he was torn between keeping his eyes on the bodies to keep his flight- to stay in the skies where he assumed he was safe- and watching the ground for any signs of his opponent. The result was that he kept no good eye on either, and was not only battered by the heavy rain, but was completely caught off-guard by a slithering vine that wrapped itself around his ankle while he wasn't looking.
Before he could do a thing about it, another half-dozen vines were ensnaring his arms, knees and elbows, then quickly retracting themselves to drag him, kicking and screaming, to the ground, his armor slamming against the marble with a resounding -CLANG!-. His back had hardly touched the ground before he sent his flying blades circling around him, easily cutting through the slimy, black, oozing plants, but there was a certain change in the air around him, and he could see flickers of light past the raining corpses. He rushed to his feet-
With the sound of a jet engine a roaring pillar of white light encompassed him, a lightning bolt as thick as a tower incinerating the place where he stood. As the blinding light and deafening boom came to a simmer, there he stood still, shielded by his wings, a silver umbrella over his head, but he was still shaking from the effort.
A flash of movement- but he was ready. He sent out his shield to his left to intercept the attack, the skeletal blade phasing through the shield and piercing his- her- side. But the block was a success. Though it was incapable of blocking the blade, the same couldn't be said of the hand and the arm which held it, and so Caster's grip was locked on the opposite side of the shield, only a centimeter of the blade managing to pierce flesh. He sent the shield forward, pushing Caster back on his heels and then moving in with his sword- but Caster once again disappeared in a blink. Without flair, without pomp, simply ceasing to be as if he never existed at all.
"I've got your routine, Caster!"
"What's the point of fixing what isn't broken? Except, of course-"
There was a spark of light. Turning fast towards the tabernacle, there was Caster again, holding -not his sword, but his thyrsus, his pinecone-tipped staff, its head spinning and crackling with purple lightning.
"-The element of surprise!"
A beam of energy fired out from the staff- easily intercepted by Geryon's shield, sparks flying like splashing water against it, as he himself leaped back to establish some measure of distance, already planning his counter-offensive; taking into account the corpses falling around him, the distance between them, making assumptions about the allowances and limitations of the attack-
There were too many variables. Before he could realize his mistake black vines were ensnaring his legs and arms. He sent his wings into a whirlwind, cutting through the vines, devoting his attention to making sure he was clear to take to the skies, making another mistaken assumption-
"ARGH!"
He screamed out into the night a wail both his own and someone else's, both himself and the one within him crying out in pain; Caster's sword laid hilt-deep in Geryon's chest, with the man himself between Geryon and his shield. And yet, the assault hadn't relented, the beam of lightning continued apace and, from his position, just barely flying off the ground, he could see that the staff was, indeed, unmanned, and was attacking entirely of its own accord. The blades in his wings continued to dance, cutting into vines as they emerged from the ground. Caster removed his sword with a gush of red blood and went into a slash- Geryon strafed back with a slight stumble in his step; everything about this situation had caught him unprepared. Not only was there the fourfold assault from vines, the staff, the corpse rain and Caster himself, but Dionysus was too cunning to be predicted. His strategy shifted from one moment to the next. The wound in his chest was a reminder: his assumptions would kill him. Every single thing that Caster did was a lie, a red herring, a nonsequitur, or an outright deception.
He realized then that there was no point in trying to understand Dionysus at all. He couldn't be analyzed, understood or even anticipated. It was a waste of time. This man had no principles, no restraints; not even a modus operandi. He was a creature of intellect and ambition and nothing else; he was as capricious as they came. Whatever may have once possessed him, whoever he may have once been, he had sacrificed it all on the altar of himself, his pleasures and his goals- that unholy trinity. What were his goals? He doubted anyone knew them, including the man himself. He wondered now, as a strange pang of pity cut through his chest, if there was even a person left underneath it all, or if Caster had lied to himself for so long that he had turned his self into a lie.
Keeping with his shifting nature, rather than flee and strike from the shadows another time, Dionysus, Bromios, charged forward, lunging towards his prey with his caprine legs. He slashed out and Geryon dodged back, and yet, somehow, impossibly, the reach of the blade seemed to extend, and a shallow cut dug into his breast. He made a pierce to the side and he dodged to the left, but, again, the attack which should've missed somehow altered course into his flesh. It was as if whatever he did, even if he was successful, he was forced into an alternate reality where he had failed. He desperately longed for his shield, but was stayed by the fact that it was still blocking attacks from the staff, and his wings were still slaying the writhing vines, leaving only his sword for defense. But what could that do? Even his shield had been powerless against that evil blade...
Dionysus went for another thrust, and time seemed to slow. Corpses were on either side of him, nearing the end of their fall to earth, trapping him. The blade was aimed straight for his heart. He had to block it. He had to do something. With no other options, he poured all his will into his sword, coating it in white light and going to parry the attack; sure beyond a shadow of a doubt that he would fail-
-SHING-
The blades slid off one another, the attack was deflected without any room for it to have succeeded. Caster's eyes widened with surprise, and then narrowed with annoyance. Geryon saw the opportunity clearly. He brought his wings together- the first true relent in the vines' assault- and with a single flap brought himself into the air, finally placing distance between himself and his doom.
He didn't know why that attack, of all his attacks, had hit, but could see that he had found his foothold: the single fact which could change the tide of the battle in his favor. He kept his fight with Archer in the back of his mind. The only issue was that the power couldn't be used constantly. It took focus, and, more importantly, mana, of which he was already running low. The fate of this battle would be determined by his ability to time his strikes and make the very most of what resources were left to him.
One of these was time, and he would waste no more. He flung the points of his feathers towards Caster below him, surrounding them in the same pristine white glow his sword had held and sending them downwards in a flurry of silver rain- that bounced harmlessly off the cobbles. Before he could ask where Caster had gone, he already had his answer. He dodged back, as, like a javelin, Caster flew by him- yes, he flew- with large, leathery wings like those belonging to a dragon or a bat, his sword in front of him to pierce his prey. Caster moved in the air for a second attack, which, too, was dodged, but not with enough room that the attack wasn't forcibly moved into a shallow cut as before. At the same time, the vines were rising up from the ground once again, and he perceived, in the corner of his eye, past the clamor of falling dead, a subtle change in the light.
-He narrowly deflected another attack, Caster's iron staff moving like a bullet towards his skull. Caster stabbed forward in tandem towards his midriff. Just in time, Geryon materialized his shield, catching Caster's hand, but his blade still came to a shallow pierce in his stomach. He pulled himself back, a falling corpse going between them, managing only a slight rise in the air as another volley of vines came for his legs. The flurry continued, his attacker seeming not only to time his attacks, all of them, perfectly, but to have no issue doing so. It was as if it were second nature for him. It was as if he had three brains in his skull, each working perfectly with the other. It was as if he were a true demon: with no concept of tiredness, or sleep, or any state other than a total, ravenous, lusting and all-consuming hunger. Geryon blocked the thyrsus. He got a shallow cut from the sword. He used what feathers he could spare to block a burst of lightning from the staff. He parried a strike. He went to counter, but was brought off-balance by a vine that yanked at his ankle. Caster circled him like a buzzard, but he put his shield between them in the nick of time, staying constantly on the defensive- waiting anxiously for his opportunity to strike in full.
Things continued in this way for what felt like a century, Geryon at all times blocking, deflecting or dodging out of the way of no less than three attacks at once. But, with each pass of the dance, he found a better hold of the rhythm. He learned to use his shield for the sword attacks- if he manifested it soon enough, he could block the attack by holding back Caster's wrist. His sword would do for the thyrsus. When bolts of energy manifested, he would use his wings, turning to use his sword against the vines. The order would be random, and so was the direction, but there was a limit to what even the all-powerful Caster could do, especially when his illusions and suggestions became useless. He maintained only a few shallow cuts, but noticed that his opponent, in a perverse contrast, was experiencing the same boost in confidence as himself. Yes, Caster's self-assurance was only growing. Caster knew that he would win a defensive battle, not because his defensives were superior, but because his mana was far vaster in its quantity, and was being used up at an extraordinarily slower rate. Moreover, his poking and prodding was finding holes in Geryon's defenses. He was increasingly targeting areas other than the torso, those places where his sword and his wings had more difficulty blocking: his arms, his legs, even his groin and his face, attacking from underneath, overhead, behind and everywhere other than the front. Athena's body was being riddled with shallow cuts, and Geryon was left with the impossible choice of dumping his mana into her healing or allowing her to be brought to her knees by a thousand cuts. It occurred to him then that if Caster had been a warrior with any training whatsoever in the proper use of a blade, he himself would likely have died a long time ago; such were the narrow margins by which his life was sustained.
The volley came once more. Geryon had an idea. The rhythm was growing to the point that both of them were planning their moves based on how he assumed his opponent would respond. Dionysus was guessing that he would block his attacks, but what if he... didn't?
Caster came in with an upward slash. At the same time, Geryon allowed a vine, one which he easily could've blocked, to slip through his defenses and grab a hold of him. The vine wrenched him downwards, out of the reach of Caster, a shallow cut grazing his/her face from chin to temple, cutting through the mask; half her face and part of her lips exposed as blood spilt freely from the wound. With the façade fallen away, the grimace on Athena's face was clear to see.
The plan worked in part. Caster was, for a moment, disoriented, his quarry now several meters beneath him when he had expected him to remain on the same level. What Geryon had failed to account for, in his haste, was that the vines were themselves an elaborate mousetrap: falling to one led to being grappled by another, and before he was aware of it his whole body was encased in glistening, oily vines that resembled a squid's tentacles more than any plant he knew of. Above him, a maniacal grin broke into Caster's face, revealing his dagger-like teeth. His staff flew to his free left hand and he broke into a dive, like an eagle with its prey in sight. But even this, however unexpected, proved to be to Geryon's advantage. If Caster attacked from the front, then he could try the one trick he'd kept hidden thus far.
Caster threw his staff like a javelin, bouncing harmlessly off Geryon's shield, his body then turning, even morphing to be briefly like a cloth that maneuvered around the shield, reforming a meter from his target. As their eyes met, one white with serenity and the other bleeding black malice, Geryon let loose his final, unseen power. The one that had vanquished Archer only the day before, though it felt so far away. He gathered his mana in his eyes and let loose a burst a pure light-
The sword went deep into his chest, piercing the breast, barely missing his heart- a gush of red blood staining the armor and the hands that pierced it, his scream cutting into the night as deeply as the blade in his chest. His wings turned like blades, cutting all around him, severing what was left of the vines, but Caster had already disappeared once more. With an animal's thoughtlessness, he gripped at the wound in his chest, channeling his healing magic not only through his body, but especially through his hands. This wound, before all others, had the potential to be fatal.
In a moment, thoughts ran like a river through his mind. His eyes, whatever they were, were useless. Caster had stopped using his illusions, and so there was no longer any purpose to their magic. If even that second quality, which he didn't understand, was useless, then why bother? Caster was always attacking from his blind spots anyway. Perhaps out of tiredness, perhaps to awaken some second sight he couldn't have known of, he closed his eyes. He turned his attention to his surroundings, feeling the movements in not just the natural but also the supernatural world. What he felt was- Caster. He was surrounded by him, enveloped by him. It wouldn't be wrong to say that he was, in a sense, inside of him. But there were distinctions. In the vines underneath and in the clouds overhead he could feel Caster's Authority, his Divinity. In the air, he felt not only Caster's presence, but his intellect, his magecraft. It was all "him", but none were wholly him. There was his divine aspect. There was his mana. They ran out of him like the branches of a tree, he needed only to find the root. And he found it. He could sense it in the earth, in the leylines beneath the marble.
That was it. This was his bounded field. He had said it already, when Athena and Chrysaor had been trapped in a world of illusion: this world, this place, was no different than himself. The reason he could seem to exist in no place is because he could, within this boundary, exist in all places at once. Had Geryon possessed the strength of Berserker, or the power of Archer, or even the intellect of Caster, this knowledge would've been the turning point. Destroy the boundary, and Caster would have no place to hide. But he had no means of doing this. He could rely only on the fact that Caster would have to emerge from his hideaway in order to strike. Yes, he would have to. Otherwise, there was nothing to stop his opponent from waging war on the Ichor Chalice directly: untangling the web this war had become by striking the Gordian knot at its center-
There he was. He could see it in his Mind's Eye. Behind him a sphere was being formed, all the energy, all the power in this place both pouring into it and out of it at the same time; both its product and its source.
He moved swift as a falcon; a preemptive strike. For once, Geryon struck first- and fast. With a slash of white water, Caster let out his own shrill shriek, the earth and vines and even the clouds all seeming to wince and quiver at once. There was a burst of purplish blood, neither red nor black, and Geryon made a second strike- but to no avail. That was expected; the retreat was so predictable that he hadn't even bothered to empower the attack. His eyes now open, he just caught sight of Caster's black claw, his right arm, falling helplessly to the ground below.
-
There was a strange silence. The vines ceased their assault, and the sky was clear of the oozing bodies that had been falling.
....