Xander looked up as an extremely beautiful lady jumped onto the scene. She moved fast towards him as if tracing over the glass tiles. She raised her high-tech sword, and cut the guillotine in clean halves. She was so beautiful, Xander found himself staring at her, his eyes lost in the appreciation of her immense beauty. Her purple-shaded form-fitting robe was unsuccessful in attempting to hide her exquisitely slim and curvaceous body. She moved before him with a predatory grace. Her long black hair with streaks of purple flowed well behind her. Her Amethyst coloured eyes were her most striking feature. Xander lost his whole concentration staring into that depth of amethyst. She caught him staring and winked seductively at him, then she struck at the void container, freeing him from it. She pivoted to the masters, who had begun to chatter among themselves in hushed, excited whispers.
One of them spoke up eventually. "Lady Valerie Nightshade, you are Lord Voran's favorite niece. Why are you here disobeying Lord Voran's orders?"
She chuckled slightly, finding the situation strangely amusing. "If I let you kill my fated groom, who would I end up with, or do you want me to die alone?" she said.
Everyone started or gasped in shock or did both. "You are one of his brides."
"Yeah! An interesting twist of fate, I should add." she smirked.
One of them raised his shoulders proudly, speaking with authority. "Then we will have to bring you in, Lady Valerie, and along with the reincarnated."
"I would love to see you try" she grinned. She whipped her head fast to Xander. "I hope you can fight a little, groom. It is never going to be an easy ride out of here." She fetched something from her pockets and dropped it in his palm. "They are energy amplifiers. They should help ease your energy nodes and your genetic nexus a bit" Before he could ask her any questions, she had dashed at the enemy horde with great speed.
Xander stared at the tiny electronic capsules in his palm for some indecisive moments. Finally, he swallowed it, and as he did, he started to feel the power coursing through him growing stronger and more violent. He jerked his hand by reflex and a massive wave of fire screamed out of his palm.
Valerie ran into the fists of one of the masters. She ducked away from the punch, and weaving a pocket of void from her palm, she wore it over the Master's arm, to a little past his elbow, as his arm sailed past her face. The void pocket varnished eventually and so did the Master's arm, up to the area swallowed by the void pocket. The Master looked down at his varnished forearm, aghast and horrified. His eyes widened in utter disbelief. He cried at the top of his lungs. Valerie swung her sword, and his head fell in a clean sweep, rolling over the floor, sprinkling blood on the glass tiles.
Some other masters realized she was indeed serious, and they came at her harder. They shot large pockets of void at her. She dodged them, phasing away from the attacks at high speed, and using her sword to deflect and destroy some. A master phased just before her, and she swung her sword at his head. Manipulating the few shadows around, the master carved a shadow sword, with which he used to defend against her sword. He pushed her with the strength of his powerful body, reeling her back. A shadowy copy of himself had already materialized stealthily behind her, reading to strike her down with his shadow sword.
Xander rushed forward to her rescue, but he wasn't fast enough. The shadow sword struck her down. Yet, instead of her blood spilling everywhere, her body merely vaporized in a burst of nothingness. The master grunted at the failure of his attack, just as the real her phased behind him. Her sword charged in a lethal strike for his neck. He pivoted, shifting away, and defending with his shadow sword. She seemed to have laid a trap for him, as he was suddenly swallowed by a void sealed onto a tile when he shifted in that direction. Valerie phased away after the master, disappearing completely from the room. She reappeared, vomited from a void sealed onto another glass tile in the room. The master's bloodied head dangled on the steel length of her high-tech sword, before she threw it to roll carelessly on the glass tiles of the hall.
"Who else among you is ready for some action" she asked cockily, swinging her eyes at the masters one after another, demanding a response.
"Valerie, you don't want to go down this path. You don't want to be the enemy of your own sect, the Void Phantom Sect." one of the men said, a bit uneasy.
"She is already past that. She crossed the line when she killed Master Levo and Master Kirst. She is now officially an enemy of her sect. Not even Grand Lord Voran can save her from this", another master yelled.
"You are hereby declared an enemy of the sect, Valerie. For the unprovoked killing of Master Levo and Kirst…" another Master read out mechanically from his head, but she cut him short midway.
"Guilty as charged" she replied, grinning. She phased away and reappeared behind another master. The master was calm, his arms folded on his chest as he remained on the spot he was. He summoned a void around him, which swallowed her sword as it moved towards his neck. "Since you have chosen to be an enemy, we will treat you as one", the master said. Her gaze dropped downward, and she phased desperately away from the master to avoid the bubbles of void slipping from his body. Xander understood the reason for her desperate run away from the bubbles when he watched a tiny bubble land on one of the halved parts of the guillotine, and the whole of it gets sucked into nothingness.
The other Masters moved at the same time for Valerie now, coming fast for her. One on one with each Master, she was powerful, but against nearly twenty masters, she was powerless. It didn't take long before she suffered some serious blows, and was sent flying unsteadily in the air, about to crash roughly into the floor. Xander ran for her immediately, catching her in his arms.
She smiled exuberantly at him. "Thanks, Groom" she said, a seductive ring to her voice. She almost cost Xander his concentration. The Masters came for them. Xander dropped her to rest on the tile and moved to protect himself and his bride.
He chased back the masters with a large wave of fire from his palms. They phased away from it. His sword jumped into his hands and Xander used it to block off an attack from a master that had phased to his back. Another master phased around him, trying to cut him down from the stomach, but a wall of heat like he had seen when fighting the forgemasters of the Celestial sect unconsciously activated around him. The shadow sword with which the master had attacked, bounced off the wall of heat, throwing the master away.
Xander felt himself being linked to his sword telepathically, and by reflex, his mind commanded his sword. The details of the command were obscure to even himself at first, but slowly he realized what it meant. The energy amplifiers had simply helped him channel out the powers lying dormant in him, but it didn't help him gain control of those powers. A force inside him was desperate to help him get that control while the energy amplifiers were still active, teaching him how to use some of his powers. The force led him to tweak his sword towards a particular angle, and then the sword blazed with fire. Ancient runes rose out of the fire. The letters stuck out in the air, just above the sword, written in red crimson fire. Then they rose higher in the air and charged after the next batch of void phantom sect's masters that came at him. Three runes for three different masters. The masters phased away, but the runes chased after them, moving from portal to portal with them, tracking and following the masters. The fire runes finally found an opportunity, and they exploded just before the masters' faces. The three masters fell to the floor, dead, completely baptized in fire.
The other masters grew frustrated and angry. They charged fast at him. Xander tried to repeat the trick, but somehow, it didn't work. He tried to project fire from himself again and again, but nothing came out of his hand, except puffs of black smoke. Xander watched anxiously and nervously as the remaining masters rushed murderously towards him, or phasing to appear an inch or two from him, just as he felt a strange quietness inside him that told him the effects of the energy amplifiers had completely worn off. It probably happened faster because of the runes trick. The masters appeared around him and attempted to attack him with their weapons and powers. Everything suddenly appeared static that instant, everything and everyone frozen in time, except him and Valerie. He thought the power had come from Valerie, but she was still struggling to sit up, recovering from her injuries. What in the world was happening? He thought.