864 - Changing Her Tune
There was no outward indication that Lex was casting a spell – he didn’t murmur any incantations or trace mystic symbols in the air – but Adagio could feel it anyway.
Although her mystic senses had dulled to the point of uselessness during her banishment on Earth, she’d more than made up for it since coming to Everglow. Now, with all of the power she’d gained, she could almost hear him activating his spell, the energy like a ghostly melody to her ears. His magic was an arpeggio of incredible complexity, the notes being strung together so fast that she couldn’t follow them, knowing only that whatever it was he was casting would be finished in the next few seconds.
But that was enough time for her to finish a spell of her own.
Layering her voice on top of itself, she sang a quick round, letting the magic in her voice turn the tune into a stabilized form. Looping endlessly as its pitch rapidly moved out of audible range, she let the song spin over itself before releasing it toward Lex. It was a finished piece of pure sound, and would relentlessly batter him with a mixture of subsonic and ultra-high frequency pulses of its own accord. Against an ordinary person, that would rattle their bones to the point of splintering.
Nor did Adagio stop there.
“So how come my sisters aren’t with you?” she murmured, infusing the magic of her voice with aristeia, as her sonic construct – unable to be seen by the naked eye – moved around behind him. If he was serious about having absorbed the divinity she’d worked so hard to steal, then she couldn’t afford to pull her punches, reverting to the topic that seemed to have gotten under his skin before. “Did they run away because you forgot to walk them and fill their water dish? Or did they run into traffic when you took their leashes off?”
The taunt was designed to enrage him, ideally to the point where he’d have lost whatever spell he was finishing and try to make this a physical battle rather than a magical one. But although she felt the words slither past that same wall of mental defenses that he had up – the same kind that Nenet had – all it evoked from him was a sneer. “What do you care?” he spat, throttling the artificial emotion. “Upset that you couldn’t sell their souls as well?”
Even as the words left his lips, the sonic construct that she’d summoned sprang at him from behind, invisible and inaudible as its outstretched bands of sound reached for him...
Only to be torn to shreds in an instant as Lex casually waved a claw in its direction.
Adagio had just enough time to feel shocked – both that he’d detected it, and had dispatched it so easily – before the entire room plunged into darkness, leaving only his eyes and horn visible.
Then she felt his spell – which was apparently something else besides whatever he’d done to darken the place – go off, the aura around his horn winking out.
“That should be enough to keep you from causing any further trouble. Now, I have questions for you.”
That was enough to make her scoff. Did he think she was scared of the dark? “Sonata and Aria didn’t teach you very much, did they? Ask a girl to talk about herself, and she’s likely to give you AN EARFUL!!!”
She delivered the last two words with a blast of sonic force powerful enough to knock him completely through the mountain, targeting the eyes that he’d so stupidly left glowing.
Except the wave never reached him, instead colliding with a barrier directly in front of her and shattering against it, the backlash powerful enough that it knocked her off her feet and sent her stumbling backward...against another barrier that hadn’t been there a few seconds prior.
Snarling as she picked herself up, Adagio reached her hands out, feeling the flat, frictionless surface underneath her palms. It turned a ninety-degree corner after only a few feet, and it took her only a moment to realize that he’d conjured some sort of transparent box around her, one that was strong enough to withstand an attack that should have pulverized any solid structure, regardless of its composition.
Apparently, that was what he’d been casting.
A second later, the glow in Lex’s eyes went out, leaving her completely trapped in darkness.
“We’ll start with when you parted ways with your sisters,” he began, and from the sound of his voice she could tell that he was circling the prison he’d stuck her in. “I know that Iliana tried the three of you separately for your ill-considered attempt to seize the castle at the center of Viljatown. What sentence were you given, and how did you escape it?”
But Adagio couldn’t answer, her jaw not working due to how hard she was grinding her teeth.
Did he think he could just shove her in a box, turn out the lights, and interrogate her like she was some sort of misbehaving child?! After turning her own daughter against her, stealing the godsblood that she’d struggled to acquired, and then spurning her advances, he actually had the gall to talk down to her?!
To a creature whose destiny was to be adored, any one of those was an unpardonable offense. Coming from the guy who was screwing her sisters, it was that much more insulting. The mere implication that anyone could prefer those two idiots – who had only survived their time on Earth because of her! – over her was something that Adagio could never forgive.
As much as Adagio had hated to admit it, she knew that a seduction attempt was the best course of action. Even after Lex had turned her down, that was still true; she’d seen the way he’d looked at her in the shower, desire written all over his face. That things had turned into a fight changed nothing; she’d known plenty of guys for whom aggression was just another form of foreplay. A strategic rip in her dress here, an “accidental” touch there, and their battle would have seamlessly moved over to the bed, regardless of whether or not Nenet was watching.
But there was a difference between being aggressive and being offensive, and Lex Legis had just crossed that line.
Which meant no more playing around.
Until now, carefully rationing her remaining aristeia had been a major concern. Although Adagio had amassed a great deal of that incredible power from a variety of supernatural figures, none of them had been so foolish as to give her a self-sustaining supply of the stuff. While she could hold onto the quantity that she had indefinitely – and enjoy the side effects that simply possessing it granted her, such as enhanced strength and reflexes, heightened magical affinity, and resistance to injury – any aristeia that she expended couldn’t be recovered.
At least, not without going back to those ancient creatures and getting them to renew her supply, which Adagio knew they never would. She was already in their debt, having made numerous promises that she had no intention of keeping, and they’d never grant her more aristeia when she hadn’t even paid for the amount that she already had.
Even trying to harvest the trace amounts of the stuff in her children had failed. Whether they were alive or dead, returning the residual aristeia in their bodies back to its source ultimately resulted in no net gain. Like pulling her own stray hairs from the teeth of a comb, recovering them gave her nothing that she hadn't already possessed.
That was why she’d gone out of her way to get others to do as much of her fighting for her as possible, ranging from her children – being able to carry them to term and raise them to maturity in a matter of minutes thanks to the secrets she’d gleaned from Lashtada’s book (even if that cowardly mage who’d liberated her from Iliana’s army had been the one to imbue her with the spellcraft necessary to put what she’d learned into practice) – to daemon mercenaries. And when she’d had to get personally involved, she’d made sure to use her other resources wherever possible, whether it was her innate powers as a Siren, the spellcasting she’d learned here on Everglow, or simply using her cache of magic items.
Of course, there had been plenty of times when things couldn’t be helped, and she’d needed to use aristeia despite her best efforts to the contrary. Several of the creatures she’d trafficked with had required her to call upon that power in order to convince them – whether by trickery, seduction, or a show of force – to give her more, something that she knew she couldn’t continue doing since repeatedly making promises and failing to keep them had ruined her credibility in more than a few supernatural communities.
Kara, that petty bitch of a goddess, had doubtlessly made sure of that by now.
Fighting Kryonex had also put a serious drain on how much aristeia Adagio had left. Although the army she’d amassed had managed to rout the demigod’s forces and push into his stronghold with only a little direct action on her part, the heavy losses they’d taken had left them ill-prepared to face Kryonex himself. Getting a vial of his divine manna had required her to not only step in, but fight at the absolute top of her game, holding nothing back. Even then, she’d barely managed to escape on her own, sacrificing the rest of her forces in order to make it back with her prize.
Only for Nenet to show up and steal it.
In hindsight, it was easy to see how that could have been avoided. If she’d used aristeia when she’d tried to enchant the sphinx during Nenet’s first attempt to steal back her master’s spine, then it would have punched through whatever mental protection she’d gained as a result of her transformation, the same way it had just now – at least before Lex had somehow countermanded her – when she’d tried to force her daughter to help her seduce him. If she’d done that then, Nenet would have been easily subdued, and Lex Legis would never have recovered his spine.
But there had been no way of knowing any of that at the time. Instead, Adagio had tried to conserve the aristeia she had left, which had resulted in Nenet shrugging off the unenhanced charm spell and successfully fleeing with Lex’s vertebrae.
All of which had led to this.
To Lex Legis thinking that he could bring her to heel with a tough-guy attitude and a few magic tricks, as though she was the same sort of pathetic, weak-willed little slut that her sisters were.
It was time to stop holding back, to abandon any ideas of turning him to her side and instead show him the same power that she’d used to wound a god on his home turf. If what Lex had said about absorbing Kryonex’s godsblood was true, then it would still be in his corpse after he died. All that would need to be done then was to crush Nenet’s will, turning her back into a good little spellbook, and with any luck there’d been enough time to replenish her magic and resume crafting an artifact out of his body.
And if worse came to absolute worst, and Kryonex arrived before she finished, she could always use the trump card she’d been given...even if using it carried risks that she wanted to avoid, talisman or no.
“Answer me, Adagio,” pressed Lex, his voice coming from the opposite side of her now. “What happened when Iliana put you on trial? How did you go from being in her custody to here?”
Knowing that he was using magic to see through the gloom, Adagio put her hands over her face, doing her best to act as though she was overcome with emotion as she quietly sang a spell of echolocation. No more taking chances; she could hear Lex’s voice, but she was going to be as sure as possible that she was aiming in the right direction when she targeted him with her next spell.
As she’d hoped, her echolocation spell worked through the box. Although his barrier held back the force generated by extremely high decibel levels, lower ranges could obviously pass through it without a problem; hence why she could hear him outside of it. Even better, it revealed what she’d suspected: he was throwing his voice somehow, his actual location being opposite from where she’d heard him.
“Last chance,” came his displaced voice again. “Tell me what I want to know, or I’ll rip the answers from your mind.”
A throaty laugh bubbled up from her then, and she lowered her hands. “You want to know what’s on my mind?” she cooed. “All you had to do was ask.”
Then, not giving him a chance to react, she turned so that she was facing him, pouring as much aristeia into her voice as she could...
And sang the Song of Destruction.
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Something tells me that it's a good thing Nenet isn't in the room right now cause if the name of the song is of any indication, the power behind it would be nothing to scoff at. Still, given Lex's precognitive ability, he undoubtedly saw this coming though whether or not the barrier he conjured to box Adagio in would be sufficient to stop the attack is another matter altogether.
Though if it does hold, all that power still has to go somewhere and with her boxed in...
Regardless of the outcome, more is revealed about the aristeia, including the fact that Adagio doesn't have much left of it with her. Though I think that she might get a chance to replenish it soon if things become chaotic where neither her nor Lex are the source of said chaos.
I wonder if you fire a powerful sonic based spell attack into a portable hole or other suxh dimention, the time shift on closing it will keep the attack suspended relative to current reality until the portal is reopened?
Lex knows she is using sound, Illusion high level even works with that, so he could be speaking where his voice is, but an illusion of emptyness there and an illusion of objectiness where she thinks he is is the first part, he could just shift into shadow form as well and not be anywhere she can pick up?
Adagio is using Destiny Bond or Perish Song?
11688355 Between the name, and the fact that Adagio dropped what seemed like a lot of aristeia into this, I'd wager that you're probably right about this being a significant attack. Hopefully, for her sake, that box Lex put her in won't be able to contain it, but I suppose we'll find out. It's hard to imagine that he hasn't foreseen what Adagio's doing, but that in turn begs the question of what he'll do about it.
Still, we did get some further insight into Adagio's motivations, at least with regard to her level of strategic thinking. Now that we know that her supply of aristeia is finite, and that once it's gone she'll basically be left holding the proverbial bag, it's easy to see why she's swinging for the metaphorical fences here. Of course, Kryonex is the major threat, but Adagio has set herself up to basically need to win it all, or be screwed multiple times over. And not in any sort of fun way.
11688416 I'll point out that, insofar as I recall, pocket dimensions don't keep things suspended in time. Of course, given that things work according to the game rules (which are then translated to an in-character representation of how those interactions function), that means that a lot of attempts to bend natural/magical laws to give an advantage won't really work. That's something Lex has found out the hard way a few times.
As for Lex potentially fooling Adagio's detection method...it's entirely possible. As far as we know he hasn't cast any illusions, but given everything he can do without having to resort to magic, it's entirely possible that he could be using some simply by willing it. Then again, maybe he didn't think it was necessary? Or at least, not until he foresaw that Adagio was about to use her "Song of Destruction," at which point the issue of her knowing where he is might be somewhat moot?
I am predicting that if she join him they will all becomes his enemies.
D20 is so versatile that it could literally be anything. Only thing you can be sure of is that it's supposed to be destructive in some way.
11689085 In the event that Lex and Adagio join forces (whether that be him subjugating her, her seducing him, or something else entirely), it's likely that Adagio's enemies will become Lex's by extension. He values loyalty highly, and sees himself as the one to safeguard those within his sphere of influence anyway, so there's a high chance that if one of Adagio's creditors comes looking to collect, he'll end up facing off against them.
...which is to say, that's how story seeds are planted.
As for the more immediate concern regarding the Song of Destruction, well...I suppose we'll find out what that does very shortly!