No more holding back. No more playing with a handicap of not using my own weapon. It was all or nothing now. I had my weapon, my powers, my sister, everything. And it was a good thing too, since I was going to need all of it to survive the next few seconds. Because these guys? They weren’t holding back either.


    Two of the three Seosten were the first to reach me, their boosted speed turning each into a barely visible blurred form. One went high, the other low, sweeping their energy blades toward my neck and legs respectively. As those deadly, glowing blades swept through the air at me, I threw myself into a twisting sideways flip, passing barely between them. My hand slapped down to pass through the lower blade as I absorbed the energy from it.


    Landing on my feet in a crouch, I instantly channeled all that energy into my staff. That glowing green outline surrounded it, protecting the weapon from being cut in half as I brought it around to catch the incoming blade from the third Seosten. Even as our weapons rebounded from one another, Tabbris took control of my left hand, creating a nausea-bubble before throwing it toward the Seosten whose blades we had just flipped between. It missed, but the throw at least forced the pair to recoil for an instant. And right now, every instant counted.


    The guy in front of me pressed the attack, feinting a swing at my head before flipping his blade around to go for my leg. I ignored the feint, paying attention to what my item-sense power and instincts were telling me about his movements. My still-glowing staff caught his blade, sliding it out of the way. Twice more, he kept at it, his form a blur of motion as he tried to catch me off guard. For those brief seconds, Tabbris was able to boost us just enough to keep up, our weapons colliding with one another repeatedly as I fought desperately just to stay alive.


    Unfortunately, it seemed that none of my new friends were interested in following any kind of ‘taking turns’ rule. Not only were these three Seosten attacking me all at once, the trio of Alters weren’t holding back either. The first, a short, squat figure that looked like a chubby porcupine, sent a shower of likely-poisonous needles flying at me. Apparently he could control them, since they very deliberately went around anyone who wasn’t me.


    But I wasn’t alone. Tabbris quickly created a portal, catching the incoming needles to send them at the pair of Seosten behind us. At the same time, I was busy sidestepping the lunge from the third Seosten as he tried to take advantage of what he clearly thought would be my distraction. His blade hummed through the air right where I had been an instant earlier.


    Now I was beside him, even as the other two Alters (one a lanky wooden Relukun and the other some kind of slimy mud-like man) brought slugthrower rifles into play.


    Trusting Tabbris to deal with that, I focused on the guy that I had just stepped beside, hitting the button that launched my grapple. Since it was on the end of my staff that was pointed down, the thing shot into the man’s leg, literally going through it and out the other side as the Seosten let out a cry of surprise.


    The two Alters had already opened fire. But my faith in my sister wasn’t misplaced. She was on the job, already using my item-transportation power to position two of our kevlar-spell enchanted bits of fabric right where the bullets were going. She also used the power that allowed me to shrink or grow items that I spent enough time with to make the cloth bits large enough to cover everything they needed to. I took the hits, which felt like little more than pebbles being lightly tossed at my back.


    Meanwhile, the other two Seosten had deftly avoided the poison spines, despite the portal making them appear right in front of their faces. They recovered, reigniting their laser blades before coming for me. They were only two steps away as the bullets from the rifles bounced from my back, my weapon currently occupied with the grapple through the third Seosten’s leg.


    Tabbris took that one again, triggering a cloud of sand to erupt from my staff before sending it flying into their faces, driving them back a step and halting their charge.


    The third Seosten was recovering. He tried to twist around to swing at me, but I ducked under the blade, then hit the button on my staff to trigger its boost before letting go. The weapon flew out of my hand, yanking my opponent off his feet and sending him flying up toward the ceiling with a cry.


    With a combination of my item-sense and werewolf reflexes, I spun at the last second, expertly catching the man’s flailing laser sword to tear it from his grip. Sensing my need, Tabbris created another portal right beside us, the other end positioned right beside the Alters who were shooting at us. With the blade in my hand, I shoved it through the portal.


    I was quick, but one of them was quicker. The mud-man managed to dive out of the way, leaving only the Relukun to have both hands cut off by the blade. He dropped the gun, stumbling.


    With any luck, they could probably fix that later. I didn’t want to kill the Alters, who were either possessed or controlled by Radueriel. I didn’t want to kill them. I was going to do whatever I could to avoid it. Including literally disarming them like that.


    Unfortunately, the ‘sand in the face’ trick wasn’t working anymore. The two Seosten each triggered some kind of spell, which created an aura around them that turned my sand to water, taking it out of my (and Tabbris’) control. Shit, now they were just being lightly rained on. It didn’t even seem like that rain was superheated the way the sand had been.


    Having fixed the sand problem, the Seosten pair came at us hard. Tabbris barely had time to blurt a warning and shove us out of the way to avoid being skewered on the end of the actual metal sword one of them had produced. Even then, she couldn’t stop us from taking a punch from the other one. Which, since he was boosting at the time, knocked me to the ground and nearly broke my jaw. I saw dark spots and bits of light for a few seconds, the laser sword dropping from my hand.


    The guy with the metal sword brought it down straight for my prone body, and it was only at the last possible instant that I managed to collect myself enough to roll onto my side, letting the blade skim past my back to drive itself into the floor. Quickly, I shoved my back against it, using the item-relocation power to teleport the weapon out of his hand. It reappeared down by my feet, even as I kicked out to send it toward porcupine-man, forcing him to dive away from it.


    At the same time, the Seosten who had struck me so hard was already rearing back to kick me in the stomach. But Tabbris had quickly used that time to create a portal to my staff. My hand caught it, retracting the grapple to let the Seosten who was hanging by his leg fall to the floor.


    With my staff back in my hand, Tabbris used the item-growth power at the exact same time that I was kicking the stolen sword at the porcupine. The staff elongated, slamming into the face of the Seosten who was trying to kick us. The blow knocked him back a step, even as she triggered the stored kinetic boost on the opposite end, lifting me back to my feet.


    The mud-man had created some kind of weird acidic-looking ball in both hands by that point, which he hurled at me. At the same time, the Seosten whose sword I had kicked away threw what looked like a small bit of metal at me as well. Halfway there, it exploded, sending a wave of concussive force that hit me like a giant’s fist. The air was knocked out of me, and I was thrown off my feet. The mud-man’s acid ball struck my arm, instantly burning through the skin and muscle there. It was agony beyond description. I screamed, dropping my weapon while falling into a roll as I cradled my injured arm. It looked burned. Badly burned. Even with my pain tolerance power, it was beyond anything I had felt before. Hell, even Tabbris couldn’t completely suppress the pain. Which kind of told me how bad it would have been without help. This was more than just normal acid. It was like the mud-man’s power let him instill supernatural pain in whatever his acidic-mud ball hit.


    It was bad. And it would have been utterly crippling and fight-ending without the combination of my pain tolerance power and Tabbris. As it was, I could barely see straight. But what I did see was the Seosten whose leg I had impaled recovering enough to aim a pistol at me, while the one who had hit me with that concussive explosion spell prepared another one.


    No more. I couldn’t let this go on. Ignoring the blinding pain in my arm, I created a portal by my foot, lashing out in a kick that went through that portal, colliding with the hand of the Seosten who was trying to throw the concussive bomb at me. The kick knocked his throw off course, sending it at the Seosten with the pistol instead to create an explosion that put that guy on the ground.


    The pain in my arm was already fading enough that Tabbris could get it under control, which allowed me to focus on the mud-man himself. I did not want to be hit by another of those balls, and he was already winding up for a second throw. Clearly, he expected me to be affected longer, because he was taking his time, building up a large blob of that mud stuff which, if it hit me, would probably take me out of the fight for good. If it didn’t just drive me completely insane from the agony.


    So it was time to change the equation when it came to this guy. To that end, I focused through the lingering pain, creating a quick portal that led behind the mud-man while shoving the hand of the arm that wasn’t throbbing through it. The other end of the portal led to the back of the mud-man’s head, and I grabbed him. Sure enough, according to the choker, he was possessed. I could see the Seosten inside him.


    Thankfully, I could deal with that too. With a thought, I created an instant copy of the expulsion rune on the man’s neck while he was still reacting to the surprise of my hand grabbing him from behind. There was a cry of pain from the Alter, and the Seosten possessing him stumbled out. He resolidified just in time to be hit straight in the face by the same torture-mud that he had been making his host create. Apparently mud-man wasn’t happy about being enslaved, and let the Seosten know about it by hitting him with enough of the stuff to put his former master on the ground with a scream of pain.


    The other Seosten, who had been rushing for me, did a double-take of confusion at that. Which I took full advantage of. Using my staff to boost myself back to my feet, I created two more portals, shoving my hands through those as well. The portals were set up near the remaining pair of possessed Alters, the Relekun and the porcupine.


    Unfortunately, I only managed to get my hand on the tree-man, insta-casting the expulsion rune there too. The porcupine, meanwhile, touched something on his arm and blurted a single word right as I was about to touch him. In the next instant, my hand struck some kind of frictionless forcefield that popped up. It didn’t seem that tough or protective, but it stopped my hand from reaching him. The still-possessed porcupine shouted something in Latin that came too fast for me to catch, though Abaddon’s name was in there.


    Activate Abaddon’s possession shields, Tabbris quickly translated, even as the remaining guys all did the same as the porcupine. So apparently Abaddon had prepared these guys with those low-level forcefields to prevent me (or others, I supposed) from being able to possess them that easily. And now it was doubling as a way of preventing me from using the expulsion rune.


    But hey, at least I’d used it on two of them before they caught on. Which meant that now it suddenly wasn’t six on one anymore. It was six on three, assuming my newest friend wanted a piece of his former enslaver as much as the mud-guy did. Not only did the expulsion rune kick those guys out of their hosts, it also rendered the two Seosten briefly incapable of recalling back to them.


    Aaaand then things got bad again. One of the Seosten spoke a single word, and both the newly freed mud-man and Relukun collapsed. They just dropped unconscious, taking them out of the fight entirely. Worse, the guy who had been hit with the torture-mud had used some other spell to recover. Now he was up too.


    So it was six on one again, except now five of those were hostless Seosten. All I’d managed to do was take two of their ‘body-suits’ away. And left one of them with a pronounced limp from shooting that grapple through his leg. A pronounced limp which stopped being a problem a second later, as the Seosten who had been possessing the porcupine-man hopped out, and the injured one took over his spot.


    Now that really wasn’t fair. Not to mention the fact that all these guys were protected from my possession and the expulsion rune. Hell, even my sand was useless since those ‘turn it into water’ spells were still active.


    Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.


    Who the hell could I submit a balance complaint to for this fight?


    The force-fields can’t be that strong, Tabbris quickly put in, even as the six collected themselves and focused on me once more. They’re meant to stop quick possession, but if you hit them hard enough, they should go down.


    Hit them hard enough, huh? I sent back. Then I guess we’re doing this the old fashioned way.


    As if in agreement with that, the five Seosten all ignited laser swords of their own and came for me while the possessed porcupine sent a cloud of poison spikes flying past them. The hard way it was.


    Gripping my staff, I waited just long enough for the flying darts to reach me before sending a concussive blast from the end of the weapon that scattered the spines. Which had the added benefit of slowing several of the rushing Seosten as they avoided the redirected projectiles. Two made it through to where I was, one leaping up and over me while the other went straight for my chest with his blade. The one jumping over my head produced a pistol, aiming down before taking several rapid shots.


    They were learning. The gun was a slugthrower, and they were trying to shoot at parts of my body not covered by clothing. Not to mention the guy with the laser sword demanding my attention.


    Unfortunately for them, they still hadn’t gotten the memo that there were two of us driving this body, so they’d have to do better than that if they wanted to distract us. Tabbris used the item-transfer and enlargement powers to shove yet another kevlar-cloth over the top of my head to stop the incoming bullets. At the same time, I intercepted the incoming laser sword by extending my staff to twice its usual length so that it could connect with the actual handle, sending the sharp metal blade right through the cylinder that the Seosten held. With a sudden shower of sparks and a cry from the man himself, his weapon fizzled and died in his hand. Also fizzling and dying? His forcefield, which collapsed from the combination of the laser sword essentially exploding right next to it and the impact of my blade.


    The Seosten flipping over me and firing landed at my back, while I pivoted sharply. The grapple-end of my spinning staff narrowly missed him, but still forced the man to recoil and duck away from it.


    And now the other three were there, with the porcupine right behind them. The trio all went for me at once, even as Tabbris created a quick portal for me to shove a hand through. Their blades sliced through the space where I was. Or rather, where I had been, since my grasping hand caught hold of the Seosten whose shield I had just broken. Instantly, we possessed him, and the three energy-blades cut through empty air.


    I was in the Seosten now, and I took quick advantage of the disorientation that caused in the others, by spinning back the other way and dropping to one knee. Tabbris had already scanned his mind for the answer to a question I didn’t even have to vocalize, sending me the information instantly. I knew exactly how many shots from their own weapons these shields of theirs could stand up to.


    At a thought, a portal appeared in front of me as I forced my new brief host to kneel. With one of his hands, I yanked the laser pistol up, firing rapidly directly through it.


    The porcupine took three, four, five shots from the other end of the portal, which appeared behind him, stumbling forward with a cry as his shield went down on the last shot. By that point, the others had recovered from their confusion, realizing what had happened. But even as they turned on their possessed comrade, I was already hitting the eject while leaving one last order: for him to fall unconscious.


    His body collapsed, while I popped out. Before my body had even finished reforming, I used a blast from my staff to throw myself right at porcupine-boy, who was still staggering from the shots that had hit him in the back only a second earlier. Dropping into a roll, I slapped a hand against his foot, triggering another expulsion rune now that his forcefield was down. The Seosten was kicked out of him, and the blade of my rising staff as I rolled to my feet went right through the neck of the reforming figure while he was still staggering from the forceful ejection.


    Two down. One dead, one unconscious. Tabbris muted the rush of pleasure, even as one of the remaining Seosten spoke a word that put the porcupine-Alter on the ground. Now all I had were four hostless Seosten. Four rather pissed off hostless Seosten, to be exact.


    Three of those four opened up on me with pistols, two energy and one slug thrower. Which, honestly, wouldn’t they have figured this out by now? I absorbed the former, sending the energy back at them while the bullets were caught on one of my repositioned kevlar-cloths.


    The answer was yes. Yes, they had figured that out. It was a distraction. I figured that much out a second later, as the fourth Seosten threw up some kind of coin, activating the spell on it to create a portal of his own before throwing what looked like four rubber bands through.


    Flick! Tabbris warned, but I was already moving. I knew this trick too, even before my item-sense warned me. The other end of the portal was behind me, and whatever those rubber bands were, I didn’t want anything to do with them.


    I was almost fast enough, with the boost that my sister threw on. Three of the four bands missed me entirely, colliding with the floor. But the fourth hit my left wrist. As soon as it did, the band latched on tight while growing. It wrapped around my arm and yanked it to the small of my back, holding it there.


    Magic restraints. Clearly the other three bands had been meant to connect with my other wrist and my ankles or legs, incapacitating me completely. As it was, they’d managed to make me literally fight with one hand behind my back. Whatever material it was made out of, it resisted my immediate effort to transport it off my wrist with my item-relocation power. And trying to shift my arm partway into lion-form to snap it just resulted in a sharp spasm of blinding pain as the magic cuff stayed put. So that didn’t work either.


    But if they thought that was enough to stop me, they had another thing coming. With my staff held tightly in my free right hand, I threw myself straight at the Seosten. Which, whatever they’d been expecting me to do right then, it obviously wasn’t that.


    I was there, right in the middle of their group, while they were still recovering from the surprise that my reaction to having one of my arms tied behind my back was to charge them. Swinging my staff hard through the air, I drove two of the four to stumble backward, while triggering a concussive blast from the other end, which caught the third in the face.


    The fourth reacted faster than the others, lashing out with a swing from his laser sword that cut horizontally through the air toward my shoulders. I ducked under the humming blade, pivoting and rising to put myself on the far side of his extended arm before driving my leg hard into his stomach. At the same time, I triggered another boost from my staff and released it so the weapon would fly into the face of one of the first two Seosten. It ricocheted off his shield, but the impact was still enough to knock his head back with a cry.


    As my foot rebounded from colliding with the stomach of the Seosten in front of me, I swung it back hard into the sternum of the second of the first two, the one who hadn’t just taken the staff to his face. A quick portal let me bring my falling weapon back to my free hand, even as I pivoted around the Seosten in front of me, the first one that I had kicked. He was still recovering from that blow, even with the forcefield. Which slowed him just enough that my spinning staff collided with the back of his neck, sending him stumbling into the second one that I had kicked.


    Those two were briefly caught up with one another. Which left the guy I had blasted in the face at the start of this flurry of fighting and the one who had just been hit, also in the face, with the end of my boosted staff.


    Both of them boosted to come after me, and Tabbris boosted us to match them. Which she could only do for a brief time. But brief was all I needed. Letting them come for me, I let the first one swing his energy blade. Another horizontal swing. I backpedaled, then lunged forward and under his second swing.


    Now between the two, I let the second guy try his luck. That time, I hit paydirt. Vertical swing. The instant I saw what he was doing, I pivoted on one foot. But I wasn’t dodging. I knew how long the energy blade was. My item sense, even though it couldn’t detect the blade itself, knew where the hilt was. I used that. Turning my back to the man, I ducked forward and raised my back as much as I could.


    It worked. The energy blade collided with the magical cuff that had been incapacitating my left arm. Suddenly, it was gone. I was free. And I celebrated my newfound freedom by throwing myself bodily backward to collide with the man who had just cut through my cuff. Both of us went down, though he cushioned my fall while landing hard on his back. The energy blade dropped from his hand from the impact.


    Creating another portal down by my feet while lying there, I lashed out with a kick. The other end of the portal appeared right in front of the groin of the second Seosten who had just been swinging his blade at me. From the dulled impact, it was clear that they were smart enough to wear what amounted to magical cups. Still, it made the guy stumble.


    Then I disappeared. The remaining three Seosten, including the one I had just kicked, reacted instantly. They turned their weapons on the one I had been lying on top of, flooding the air with what was apparently some kind of stun setting on their guns. The guy was hit by so many of them, he probably wouldn’t wake up for another week.


    I almost felt bad for the guy, considering I wasn’t actually possessing him. Yeah, his shield had still been up. Instead, I had simply possessed a tiny wooden coin that I’d dropped next to his body. But it sure looked as though I’d possessed him, and his companions had reacted pretty much as I’d planned.


    Three left. While they were still trying to figure out what was going on, I popped out of my little wooden coin, already shifting my weapon to its bow form and loosing a shot. My foot was on the bit of wood, and I instantly transferred it to my hand before throwing it up and over their heads while they were diving away from the exploding energy arrow.


    Even as the coin started to leave my hand, right as it was on the tip of my finger, I possessed it. My body vanished into the thing, which flew up through the air. One second I was standing there throwing a bit of wood, and in the next, I was inside the thing as it sailed over them.


    With the wooden coin directly above one of the Seosten’s heads, I popped out of it. They were still trying to figure out where I’d disappeared to when I suddenly appeared with my weapon back in its staff form, blade down. Before the guy below me could react, I used a blast from the other end to propel myself at him. The blade collided with the man’s head and kept going, tearing through his shield from the force of the impact to cut straight down through him. The staff basically cut him in half vertically. It was… messy.


    Two left. Both of whom were losing their minds right then. They wanted me down now. And they did their best to achieve that by boosting themselves to blinding speed, their forms a blur of motion as they came at me. Tabbris boosted us as much as she could, and the two Seosten were still faster. One slammed his fist into my face, knocking my head to the side with a cry, just before the other kicked me in the stomach with a blow that took the wind out of me while I was thrown backward. My staff fell to the floor with a clatter at their feet.


    Too fast, my partner blurted, they’re too fast, I can’t keep up!


    It’s okay, I sent back. He can.


    He, in this case, was the first Seosten that I had killed in this room. The one whose throat I’d driven the blade of my staff through right after ejecting him from his host. He’d been killed instantly.


    But I was a necromancer. And I was pretty God damn motivated right then. At a violent mental shove, the dead Seosten was suddenly back on his feet. He boosted, throwing himself at my two unsuspecting opponents. They turned too late, one of them taking the reignited energy blade through his chest before he even knew what was happening.


    The other didn’t stop to question it. His own laser sword cut through the necks of both of his dead companions, taking their heads from their shoulders. A quick expert follow up swing took all four arms from them, and then he was facing me once more, energy blade extended. “Enough of this! You die now!”


    “You know,” I shot back, “I was with you through the first half of that.” As the man readied himself to come at me once more with a blinding blur that would surely finish me off, I held up both hands as if to show that they were empty.


    Then I grabbed the bracelet on my arm, the one that I had gotten from Broker the day before. My finger found the blue button on it, and I spoke a single word.


    “Jaq.”


    I disappeared. Exactly as advertised, the bracelet transported me instantly to where Jaq was. Which, at that moment, was attached to my staff… directly behind the last Seosten. I appeared in a crouch, my hands already grabbing the two abandoned laser swords from the beheaded (and disarmed) guys. Thumbing them on, even as the guy realized his mistake, I shouted inwardly, Boost!


    It wasn’t fast enough to get the guy before he could turn around. But it was enough to get him before he could do anything else. He faced me, mouth open in clear disbelief as I stood there with two borrowed energy blades, one in each hand, driven through his chest.


    He fell. And as he did, the weapons fell from my hands as well, even as my arms dropped to my sides as if they weighed a million pounds. I was breathing hard. Everything, going through the hotel, all the possessions, all the fighting, the running, the boosting, the struggling just to survive for another few seconds, all of it for so long, was getting even to me. I had to catch my breath. Six Seosten. Six Seosten and they were down. They were down. Breathe, Flick. Breathe.


    And then a sudden, blinding pain in my legs took even that breath away. A strangled scream escaped me, as I fell to the floor. I was bleeding badly. Something–something had cut through both of my legs so deep they were nearly cut off entirely. More than once. Something cut through them more than once. I couldn’t stand. I couldn’t think. There was so much blood.


    “Well, this was exciting,” Kushiel’s voice spoke, as my bleary eyes snapped over to find a hole in the shield that had been keeping them out. All of them. They were there, the three Olympians. Kushiel, Abaddon, and Radueriel.


    “But I think we know how this ends,” the psycho bitch continued while handling the bloody sword that she had used on her own legs while transferring the damage to cripple me. “Not well for you.


    “Not well at all.”