Chương 67: Will O’ the Wisp

Cormac screamed as his leg was pinned to the stone with a sickening crunch, sending the rest of him flying to follow. Róise screamed too, but hers was the wordless rage of someone helpless to do anything but determined to do something anyway. Blue blades shimmered in her hands and she began slicing at Maitiú's hamstrings - no techniques, no fórsa. Just rage. Miriam understood where she was coming from. It was impossible. Maitiú was too strong. Nothing they did would matter.

He would kill Cormac and then likely he would turn on them and kill them too. She looked up at the hole to Scior. Róise's rope was still hanging there - a self-sustaining lifeline that she and Sol could use to get away. Maitiú wouldn't be able to follow - he had become far too large. She hesitated. Then she ran. Straight towards Maitiú, who was ignoring Róise and grinding Cormac's leg into the ground. With a furious scream of her own, she unleashed Waterfall at point blank range.

She was still filled to the brim with foreign fórsa and she poured as much of it out as she could while still maintaining the technique, blasting Maitiú with the fury of a torrential river. For a second, it seemed like it wouldn't be enough. Maitiú leered at her while bracing against the flood of fórsa, unmoving.

Miriam kicked open the gates again, not bothering to try to control her fórsa natures, blasting him with blackened, goopy water with a level of pressure that was almost more than the structure of her technique could bear. Maitiú went flying across the cave. Panting, Miriam turned to Róise.

"Get him out of here. I'll deal with Maitiú." Róise shook her head.

"You're a First, Miriam. You can't -""Technically I'm a Second now," Miriam said, mimicking Cormac with a weak smile.

"Go. I know what I'm doing." The world began to sway with Róisín Dubh as Róise lashed Cormac to herself. The Saint Adept was lost in pain, his knee… well. Better not to think about it. It was a disturbing sight.

"Just get away," Róise said.

"I'll throw the rope back down. You just get away as fast as you can. Sol?"

"Yes?" He was standing quietly behind Miriam - she hadn't even noticed him approach.

"Do you have any more Life fórsa? I'm almost out, and… I think Cormac is going to need more than I can hold." Sol nodded and wrapped a pouch around her neck.

"This is all I have left that aren't technique ones."

"Go, Róise!" Miriam said urgently as Maitiú began to struggle to his feet, seemingly still unused to his new bulk. She touched the pixie's shoulder, grinning.

"Sometimes the reward is worth the risk."

"What's your plan, Miriam?" Sol asked as Róise began hoisting Cormac up the rope. It was a pretty comical sight.

"Are you going to try to square up with him on your own? I won't be much help."

"Just get up the rope," Miriam said.

"I'll just… do my best, I suppose." Sol shook his head.

"I'll stay back and support you somehow."" Miriam," Maitiú taunted." I didn't know you had that in you. Wait, where… no!" He noticed Róise hauling Cormac up to the hole in the roof. His eyes locked on them and he bent his knees. Was he going to jump all the way up there? He could, Miriam realized. With the sort of power he'd demonstrated, even with his added size it would be easy for him. As Maitiú's feet left the ground, she activated Raging Current. With all her might she used her Water fórsa to shove Maitiú.

In the air, it didn't really matter how strong he was - he was just mass, and she could move mass if he wasn't able to apply his strength to it. He missed Róise and Cormac within a hand's breadth and crashed down hard on the stone floor beneath. Maitiú growled, slamming his fists on the ground in frustration.

"He's building up a technique," Sol said. Miriam grimaced. She couldn't afford to let him be the one on the offensive. She had to buy her friends time, and that wouldn't happen if he sliced her in half with Water. Miriam used Vine Leap to close the distance, managing to avoid the wave of water fórsa that sliced up the cave walls around him. She was stricken to see Sol collapse on the ground as she glanced over her shoulder, but it seemed he could sense the shape of the wave and had merely ducked.

While still in the air Miriam fired off a barrage of vine spears - not a technique, just throwing sharp objects. Most of them just bounced off of Maitiú's skin. She landed gracefully and decided to take a page from Róise's book. She summoned knives made of impossibly sharp vine and began to run around the hulking man, slicing and stabbing wherever she saw an opening. Like the spears, it seemed to do nothing. Maitiú growled and slammed his front fists down.

He was not the slow behemoth Miriam might have assumed him to be. She only managed to dodge at all because he was telegraphing his strikes so obviously. Maitiú was not a trained fighter, but still fast enough to hit a glancing blow on her shoulder. She screamed as she felt the bones shatter, leaping back as his fist carried on to the floor, cracking the stone beneath them.. Then she saw the third fist coming. She was in no position to be able to move, caught on the back foot from her dodge.

It would smash her to pieces. She started to weave a vine barrier, but she knew it was useless. She was too slow and the vines far too weak. There was a sharp crack, and suddenly a vine spear was sticking out of Maitiú's eye. Miram looked back - there was Sol, reloading one of his fórsalocks. It was only a First Ring technique, and Maitiú's eye was barely scratched, but you don't forget a lifetime's worth of instincts in a day. If something hits your eye, you will recoil in panic.

Miriam dashed back to stand with Sol, cradling her broken arm.

"We're getting nowhere, fast." Sol nodded.

"We are more skilled, but the power difference is too great. However, Róise and Cormac made it out of the hole. What we need to do now is find a way to keep him busy while we climb up the rope ourselves."

"We can help with that, you tosspots," a voice creaked from behind them. Miriam whirled with a newly formed knife, but the lead Wisp who had accosted them earlier held his hand up for peace.

"Wait! We ain't here to fight." All around them, globes of gentle light they hadn't noticed during their fight winked off to reveal nearly thirty Wisps.

"We figured you was right. All sorts of things going awry here. All-powerful giants. The ground rumbling. Our home, just now stricken with a flood of contaminated water!" The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation. Miriam shared a glance with Sol and grimaced.

"Anyway. We got nothin' to lose, so let's say we trust you for now," the Wisp said.

"So long as you can do what you say and get us off the island, we can hold that… thing down over there."

"What? How?" Miriam had one eye on Maitiú, who was glaring at them while he massaged his wounded eye. She didn't think they had long before his rage overtook him again.

"You don't need to hear our whole sob story, but for years we Wisps never felt at home at Láthair Maol. So we moved underground. We're… a suspicious lot by nature, and Cian always seemed a bit too good to be true. So we developed a technique to trap him." The Wisp looked embarrassed.

"You thought you could trap Cian? On his own island?" Sol nodded.

"Ambitious."

"I never said it worked, did I?" He sneered.

"Ain't never had the chance to test it. But even if it wouldn't hold the boy, it might be enough to pin down that brute over there for a few minutes. Same as we learned to walk the different Webs on the island, it's a trap that ignores your Ring. It should just work." There was no time for doubt.

"What do we have to do?" Miriam asked. Maitiú was beginning to walk towards them.

"Just lock him down for thirty seconds or so," the Wisp said, rubbing his hands together.

"We'll do the rest."

"Lock him down?" Sol raised an eyebrow.

"Miriam, I might have an idea." They only had time to coordinate a few more words before Maitiú charged them. The group scattered, but Maitiú had his eyes set on Miriam. No matter how she tried to dodge away, he was on top of her. She threw technique after technique between them as she ran; Waterfalls, Raging Currents, rough spear walls. Her fórsa was severely lacking and she could feel herself getting slower and slower as she depleted it. She wasn't going to have enough to execute the plan.

Suddenly something stung her hard on her cheek and nearly made her fall down.

"Sorry!" Sol called. It was a material fórsa sphere he'd fired from one of his fórsalocks. Miriam absorbed the power quickly, but it was at best only a quarter of what her reserves would normally hold. She hoped that would be enough." Stop running!" Maitiú skidded to a halt, looking exasperated." I don't even want you. The man I have to kill is upstairs." Miriam tried to eye the ground without giving the plan away. They were almost back to where she had fought Maitiú only moments before.

Her feet were slipping on the loose, broken rock, but she needed him to be where she was.

"You don't need to kill Cormac, Maitiú. We can help you! You saw that earlier, when Sol and I siphoned off some of your excess fórsa! This doesn't have to end with anyone dead." Maitiú seemed to pause, as if her words were troublesome." I don't think that's right… I have to kill Cormac. I have to." His face twisted again." I have to!" Miriam deflated. For just a moment she had thought maybe without Cormac in the room, she could talk him down.

She supposed what he had told Cormac was true - his hate was now burned permanently into his brain. She sighed, stepping back.

"You gotta go through me first, buddy." Maitiú didn't charge. He didn't roar. He just walked mechanically towards her, raising his fists." I'm sorry Miriam. I wish things had been different."

"Me too, Maitiú." Miriam closed her eyes and focused every single drop of fórsa she had into one single technique. A seed manifested, in the rocky dirt underneath the broken stone of the cave floor. A seed that wanted to grow, but she held it back - no, not yet. Not yet. The Seed trembled, filling too full of life force. It needed to escape the confines of this shell. Not yet, Miriam instructed. She needed the pressure to build. Maitiú was coming closer, she could feel his steps, but she couldn't open her eyes yet.

Holding back was taking everything she had.

"Miriam!" Sol called.

"Now!" Miriam's eyes blazed open and she thrust the fist of her good arm upward, activating a pressurized Rising Tree. Life fórsa was not Water that you should be able to pressurize, but she had reasoned that at the end of the day, it was all her fórsa and by the gods it would do what she told it to. In the case of Life - it meant a delayed reaction, with increased speed on the rebound.

The seed she'd manifested in the sparse soil under the cave floor, now accessible thanks to the damage Maitiú had inflicted on it, exploded up, finally free to grow the way it was supposed to. As it thundered upward Miriam molded its shape as she had done against the birds - a huge tree with a spear for a top. The stone floor broke apart dramatically, chunks of stone erupting from the ground under Maitiú.

The old sailor was quite surprised by this, as he was trying to reach Sol, who had wrapped his arms around Maitiú's neck from behind.

"I want to try something you told me about Solas's gem," Sol had said quickly.

"Get his attention and I'll get my hands on him. If there is something else you can do to distract him I might have a decent shot." Sol only had moments before any of the four of Maitiú's arms plucked him off, so he wasted no time. He reached into the functions of the gem inside him and tried to find one he had never used before. Lock down Water fórsa! He commanded himself. For a moment he was worried that nothing was happening. He had no mind space visualization, the way Miriam had.

He just told himself what to do and his functions listened, so if the process had begun, he wasn't sure. Two hands reached for him - one open, the other that was seeming forever clenched in a fist. Then, Solas's fórsa sense recognized the vacuum left by a huge fórsa entity suddenly disappearing. Maitiú's fórsa Nature had been locked! Though he couldn't visualize it, Sol got the feeling the dam could only hold against the strength of Maitiú's power for seconds at best.

Maitiú roared again, but it was at this moment that a thick, sharpened tree burst from the ground and speared him right in the gut. Sol was buffeted by branches slapping at him roughly as the tree grew, but he was high enough on Maitiú's shoulders to avoid Miriam's technique from running him through too. It hadn't been an easy attack, he noticed. The trunk emerged from Maitiú's back completely blunted, having been dulled by pushing through as dense a creature as the old sailor.

Only the built up pressure and Maitiú's lack of reinforcing fórsa allowed it to happen at that moment. Maitiú was writhing like a fish at the bottom of a rowboat, gurgling screams choking out any real words. Still, it was all for nothing if the Wisps couldn't keep up their end of the bargain. Maitiú would regain his fórsa as soon as the dam broke and he would tear his way off of the tree with his bare hands. At Sixth, he would heal almost as fast as Róisín Dubh.

"Any time now!" Miriam called out. Ten of the Wisps ran forward with their lanterns. They arranged them in a circle around Maitiú. They each began to glow as the Wisps made tiny adjustments to them, each now glowing with a different hue.

"You'd better get down if you don't wanna get stuck," the lead Wisp called to Sol.

"Once I do," Sol said, using all his strength to hold on, "he will get his fórsa back. So be ready. Tell me when!" The lead Wisp conferred with his team. They all nodded.

"Hurry!" Sol yelled. He could feel the dam breaking.

"Now!" The lead Wisp yelled. Sol leaped off the pinned man, landing awkwardly next to Miriam, who had collapsed on the floor, panting and dry of fórsa. Maitiú's head snapped up and an ugly grin grew on his face. He began to stand up straight, the trunk of the tree inside him bending, quickly on the verge of snapping. The ten lanterns instantly formed a web of interconnected beams of light, each of them connecting to the other, forming a complex web outside of an empty circle within.

Maitiú seemed to sense the danger he was in and he twisted his body violently, the tree trunk shredding apart before their eyes. Then the circle was complete, and Maitiú froze. Miriam let out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding.

"It worked?" Inside the circle, Maitiú was stopped still, immovable as a painting. Well… most paintings, Miriam acknowledged. He wasn't moving even a hair, not even breathing. The Wisp broke into a toothy grin.

"I'd say so! Good on ya, lads, that's a job well done! My ancestors would be proud. Make me wish we'd had a chance to try it on Cian."

"He's not dead?" Sol asked, brushing off his coat.

"Nah. Tell you a secret. There's fórsa natures that exist below the fundamental layer that Sidhe can access. People can't touch 'em. Any mind that tries will just scatter them to the wind. It's like they are there until someone's watching - then they're not! But machines, like our lanterns here… they can access it, cause they got no mind."

"What is the nature these lanterns are accessing?" Miriam asked, standing up with a wobble. The Wisp chuckled.

"Time! Only time! The lanterns will break down sooner or later, and when they do, it'll seem like to him that not even a second has passed. But we'll be long gone!" One of the lanterns flickered.

"Miriam? Are you okay?" Róise called down.

"We're fine. We're coming up!" Miriam looked at the Wisp and smiled.

"All of us!

"You'd better hurry," Róise said. Her voice was trembling in a way Miriam had rarely ever heard from her.

"What's going on?" Miriam called back.

"Is Cormac all right?" There was a pause. The next words she spoke were full of a dread they could not have evoked only a day earlier.

"Cian's coming."