"You want to go check it out?" Mia asked, angling her head towards the mana fluctuations outside.
I could sense three different major sources of mana there. The Kettunen matriarch, a Baroness, was fighting against a Viscount and a Baron. There were also who-knows-how-many weaklings running about. Those minor signatures all blended together, making it impossible to tell them apart.
"Well… does it benefit us more to get involved, or to wait for the Kettunens to get butchered?"
"If we save the Kettunens, they might like us enough to ally with us," Mia pointed out.
I chuckled. "Ahh, but if we don't save them, we might get to raid their mansion."
Mia returned my malicious smile, but then she hummed, shaking her head. "Too much work."
"Ack. True! So… in that case…" I grabbed her hand, tracing patterns on it idly. "You want to try, you know, 'that' again?"
"We do need another combat test," she purred, making another smile creep across my face.
"True. Would be a shame to lose the chance."
"And this has nothing to do with you wanting to know what I think about you in these clothes?"
I gripped her hand tighter. "Perish the thought."
Then I let my everything reach out for Mia. Strands of our being brushed against each other, met, and entwined, dragging down all doubt into the deepest forlorn depths of our minds. Where it belonged.
And, in its place, a matching set of grins emerged.
It was easy. We stepped through the door of the room they'd thought to trap us in, gliding right past the locks of both matter and dream mana like a whimsical daydream.
Our senses stretched further than they were ever meant to, phasing right through everything in their way and leading us towards the battle in the distance. When we laughed, the sound of our merriment echoed from two throats, and the few servants left behind to guard the house fled before us.
Not before we snared a couple in Woe and dreams, though.
We dragged them down, trapped them in nightmares, and then drained whatever energy we could from them through the Emotion, taking deep, greedy gulps of mana and Woe. It did little to empower us, though it gently sapped the will of anyone we encountered, making it impossible for them to stand against us.
Vengeance was far more useful for pure physical confrontations. We pulled on it heavily as we crashed right through the grand doors of the manor, cackling in multiplied mirth at the sight of the expensive wood shattering and pelting the fighting demons with shrapnel.
Almost as good as a spell, that. The quality of the mana-infused wood made the projectiles deadly for anyone particularly weak. It caught a few of the Kettunens as well, of course, but it wasn't like they were our people.
"You started without me?" we demanded, our voices layering and echoing in a way that made combatants on both sides pause.
Vallinach's troops were easy to identify, mostly by their muted, camouflage-convenient clothing. We snapped out at them with dream mana. The Kettunens, on the other hand, wore suits and rather fancy dresses. Impressive, we supposed, but their clothes did hinder their mobility in battle.
"Take care of this traitor," the Viscount grunted at his Baron partner. "I'll handle the two idiots."
We immediately focused our attention on the Viscount. He didn't look like much! Scales formed rough ridges all over his body, and he had four horns sweeping back over his head, but his overall grey tone and unimpressive build were a letdown.
His sword didn't look like much, either. A plain, straight, double-edged blade that seemed like it had seen better days. If it wasn't for his mana flooding the world around us and trying to crush us, we would have discounted him as yet another underling brought along for the sake of numbers.
Then flames ignited over his hands, and he moved so quickly that we barely managed to bring up a wall of crystal to halt his advance.
"So eager," we taunted. "Perhaps if you bought us dinner first —"
Our echoing mockery cut off when the demon refused to slow down and his sword sheared straight through our crystal.
We hissed at the unexpected move. Activating our technique, we whisked away in two opposite directions to circle our assailant as his sword cut through our illusions.
The sensation was all wrong. The blow was supposed to undo our spells, yes, but this felt less like unraveling and more like complete cessation at the point of impact. Our mind flashed to all the times we had trained against each other, and our stomachs did a little uncomfortable flip.
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A soul blade.
The Viscount moved to pursue, but we were ready for him now. Spells snapped out to ensnare him directly, bombarding him with subtle illusions and distractions as crystal wound about our bodies. It couldn't stop his soul blade, but it could strengthen us, enhance our reaction speed, and even help us pull ourselves away from danger.
The Viscount sneered when we went to meet him blow for blow, two swords flashing together. Then the sneer fell apart when his sword didn't shear through ours, and his strength failed to break us.
"Mine's better."
The taunt rang out from two throats at once, one from the body keeping the soul blades locked in a contest of strength, the other from the body we materialized right behind him to swing another sword at his spine.
He snarled and twisted around to bat us away, but not even a Viscount's reflexes were good enough to escape completely unscathed. Vengeance-fueled strength and speed drove a blade into his side. The Lagyel sand it was made of allowed the sword to tear right through his enchanted leather armor.
Our other body reacted simultaneously, drawing its own Lagyel sword and slashing down on the arm wielding the Viscount's soul blade.
The demon howled and released a veritable explosion of mana, launching us backwards, but we didn't relent. As soon as our feet found purchase, we rushed forward again. We even dispatched a couple of Vallinach's minor minions as we went, feeding our soul blade, which then pumped demonic soul essence and mana back into us.
The Viscount was nowhere near as hurt as we had hoped he would be. The long cut in his side was healing already. Even the tear in the armor was sealing back up. Our other sword had dug deep into his arm and slashed into bone, but it had been stopped there. That wound was healing nicely too, even if it was a bit too gory to shrug away easily.
His arms snapped up when we were just a few yards away from him. Purple flame poured from his hands, bathing everything around us. More than a few weaker demons on both sides screamed as they were caught in the attack, but if he was hoping to slow us down, he wasn't going to get his wish.
Our own soul blade ignited ever higher as it resonated with the Abyssal flames we housed, and we lit up like twin conflagrations. Wherever purple flames touched emerald ones, they were snuffed out.
We charged straight up to the startled Viscount's face with mirrored grins. Our soul blade was once again stopped short, but two Lagyel swords found purchase in his legs, and then his torso. He barely dodged away from a slash meant to take one of his eyes out. Emerald flames flickered over the wounds, taking up precious time and mana to tamp down and eradicate.
We didn't give him that time.
His flames were also not proper Abyssal fire, apparently. Though he wrapped himself up in them, they failed to stop the spread of emerald. If anything, as we distracted him and forced him to dodge our blows again and again, the emerald slowly began devouring the purple.
What had started as wounds edged in emerald Abyssal flames grew into a creeping trail of fires, seeking to meet and devour him wholly. Even better, our connection to our flames revealed that their progress was quite a bit more serious on the inside. His gut was starting to get devoured where we'd managed to slash deep into it, and his regeneration had been countered pretty hard by the flame's voracity.
"Stay still, you little shits!"
He howled in pain as yet another of his wild, admittedly overwhelming strikes missed us, gouging a train of purple sparks into the formerly immaculate lawn of the Kettunens.
Obviously, we were not eager to fulfill his wish. Instead, we leaned even harder into the teleportation technique, weaving it even tighter with dream mana.
He hadn't noticed yet, but Woe was also starting to infect him. Coupled with dream mana, the Emotion was yielding some truly fantastic results. Every third or fourth strike he made was aimed at an enemy that didn't even exist.
He was starting to weaken besides. We could feel our Emotion encroaching upon him: sapping him of the will to wield his blade, taking the edge off of his spells, and injecting doubt or lethargy where there should have been none.
Finally, bolstered by the weakening of his will, Fear wove into his heart as he began to doubt his ability to overwhelm two 'mere' Barons.
Like there was anything 'mere' about us!
We laughed, pure delight overflowing from our melded minds. How long had we been laughing? It didn't matter! All we cared about was that startled look on his face and the way he was edging away from us, retreating without even meaning to. His eyes sought out his allies, but they landed only on weaklings who were dead, fleeing, or terrified as we spread ourselves everywhere.
Our own dream mana subsumed the curtain the Kettunens had laid over their estate. It infected everyone present, filling their minds with Woe and dozens of illusions of us coming right for them. Nightmares convinced the weaklings that their flesh was flayed, blood spilled, and souls silenced. We tricked entire groups of Vallinach's troops into rushing straight into the melee between the Baron and the Kettunens' matriarch, inconveniencing both.
Just because we could.
And then, right when the Viscount was using his overwhelming mana reserves to recover his footing, we pulled off our next trick.
Our united souls called out. The soul blade vanished from the hand holding it, landing in the grasp of the other body that was once again preparing to pounce from the side.
The Viscount noticed, because he wasn't a waste of his rank's mana, but he noticed a beat too late.
He had just about time to twist out of the way of a death blow, but the soul blade sheared right through his arm, a little above his elbow. Mana, soul stuff, and blood erupted out of the wound as he screamed in absolute terror.
His eyes burning with hatred, he threw himself back. A black pearl materialized in his other hand, which was still gripping his own soul blade. Clumsily, he crushed the pearl. An eruption of spatial mana tore him away before we could try to deal another death blow.
His severed arm hit the ground, desiccated and utterly useless. Our soul blade pumped its newly stolen essence straight into us, and we both shuddered as our souls were strengthened a tiny bit further. The soul essence of a Viscount was a rare treat indeed, even if we hadn't gotten to feast on him fully.
Thankfully for us, there were other enemies there.
We turned towards the abandoned Baron and the handful of leftover assailants with hunger and glee shining in our eyes. Oh, we'd gotten to steal a few tastes of soul recently while executing traitors, but that had been outside the Abyss. Even with a soul blade, we'd barely been able to consume a tiny bit of our victims' souls before they vanished for resurrection.
But here, in Torment? Death here was final. There was nothing to stop us from slurping down every bit of our enemies' souls.
And our enemies knew it.
Vallinach's minions turned to run. The Kettunen matriarch blanched. We just kept laughing as we charged forward, moving as one.