256 - Intruder

Lexie first tried to figure out the nature of the interloper. Was it human or otherwise?

It moved on two legs, but that didn’t mean much. She tracked its movement patterns, noting that it seemed to be circling the pair of fighters, exuding some kind of aura towards them, as though weaving a spell...

No, not a spell.

Wait a minute. Was Lexie detecting Eldritch essence coming from it?

Yes. It came across clearly now, despite the vast distance between them.

Whatever the thing was, it was Eldritch, although not from a line Lexie had ever encountered before.

Nevertheless, it felt familiar to her somehow. DECODE picking up notes of fear, as though it were a cousin of the V’Sala.

Was it a ghoul? Was that why it was invisible?

But Lexie had never met a totally invisible ghoul before. Usually, there was some shimmer in the atmosphere that gave it away.

As it worked, Lexie finally realized what the creature was doing.

It was redirecting fear in the arena, amplifying it, pushing it at Torin's.

Heightening his anxiety.

Why Torin?

There wasn't any fear being directed at his opponent, although there did seem to be some kind of link between the creature and Patriot.

Was it a soul contract?

The sneaky bastard. Had Patriot contracted an Eldritch?

How? And did he just do it for this fight because that would be a really fucking deranged thing to do.

Lexie was too far away to activate the soul card, but she could probably disable the creature with DECODE, given enough time.

In the meantime, she decided to counteract its activity.

She analyzed exactly how the creature was siphoning the fear from Torin and activated an invisible V'Sala to counter it. Lexie wove a link between the V'Sala and the creature, using the V'Sala to siphon the fear that the creature had been pushing toward Torin.

"Told you I'd give you something good to eat soon," Lexie told the V'Sala, and he murmured in pleasure.

Lexie sensed the other creature's confusion. It couldn't see her, but it knew something strange was happening.

The next thing she did was discover how it kept itself hidden. Turned out not to be ghoul after all, at least not in the way the V'Sala was. Its power worked through a series of seals that had been placed on its body. The invisibility was controlled by one seal, and by breaking it, she would unveil the creature.

And reveal to the audience what a disgusting cheater Patriot was.

She went to work on the first seal. It caused an odd shimmer in the air, which no one noticed, or perhaps they thought it was due to the heat from Torin's flame.

Everyone was too focused on the match anyway, which was taking a turn now that Torin wasn’t as afraid as he was before. He was coming back to himself, dodging the attacks with far more ease now and sending a counter kick across Patriot's face that rivaled the blow he'd given Torin.

That angered Patriot, who snarled as he launched another flurry of attacks, with Torin dodging neatly while landing light, fiery blows to his opponent's side, driving Patriot further into Madness.

It looked like his control was also worse than Conrad's, and he was getting more agitated as time went on.

Especially as the crowd was cheering again for Torin.

Torin grabbed Patriot’s arm and tossed him at the wall, but Patriot's reflexes allowed him to bounce off and shoot back at him.

His speed had increased to match Torin's, but Torin's skill still outpaced him.

And then Lexie finally broke the seal and revealed the beast. 

Damn. 

It was uglier than the V’Sala. 

It has slimy pussy green skin, with the face of a ghoul but the body of some tentacled creature Lexie had never seen before. The tentacles extended to humanoid arms that covered its big, bulbous eyes as it screeched, and the entire thing was balanced on two strangely human legs that made it look even more horrific.

The second the Patriot saw it, he paled.

Lexie couldn’t tell if the pallor was from being caught or his shock from seeing the creature in real life. Maybe he hadn’t been conspiring with it. Maybe it had possessed him.

In any case, that was the least of her worries now. At the creature's appearance, the screams from the audience began.

So did the shouts from the ushers and the security guards who dashed for the arena. The magic-cancelling silvers came on, but the creature screamed anyway, and in a final ditch attempt, it launched its tentacle-arm at Torin. 

Torin jumped out of the way, leaping into the air out of the silver's reach, and boosting himself up with a jet of flames.

Patriot pounced up to join him, and so did the creature. 

They both attacked him at the same time, and Lexie worked to deactivate the silvers because they really only limited Torin, not the other two. It was an automatic emergency measure, but it wouldn't work against the Eldritch, and Patriot didn't use magic, so Torin was at a disadvantage on the ground.

Nevertheless, Torin managed to avoid their aerial attack, and when the silvers went off, he used a ball of fire to send the creature back down to earth.

And he just kept on burning it.

The creature screamed, and Torin turned away in time to catch Patriot's fist in his hand. He flung him to the ground, and Patriot crashed hard enough to create a small crater.

He didn't move again as Torin also surrounded him with a ring of fire, trapping him.

“Oh my God.” Lexie saw her friends running out of the fighter's area behind her. “What the hell is that thing?”

"I don’t know,” Lexie said. The creature's screaming finally stopped, although Torin continued to burn it anyway, with an intense blue flame. He clearly wasn't taking any chances.

As chaos ensued in the audience, forcing the ushers to corral the crowd, Lexie approached the arena, moving through the force field toward the crowd of people that had surrounded Torin.

No one noticed her appearance at first; everyone was preoccupied with the creature and Patriot, who was already recovering on the ground. 

Only Torin noticed Lexie coming up to stand beside him. Lexie met Torin’s gaze. She saw the hardness within. He was mad.

“What the hell is going on?” Torin’s trainer burst on the scene, addressing the ushers and guards who had surrounded the creature, wondering amongst themselves what to do. One of them was calling an urgent hero alert. “What the hell is that thing?”

The ushers seemed befuddled, so Lexie explained.

“It’s an Eldritch,” she said. “Or at least partially so.”

The trainer faced her and paled. “You mean a demon?”

"Eldritch," Lexie corrected, and the ushers and guards all took several steps back from the thing. 

Lexie, on the contrary, walked to it and made soul contact. 

Now that she could feel it, the creature did seem familiar, but not in the way she expected. There was something about it, about its soul, that she did recognize even though it was garbled and twisted underneath a mix of things.

Spawn of Neqal. 

No. An experiment of Neqal.

The creature wasn’t a V’Sala. It was an abomination that likely used some of the V'Sala's attributes, combined with a few other things, and locked them with seals.

Why seals? 

Another thing Lexie noted was that the creature didn’t seem surprised at the soul touch. 

It felt almost expectant and eager, like it knew this would happen. Like this had all been planned for her. 

But how?

Had Neqal done this to get to Lexie?

That would mean Neqal had to have known she would be here, in which case that meant he was monitoring her somehow. Through the Mountain? But that didn’t make sense. If Neqal could truly access the Mountain, he would have had all the information about Lexie that Naem had managed to hide from him in the past. He would have attacked her by now.

Unless Naem had been lying about that, too. Ugh, it was all so confusing. 

But there was something even more worrying. 

Naem had warned her that Neqal would come after her soon. She didn’t think that would extend to people she cared about.

But had he really wanted to hurt Torin? There were more straightforward ways to do it.

Maybe this had only been a warning. Or maybe it was a message for Lexie, urging her to do something. To seek him out?

Lexie finally turned to Patriot and asked him, “How did you find it, and how did you bond with it?”

Patriot glared at her and got to his feet. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“You brought it to the arena with you, and it’s subsisting off of you. It was taking away your fear and siphoning it into Torin. Why would it do that if it wasn't attached to you in some way?"

“And how would you know all that?” an usher asked.

“She’s the one who got possessed in the dungeon,” someone whispered.

“I'm not possessed,’ Lexie said. “But I met many Eldritch in the dungeon, and am something of an expert now. I can sense a soul contract, and I know he signed one with the Eldrich.”

“No, I didn't!” He yelled, but there was thinly veiled panic in his tone. 

“Do you have any proof of your accusation?” Patriot’s trainer, who looked like a shorter, rounder version of him, asked, crossing his arms over his chest. “If anything, Lexie Sparrowfoot, you present as a more suspicious figure than my nephew.”

“How so?” Lexie responded frostily. 

“He doesn’t consort with Eldritch. And he’s not the son of a Villain.”

“What a stupid thing to say,” Torin said in a voice Lexie had never heard before. It was low. Trembling.

He sounded murderous.

“Do you have any idea how much trouble you could have put everyone in? You endangered this entire place, thousands of people, for what? To win a stupid fucking match!”

Lexie blinked. Torin was yelling. And swearing. She'd heard one or the other but never both at once.

“And you believe her?” Patriot asked. 

“He doesn’t have to,” Lexie said confidently. “I’m sure a visit with the Saintess will confirm everything I just said.”

Patriot paled at that. 

The Heroes arrived on the scene a few seconds later, and so did a Saintess, allowing Torin to let go of the flame. The creature wasn't moving anymore, but they still had her work her magic on it before transporting it to another lab for further analysis.

They took Patriot along with them, although not willingly. He argued and fought everyone and ranted like a banshee until they had to use tranquilizer darts to get him down.

The last words he cried out were, "I would have won! I almost had you, you arrogant asshole. I would have won!"

Meanwhile, Torin wasn't even listening to him. He stormed off the arena, clearly still furious, ignoring the audience calling out to him and the other fighters who had crowded the doorway.

They made a path for him, reading the stormy expression on his face, but still called out, “What happened?” as though expecting him to answer.

He didn't.

His trainer and a medic followed him. So did Lexie. 

She heard some of her teammates calling out to her, but she only gave them a thumbs up and a signal to suggest that she would be returning soon.

As she tried to follow the group into Torin’s private lounge, the trainer put out a hand to stop her. 

“Sorry, Miss, but this is private–"

“It’s fine,” Torin called out. “She can come in.”

“Tor.”

“I said it's fine, Hugo."

Hugo pursed his lips. He didn’t look like he wanted Lexie there, but he didn’t have a choice. He let the arm drop, and Lexie walked in behind him to see Torin pacing and rubbing his hand over his face, while the medic tried to get him to calm down so they could read his vitals.   

"Such a stupid thing to do for a match,” Torin muttered. "And now I probably have to answer questions about it for the stupid interview after. I didn't prepare for that."

"You have some time," Hugo said.

"What am I supposed to say?"

"The truth. You don't know anything about that thing, but even with Patriot's flagrant cheating, you won your match."

"I don't care about that."

"You should. It just shot your ranking through the roof."

"You don't have to give the interview if you don't want to," Lexie said.

Torin didn't dignify that with an answer.

“You shouldn’t have to," Lexie said.

"Of course, I have to. I have to do it more than ever,” he said. “Isn’t that right, Hugo?”

Hugo raised an eyebrow at Torin's tone. "I'll give you some time to cool off and figure out what we know about the situation."

"Yeah, you do that."

After he left, Torin didn't seem any happier and told the medic, "Actually, can you give me a minute with Lexie alone?”

The medic protested, and Torin assured him. “I’m fine. I’ll get checked out once I’m home.”

The medic gave them both looks.

Then he decided that he wasn't getting paid enough to argue with a prodigy Firebringer and a dungeon escapee, so he simply shrugged and walked away.

"Was that you?”  Torin asked as the door closed.

Lexie was offended. "Of course not. I wouldn't summon an Eldritch in the middle of a match."

"No, not that part." He waved a hand. "You said the thing was making me more afraid. I realize now that was what was happening, but even before I killed it, before it even revealed itself, it was like all my fear was gone in a single moment. I felt great." He paused pacing to stare at her dead in the face. "Did you do that?"

Lexie shrugged. "Well, yeah."

He looked pained. "You shouldn't have Lexie."

"Hey, I had to do something to counter it, and it worked."

"Yes, but by eliminating my fear. It feels like I cheated, too."

"I didn't eliminate all your fear," Lexie said. "Or at least I wasn't trying to. I just stopped him from turning his fear into yours. You overcame the fear all on your own.”

He shook his head. "I don't even know what to say."

"Well, usually when people help you out and save you from an embarrassing and unnecessary defeat, the correct thing to say would be 'thank you'."

He released a breath. "Thank you."

"You're welcome."

"But don't do it again."

"You can't tell me what to do. You're not my mentor anymore."

A small smile finally kicked up the side of his lips. "How did you even know it was there?"

Lexie didn't want to admit that she'd discovered Patriot was cheating while trying to help Torin cheat, so she simply shrugged and said, "Magic."

A knock on the door delayed a response.

"Interview in five minutes," Hugo announced without opening it.

Torin's amusement died.

"I'll be right there," he responded.

"You really don't have to do this," Lexie said.

"Yeah, I do." He moved to the mirror to arrange his hair, sweeping it back with his hands. He also wiped off his sweat and bloodstains, nudging his nose into the right orientation so it could heal properly.

Lexie cleared her throat. “Hey, if you ever want to talk, you know about stuff. You can call me.”

He raised an eyebrow.

“Like I said, I know how you feel. And in some ways I still feel like that, so…" She gestured vaguely. "I don't know where I'm going with this. Didn't plan the end of the sentence."

He smirked at Lexie's awkward reflection, and Lexie decided to get him back by saying, "How’s Flora by the way?”

“Fine,” he answered smoothly.

Lexie thought maybe things had changed since she’d been gone, and Torin no longer had a massive, embarrassing crush on the other girl.

But then, as he turned around, in typical Torin fashion, he bumped into a seat and nearly faceplanted.

Lexie burst out into laughter, and Torin walked away without looking at her, with the tips of his ears pink. 

Lexie followed him to watch the interview.

It was held at the pitch, and Torin was surrounded by reporters, shoving their mics and whizzing their PHORBS in his face. He wasn't the only one.

A few fighters, mostly other winners, were on the pitch too, spaced out from each other so as not to get in each other's way.

Torin, though, by far monopolized the biggest group of reporters. There were like nearly a hundred of them.

But a problem arose when their PHORBs began mysteriously malfunctioning.

Some of them simply blitzed. Others dropped out of the air without warning.

It was the strangest thing. One second, they were perfectly fine, and the next second, they started dropping like flies, one by one.

But the problem only became apparent when half the PHORBS were gone. Then they called out alerts, but it was too late. The problem continued until no PHORB in Torin's group remained.

The reporters murmured and complained, and no one knew what was going on.

But Torin seemed to know what happened.

He gave Lexie a disapproving look, and she winked at him before she left.

***

During their team dinner, all anyone could talk about was the Torin vs Patriot match and how much of a psycho Patriot turned out to be. Shadow, Lane, and Jan were paying for dinner after losing the bet, and the real good news was that the craziness of the match had gotten Cara out of her bad mood.

"Torin’s had bad luck with matches recently," Cara said. "The first one was cancelled because Lexie appeared, and the second one was invaded by an Eldritch monstrosity."

"Eh. I wouldn't call Lexie's appearance a bad thing," Boris said. "And Torin proved that he could beat both the Patriot and the Eldritch monstrosity at the same time, so I would say if anything, he's had great luck."

They continued to argue about whether or not it was good, but Lexie didn't really pay attention until Cara said, "Is it just me, or are there a lot more Eldritch monsters running about lately?"

The mood at the table dipped a little.

"It's because of the UD's," Conrad said. "It'll be fixed soon."

"My parents don't think it's just that, though."

"What else could it be?"

"I don't know." Cara sighed. "I kinda wish the Fae didn't leave. We would have felt much safer with them around."

Lexie didn't agree, but she said nothing.

When she got home, the house was empty. Max had left a note for Lexie to call him when she got back, but she didn't.

Instead, she went up to her room and lay in bed. She took out her phone, noting that Xena still hadn't answered her text.

Could she have been busy for two whole days?

Lexie texted her again. Hey, are you okay?

Simultaneously, she texted Dewie.

Lexie: Have you seen Xena?"

Dewie: Yeah. Why?

Lexie: She hasn't responded to my texts. Is she okay?

Dewie: I think so. Should I ask her?

Lexie chewed on it.

Lexie: No, it's fine. I'll ask her myself later.

It was almost school break anyway. Xena was probably busy planning their trip, which they would start immediately after Aiden got back. That was probably all it was.

Lexie decided to take this opportunity to get some sleep. Her magic use had drained her, so she was feeling suitably tired. She closed her eyes, cleared her mind, and focused on her breathing.

She didn't know how long it took, but eventually she slipped under, into a dream with her mother pushing her on a park swing.

"Higher!" Little Lexie squealed. "Higher!"

"Any higher and you'll be flying," Lara said as she obliged.

Lexie smiled at the scene.

Then it turned dark, ink bleeding away the image.

"Finally!" Lexie declared, turning around to meet the dreamweaver himself. "Where have you been?"

Naem blinked. “I take it you missed me.”