Symphonic Odyssey
: Vol. One: Servant of a Hopeless Household: Verse Zero

The stench of blood was heavy in the air and the clouds hung low on that quiet moonless night. Eight corpses littered the ground, a light fog lingering as the two Conductors faced each other.

Burning in his right hand was the remnants of a powerful spell that had taken out the last of the lesser enemy forces and now he stared down his final foe.

She smiled from beneath her dark crimson hood and laughed softly, her rose-colored mail clinking as she did so. It wrapped itself scantily around her diminutive frame, covering her vital points while leaving everything else exposed.

Small as she was in stature, she still held the charms of most beautiful women, and as such was not opposed to using them to distract the weak willed. Her body had served her well in capturing the lustful gazes of many of the men she had battled over the years. In every instance, it had cost them their lives.

The man who stood before her now, however, seemed completely uninterested in her womanly charms. She had flashed him purposefully several times in her attempts to distract him for even an instant.

It was useless, as she soon discovered, and created more openings for him than for her.

He would not fall to her wicked mace as easily as the countless others. Instead, it was she who now looked him over. He was steadfast and as unmoving as stone while he watched her. His grey eyes shone with violent battle intent beneath the dark hair that hung loosely around his squared face.

Blood was drying at the corner of his mouth and some still dripped slowly from his short beard. She eyed the ethereal sword clutched in his left hand, already beginning to fade from his exhaustion. She would not, it seemed, have to wait for much longer for an opening.

He noticed her raise an eyebrow and smile softly. With a deep breath, he lowered himself into a defensive stance. His eyes locked upon the petite woman standing before him and he waited for the slightest sign of movement that would signal the end of their devastating battle. She tapped the head of her obsidian encrusted mace against a plate of armor beneath her cloak but gave nothing of her intentions away.

He had known that it might come down to this final deadly clash. In truth, the fact that he had gotten this far unarmored and unarmed with physical weaponry was a testament to his skill and power as a Conductor. Blood ran from his many cuts, and each burn from the feral magicks that had grazed his skin screamed with pain.

It had been long enough now, and if he had the energy to do so, he would have escaped, opting to fight another day. However, with his strength fading and his Zight nearly expended he was left with only one choice. He had to fight to his last breath.

His two companions would have made it back to the city by now and the warp-scar left from their forced departure would be closed, leaving his foe unable to follow them.

Their mission had been to infiltrate the hideout of these dark Conductors and learn whatever they could about their plans. That aspect had not gone as smoothly as he had hoped.

Indeed, the moment they had entered the underground chamber the enemy had sprung their trap. Someone had betrayed them. One of their spies must have delivered faulty intel and because of it, Fenix and his team had almost perished in that treacherous cavern.

Rage seeped through him, and he burned to know for certain the name of the one that had ruined weeks of planning and brought about this final bloody battle. The town behind him, Dex, had been mostly left undamaged save for the town square and other various buildings leading to the main gates.

His party had done their best to escape the tunnels and had almost made it to the front gates undiscovered when the woman and her troops had suddenly appeared.

Though the mission had technically failed, a small bit of crucial information had been discovered in the form of a small scroll. He had passed that scroll along with a few of his possessions to his companions. Then, he had teleported them away from what would soon become a battlefield.

They had refused to leave him, and instead opted to fight by his side.

Touched as he was by their devotion, he could not allow them to die during this mission with no one left to deliver the intel that they had gathered.

Warping away with no one to guard the warp-scar would have left an easy enough trail to follow, and bringing these enemies into the heart of their base of operations would have been disastrous to say the very least.

Furthermore, fighting all out without having to worry about hurting his companions was ideal in a situation this dire. He knew that if he did, he would be more than able to buy them enough time to escape.

Thus, he had pushed his companions back, and had initiated his quickly worded spells to send them and the information to safety against their will. It was an underhanded tactic, one he regretted, but a necessary one all the same in his eyes.

‘Forgive me my love, but we will meet again someday,’ he had thought. A moment after they had vanished in a bright flash of light, he turned to face the nine enemy Conductors.

He had left himself with barely any means to effectively fight off such a force, but he was confident that he would be able to handle the lot of them. He had miscalculated, however.

The fight in the underground chamber had been short but explosive, and although his companions had been there to assist him, he was now fighting eight Rank-three Conductors in the middle tier, and one Rank-four Conductor in the upper tier by himself, and all this after having expended a vast amount of energy during the escape.

He panted heavily and sweat ran down his brow as the woman before him finally leapt forward, her vicious mace raised high to deliver another wave of unnaturally swift assaults.

Within less than a few seconds, he had parried her attacks with his conjured sword. First from above, then from the left, and one from below. She let out a cackle and drove her weapon down a final time.

Just as before he moved to parry, but as the weapons connected, his blade shattered in a bright flash of light and the sound of shattering glass. An instant later, her attack connected with his right shoulder.

He crumpled to the ground and roared in agony, life quickly fading from his now broken body. She simply brushed her shoulders off and hung her mace from a belt around her thin waist. Squatting down next to him as he struggled on the ground, she giggled again.

“You really put up quite the fight didn’t you Fenix?” she chided in an eerily childlike voice. She patted his unbroken shoulder and flashed him a wicked smile.

“Ah, but it’s over now isn’t it? I brought my best toys to play with you and you managed to break all of them didn’t you?” She motioned to the bodies of the men around her and let out an obviously fake sigh.

“Now I’ll need some new ones. Although, teaching the toys how to play is one of my favorite parts, assuming I don’t break them myself in the process. You never did learn how to play nice though, did you?

“I suppose you think you’ve bought your friends time to escape and perhaps you have. But now it’s just you and me, and as you can see you’re in no position to fight back now.

“Oh yes, we’re going to have a lot of fun together you and I. I’m impressed that you still have some life left in you. There’s so much I want to learn and I know you won’t be quick to let anything slip without some slight… persuasion.”

It was true. As far as he could tell between the waves of pain rocketing through his body, his right arm and half of his collarbone had been destroyed. It would be impossible to heal this damage enough to continue the battle, not with his current strength.

It was also not likely that she would even give him the chance at this point. He struggled again, attempting to pull himself into a crouch and collapsed sending new waves of pain through his tired and battered body.

“It…doesn’t m-matter Ay-Aylynah…”, Fenix forced the words out slowly through clenched teeth. It was clear as he croaked out his response that one of his lungs had collapsed.

“You might have b-beaten me… But they are beyond your reach now! You’ve lost a-and it’s only a matter of t-time now before you meet the same end as your men!”

Her face twisted into an ugly scowl and she gritted her teeth.

“I’ve lost?! I LOST!?! No, no, no. I don’t lose, you foolish man! YOU’VE LOST!” she screeched. Her childlike facade failing her through her rage for a moment.

She stood and kicked him hard between his ribs, breaking a few of them by his reckoning, and he coughed up a spout of blood. The pain was intense, but his will was greater and he continued to taunt her further.

“A-Aye, you can go ahead and kill me here I won’t be t-telling you a-anything. Y-you can throw your tantrums and curse my name all you wish, but you won’t be bringing anything back with you, not tonight…”

He knew enraging her further would do him no good, but after all the horrors she had put him and his companions through, it was worth it to relish in her anger one final time.

His vision flickered and he collapsed in a heap coughing up more blood as she stepped back and scowled down at him. He knew that his time had come.

This wouldn’t end how she expected it to. He gathered all the life and Zight left in him and began to cast his final spell. It was a spell of ending and perhaps, he hoped, one that would shift the balance of power one day.

“Q-quintet, verse Five..” Fenix chanted softly, his spell taking hold as he expended the very last of his power to deal her a final slight.

“NO! NO YOU DON’T!” She screamed, desperately kicking him repeatedly in his lower gut with her armored foot, but by then it was useless.

The pain meant nothing anymore and he would not stop his incantation. In a burst of power, his body began to glow and a final chuckle escaped his lips as his eyes darkened and he grew still.

In a final act of desperation, she drew her mace and swung it down as hard as she could upon his head. With a sickening crunch and a splatter of blood and brain matter, Fenix was no more upon this world.

“Tsk… You stupid bastard…” She muttered as she turned away disgusted, and shook the remnants of his skull from her mace before returning it to her side.

She had lost her temper once again and her master would not be pleased it had ended this way. Still, the matter was resolved and now their plans could move forward mostly uninterrupted.

She quietly searched Fenix’s body but found nothing of value within the tattered and bloody folds of his tunic. She could not even replace his Ark, which likely meant he had fought without it this entire time. It was a feat that impressed her, albeit only slightly.

She looked upon him a final time disgust etched across her face. She was pleased to be finally rid of him and his incessant meddling. With a final disgraceful kick to his side, she left his destroyed body where it lay in the dirt.