Tsk. Had he seriously just left her? What a guy. Not that Artemis couldn’t handle this on her own, she supposed, and if it meant keeping Lavimo and Haven safe, then she approved of his decision. So long as he managed to successfully rescue the younger members of their group, she would be satisfied, not that she was much older than those two, only having lived a century or so longer.
But the butler was staring at them in incredulous shock, teal eyes wide and ever shaking as Kal disappeared down the corridor quicker than he could stop it. He and Artemis then looked at each other, locking eyes, the butler putting a hand on his hip over the suit with a scoff. “What a poor choice of action. With just one of you here, you won’t be able to defeat me. Now I can pick you off one by one. You’re both done for.”
“Oh, I’d like to see you try,” Artemis grinned, spellbook balancing in the palm of her hand as she extended her other to the side, the light shimmering around the space in between her fingers as a dark purple energy shot out, a black metal staff edging its way out from her storage to be caught in her free hand, the end of the staff being a small black lantern with a fierce violet glow to symbolize her power. And Artemis grinned at him, her own arrogance pouring off her in waves, but similarly to her oh so amazing cousin that everybody idolized, her arrogance was just as deserved. “Personally, I think you’re the one who’s dead. Now, oh great moon who shines for the spirits, let your power strengthen the core of this room! Let your glow and your magnificent light thwart all who stand in my way!”
At that, the moon she had earlier summoned that was standing right in the middle of the upside-down room whose gravity had been flipped, Artemis’ staff landing firmly on the flat stone ceiling, the entire room suddenly began to shake as it was filled with the moon’s power, the white orb of a rock glowing and trembling with its own might as the butler stared at it in horror.
“Oho, no you don’t. I won’t let someone with such a weak concept as the spellcaster get in my way. All I have to do to win this is shut you up!” he roared, silver hair flaring as he lunged long, sharp black fingernails at the woman, elegantly matching with his elegant black suit.
But Artemis just continued to grin at him, gravity bending his claws to her will as the gravity only around the black fingernails began to twist uncontrollably, the long claws bending and snapping in half as the butler gritted his teeth. “Hahaha!” Artemis laughed haughtily, greatly enjoying herself as she knocked her staff against the ground again. “I’ll have you know that fighting me won’t be easy! You’ll have to try way harder than that!”
“Mm… I see that now,” the butler agreed, jumping backwards atop the ceiling as Artemis only kept grinning like it was the only facial expression she knew how to make. “Then I will— ah—!!” he yelled, his gravity switching once again as he fell to the bottom of the room, quickly acting fast to make himself float in midair with what must be the concept of flight he had also used earlier. “That trick won’t work on me, you wench! I am far more powerful than you can ever imagine! I represent the power of my master!”
“Then fucking act like you’re strong, fuckwad!!” Artemis laughed darkly, gravity taking its shape around her body as she flew to be right opposite from the butler in the center of the room. “And besides, I’m the same way. I’m much stronger than you could ever imagine, too.”
“Well, then I’ll repeat your words back at you. I’d like to see you try!” the butler roared, energy suddenly bursting from his hands as Artemis was blasted backward, her body burning as her back slammed against the wall, her concept of gravity dropping from the sheer shock as she fell to the bottom of the solid basement floor, head knocking against the hard concrete as her shoulders bent into themselves, coughing harshly as she gasped for air. Her brand new cargo pants now had holes in them, and her lovely tunic that she’d made herself and sewn such wonderful and lovely flower designs onto was now charred and ruined as well… how… how dare he…!!
“I’ll kill you!” Artemis glared through her rough voice, coughing and choking just a bit more as she heaved on the ground, before the burning of her skin finally made her nose start to shriek, her lungs heaving as she belched and threw up all of her breakfast from that morning. She heaved, and heaved, and heaved, until she had nothing left. The vomit on the floor was gross and smelled disgusting. And that damn butler was only laughing at her.
“See? There’s nothing you can do to defeat me. As I said, I represent my master’s power. I am as strong as she is, and she is one of the most powerful people in the world! It would be wise not to underestimate me,” he laughed with a jeer, Artemis’ glare only deepening into her face, her thick brown eyebrows burrowing into her sky blue eyes as she glared at the ground with rage.
“Oh angels, hear my plight…”
“Huh? You’re talking to angels now?” the butler laughed with a smug smirk, clearly no longer taking her seriously. But Artemis would not let him get away with that.
“Angels, your kindness, it’s so sweet and merciful… please shower it on me and show me the way in your great and all-powerful light,” she chanted, her spellbook that had been dropped across the room opening as its pages and flipping to her strongest healing spell that she had crafted herself with the help of two real angels, its power as strong as they were. She would not stand for this, she would not allow herself to be beaten and humiliated…! “Please, grant me the healing from your merciful wisdom and the emotions behind your tears… let it fall unto me… and restore me to how I once was!”
“Oh… oh, no you didn’t,” the butler frowned as a bright amber glow encased her body, her wounds healing behind the burns of her clothes and mending the bruises to her lungs. But he wasn’t done, and quickly began to charge up his hand with more powerful energy, the concept popping and fizzing in his grasp. “That won’t work! I will just hit you again with more power and you will be down in an instant! You cannot defeat m—”
“Shut up, you motherfucking bitch,” Artemis rasped behind her anger, already sitting up as she took over the reigns of her gravity once more, pushing herself up against the wall as the amber kept shining around her fair white skin the shade of the flower for vanilla, healing her slowly and kindly and giving her the strength she needed, mending her back to her peak condition. And with that, her gravity snapped, forcing itself around the butler despite his concept of flight and wrapping itself around his concept to shrink its space, before taking him and slamming him down onto the concrete just as hard as he had slammed her. “No one, and I mean NO ONE, messes up my tunics and MY sewing!! You won’t be seeing the light of day ever again if I have my way with you!!” she roared through a tight jaw, biting down so hard on her tongue and the inside of her cheek she could taste blood, though she was so angry she could hardly feel it. Her wonderful tunic that she had spent hours and days on, ruined… it was unforgivable.
The butler’s skull knocked against the wall as a strained wheeze was forced out of him, his lungs tightening through the sheer force of her gravity as Artemis’ anger fueled her strength. He coughed and sputtered, but he couldn’t focus hard enough to use the concept of energy again when she took him up once more and slammed him just as harshly against the ceiling. She would have her way if it was the last thing she ever did.
“That tunic took me HOURS! Do you know how long it takes to get done detailed embroidery?! Do you know how hard I had to look to find and access some of those COLORS?! It was so beautiful and I had put so much effort into it, and now it’s all ruined, all because you just had to open your motherfucking mouth and blast your weak shit powers at me!!! Just try it again, I dare you!!” she yelled, gravity slamming him all over the room as the butler felt his brain get knocked around in his skull.
Focus, he… he needed to focus… dull the pain, numb the pain… remember, at the end of the day, he was just a puppet… just a puppet under Orvana’s control whether he wanted to be there or not… and a puppet? Puppets can’t feel pain. They can only feel the pain that the person holding their strings wants them to feel. And he could feel his pain receptors slowly numbing as that very person manipulated him like he was a marionette doll, the strings attached to his mind pulling and prodding as his energy built up inside him. He would win one way or another, he was sure of it. Because he had Orvana’s power, and Orvana could not be defeated. Not by a mere girl.
His body shook and shimmered with sparks and energy that mimicked the shape of electricity, the power buzzing and bubbling and popping before it exploded into the entire room, blasting everything to bits. All of the mock furniture Orvana had placed there just to make things look more eerie and odd were burnt to a crisp, the wood burning and crumbling to ash while the stone charred and crumbled just as well. The stone walls hissed as steam poured off their surfaces, the pure melting point behind the raw power thinning their structure until the ceiling became so heavy underneath the ground that it began melting into the frame of the underground facility. Surely Artemis was now dead. There was no way she would have been able to survive one of his strongest attacks. Because while he wasn’t as strong as Orvana, he did share her same concepts, making him powerful, as well. He didn’t have the same technique or mastery, but he was Orvana’s slave, and he had no will of his own. And that made him just as terrifying.
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Well… terrifying to most people, anyway. But for the butler, he was fairly certain that had he been allowed to feel fear, he would’ve been terrified of this woman. Because there she was in her mighty stance and glory, furious scowl still plastered to her face like paint, her gravity having reversed around her to repel the energy of his attack, leaving her completely unharmed. The butler was gawking at her with such reverence, no one having ever been able to do something like that before, her raw power amazing him and striking him with the closest thing to fear a mere puppet could feel.
“You’re insane! How do you have so much power?!” he roared, immediately taking himself to float in the air once again as he pushed himself back, prepared to flee if need be, as Orvana still needed him as her faithful servant, with him being one of her strongest. Because, unlike most others, he… he had retained his concepts from when he was once his own person, as well. And that concept he wielded… was mightier than them all… “You haven’t seen the last of what I can do. I assure you, I am nowhere near finished yet. You haven’t seen anything, you bitch,” he hissed, his voice breaking at the curse of his sentence while Artemis raised an eyebrow at him.
“Seriously? You say that after I just kicked your ass? Sure, let’s try it again then, come at me and—” her face suddenly flinched, her words catching in her throat as she immediately realized what the butler was doing. No… no way. Not this concept. Anything but this.
“Hahahah… see now, miss? Do you see now why you will never win?” the butler chuckled haughtily, Artemis’ glare hardening at him as a clock wound itself back in the air, her body winding backwards as the wounds and burns on her chest, torso, arms, and legs returned to her, a particularly harsh burn on her cheek steaming with heat so hot you could see a hint of the white bone behind it.
The concept of rewinding time, one of the Udimeia’s many taboo concepts. It simply wasn’t allowed, as it was too dangerous and often used for immoral deeds. Artemis stayed floating in her spot in midair as she ignored her immense burning pain to glare at the butler with the same intensity as before, entirely calm and stoic as she called her staff back to her, her book flying back to her hand in a flash as the pages flew to the one spell she was thinking of in her mind.
“Very well. If that’s how you want to play. I will go all out as well,” she spoke coldly, and yet her voice still felt like it carried the heat of a burning forest fire. The butler wasn’t sure how such things could coexist, but they clearly did when it came to her. And as the glow of the violet lantern on her staff began to strengthen and grow, Artemis didn’t care about the time that was continuing to rewind her body as she acted fast. It was either now or she would be dead within moments. “Oh spirits of the sun and flame, of fire and the hearth, shed your power upon me and lend me your guidance. My strength needs aid, my heart needs power… please, shower me with your pity and give me what a desire to survive in the dire flames of your holy hands!!”
A large white-violet laser beam exploded from her metal staff, Artemis whipping forward as she aimed it at the butler, who blocked the first one with an extra forcefield. So he had the concept of the forcefield, too? How many concepts did that make? How absolutely troublesome. She wasn’t even getting paid for this. She kept aiming her lasers at him, their violet color vivid and violent as time after time she was blocked and blocked again. It annoyed her and pissed her off, the desire to get in just one good attack making her impatient, and she decided she’d had enough of this as she felt her body rewinding faster. She could feel the features of her round face shrinking and becoming younger, the length of her spiky chestnut brown hair growing longer and then shorter, the broadness of her shoulders and the muscle behind her arms and legs weakening and shrinking, the defined abs across her stomach fading with the rest of it as her chest shrunk and dematured. But while her body was turning into the weaker state of a child, she still had the full power of both her concepts, and Artemis knew better than anyone that she better end this soon as she flipped her staff behind her and circled it around her waist and between her hands in the motion of a figure eight.
“Oh god, oh goddess, share your wisdom with my sorry soul! I need to move me and my enemy, so please guide us to your shore and the pathway to victory so that my will can be saved! My debt will be yours, and it will be paid with the execution of power and the path of righteous fury!”
With that, the quick movements of her staff shifted and moved faster, the black blur of the metal pole beginning to move so fast it was hard for the eyes to follow as Artemis released her grip on it, the staff circling and throwing itself around her in faster figure eights as she glared at the butler in front of her.
“I will end this now,” she assured him, the bright violet light of her mana encasing them both and filling their bodies to the brim with her power, teleporting them both outside the creepy basement and back onto the rough landscape of Trivanma. There was a geyser just behind them and two more in the distance, but the one was just enough for what Artemis needed to accomplish. “Water spirits, oh legendary water spirits of yore, I know you love the joy of freedom and not my command! But please, I beg of you to lend me your graceful power and infuse the beauty of nature into my arsenal! The north wind is becoming harsh and brutal, and my body is growing ever weary as the day goes on! Let the water nurture and nourish me, and fill me to the brim with the energy and will of the youthful spring!!”
At that, the geyser behind her exploded with fierce intensity, the rock bursting and crumbling with the sheer power and scale of it all as the butler’s jaw dropped open the floor all over again in the center of their new battlefield. You had to be kidding. He opened up a round blue forcefield all around his body reflexively, not allowing himself to be crushed, but the water and power of nature was encasing him within the moment, hitting him harshly and pushing him and his forcefield ever back.
“This ends now,” Artemis glared with her eyes of fire and ice, her body shrinking in her clothes as her pants sagged against her waist with only the help of her belt to keep them atop her, her tunic sliding against her shrinking neck and shoulders, the woman in the form of her small child self pointing her mighty crystal lantern staff at her enemy, the butler suddenly sensing his end really was near as the mana and power behind her staff charged and only grew stronger. The violet power fueled and became so intense he could feel it before it ever fired, when it suddenly blasted off with the speed of light and shattered his blue forcefield to pieces. And just within that split second, the roaring waters of Trivanma stopped and seeped into the ground and back within the geyser, Artemis flashing to be in front of him before she moved and snatched his long silver hair, nails digging into the base of his ponytail while his fair skin wrinkled in irritation. “Oh body of the man I touch, feel my power and my drive and the strength of my volition and let me force this man to my will. Let his will be mine and mine alone, let his body lose its strength and succumb to the weakness of infancy,” she whispered sternly, her quiet yet firm voice making the butler finally panic as he lost all feelings in all of his limbs.
All of sudden, with the success of his immobilization, Artemis’ body slowly began to grow and grow back to its original form and to the state she’d been in after healing herself, her clothes still slightly tattered, but it was of no worries. She could easily fix them with a spell, because she had obviously made a spell just like that for scenarios like these. After all, it was usually impossible not to get her clothes dirty or at least somewhat ruined in a fight, as that was just what fights were like, she was no fool. So she had worked hard to create a spell that could fix any cloth or piece of clothing back to its original form, which allowed her anger to dull and fade back into the pit of her belly after successfully paralyzing the butler while he glared up at her with defiance.
“What have you done to me?” he hissed, his mouth still working fine while Artemis smirked at him with a snort.
“Oh, nothing much. Nothing as bad as you trying to turn me back into a fucking baby,” she laughed snarkily, the butler’s eyes suddenly widening in the fear he wasn’t supposed to be able to feel as Artemis took hold of her staff and moved her hands down on it to hold it like a bat, sky blue eyes glowing with pride and contempt as she lifted it above her head and over the butler’s already injured face.
“No… no, wait, no—!”
“Buh byee,” she snickered cheekily as she slammed the lantern of her staff right onto the butler’s skull, smashing it in as he was finally knocked unconscious, unable to do anything more but sit there with a bloody head and mangled features. He was bruised and battered much more than she was, as she had the ability to heal herself with her spellbook. She was now considered a divine healer on par with the great King Didimitri Korule of Lilino himself, all because she had worked together with two angels to maximize her spell’s healing effects. Those two had been royal angels, as well. Angelic royalty! It was no wonder they knew so much about how the concept of healing using holy power worked! Both of them had been so knowledgeable, especially Apollo. And Mika had been oh so cute, too. They had helped Artemis with this spell a little over a century ago, and it’d been a while since she’d seen them. She’d like to meet with them again someday. But they were Feather’s friends, not hers, so that may be a while, with how inconsistent and sporadic her cousin was known to be. Ah, oh well…
Either way, Artemis efficiently wrapped the unconscious butler with her gravity and lifted him into the air, teleporting her staff and spellbook back to their rightful places within her storage system. Feather had taught her that skill. It was a nifty trick and was very useful. And she began to walk back towards the underground basement that she had made sure not to flood with her spellcasting in order to protect Kal, Lavimo, and Haven who were within it, and moved on with a smug smile still plastered to her face as if it would never go away, certain that her new captive prisoner would be able to give them plenty of information later. “Haha, and this is why no one should mess with me, fuckin’ suckers.”
And of course, that was true. Artemis’ power was immense. She was the only one of her generation who could confidently be considered by all as stronger than the legendary Cirrus Aixon himself. But of course that was the case, she’d been trained by Feather, her monster and freakshow of a cousin. Oh, how she thanked him. Without him, she would still be weak and useless, not enjoying her days at all. Now she lived life every day by enjoying her passions and indulging herself in her healthy desires, just like Feather had taught her. And when they met again, oh surely, she would have to tell him all about her fight today. She was certain he would love to hear the story.
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Thoughts on Artemis?
