Vol.4 Ch.78 – Out Of Phase

Chapter 78: Out Of Phase

Cassie slammed into the wolf head, shoving it off course just enough to miss Ophelia, then recoiled, no doubt realizing just how bad of an idea it had been to slam into a being made out of fangs.

Kaja could barely focus on that, however, as most of her focus was on the Necromancer. Or rather, on the Necromancer's main body. All the horrid things stalking them from just outside the veil of reality may not be truly part of that Necromancer but Kaja was fairly certain they were part of his consciousness.

It was risky to take anything for granted when it came to Necromancers but her and Omega had fought something similar to this back in the early 20th century. The Necromancer back then had conjured up creatures he'd deliberately designed to look similar to some of the more unsavory kinds of Fae. He had tried to get them to believe there was some kind of alliance between the Outside and the Fae, trying to kick-start another Fae War. The Knights of Summer and Winter back then had both been very reasonable people and the misunderstanding had been cleared up before anything serious could happen but, in short, that technique had left an impression.

Kaja couldn't guarantee that this was the same kind of technique, maybe it was something that looked similar but worked off of a completely different principle but she was pretty sure it was the same technique.

A Necromancer's mind and spirit were only superficially their own. Not only did the Necronomicon, that horrid jellyfish creature pretending to be a book, have its tendrils wrapped around the Necromancer's brain, their spirit was also tied to the three major Outer Gods. Their bond with Shub-Niggurath let them graft cankers onto living flesh, their bond with Hastur let them call up the dead, tearing spirits from their well-deserved afterlife, and their bond with Nyarlathotep let them manipulate Darklight and other unsavory forces. But these bonds also enslaved the Necromancer's spirit, making them a pawn believing themselves in control.

And that particular Necromancer had used these bonds to tie his consciousness to barely sapient Outsider monsters with which to attack his prey. And Kaja was pretty sure the current Necromancer was doing the same thing.

The upside of this technique was that hurting the creatures attacking them would hurt and disorient him but the downside was that the onslaught wouldn't end until he was dead. His consciousness would just enslave new creatures if they somehow managed to kill one of his pets, itself a tall order when they had no idea of knowing just how big those things were. That wolf's head indicated a size about five times as big as a regular wolf, but that was assuming the rest of its body was shaped like a wolf. For all they knew the beast was a mile-wide slime mold that these wolf heads grew out of. And Kaja had exactly zero desire to hop Outside and check.

Either way, the best thing she could do would be to take down the Necromancer's real body. After that they could worry about these veils.

As always, Omega was ahead of her. He had already summoned his bar of iron and turned it into a heavy length of chain. Apparently he wanted to be done with this as soon as possible.

Celestials fought in a much more codified way than mortal mages and one of the main aspects of that was the use of Named Spells. Of course all mages used Names for their spells, Pavlovian stimuli to tell the brain to cast specific spells. Kaja's spell Names were embedded in the Enochian incantations she chanted, Omega calculated specific equations in his head. She knew Elaine used rhythms tapped out on her thigh or the ball of her hand, but most popular were terms and phrases in languages the mage was not fluent in and had no desire to learn. Dead languages were excellent for it. But each Celestial also had one or two spells whose Names were actual spoken words in the common tongue, spells that they were known for.

Radiant Prism, the spell people used to refer to Kaja, was her most terrifying piece of spellwork, an anti-army spell that could raze entire battlefields. It was flashy, it took forever to cast, and it was utterly out of proportion for the kinds of fights she usually found herself in. Omega's Named Spells, however, were more focused.

They weren't as flashy, they didn't take as long and they usually got the job done. And so when Kaja saw Omega going for the chain she knew he was about to use the spell that had given him his nickname.

“Acheron Vector.”

With a single mighty swing he sent the chain at the Necromancer, momentum and a bit of magic making the heavy length of chain wrap around the young man's throat. Before he could react at all Omega yanked the chain back and lunged towards the man. As he soared through the air the metal of the chain liquefied, then reformed into an ornate scythe and, with a single swing he lobbed the Necromancer's head clean off.

It was a terrifying attack, shocking and sudden and utterly lethal. If he'd really wanted to kill the Lloigor woman earlier he wouldn't have made threats. He'd simply have done this.

Of course, Kaja realized that something was wrong immediately. No, not when the veil between Outside and Creation failed to close. She'd realized something was wrong the moment the chain had wrapped around the Necromancer's head. He'd been encased in a barrier earlier, a barrier that had apparently erased the metal door Omega had flung at him. There was no way Omega's chain should have been able to connect with him at all, let alone cut him down.

But... Omega had been the one to kick the door at him. He had to have known he wouldn't have been able to harm him. Yet he'd still gone for it. Despite how he appeared, Omega wasn't a mindless brute. He must have noticed something about the barrier. And he clearly wasn't letting his guard down now that the Necromancer's body was on the ground and his head was about ten feet away.

As Kaja looked at the body she saw that same barrier encasing his body. Strange. She summoned up an arrow of light, nocked it and fired it at his body. The arrow disintegrated as it touched the barrier.

What in the Seven Seals was going on?

Omega must have had the same thought because he looked back at her, a frown on his face. The moment their eyes met his expression turned to horror and a moment later a roar and an icy gust hit her back. One of the things was lunging at her. She tried to spin around but she knew she'd be too slow. For an angel Kaja was pathetically weak, her body not even as strong as these enhanced mortals they'd brought along. She more than made up for it with her magic and her physical shortcomings were compensated by Omega. And, as he always did, Omega jumped to her rescue, his scythe turning into a greatsword to block the wolf's head lunging at her.

Except when he tried to shove her to the side and slam into the beast he passed through both of them, his hand failing to push her away and his sword failing to even touch the beast.

At the very last second Cassie slammed into her, sending her tumbling to the floor as he slashed at the monster.

Her mind split into two, the way she'd trained herself for centuries. Her rational mind neatly compartmentalized the part that was currently losing its shit and going into panic as she analyzed the situation.

Omega had been able to decapitate the Necromancer, completely ignoring a barrier she couldn't even get past. Meanwhile, Omega had been unable to touch her or the monsters in the veil surrounding the arena. Cassie, meanwhile, was able to interact with both her and the monsters. There were many possible explanations for this, each of them more complicated than the last. Occam's Razor, however, suggested the simplest of them: Something had pushed them out of phase with each other. Cassie and her could touch the monsters and while Omega could bypass the Necromancer's barrier, for all the good that had done him.

This meant the Necromancer had neatly split them apart. One group couldn't touch the Necromancer, the other couldn't touch the monsters. The first thing to do would be to find out who was in which category. Was it only Omega who was out of phase or were there others? The monsters had attacked Ophelia as well but that didn't necessarily mean anything. If she was that Necromancer and had just cast this phase shift ability the first thing she would do would be to sow confusion among them. The best remedy against confusion, however, was communication.

“Everybody, listen u—“ she began but the Necromancer cut her off.

His head was lying ten feet away from his body and didn't move in the slightest but his words were still clearly audible. “None of that,” he said and her voice vanished into the ether.

She tried a few times but her voice was simply lost to the winds. She couldn't even feel her vocal cords anymore. Of course Omega and her had trained signs for just such a situation but they were far too rudimentary to explain what needed explaining. And so she tried the next best thing. She moved her hand through the broad sweeping gesture to open the AR apps on her CARD, opened the messenger and sent Omega a text. It didn't reach him. It kept up the same “Sending...” message indefinitely.

She didn't know if this was because of what the Necromancer had just done or if it was because of the phase shift. Either way, she would have to trust the others to figure this out on their own.

Was what a lesser mage would say.

She drew Winds to herself and then sent out a reed-thin beam of light, carving a message into the concrete roof of the library.

“You're rather persistent,” the Necromancer said, sounding annoyed, then sent out another wave of energy.

The moment the wave hit she knew she was screwed. You know that phenomenon where you can't read in a dream? Even if you know what a sign should say, words just melt away or become a jumble the way they do in badly made AI images. Suddenly every written word within her line of sight looked like that, like melted candle wax, clearly still words but just as clearly indecipherable. And from the way the others were blinking and shaking their heads, he'd just done this to everybody. She had to trust the others to figure out what she had.

But that wasn't even the most pressing concern. The problem was that Omega had decapitated the Necromancer and he was still alive, still taunting, still casting spells. Once again, there were two possibilities. Either they had to kill all of the monsters hiding behind that veil or he could only be killed by those who weren't out of phase with the barrier, which in turn meant they would have to find a way to break through that barrier without those who couldn't even touch the barrier.

Another creature burst through the veil, this one looking like a star-nosed mole. While those animals already looked like something straight from a nightmare, at least their eponymous star noses didn't usually look like the undersides of actual starfish, complete with thousands of teeth arranged around a single gaping maw at the center. But this one did.

The beast snapped at Alexis, trying to snatch her up and grind her into red paste with all of those teeth. Unlike Kaja, Alexis was fast enough to get out of the way on her own but this time when Cassie jumped in to fend the thing off, he passed right through the monster. Wait, but...

Omega noticed and this time he rushed at the creature, then slashed his greatsword at it, leaving a massive gash along its starfish nose and belly.

He frowned as the beast recoiled. He had clearly figured out the same thing Kaja had, and so he was just as confused as she was. He sent a hydro blast at the Necromancer's body and there was still no barrier blocking the attack.

Okay, so Cassie and him had not randomly shifted phases. Apparently some of those beasts were in one phase and others in the other. And just as apparently, these creatures were the key to beating this guy.