A prickle of dread rose, then the thought flashed like a fish through clear ink—Exemption.
Was it Exemption that washed the Blue Ringed Octopus’s toxin off her like rain sliding off oiled silk?
It felt sloppy. Exemption meant release, but to an enemy it tasted like prohibition, like a frost-sealed gate; under normal skies, poison shouldn’t even seep in.
I’m already under Exemption—so why did you still slip in like smoke? And once inside, why did the toxin simmer for so long before it faded like dusk?
Maybe Exemption isn’t continuous, just a momentary bell? Yet as a two-character concept, it should cover tides and stillness, present and ongoing, like moon waxing and waning.
And why did her simple water spell flatten one octopus like a paper talisman, then leave not even ash—like a candle snuffed to nothing? Was that Exemption’s Authority Power? What got exempted? Its defense, its healing, or its life itself, like a wick cut short?
The oddness sat in her chest like a pebble in a shoe.
For now, no other guess flickered in the fog; this felt like the most likely Authority Power, a lone lantern on a dark road.
And the place it manifested matched where she stood, two shadows overlapping; bold as a hawk, a thought rose—maybe she was the Deity of Exemption?
She still didn’t know what Exemption’s Authority Power truly encompassed, its shoreline and hidden reefs.
That’s why scholars pick apart the Authority Powers of Dark Deities, night after night like surgeons with lamps, charting scope and displays, to forge defenses and strikes like chess pieces set on a storm-wet board.
Say a Dark Deity wielded [Liquid]. The net is wide: water is liquid, blood is liquid, and from a past life, many reagents are liquid, each a different river.
Manifestations vary like weather. Can he command liquids, like tides in a bowl? Or call them from nothing, like a spring from bare stone? These knotty questions grind their temples like drums.
Back to the present, the thread cut clean.
Confidence surged like a kindled flame. Lucimia’s waist didn’t ache, her legs weren’t sour; strength rang in her bones like iron. She felt she could punch the octopus and blow it apart like a clay jar.
The Blue Ringed Octopus went wide-eyed, a lantern knocked askew. Its plan had been patient as a snake: let toxin gnaw and numb Lucimia, then strike like a guillotine and replace her mask, becoming the Exorcist Family’s young lady.
That rosy vision crumpled like paper in a brazier.
Lucimia stood at full strength, a spear unbent. The octopus had been grinding through an attrition fight, its reserves thinning like a worn rope. She knew its tricks now; with magic rushing back like a river, she chose fast as lightning, and she drew the fallen shelves of the shop like a tide, sending every slab of wood surging at the octopus hanging in the air.
The octopus reacted quick, whirling like a spinning top. Boards shattered like brittle ice; shelves burst into splinters; sawdust snowed through the air in a pale storm.
It readied a sneer, then saw Lucimia lift a hand, fingers closing on empty air like a net. Every floating fragment reversed like a flock wheeling. Wood and wind answered her, sharpening splinters into thorn-bright blades.
Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh—!
Uncountable slivers dived into its flesh like needle rain. The Blue Ringed Octopus screamed, and the tentacles that took those bites shrank like withered vines, limp and useless, their fight snuffed.
Cornered, it spewed big roiling gobs of venom, ink-dark floods that finally ate the splinters clean, hissing like acid rain.
Even so, it paid three tentacles, a steep price like coins tossed into a bottomless well. The venom had drained with earlier blasts; its combat strength dropped like a hawk with clipped wings.
Lucimia had gambled on her magic’s strange effect, so she pushed fine shrapnel deep, a storm of tiny needles under the skin.
Big attacks miss like stones thrown at swallows; but a cloud of grains? How could they not hit?
At last it was her turn to breathe, her smile opening like a flower in sun.
“Hmph. Watch me stab you till you drop.”
Wincing like a cat pulling burrs, she plucked a few hairs. A spell hardened them to needle-bright frost. Wind lifted them like leaves, spiraling the airflow tight, and she sent them darting at the octopus with hawk-fast speed.
The needles took turns biting, sliding in and out of the Blue Ringed Octopus like stitches through cloth, in, out, and in again.
Each stab wrung a howl, and in midair it jerked into a ridiculous dance, a puppet snapped by strings.
Lucimia stabbed with growing zeal, her mood rising like a kite on a steady breeze.
You chased me like a storm; now I chase you, stabbing hard like rain.
Not long after, the Blue Ringed Octopus exploded.
Yes—just burst, a gourd blown open. Its body ripped apart, spilling a mass of black, unknown liquid, ink pooling and crawling across the floor.
“Is this… its blood?” Lucimia leaned in, the needle nudging the shadowy puddle; nothing answered, just silence like a winter pond.
Fine. This crisis finally guttered out like a flame with no oil.
She let out a long breath, pale steam in the chill of fear gone.
The bookstore lay in ruin, a battlefield of words: shelves toppled and shattered, not a single whole book spared; walls scratched and etched by corrosion, scars like claw marks. The shop was a husk. Only the front counter stood intact, a lone island; the blond man still slept, quiet as wheat in a lull.
Lucimia skirted venom-stained tiles like a wary fox, came to the blond man, checked him with light touch, and found life pulsing faintly, a reed whisper of breath.
He could really sleep, like a stone in a stream.
If he’d woken sooner and slipped out to alert the guards, she wouldn’t have had to suffer this duel of wits and blades with an octopus, a chess match fought with knives.
At that thought, heat rose like smoke. She glared at the blond, irritation rippling; the more she looked, the more it grated, like grit under a lid. Before he woke, she vented and gave him a small kick, a pebble pinging off a drum.
“Hmph, this is all your fault.”
She brushed dust from her palms, ash sifting like snow, and turned to leave.
The aftermath wasn’t hers to stitch; she needed to hurry home, a sparrow diving for cover. She had no idea if her mother had discovered her sneaking out, that thread tugging tight like guilt.
Before that, she had to report to the guards, duty ringing like a bronze bell.
These two octopuses were followers of the Deceiver Elyssus. The report had to be swift as arrow flight. After returning, she’d also tell her father, the word carried home like a sealed letter.
Come to think of it, the clamor here was thunder under a clear sky. Why hadn’t the guards noticed, like watchmen deaf to a drum?
Civilians not coming is understandable—unarmed folk should run, like leaves before wind. But guards not coming? That’s strange, a silent street under a noon sun.
Thinking more was useless, thoughts circling like moths. She had to step outside and see with her own eyes, feet on stone, wind in sleeves.
She kicked the wooden door. Fragile as a dead leaf, it toppled under her boot, clattering like brittle bark.
“…Uh.”
Forget it. Broken is broken; one more splinter doesn’t change a wrecked bowl.
Azure sky spread like a silk scroll, orange sun hung like a ripe fruit, and Lucimia felt joy rise, a window thrown open to light.
She drew in fresh air like a cool lake, then let it out slow, a warm ribbon.
“Finally out of that cramped shop,” she said, as if leaving a cage for open field.
Lucimia looked around. No one—an empty road after the tide retreats.
Yes, this edge of town sees few passersby, a quiet hem of the city. But not far stood a temporary guard outpost, a stone among grass. In a suburb this still, such noise should blaze like fire; yet the guards hadn’t noticed, as if blind under noon.
She’d expected that, the instant she stepped out, a ring of guards would close like spears. Instead, emptiness, blank paper where a picture should be.
“…Mm. Better check the outpost first.” Lucimia set off, her footsteps tapping like coins on stone.
