Sophia shifted the feathers she had in the air until they were close enough, then aimed carefully. It wouldn't do to hit herself instead of the bone remnant, and that was all too likely with her wings wrapped around the monster as it shook her from side to side like a chew toy. Sophia reached out and grabbed the bone remnant's chest; that was one of the few things she could reach with her wings wrapped around the bone remnant.

By now, her wings ached from the way they'd been twisted, but they no longer hurt. It was like they'd been reinforced by Plush Bonds, almost like the Ability had told her wings this was how they were supposed to be shaped. Sophia didn't really like it, but at least it no longer hurt.

She concentrated, and from behind her four beams of True Death arced out from four floating feathers to strike the top of the bone remnant's skull. She could manage more than that in a single strike, but she wanted to see what the result was. Four was enough to splatter one of the big ram-like ruins apparitions that would give Lan'ti's team trouble, but bone remnants were supposed to be tougher, with far stronger shields.

Sophia felt a faint hint of Death shiver through the bone remnant's skeleton and brush up against her wings, but the true power of the fourfold strike was spent on the bone remnant's shield. Sophia didn't even think she'd broken through; the bits of Death she felt were likely what the Guide allowed through the monster's Shield, the same way poisons and the like could affect people even though they still had Shield left.

What she didn't feel was any sign of the magic affecting the creature the way it affected ruins apparitions. In many ways, that made sense; the bones of the dead were already touched with death. Sophia had to hope it would be effective later, though, when the monster's shield was broken. It was supposed to be effective against the "walking dead," after all, and this was definitely something dead that was walking.

Sophia frowned. The magic wasn't supposed to affect bones at all, was it? It made a lot more sense if it disrupted the spell that animated the creature. Simply attacking it worked on the ruins apparitions because the animating spell was all they were, but the bone remnant had actual bones.

And she'd been distracted by them. Sophia growled at herself; she ought to know better than that.The Guide's Abilities seemed straightforward in a way that magic at home simply wasn't, but it was clear that it only seemed that way. Magic here was just as complicated as at home, only worse because she didn't know what the Guide left out of its descriptions and the Guide didn't start out simple and slowly teach you what it could as you improved; everything was complex.

Sophia started to refocus and try to fight out how to use her True Death Bolt to attack the magic animating the bone remnant instead of its body, but that was hard to do when her head tingled and burned a little. Clearly, the problem was the way she had the bone remnant wrapped up; if she didn't, she'd be able to hit it much more easily.

A warm ring seemed to form around Sophia's neck, exactly where her necklace lay.

No, wait, that wasn't right. She wasn't having trouble hitting the bone remnant. She'd hit it every time she tried. Sophia tightened the places where she'd started to relax her wings. What had she been trying to do a moment ago, when the lightning started dancing on the bones?

There was no lightning. Why did she think there was lightning?

It felt like lightning.

"Oh no you don't!" Taika's voice sounded loud, like he was talking next to her, but Sophia knew that was because he was projecting the words to her silently along the channel Dav created. "You don't get to trick Sophia!"

Trick Sophia?

Sophia blinked in surprise. For an instant, the world disappeared and she could see an image, clearly projected by Taika along with his words. It was lightning striking a fan of colorful feathers. A folded angle of metal, almost like a metal mask or maybe a book with a metal cover and pages made of light or magic, flew towards the feathers. When it hit them, light and magic sparked from it and the feathers. The book passed through the feathers and vanished, taking the lightning with it and leaving only a spray of glowing multicolored feathers behind.

The image vanished as Sophia opened her eyes. What the heck was that?

"You should be good now," Taika said. This time, it sounded like the chinchilla was speaking directly to Sophia instead of yelling nearby. "It was trying to get you to let it go. Now it knows I won't let it fool you. I blocked the openings it was trying to use to convince you that letting it go was a good idea."

Taika was an illusionist, but he was also a Psychic Bulwark. Sophia had only really seen his physical barriers, the ones he'd gained when he passed the first upgrade. It seemed like that wasn't true anymore; she'd just seen what happened when he protected someone. It was hard to say if it was an image Taika sent to her mentally or if it actually had some reality somehow, some expression of Taika's psychic abilities in a visual form, but either way it was real enough to work.Taika had just blocked an attack on Sophia's mind.

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She'd felt a tingling sensation earlier, almost like lightning; clearly, that was the attack. The feathers had to be Sophia herself and the metal object was probably Taika's protection. It wasn't a book at all; it might be a mask or a shield, but really it was whatever Taika needed it to be.

Sophia hated monsters that could fool people. This seemed like one of the most common types, able to momentarily trick opponents into making a mistake. The ability hadn't come up in the earlier fight, so it probably couldn't control the ruins apparitions and trick opponents at the same time.

Its tricks could be deadly if the monster was clever, but Sophia didn't think this one was that smart. It had panicked and revealed its ability early, before it really mattered. She was pretty sure it wouldn't have gotten free anyway; she wasn't actually sure she could release the monster without dismissing her wings, and that wasn't what she'd started to do under its influence.

Sophia tightened her wings' grip on the bone remnant's skeleton anyway. She wasn't feeling forgiving. No one liked being tricked, and mind control was the worst trick of them all.

Now, what was she up to before the monster tried to alter her mind?

That was it, she was trying to figure out a better way to hurt the bone remnant. The first thing to try was sheer power, so Sophia gathered all of the feathers she had available that weren't restraining the monster and used them to send True Death at the bone remnant.

Once again, the True Death Bolts splashed on the monster's shield. This time, though, Sophia noticed something: several of the rays actually missed what she aimed them at. They all should have hit the monster's shield over its skull, but they were all at least a little off target. Half of them hit the horns instead of the skull itself.

Those True Death Bolts didn't splash off the monster's shield. Instead, they seemed to dissipate when they hit the horns, as if they'd hit nothing at all … or something they simply couldn't affect.

"The horns are different. I think they attract projectiles, but they're not vulnerable to my magic," Sophia projected to the rest of her team. "I don't think it's more mind control, not with Taika protecting me. I think the horns actually do something."

"They probably do," Ci'an answered immediately. Her mental voice was clear and calm, but it came with a flash of a ruins apparition silhouetted by Sophia's magelight against the dark floor."I've seen it before, monsters that can knock arrows out of the sky with their horns. Deer have it sometimes, but theirs isn't very strong. It works the best on other deer."

Sophia suspected that images were more likely to accidentally slip into the mental projection when the person speaking was agitated. Ci'an sounded calm but Sophia didn't believe that. Not in the middle of a fight when she was watching a ruins apparition. Night Owls had vision-based attacks; Ci'an was probably doing something to the ruins apparition as she spoke.

Sophia groaned at the reminder that this was probably a holdover of the "Species" Ability for whatever the bone remnant was before it died, even though animated bones shouldn't have a species. They were dead; whatever they had been before, they weren't that now. Sophia didn't even think that the bones she saw all came from the same creature!

She glanced over her shoulder towards Dav. He was less than halfway to her; there were a lot of ruins apparitions in the way. They might not be controlled anymore, but he still had to deal with them before he could move past.

It was just as well. Sophia kind of wanted to kill the bone remnant before Dav caught up to her anyway. She just had to figure out how.

Sophia tried another full attack, but this time she targeted a spot on the skull that was well away from the horns. Her True Death Bolts were still forced off target, but this time they all hit the skull's shield instead of dissipating harmlessly on the horns. That was great, but she really needed to kill the monster, not just beat on its shield slowly.

Maybe that was the problem? Maybe the shield didn't have the same weaknesses as the monster itself. The ruins apparitions' shields didn't protect them all that well, but they were completely nonphysical. No one could really tell Sophia how the Guide's shield worked; Ci'an had told her bits and pieces as they traveled, but it was all a collection of specific circumstances without an overarching explanation of why things sometimes worked one way and sometimes another. It was as good an assumption as any that she needed to break the bone remnant's shield before her True Death bolts would really work on it.

How?

Sophia pulled up her list and wanted to facepalm. No wonder Piercing Plume worked so well on ruins apparitions; it was all about piercing shields and she'd fought enough of them that she had the Collected Knowledge to make it work. She didn't have that for the bone remnant; this was the first one she'd ever fought. It might well work on future bone remnants but it wasn't going to do anything against this one.

She skimmed over the list and didn't see anything until her second pass, when her eyes lit on a Spell she'd completely forgotten about. She'd never used it in a fight, but this might be exactly the right time for it. She literally had her wings wrapped around the bone remnant and it ought to be vulnerable to True Death. The description wasn't entirely clear, and her tests hadn't really told her much, but this seemed like a better test than anything she'd tried in safety.

Embody Element

Manifest your element physically. Exact effects depend on the element embodied.

Sophia felt Death mana spread along her body, then outwards through her wings. They seemed to darken a little, then they started to glow with a cool gray radiance that reminded Sophia of home.

For all that the Guide called it True Death, this was not a separate Affinity; this was Death Itself, and Sophia knew it. Her home planet was steeped in Death and it was her father's primary Affinity, as well as her aunt's. It was happy to reach out and claim the false life of the dead bones she held, returning them to the truth that they were long dead.

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