How could someone disguise herself as Leela so well? It didn't seem possible. Without the aid of True-Sight, this impostor would look just like Leela.
Opening up the siphon into the Void, gripping staff and shield tighter, Malaran's heart raced, but she didn't know what to do. Attack now? Wait and see what this was all about?
The false Leela slid from a jog into a walk about thirty feet away, smiling and raising a hand in salute.
Malaran watched her movements closely, waiting for an attack, the True-Sight still active, still revealing this person before her to be nothing more than a caricature of Leela.
"Leela," Malaran said with no need to feign her real surprise. "I thought your battalion was on alert. Elsewhere."
The false Leela shrugged. "They needed someone special to courier over this message."
The words hurt Malaran's ears, grating and disharmonious as True-Sight manifested in all of her senses, the falsity of Leela's mimicked voice amplified. But the content of her words did not register as false.
"What message?" Malaran asked.
The false Leela smiled as she casually brushed a stray hair from her forehead. "You are too much of a wildcard, too much of a liability."
Before Malaran could register a thought, lightning struck her, blowing her off her feet, forcing her to use every ounce of will to bend the charge, to use the other forces of the Void flowing through her to channel and dissipate the electrical charge before it could do too much damage. Before it could consume her.
In many ways, it was what the Rite was all about, what Malaran had come here for -- to embrace the forces of the Void and remain unconsumed. But she somehow knew that the false Leela had somehow directed the lightning at her.
Malaran rolled across the hard ground and came up on a knee, and aimed her staff at the False-Leela. With all the energies of the Void charging the very air, the end of Malaran's staff quickly glowed midnight-blue with all the pent-up forces.
False-Leela hadn't moved, and she just looked disdainfully at Malaran's energy weapon. "History has buried the Agema and their battle-staffs," said False-Leela.
Malaran unleashed the forces focused into her battle-staff, firing a pulse of the dark energy right at False-Leela.
False-Leela raised her hand just as the energy blasted out of Malaran's staff, and the pulse struck False-Leela's hand and just dissipated. Gone without a trace. She smiled at Malaran. "Princess," said False-Leela, though as speaking to an entertaining child rather than to royalty. "I knew it was kind of a long shot that you're the one we're looking for, yet I still expected more out of you. Something to justify the suspicion at least. Something to justify my journey to this little backwater planet."
Malaran opened up the siphon into the Void and began firing pulses in rapid succession, aiming at different parts of False-Leela's body with each shot, trying to get past her defenses. False-Leela's moved her hand back and forth, drawing in each burst of energy before it impacted her body.
False-Leela smirked as she glanced briefly down at her unblemished hand that had stopped Malaran's attacks cold. She made a gesture like flicking crumbs from her fingers. "You pampered little princess. Nothing but a pretend warrior. "
Rage seethed through Malaran. Her whole life she had known there had always been whispers about the Calistite trainers taking it easy on her because of her royalty. She had to constantly prove that she wasn’t a "pampered princess." She opened the siphon into the Void further, bringing more energy into her staff. Her immediate thought was to blast this intruder with an even bigger pulse of energy.
But before the energy could be summoned, False-Leela pointed her finger at Malaran and said, "Only the strong and mighty will prevail in the new galactic order." Red lightning shot out from False-Leela's hand.
Malaran tried to block it with her shield, with the energies of the Void undulating through its smart-metal skeleton. The red energy blasted into the shield and threw her whole body backward as the red lightning curled around her shield and tried to engulf her. Again she willed the other energies of the Void forward to channel and divert the energy bound in the red lightning before it consumed her body.
Intense pain lit up Malaran's nerve endings, feeling the fire as the red lightning tried to devour her. She let out a silent scream as she bent the energies of the Void and forced the fire back, stopping the incineration but not the agony.
Focusing her mind, Malaran rolled to her feet once again and sprung back into a defensive posture, the Wind Breaker, unconsumed but still stinging.
Her jaw almost dropped though when her mind finally registered what her eyes were showing her. The Leela caricature was gone.
False-Leela had been replaced by some creature, some bipedal insect beast, dark chitin body plates with jagged, pointed edges and with long, jointed arms. Some monster out of nightmares. As Malaran looked into its two bulbous eyes, glowing red, she realized the creature appeared just as much humanoid as an insect, some demonic hybrid.
Malaran leaped forward, firing her staff, and charged directly at the beast. Maybe this creature will have more trouble dealing with the energy blasts if she shoved her staff through its chest first. She had trained most of her life to fight the bigger, stronger Umpala in close combat, and maybe this monster that could shoot lightning from its fingers will be unprepared for direct physical strikes.
As she prepared to leap and go into a strike using one of the ancient kata, battle forms, of the Agema, the creature raised both hands before it, splaying its humanoid, yet chitinous fingers, and a storm of red lightning erupted into a virtual wall between Malaran and her foe.
Focusing her mind, calling in the energies of the Void that sizzled in the air around her, she tried to cleave a path through the red storm, but as she impacted the wall, she was repelled. Thrown back at least ten feet, again sent rolling across the hard ground as the red lightning burned at her nerves.
"You must command the Void," whispered a voice in her head. Qingniao's voice.
Malaran took a deep breath as she came back up onto her feet. She had thrown everything she had at this creature, and nothing had come close to working.
Twice before, in desperation, she had been able to rend open up the pinprick into the Void and shape it into a bubble, a protective enclosure that isolated her from normal space-time. But she didn’t know if it would be a good idea know with all the talk of ripples. And so much energy pulsed and rippled through the air here, unbridled and unfocused. Raw. Even if she somehow was able to summon a bubble yet again, she didn't think she could maintain it in the maelstrom of forces at play here.
"Seriously," thundered the creature's deep, inhuman voice, "your kind of pathetic, little princess."
Red lightning shot from the creature's hands once again, but Malaran stepped aside just as it sizzled through the air near her ear, barely missing. She had somehow sensed it coming. She had not consciously invoked Fore-Sight, too distracted with everything else, yet her body had reacted as though it knew what was coming. Maybe she had a chance against this demon after all.
"Well," said the creature, "I guess that's better than nothing."
"Command the Void," whispered Qingniao's voice. "Don't avoid it."
"Easy for you to say," said Malaran. Avoiding the red lightning seemed like a much better idea than not avoiding it.
"Command it," whispered Qingniao's voice. “Or all is lost.”
The point of the Rite was not to be consumed by the energies of the Void, but that was a little different than catching lightning and flinging it back. She wasn’t sure anybody could do that. But she didn't seem to have many other options.
She bolted for the creature, charging once again, bringing her shield and staff around preparing to execute another battle form.
The demon brought up both its overly long insectoid arms, invoking the wall of red lightning once again.
At the last instant, instead of trying to crash through this time, Malaran, dropped shield and staff and thrust her hands i
nto the storm of flickering and pulsating red energy.
Malaran screamed. Her hands burst into fire, almost unbelievable pain.
But she did not withdraw them. She drew the red energy in, the pain and agony spreading to her entire body. Again she called upon the other energies sizzling and pulsing within storm clouds all about her, using these other forces to corral and channel the red energy.
She stepped forward, bringing her entire body into the red squall, flame erupting all about her. But she would not allow her body to be consumed.
The creature let out an inhuman high-pierced scream, some demonic bellow that seemed to ring through the ground and the clouds. "You cannot stand, little princess."
The red storm of lightning, the wall of crackling energy, intensified even further. The pain and agony intensified further. The energy pulsing and vibrating through her body intensified further.
She screamed again as her feet ignited, bursting into flame. She knew she would lose consciousness soon, had to do something soon.
"Calista!" she screamed, the ancient battle-cry of the Calistites, throwing her burning hands forward, trying to unleash all the boiling energy that threatened to immolate her.
Red lightning, blue lightning, all the colors of the rainbow, erupted forth and struck the creature, hundreds of lightning bolts sizzling and flickering between Malaran and the creature.
The creature screamed again, shaking the ground, and lightning rained down from the sky as Malaran lost consciousness.