Page 30

Sewer Wars

A chmed smoked a cigarette, lazily ambling out of the subterranean loading bay and into the flooded tunnel that led into it. He balanced atop one of the cart rails to avoid wading through water. His tendrils writhed inside his lungs as the smoke spread through them. But then, something felt off; one of his tendrils was caught, and he stopped dead, leaning slightly as he mentally commanded the tendril, dragging up a clump of tarry mucus before he spat it out and put the tendril back in place.

Meanwhile, the two hideous things assigned to him waded through the water, oily patches spreading out around their legs.

They were insectile, Evoy-like creatures, but wrong in countless ways.

To start with, their morphs were malformed, with emaciated, human-like torsos and lanky limbs, almost like dried-out corpses with chitin plates haphazardly stuck to them willy-nilly. Black tubes and cables snaked in and out of them, and fully artificial organ enclosures bulged their stomachs or protruded out of them in various ways. Heavy-duty, helmet-like sensor array grafts covered their heads. The one to his right had several large, circular graft eyes set into its head graft in a scattershot pattern, and as a result it had a habit of constantly looking around. A decal was sloppily airbrushed onto the side of its head. It read, “SB-55C-143.” The other one had no visible eyes, but it constantly emitted a low buzzing and it seemed to see just fine. This one’s decal read, “SB-55C-82.”

Both of them had one functional arm, with clawed, knobby, dysgenic fingers, and one weaponized arm. One-four-three’s leftie was a muscular limb with a bulbous, mace-like head, sectioned off into five petal-like parts that could open to reveal an array of six silver membranes, one at the center and five around it. As for 82, its left arm retained a hand, but it was distorted and partially split down the middle to fit a weapon graft onto the underside of its forearm. It looked like one of the Blasting Clusters that had been mounted on the Foreman’s Hounds, but smaller, clearly accommodating for the unit’s more limited power output and weaker build. A primitive, cheap, but effective “shotgun.”

“Lotta good the operation at Slaughterhouse 9 did for those rich fucks if you lot’re all that came out of it,” he muttered derisively, taking another toke of his cigarette. Less human than even stitched-together hobo corpses, these things were supposedly failed Evoy molts that had been “recycled.” Even lesser than corpses reanimated with heavy grafting; never even alive to begin with. They were in the same realm as the artificial bodies offered by the church. Suitable vessels only for the Gor’ah in their heads that gave them motion; they certainly took to these shells better than natural humanoid meat suits. It was obvious something about these “stillborns” was explicitly designed to accommodate Gor’ah and thus compensate for their sorely lacking intellect. The nature of that compensation was far beyond Achmed’s station, but he was sure it was something extremely fucking heretical given the Benefactors’ involvement.

Slowly, lazily, taking his sweet time, he continued his patrol. Being only one of many guarding the mansion, he didn’t actually have a great deal of responsibility. His purpose here was threefold. The first task was to act as a minder for the stillborns, and the second was to receive a delivery that was to come through here. Some kid. He didn’t think twice about the purpose or origin of that delivery, having long numbed himself to far worse cruelties than human trafficking. If it wasn’t happening in front of his face, he could easily act as if it didn’t exist at all. The third and perhaps most crucial task was to keep an eye on blasting charges planted along a section of the tunnel and to set them off if any intruder came through and managed to reach the area where they were planted. The stillborns were there to keep the trafficker honest and to act as a barrier between any would-be intruders and Achmed for long enough to set off the charges.

He soon got to the section with the charges. They were nothing like any explosives he had seen before. Occult-looking tetrahedrons made of brass, with long, three-sided black rods emerging from their apexes, ominous symbols glowing orange down the rods’ sides. He couldn’t read them, but they didn’t look like any human alphabet, and Achmed was abnormally well-read for his current career path. Tetrahedral spikes emerged from the tunnel wall around each charge, seemingly “growing” out of the bricks. Achmed guessed it was some sort of geomancy. Feeling no need to hurry, Achmed took his time checking them over, eventually stepping onto the tunnel wall and walking up it. A petty trick learned from a Saurian he had inhabited in the past, but terribly useful. Sure, he had a fancy detonator built specifically for these things, but it was never bad to be double and triple certain that explosives wouldn’t misfire.

Footsteps approached from afar, sloshing in the grimy water. Achmed perked up, anticipating the trafficker. He finished his checks and retreated a short distance outside the remote charges’ blast zone. It was at a turn in the tunnel, this spot chosen specifically to allow him to look down the other side or to take cover.

It wasn’t anyone he had been told to expect. He knew that the moment 82 became agitated, both in body language and sound. Its quiet buzzing took on a deeper tone and became far louder with inaudible frequencies sending ripples through the water underfoot and reverberating up through Achmed’s body.

The stillborn, 82, surged forward, sprinting past the corner, its buzzing rising to a scream-like fever pitch as it raised its left arm and began firing. With a repeating sequence of whirring charge-up and thumping release, its weapon’s focused shockwaves tore up the water surface with their mere passage.

But the distant footsteps only became quicker, accompanied by the unsettling caw of a raven and followed by a sequence of cannon-like, thumping explosions. They sounded not quite like gunshots, but close to it. What came from beyond the corner were not bullets, however. Achmed barely got a glimpse as he was busy retreating and preparing the detonator; they were comets of swirling blackness, zipping through the air like swift arrows, their trajectories bending to all strike 82. A greenish glow lit up inside the stillborn’s chest as glassy wards of the same color revealed themselves around it, and these defenses held for a moment, only to be torn apart soon after.

The creature continued firing back for a moment longer while its body held up. Soon, 82 was shaking in place as countless explosions tore open the stillborn’s exoskeleton, spilling its oily inner fluids into the water and painting the walls with the iridescent rainbow of their puke-like hues. A pretentious sort might interpret those stains as a veritable work of abstract art commenting on the traces left by those who are consumed by an opposing force’s overwhelming violence.

Without needing to be commanded, 143 quickly prepared itself to face the enemy, ducking to the wall as its left arm split open to expose the emitter nodules. A black blur zipped past the corner, trailing black smoke and red light as it flew. It was a raven, or at least something in the shape of one. Opening its beak, the thing screamed with the banshee tone of a woman being murdered. Its eyes flashed, and the section of wall Achmed was hanging from exploded. Though not enough to make him fall, his right foot was left hanging onto a chunk of loosened stone, forcing him to release it and right himself, moving even further up the wall until he was nearly hanging upside-down.

Just as he got his bearings, Achmed saw it—a human shape in black armor, with an unfamiliar device on its waist. It didn’t even cross his mind that it was a Mamon Coupler; he was not particularly familiar with those devices and only had passing knowledge of common models that his fellow gang members used.

A beaked mask concealed the shape’s face. Its eyes were two impassive, circular lenses within which green fire burned, trailing light in a near perfect line as it moved. Its left arm bore a heavy, gun-like catalyst, spewing smoke and flames from its muzzle, while the right was concealed by a shield-like bracer-and-pauldron combination.

It walked as quickly as any normal person would run, gliding through the ankle-deep water with an unsettling, mechanical smoothness. Even its arms remained unnaturally stable as it leveled its weapon at him. In Achmed’s mind, that thing had to be some kind of graft-beast, maybe meant to compete with or replace the Red Hoods. Its mask certainly looked Zaveshian.

A swarm of smoke-missiles spewed forth in Achmed’s direction, and the shape threw a reflective, black sphere towards 143. Neither fighting back nor setting off the charges crossed his mind—only escape, and escape he did, raising his unique barrier. A pair of ghostly green wings formed on his back, contorting to cover him as he jumped from the ceiling to the ground.

Meanwhile, the smoke-missiles’ trajectories curved in an effort to strike him, but they only ended up tracing a line of holes along the wall in front of where he landed, passing through the water and kicking up a cloud of foul mist. A spark of hope—their homing was limited.

Achmed spun around, continuing to run backwards as he watched and waited. That black sphere exploded, throwing 143 across the tunnel and into a wall, blowing off the stillborn’s legs below the knees, and leaving ominous black smoke eating away at the stumps, almost like a smoldering alchemical flame. Achmed continued retreating, dodging, and blocking the missiles with his Wing Barrier. Each one struck with terrifying force, making it no wonder why the stillborns didn’t hold up so well against the intruder. Their firepower was truly monstrous.

Even wounded, 143 fought back, raising its arm to the intruder. A barrage of pinpoint-focused shockwaves bombarded the invader, each punctuated by a high-pitched sound, but the shape neither slowed in its march nor showed any other signs of being affected. The only indication that the weapon was even hitting was the deformations in the armor. With each shot, a dent the size of a coin appeared on the green-eyed demon’s monolithic chestplate, but each time, the armor’s eldritch runes pulsed with light, and the metal simply buckled back into shape. Without slowing down or even turning its head, the matte-black monstrosity turned its left arm to 143 and recorded the end of the stillborn’s struggle in oily splatters upon the wall.

Feverishly clicking the detonator, Achmed realized he had forgotten to make sure it was set to detonate all paired charges at once. With each click, one of the charges came alive, its respective rod slamming into the wall as the surrounding spikes grew out at odd angles, creating obstacles and preceding the true detonation.

Somehow, someway, the shape simply stepped out of the way of the spikes, as if it knew exactly where they would go just by looking at them before they grew. In a rapid sequence, numerous such stone spikes grew, dense enough to skewer or entrap the invader. The main charges were then consumed by forceful vibrations, their tetrahedral shells resonating. They were not mere pyramids full of gunpowder; instead, they sequentially released enormously powerful shockwaves with a range precisely confined to the tunnel’s inner volume. The first shockwave traveled down the tunnel, forcing Achmed to stop moving and cover his ears.

“No collateral damage, fucking bullshit,” he seethed inwardly. Each shockwave that came rattled his bones and made his tendrils shake, immobilizing him and disrupting his focus. The tunnel was indeed untouched, however.

When the shaking subsided and Achmed looked towards the killzone, he saw nothing—only a brownish cloud formed from the powderized stone spikes and vaporized water.

But then, as the cloud of dust and mist started to clear, he saw it. Completely unharmed. In fact, it looked like the shape had bypassed the killzone entirely, maybe even before the charges had gone off. An unearthly aura of pitch-black smoke rose from the invader’s armor, as if it was some cursed ghost that had just walked straight through solid stone. Achmed raised his Wing Barrier without even thinking.

Some thirty meters downrange, it stopped. Somehow, he felt that it knew firing would be pointless, that he could effectively defend against its missiles while retreating too quickly for it to catch him before he got back to the mansion.

But then, the green-eyed demon adjusted its stance, turning side-on and leaning forward on its right leg to the extreme, with the left leg stretched backwards. It tucked in its right arm in a tackling stance, resting the left hand on its belt. With the turn of a dial, an ominous aura of dense smoke and embers enveloped the figure, and it pointed its left arm’s casting catalyst backwards.

For a moment, Achmed was confused. To add to his confusion, that raven spirit from before appeared once more, simply coming into his awareness as if it had been invisible until now. It flew over him, strangely not attacking, only to stop dead-still, hovering near a wall while looking further down the tunnel.

This moment of confusion was, inevitably, broken. With an enormous rumbling noise, the green-eyed demon went flying down the tunnel straight at him, riding a pillar of smoke and flame like some sort of giant firework.

COUPLER CHARGE

BLACK SUN COMET

Achmed fearfully ran up the wall, hoping to avoid the charge to save his life. This job was just that, a job. He would not offer up his life for the mafia. The demon glared at him but passed him by as it went tearing down the tunnel. The raven, however, was different. It suddenly spoke to him with a demonic voice full of accusation. “Filth.”

Achmed turned just in time to hear the spirit speak again. “None can save your soul. None escape the wrath. Repent.”

And just like that, the bird vanished into a puff of smoke.

???

Krahe had fully intended to turn that wall-walker into a greasy smear, but she had severely underestimated the difficulty of controlling the coupler charge. Though the strain of harnessing the Black Sun Coupler’s full power was substantially reduced by her strengthened body and the Viridaimon Armor’s unique design, it was nonetheless severe enough that she had no choice but to focus solely on maneuvering through the tunnel’s curves. She didn’t feel any particular regret about leaving the gangster alive; Casus would get to him.

The rocket-charge didn’t last nearly long enough to cover the full distance to the mansion’s basements, but that was a mercy; immediately following the coupler charge’s end, the Viridaimon Armor lost power. Without proper training and lacking typical safeguards, the coupler charge had dumped every iota of power output. The light in the armor’s eyes sputtered out, and its full weight bore down on her.

It was so suffocatingly heavy she could only walk, stumbling over to the wall. Over the course of a few seconds, the armor returned to life, and the burden eased, but the belt had not been spared. It was still functional but drawing on it for combat-level power output, let alone further coupler charges, would inevitably destroy the belt’s internals. She wanted to make it last, given the enormous power and durability it afforded her, but she knew better than to rely on a self-destructive prototype, let alone assume that it would last the full length of a combat operation.

Krahe checked if the wall-walker was following her, feeling a pang of disappointment when she found he wasn’t. She continued onward and before long reached the entrance to the mansion’s basement complex. It was a whole cargo loading dock, with three branches spreading out. The frames of great bulkheads yawned empty, and the loading area was deserted at first glance. In reality, there were indeed people here; she learned that the hard way from a multicolored hail of magic and bullets erupting from several spots. Some were behind pillars, another on an elevated walkway, and a pair beyond a corner, inside a storeroom filled with a maze of containers. A quartet of those borged-out things dropped down from the ceiling where they had been hanging, screeching and weeping as they charged headlong towards her on all fours.

And so, the first true battle began. Even as she was, armored and armed to a degree sufficient to take on mid-rankers, Krahe was still at a disadvantage. A direct battle was a foolish idea even with the Viridaimon Armor.

Striding sideways through the awkward layout of the loading dock, Krahe immediately began forming a smoke grenade before Astro Diving. Just this act was enough to damage the enemy’s morale, with screams of possessed ancient armor abounding, while the few who retained their full composure hollered orders at the so-called “stillborns.” Meanwhile, Krahe circled them like the ghost she appeared to be, ducking into the storage room before surfacing and tossing the smoke grenade. As she entered, she raised a jade wall to block off the entrance, leaving only one other. She sent Barzai to watch over that entryway as she cleared the rest of the storeroom. There were only two people here, huddled together in the corner—a man and woman, or more appropriately, a boy and a girl. Cowards with no killing instinct and auras about as strong as Mohawk, and dressed in a similarly threatening biker-esque style. Given the situation, it made them appear even less threatening. She openly walked between the rows of crates towards them, and the boy whimpered as he fired off a purplish buzzsaw crackling with electricity.

The electric saw flew by Krahe’s head, not for lack of accuracy, but because the boy’s intended aim was so obvious. As such, Krahe simply tilted her head out of the way. The saw bit into the ceiling and traveled some distance before it sputtered out.

As she looked down at the two, Krahe decided she didn’t care to kill them. They barely looked like adults; their eyes lacked any sort of hardened shine. They didn’t belong here; they reminded her of stupid kids back in Megacity Gamma. Stupid kids who joined gangs, thinking it was a glamorous lifestyle, only to get shot like dogs to protect the bastards who actually deserved those bullets.

With a gesture, she raised a slab of smoky jade, entrapping the two of them in the corner, but only pushed it to chest-height so she could easily peer over it. The Viridaimon Armor made her a head taller, granting her a truly towering presence at over 200cm. Fully exploiting the ominous size and stillness of motion granted by the armor, Krahe leaned forward to look down at the pair.

“You won’t be this lucky next time,” she said, her voice distorted and deepened by the mask. “Get your shit together. Perhaps go to one of the churches or join a proper agency. You don’t have what it takes to traffic children for man-eating flymen.”

The boy had gathered his wits, standing as tall as he could, staring back at Krahe with a defiant, but fearful gaze. She leaned in further until she was eye-to-eye with him, then willed Viridaimon to uncloud the lenses as she conjured a handful of CRC Rings into her hand. They totaled 5000 DDs in value, including four of a 1000 DD and two of a 500 DD denomination so they could be split evenly.

Sprinkling them onto the moron’s head, she added, “That’s a good thing. Stay still and be quiet. The panels don’t last long.”

At that moment, Barzai alerted her to an approaching person. She was surprised it had taken them this long to muster the courage to try and suss her out. Turning on a bootheel, she raised her left hand and formed yet another smoke grenade in her right. Before she moved on, she added, “And avoid the Silversword Agency.”

She had barely interacted with them whatsoever, but those interactions, combined with what she had heard and read about, had sown the seeds of distrust and dislike. Out of every group in Audunpoint, they reeked the most like a typical black company.

Krahe approached the storeroom’s entryway, raising a few more barriers as she went to prepare the field, leaving the Forming Toroid at roughly half charge. That default 2m x 1m x 30cm, 10-charge slab was really too much for most uses.

In these close quarters, using Tracers wasn’t ideal. She directed the belt’s output to the catalyst, building up a charge while embedding it with the mental pattern of Deathsmoke Spray.

As the first man stepped into the storeroom, Krahe was already waiting. At that instant, she released the smoke burster, letting it burst at her feet. She released the charge, and instead of a stream, the casting catalyst expelled a burst of black and red that smashed through the man’s wards and sent him flying like a ragdoll. He trailed blood as he flew, crashing into the edge of a crate and smashing his head against it, both of which his wards absorbed. He was left wheezing in shock, a fist-sized chunk of meat missing from his stomach which grew larger with each passing moment as the deathsmoke ate away at his flesh like a smoldering flame spreading through steel wool.

This was the exact “shotgun” effect she had envisioned when she first conceived of Deathsmoke Spray. It was just a shame it was locked away behind a high-performance prototype Mamon Coupler. Knowing how these things went, even if she eventually bought a production model, it wouldn’t come close to this.

She let a few more of them come for her but didn’t just hole up in the storeroom expecting to win by holding that position. They were on the defensive here and could easily call in more reinforcements from above. Time was key. And so, Krahe formed a monstrously powerful burster with a long fuse, having Barzai carry it near the doorway. Meanwhile, she crossed the storeroom, stepping over a mangled corpse and a whimpering soon-to-be corpse on her way to a solid wall. This particular spot was perfect, as when she skimmed to the other side, she ended up covered on both flanks.

What she couldn’t have predicted was that the two stillborns were still sniffing around the blocked-off door, as if even their own allies didn’t want to interact with them. The one that lacked visible eyes emitted a loud click, then whipped around to face Krahe.

And so, she was forced into a melee with this monstrous thing, and Sector 7 Style’s close-quarters methodology kicked in once more. That is to say, Krahe tackled the creature, shoved her left fist into its chest, and blasted its ward generator apart with two shots. Once it was on the ground, a downward punch with her right hand half-severed its weapon arm, leaving the joint ruined and black veins whipping about, gushing oily hemolymph.

The next abomination was already upon her before the first died, and so she rose up, stomping on the first one’s neck as she threw the second like it was a ragdoll. While far heavier than its frame suggested, the thing was still skeletal, and the left arm was already strong enough to lift a hundred kilos without issue. With the Viridaimon Armor’s extra strength and weight, this feral borg-zombie was more dangerous at range than up close, and she had just given it that beneficial distance. That was a problem; it started firing on her before it even landed, its sonic weapon pounding her armor like a jackhammer. Thankfully, the problem was easily solved with a prolonged burst of tracers, shattering the bioweapon’s wards, tearing off its arm, and continuing through the hole into its chest cavity, thanks to Krahe circling the thing. True, this exposed her to direct fire from the actual people, but she pulled her arm slightly upwards and tossed a smoke grenade.

Over and over again, Krahe shamelessly threw filthy, isotope-infused smoke grenades, skimmed through walls, and simply rendered herself untouchable whenever the enemy’s numbers and knowledge of their home turf proved superior to her tactical planning.

The slaughter continued like this for several minutes.

There were survivors, ones who reached the ground level before she did. One was in shock and unable to utter anything other than the words, “Smoke. Black armor. Ghost.”

The other swore up and down that it had to be “Blackhand’s Big Brother.”

???

Casus carried the boy a short distance from the underpass before setting him down. He understood that Blackhand wanted to prevent the child from witnessing the gruesome reality of things, and he was in agreement. Right afterwards, he pressed the eye of his belt, initiating the transformation. His body was consumed by a surge of golden flame from the belt, a projection of its star-shaped pupil emerging, rising to Casus’ head height. A silhouette wrought of silver flame followed, and the full phantom simply stepped back into his frame, silver flame momentarily overtaking gold before being consumed. In that instant, all the light and flame vanished, leaving behind only his armored shape. Despite its increased complexity, the transformation only took moments; it was so quick it almost felt wrong, sped up, incomplete. That last part was true.

The Silberblut Coupler spoke, its tone resolute and melancholy at once. “Divine crusader, hero of justice, reforged in flame.”

This “Tarnished Silberblut” was not the new armor which Casus had manifested at the end of his training. Instead, it was born from the “Crusader of Black and Gold” boon as Heroic Subjugation’s effect on the Silberblut Armor in its base state, forcing the armor to better suit Casus’ own preferences rather than forcing Casus to adjust his fighting style. He found it to be substantially more resilient and physically stronger, but less agile, not for lack of agility or speed, but because of its increased bulk. He also found that the strain on his body was vastly reduced, as he was not undergoing excess change with each transformation to compensate for a lack of compatibility.

He scooped up the child as if he weighed nothing, put him on his back, and took off running. Faster than his motorbike, he shot through the streets like a matte-black bullet, the child holding on for dear life.

???

The sound of rapid, heavy footfalls approached the shrine. A dark silhouette sprinted through the entrance, golden light spilling from every crevice of the stranger’s form like flame from a ramshackle furnace. Lucia froze mid-turn as she beheld the tall man set a run-ragged child before her. He said something about keeping the boy safe and that he had been rescued from a human trafficker, but only the vague contents of his words and the tone of his voice registered to her in her shocked state.

At first, she had not recognized him, but this was definitely him . The belt, the voice, the armor—all wrong in some way, yet all too familiar. In an agonizing few seconds, Lucia unthinkingly took the child into her arms as she took in the familiar Mamon Knight’s armor.

A single, stone eye stared down at her, an azure abyss overlaid by a four-spoked star of burning orange, and this same pattern now reigned within his belt’s eye.

The Silberblut Armor’s previously gleaming silver had tarnished to a matte-black shade, and the suit now bore significantly bulkier armor on the forelimbs. The golden crown upon his brow had grown substantially, forming horizontal, quarter-circular horns to either side alongside a third, dull-ended vertical horn, which ever so faintly resembled that of a stag beetle. Four peculiar motes of golden flame circled above his head.

In place of a closed vertical eye, his chest now bore two horizontal ones. To compliment the eyes, the lower torso plates were shaped to imply the presence of a face’s lower half just below the surface.

The left gauntlet was even bulkier than the right, possessing an additional closed eye. His arm-blade was the largest change, clearly attached to his arm as a separate weapon rather than seamlessly incorporated into the armor. It was shaped like a four-pointed star with one of the points “stretched out” to form the blade.

His aura of cold, steely imposition was gone, replaced by a numinous warmth spilling out of him like he was the sun itself. It was not physical heat; the shrine’s interior was as cold as it always was at night, yet the warmth was real all the same.

“Casus Aristedes? What happened to you? Need I report your condition to the Inner Wheel?” she blurted out without thinking.

“There is no need. Safeguard the child and perhaps prime the shrine guardian for tonight. I must go. Once tonight is over, you will know why.”

With that, he was gone, not a phantom, but a matte-black bullet leaving a trail of golden flame.

Sometime later, after making sure the boy was uninjured and settling him in the back of the shrine, Lucia acted on Casus’ advice. Behind the shrine’s altar, a shape of gleaming metal sat, shrouded in a heavy robe, sitting on its pedestal in a relaxed pose with its head bowed too deeply for anyone to more than glimpse its face. It was a statue to all but the most well-read adherents, but to the shrine maiden and others who knew, it was a far more immediate promise of safety than the Banishment Veil. It was also a far more immediate threat of violence to those who would foolishly think this small shrine was unguarded.

Lucia carried out a ritual of offering up sacrificial liquor, burning incense, and performing an elaborate dance whilst chanting a specific sutra. It was not a sutra from any scripture, but one written particularly for this idol, embedded within its body and known only by vanishingly few besides Lucia.

By the time the ritual was over, the boy had come out just in time to witness the shrine guardian lurch upward. Its mouth creaked open, and it drew in every iota of incense smoke in the vicinity. The guardian thumped its staff against its altar, and a seven-spoked wheel of golden flame blazed to life behind it. Another thump, and the wheel turned by a full revolution. The shrine was enveloped in golden light, and the doors slammed shut.

Another thump. Another revolution. Reams of blessed paper sprung forth from the guardian’s sleeves, flying upwards into the rafters and out of sight, circling the shrine. Thereafter, the guardian went silent, the wheel projection behind it fading until it was barely visible. The next morning, four known Hashem Family members would be found in the vicinity, bound by these same reams of sacred paper.

Meanwhile, Casus shot through the city streets even faster than before, his maximum speed no longer limited by the presence of a small, fragile passenger. He took sharp alleyway turns one after the next without slowing, sometimes running along walls and other times tilting his body as if he himself were a high-speed motorbike, tearing up the flagstones with his arm-blade to help him steer. He only stopped at the hidden door, and then it was back to full speed from a standstill.

Even the small loss of maneuverability really stung, but somehow, Casus liked this better. A man-shaped battering ram.