Page 35

Flesh-thief's Hex

A short time earlier…

T he Inquisitor’s attention snapped towards one end of the mansion’s upper floor, as her bound servants broke their orders to flee from the source of the outburst. Even she could sense it, despite the barrier. It easily compared to the immense flare of transformation energy she had sensed from Silberblut earlier. Unlike the Silberblut Coupler, this outburst’s signature seemed thaumetic in nature, albeit far too intense, teetering on the output of advanced burning techniques. Yazata didn’t think this was plausible, given that such techniques weren’t common even among mid-rankers, but she didn’t have time to dwell on it.

Her opponents were good. Too good. Their coordination was impeccable, their movements twitchy and unpredictable, and their barriers held up better than most physical walls—against the blunt impact force of her distortions, no less. Their offense, too, was equally potent and treacherous, manifesting as invisible sonic blasts strong enough to tear up the front garden and register to the mansion’s barriers. Every so often she glimpsed the source—silver membranes and chitinous armatures darting out of her foes’ trench coat sleeves. It was in line with the briefing that warned of a new type of artifact weapon. She was certain now. Certain of what they were. There was no room for guesses with the measure she was about to take, given how vulnerable it would leave her, but Yazata hadn’t gotten this far by hesitating and being unsure.

“Om, Zavyarana sowaka, behold the heretics and set their stolen flesh against them! Om, Zavyarana sowaka! Sear the mark of their sin upon their souls!” Yazata chanted, pulling her church signet from her neck. She held it up as she hopped back and forth in the desperate attempt to keep all three of them in her line of sight. Her eyes burned in their sockets, her hair floated weightlessly behind her, and her gaze was briefly filled by a numinous light that scorched the grass. At that moment, she went blind.

Yazata’s sight returned to a blurry shadow of what it was normally as the surge of divine power faded. She could see well enough to be certain—she could see them writhing, twitching, wringing their hands together, their cheeks splitting as their faces opened with mandibles, and the contents of their stomachs poured out. At a glance it resembled coffee grains—it was half-digested blood. Though not visible physically, their astral bodies had been branded, the curse sigil a modified, refined version of one which had once been used to brand body thieves in a far-off land, trapping them within bodies that rejected them.

“Th-the Flesh-thief’s Hex, but ah, it reeks of self-righteousness! What have you done with it, you church harlot?! I shall pluck the eyes from your skull!” one of the three Evoy seethed, visibly regaining self-control quicker than the two others.

“Good guess,” she admitted as she struck the Trapezohedron against her leg once again. “My version is better. My ‘Plunderer’s Branding’ never goes away.”

The Plunderer’s Branding was a reconstruction from the ground up, making it impossible to dispel using the methods that worked on its lesser counterpart. She had even embedded traps that would agitate the brand under specific conditions, and a targeting mark for the purposes of her other abilities. One such trap was in place to prevent the victim from using Mamon Couplers—terribly convenient and justified within the brand’s purview by the fact some Couplers could be modified to temporarily suppress rejection symptoms by overriding them with the transformation.

One after another, the three Evoy burst out of their skins in a manner Yazata had never seen. A wave of heat and rancid stench washed over her, fluid gushing onto the ground near them. In moments, the three transformed, growing to easily two and a half meters tall, into forms clearly intended to resemble war-morphs—the so-called “Abara Morphs” Aristedes had mentioned.

Yazata couldn’t help smiling, and then, she began cackling.

They were huge, hulking, but also completely malformed. One couldn’t breathe properly. Another’s legs were comically tiny in contrast with gigantic, oversized, clumsy arms. The third—the one who had recognized the curse—was the only to transform mostly successfully. In fact, his malformations increased his offensive power, silver sonic blaster membranes gleaming across him from head to toe.

He would’ve been a problem had Yazata spent the past few seconds doing nothing, but she knew better. While she couldn’t use her eyes as a casting medium for the next several hours, she had backups. This whole time, she had been striking the Black Trapezohedron against her leg, modulating its frequency towards a desired pitch.

The blaster-covered Abara Morph joined Yazata in laughter, shockwaves of sound blasting out with each cackle, shattering the stones underfoot and throwing them out like pebbles, forcing Yazata to focus every bit of her remaining strength towards deflection. Her eardrums would have surely burst, were she unwarded. She weathered the storm for a few moments more, finally reciting an invocation, covered by the noise. “Ring out from the spires of Zor’Aguhastra, and sing…”

At once, distortion flooded out of the Black Trapezohedron, flowing through the air and swirling around the three Evoy. Their chitin began to crumple in on itself, as if submerged far underwater, and quickly being dragged deeper.

“Sing, o Great One chained in the deep!”

With the passing of a breath, the three Evoy’s bodies burst under the pressure.

Yazata let out a satisfied sigh. Each time one of her coworkers questioned how she could put up with so many limitations on her magic, she wished she could show them this.

???

Dozens of blows exchanged in moments. Hundreds of meters traversed in seconds. Tracks carved, burned, and torn into the flooring, shards of polished stone shifting and sparking with crimson magic as the ballroom floor struggled to pull itself back together.

He had to finish this quickly. To say he didn’t have much time was a generous understatement—he had no time. With each passing second, Casus could feel his brute-force-evolved transformation eating away at him— consuming him. He just wasn’t strong enough to hold it together, neither in physical nor in astral body, not to mention where he lacked spiritually. It had been purely this moment, this context, that had allowed him to transform into Eisenretter.

Had it been anyone else, anywhere else, at any other time, he could not have done it.

But it was Tsetse, right here, right now. That, alone, had been the permitting factor. This sword on his arm—this twisted, malformed thing—had been forged solely to cut down this Abara Morph. A part of Casus knew his armor would burn straight off of him if he turned it against Semzar.

As he sprinted, Casus used his left arm as a counterweight, drifting at a 270-degree angle, nearly flat against the floor, in order to get under one of Tsetse’s kicks. Its blastwave removed the heads of eight or nine fleeing people and shattered numerous pieces of glassware, sending a small tidal wave of razor-sharp dust roiling through the ballroom.

From his near-prone position, Silberblut pushed off of the floor with his left hand. The blade of his right arm trailed a gold-burning arc through the air, intended to sever the Abara Morph’s left arm. Tsetse dodged, of course, but the wound had been struck—oily blood gushed forth from a flesh-ravine that now ran the entire length of his torso on the left side. His left arm visibly lost some volume.

Tsetse emitted a grunt of pain and frustration, but he was neither deterred nor thrown off-kilter. The fly-man twisted himself like a humanoid spring in order to deliver a kick from an entirely bewildering angle, sending Silberblut flying into the ceiling. Rather than smash into it, Silberblut tucked in his legs and outstretched his left arm past them. The eye upon it shone with a silver brilliance, and a strange force of the same shade flowed out of it, bracing against the stone. It vanished as quickly as it appeared, but nonetheless slowed his flight enough that he could comfortably bounce off the heretofore immaculate fresco. A face upon that fresco was turned to rocky gore once he used it as a jump-off point. Spinning through the air, the Mamon Knight stabilized himself in a flying-kick position whilst Tsetse dug in his heels—literally. The Abara Morph’s feet and heels unfolded and anchored into the stone underfoot.

Pulling open his own chestplate, Tsetse revealed an immense array of sonic membranes. In the same motion, he tucked his arms close to his body, even now concealing his left-hand palm-blaster with his fingers and holding his right hand in the same gesture to not give it away. After all, even if the Evoy was fairly sure Casus knew of the palm-blaster, he wasn’t sure that he knew which hand concealed it.

The ground shook, and soon the furniture followed. Glasses and bottles began resonating and cracking.

All sound cut out as it was overtaken by a thunderous bass, louder than thunder. To whomever might have the eyes to see, the distortion wave would be plainly visible as it flowed through the air towards Casus. As he met it, the face upon his chest opened its eyes and mouth. His flight slowed for but an instant, as in the next moment, the entire shockwave vanished. In turn, the brightness of his halo grew, and his armor seemed to grow darker in turn—or was that a mere play of the light?

The true blow, of course, had yet to come. Tsetse set loose a sonic kick as if it were the gotcha, nestling the killer strike within the motion’s end. It was awkward, and that was the point, to go against reasonable expectations, reducing the likelihood it would be noticed or countered. Silberblut slipped past the kick’s shockwave, holding his left hand out as a shield. At the very next moment, Tsetse’s trump card struck. The eye of his left hand came alive, locking not onto Tsetse, but onto the trajectory of his strike, all in a singular instant. Silberblut’s halo turned clockwise by a one-seventh increment. A burst of light from the eye met Tsetse’s shockwave and dispersed it.

Immediately upon landing, Silberblut transitioned his momentum into an unnatural, zigzagging rush, tearing up the floor as he combined his raw physicality with his left arm’s exceedingly monstrous strength and strange powers to forcibly change his trajectory time after time. Tsetse let off another barrage of kicks accompanied by shockwaves from his chest-mounted array, slipping in two precision strikes, but even those which would have struck had no effect. It was as if they were all devoured by the face on Eisenretter’s chest or shot down by the eye on his left arm.

Before Tsetse knew it, his left arm had been severed from his body, and the blade which did it had trailed a half-moon of empyrean refulgence through the air. He stared Silberblut—Eisenretter—Casus Aristedes—in the eye and felt that Silberblut’s left hand was pressed closely against his chest’s exposed sonic membranes. But so was his right hand against Silberblut’s side, and if he still held any advantage over the Mamon Knight, it was in how quickly his trump card came out.

The wave passed through the black-armored warrior, punching a hole in a nearby table. It merely sent Silberblut stumbling to the side, but at this moment, putting him out of position mattered more than the cumulative damage. In that forced stumble, Silberblut’s clawed hand grasped with its monstrous strength, and Cabral found the entire front of his meatsuit all but torn off. The cold air met his real chitin, revealing a many-jointed, lanky form designed specifically to fit inside Abara Morph Tsetse.

If anything would undo Silberblut, it would not be Tsetse’s own combat power. It would be time. His incomplete Eisenretter form, though frighteningly powerful, could not last.

Still, Tsetse was cautious, and he strongly considered creating distance and turning this into a stalling game, even as Silberblut approached him.

“Unlucky. You have new defenses,” the Abara Morph remarked matter-of-factly. It was clear to him that the left hand had been devised specifically to counter his trump card. He was already considering how he might alter his form to work around Silberblut’s defenses.

“The Visage of Judgment and the Left Hand of Anger,” the righteous warrior announced, openly naming two of his tools. “I would have been a fool to not forge a Mamon Armor that could counter your strength and more. And now, with the Right Hand of Courage, I shall excise your tumorous existence from the world!”

But at that moment, as Mamon Knight Silberblut held out his right hand and golden flame enveloped its curved blade once more, his arm, too, was severed from his body. A sudden flash of dark light, leaving behind a fading blackness alien to the mundane world, ripped through the ballroom. Everything between its source and fading point was cleft in twain.

The hiss of frustration pointed to its origin: Semzar Hashem.

???

Moments earlier…

Semzar had not been idly cowering in place. He had spent the entire battle clutching a jambiya dagger which rested at his waist, for the dagger’s blade was a potent artifact for resolving tense negotiations. Its sheath, in turn, was an artifact of the same grade, capable of concealing the transfer and buildup of power within the blade. As Semzar poured his own thauma into the weapon, it flowed through its handle and reacted with the thaumstone jewels set into it, creating an enormous buildup of arcane power. The efficiency was nearly miraculous, the only downside was how long it took to fully power the artifact.

But as he drew the blade, the sheath’s effect was lost, and the swing veered wildly off course. It was akin to trying to steer the force of a tsunami. Semzar did not have even a tenth of the strength required to control it properly. Nonetheless, he managed to strike his target.

In a flash, reams of black runes sprung forth from the dagger, and all before them was parted. Even one of the mansion’s mighty barriers was split in twain, and it only shattered a second later.

brOKEN RELIC OF A FORGOTTEN LAND

FAINT REMEMbrANCE OF A GLORIOUS PAST

TAINTED BY THE HANDS OF A COWARD

With Silberblut’s focus entirely directed towards Tsetse, he was caught off-guard even by this attack that originated in plain sight. Under different circumstances, he could have dodged in advance based on Semzar’s body tells. Moreover, even the Left Hand of Anger didn’t react, despite the fact automatic defense was its core functionality. Tsetse was the only target permitted to Eisenretter’s nascent form.

And so, the dismembered Mamon Knight fell to one knee, holding himself up by his remaining arm. In moments, his halo sputtered out, and his armor burned right off of him. With a loud thud, the severed limb fell to the ground, its armor burning away, musculature wildly spasming. A horrific creaking resounded as the limb’s panicked throes bent its own elbow backwards and twisted its metal bones out of shape.

The attack seemed to shock even Tsetse, enough that he recoiled for a moment and glanced in Semzar’s direction. However, he quickly regained his composure, approaching Casus as he drew back his fist in preparation for the killing blow.

Right then, a blurry form of black smoke flowed into the ballroom through the backmost door on the left.

“C-C-Cabral! She’s back! Finish him off already!” Semzar called out, panicking as he shoved the jambiya back into its sheath and grasped for something else inside his jacket—doubtlessly another artifact.

The flyman froze mid-step, for but a split second, only to spin on his heel. With a forward stomp followed by an upward knee with the same leg, he sent out a shockwave that toppled the couch and threw the mafioso into the air. His barrier took the brunt of it, and Semzar cried out in outraged disbelief rather than pain.

With a stomp, he rebuked the mafioso. “Honorless cur. First, you failed to deliver the full shipment of thirty. Now, you’ve poisoned my combat data. Our arrangement is void. You can use your own strength to save your own hide.”

Lady Blackhand emerged from her dive a few dozen meters away. She began pelting Semzar with bullets and tracers astonishingly similar to those she had wielded as Viridaimon, while Barzai flew overhead. Soon enough, she started throwing bursters and clouds of supernaturally thick, near-sentient smoke cropped up. Strangely, the raven split from his master and made his way to the stage, upon which half of the band was still to be found, including a drummer, a singer-guitarist, a bassist, and a keyboardist with a thaumatech piano. They would have better fit a bar than a ballroom. Barzai perched atop a notation stand.

“Play,” the demonic bird ordered in the same baritone he had used to demand meat from his master. He glanced at the notations, then at the cowering musicians. “Crest of Z. Can you?”

Confused looks and hesitantly shaken heads were the response.

“Soul for the Sword?”

Again, the same response.

“Steel Messiah?”

Once more, nothing.

Then, almost jokingly, “Mad Machine?”

This time, they nodded.

Bobbing up and down in return, Barzai reaffirmed. “Play.”

Once the rattled musicians got in position, he abruptly stopped, spreading his wings.

“ Play. Or else.”

With that, he flew off to aid his master.

A bass chord riff filled the ballroom, pulling the various melodies in as Tsetse picked up and carried through the mostly empty ballroom. Tsetse turned towards the dismembered Banisher, offering clemency. “Run. Leave. Get stronger. I will let you.”

With blood leaking and golden flame bursting out of Casus’ eyes and the seams between his skin-plates, he choked out these words, “You can make that choice. I have no such liberty.”

He reached out for his severed arm, nearly falling over in the effort. Nonetheless, he picked up the limb and pressed it back into its socket. Wires leapt out from both his stump and the arm, lashing around the ends of the severed bone, pulling them together, winding and tangling around the joint into a knot. As this took place, the arm’s grafted musculature rejoined in a similar manner, forming an unseemly, swollen connection, but one that would hold. The hiss of boiling blood filled the room with the stench of carbonized flesh as the wires superheated and soldered together. The graft’s internal tubing, too, had been severed and reconnected with a gruesome sound and the leaking of blood between muscle bundles where the arm had been rejoined. Golden light erupted from between every muscle fiber of the limb, and with the gruesome sounds of metal scraping, it twisted itself back into shape.

The process only took a few seconds, but they felt like the better part of a minute due to how closely Tsetse observed it. Meanwhile, Semzar was scrambling in total panic as he tried to create as much distance as possible between himself as a rapidly approaching Blackhand. The ballroom was, nonetheless, huge, and it would take her a few moments more to get within range.

Casus tried to gather the strength to stand, but he could barely breathe. Everything hurt. Even the shallow breaths he managed sent brilliant, burning pain shooting through his body, piercing through the all-encompassing agony like flares lashing out from the surface of the sun. He wasn’t sure where the pain of injuries ended and where the pain of isotope sickness began.

“Please… Just once more…” Casus pleaded. “Just for a moment… Om, Zavyarana sowaka…” Casus said.

There, in the depths of a flesh-stripping blizzard of despair, Casus found a golden ember of fierce will, burning ever brighter in defiance. But just as he grasped that ember, consciousness slipped away from him.

That the Banisher lost consciousness, however, would not be known to the world just yet. His body stiffened for a moment, and he rose to his feet with a steadiness that did not hint at even the slightest injury or exhaustion.

The three claws holding the Silberblut Coupler’s eye inside the socket suddenly sprung open. Once more, golden flame engulfed him, and out of the fire burst a figure of ebon-black, blacker than the blackest night. Its only distinguishable features were its blindingly bright halo of golden flame, a golden blade upon its right arm, and six seething eyes with seven-pointed stars for pupils—one on its head, one on its waist, one on its back, one on its giant left arm, and lastly, the two eyes upon its chest. All else of the figure was so dark as to be more of a three-dimensional shadow than a person. The Face of Judgment, its eyes wide open, screamed a soundless word.

That word reached Tsetse faster than sound would permit, permeating through him, and in that instant, the Evoy knew he was doomed.

“BE CLEANSED FROM THE WORLD.”

He couldn’t dodge. He couldn’t block. The matter of even trying never crossed his thoughts. At this instant, he felt as if he were facing a saint from millennia past, and all will to fight left him.

This wasn’t an attack. This was the blade of a guillotine speeding towards his neck.

FINAL COUPLER CHARGE

CLEANSING BLADE OF COURAGE

The shadowy shape of Eisenretter, blackened by the radiance of his own light, passed unimpeded through Tsetse. His passage and shining blade cleft a vertical split through the monstrous flyman three-quarters of the way up his chest. Miraculously, Tsetse remained standing. Even as gold-silver flame scoured his flesh from the inside, widening the wound, as Cabral’s internal organs spilled out, and as both the Abara Morph’s and the Host’s blood ran freely down Tsetse’s legs, pooling at his feet, he calmly looked down at himself.

“Unlucky… me. Hoist by my own petard. Heh. I shall see how you do… against my next self.”

Tsetse went limp, toppling backwards with a fleshy thud. However, the same could not be said for whomever was inside. Cabral’s lanky, mutilated upper half wrenched its way out of the Abara Morph’s rapidly decaying flesh, confusion evident on his face. Various connection ports stretched between him and his meatsuit, tearing in half as he emerged, propping himself up by his arms.

“Where… Who… How?”

The Evoy clutched his head. He then toppled over forward, and the umbilicus connected to the back of his head snapped.

At that instant, he went limp like a puppet with its strings cut.

Meanwhile, “Shadow Eisenretter” melted away, leaving Casus barely standing in his place, his right arm hanging limply at his side. Frayed muscle peeled away from it. With each labored step the Banisher took towards Semzar’s sofa, blood and other fluids ran down his arm’s length and trailed across the ground. The Silberblut Coupler wasn’t in a much better state. Its outer casement had cracked, and its trio of securing claws had been welded open. Casus was somehow certain that the Mamon System’s relic components had purposely taken on the brunt of the strain to spare his life.

Casus, of course, was already unconscious by this point. Nonetheless, his body walked to Semzar’s sofa of its own accord and sat down, holding vigil over Tsetse and Cabral’s rapidly disintegrating forms.