Page 36

Vs. Semzar

W hilst rushing to reach the ballroom, Krahe had encountered several more of Semzar’s subordinates. To call them defenders would have been a stretch—they were either fleeing or just frozen in panic when she encountered them, and only some of them turned to fight. Those stupid, stupid few served as further target practice for her heretofore unnamed tar-whip thaumaturgy, each a new attempt to refine it without slowing down. It would have been terribly convenient if she had just so happened to perfect the thaumaturgy by the time she arrived at the ballroom, but alas, no such thing came to pass.

Oh, she felt close. So, so damnably close. Its true, ideal form was within her grasp, she just knew it. But she had to start fighting Semzar without it.

Furthermore, as she approached the ballroom, another thing became patently evident—something far less positive. That something was that quite a bit of her pain stemmed from the Atomica, or perhaps even from her altered Soul Furnace. She couldn’t discern the exact nature and extent of it, but one thing becoming clear was that burning thauma was somehow causing her body to break down. As to the nature and extent of the damage, she wasn’t sure, but this was certainly the polar opposite of what she had hoped for with the Atomica. A part of her feared that Yao might have purposely sabotaged the key, but a much larger part was certain this had to do with implanting it prematurely, or perhaps some other factor external to the key itself. Perhaps she hadn’t let it cool off long enough after the transmutation, or it was something as simple as her body not being physically tough enough to stand the power, even if such a possibility was counterintuitive given her frequent use of anathema without issue.

The silver lining was that she was certain the damage wouldn’t catch up with her before she killed Semzar and dragged Casus to safety. Half of this certainty stemmed from her possession of the Calbian Molting Tonic—the ultimate contingency from Razem himself, an elixir that would by his description allow her to survive beyond-lethal injuries if she injected it into her heart. Another quarter of it came from the fact Thaumic Fusion still worked normally, allowing her to mitigate the damage to some extent. The rest was just self-confidence, bravado perhaps. It would all come down to how good Semzar was and how long it would take her to off him.

All considerations aside, it wasn’t as if she had much choice in the matter. That much she knew the instant she entered the ballroom. She had arrived, as it seemed, just in time to witness Casus carry out a heroic and undoubtedly self-destructive final attack against Tsetse. The enormous gash in the floor and the seething dagger in Semzar’s hand told the rest of the story. She was certain that, had she arrived later, she would have found Semzar leering towards Casus with the intent to take the Banisher’s body for his own. If everything went wrong, she would at least try to get Casus out of there and rendezvous with the inquisitor, whom she knew to be stationed outside the property. At least, she hoped she was still in position, and still alive.

Despite her dicey-at-best position, when she surfaced from her dive and set loose that first salvo of tracers in Semzar’s direction, Krahe couldn’t help but let a grin push its way onto her face.

A body breaking down from an experimental power source, one high-grade drug keeping her going and another in the back pocket to pull her through the final stretch. An opponent—no, a target—such as Semzar, one with bought and stolen power that he didn’t know how to use properly, relying on the muscle memory of his body’s previous unfortunate inhabitant. The one unfamiliar variable was Casus. A wounded comrade whose life, for once, was a higher priority than the death of her target.

All in all, she felt more clear-headed, more focused, more confident than ever.

Nothing she had experienced on the face of Zastreon had brought her back as much as this. Her mind raced with countless possibilities and past operations to draw on. Every moment stretched on and on like a distended synthetic tendon. The pain burned through every inch, turned sideways by Class-3 painkillers, suddenly feeding into a razor-sharp bodily awareness.

Hopping backwards and scrambling to keep distance from her, the mafioso babbled something under his breath whilst rummaging through his inner jacket pockets. Krahe wasn’t sure if it was an incantation of some kind or just a nervous tic. His physique began stretching his suit, tendrils bulging out from under his skin, which itself turned an unseemly shade of bluish purple. He became faster and faster, his apparent physicality now equal to a Mamon Knight using a High-Pressure type Dregsteam cartridge—only, with none of the finesse. More than anything, he resembled an ape in the manner he bounded from spot to spot.

Between barrages of tracers and Cinder Gatling rays, Krahe threw in a Six Trees Killer—but one of a different kind. Semzar’s movements were too erratic for a timed fuse, and as she understood the evolution of her thaumaturgy, she thought remote detonation ought to finally be within her reach. The mechanism was a simple pulse of thauma keyed to a particular thought-impulse, much like a real radio detonator would work. She couldn’t just release thauma in all directions at any reasonable range, so she still had to keep the burster in her sightline, but that was an acceptable limitation.

A satisfied chuckle rose from Krahe’s throat when the bullet-propelled grenade zipped over Semzar’s head, and the shockwave nearly knocked him off his feet a moment later. He quickly regained his bearings, and with an angered gesture, stood his ground, stomping with a great release of thauma. The floor cracked under his foot, the fissure racing forward as great gouts of blue flame sprung forth. It was a display of power to be sure, but a mere decoy. The real danger was a double-barreled pistol he pulled with his free hand, and from it set forth two Bloody Reapers in quick succession.

Krahe halted in her tracks and performed a dive, letting them pass through her as she made mocking gestures towards the mafioso. Immediately after emerging, she whipped a burster his way, and while his attention was on it, she peppered his side with a few Cinder Gatling beams. And so, the struggle continued.

As the two played cat-and-mouse through the nearly deserted ballroom, Krahe scattered a great deal of smoke across the field, and it was not just smoke. Within the smoke, under tables, and even in plain sight, she dropped fuseless bursters. By slightly reducing the internal pressure, she ensured they would last without maintenance for a little while.

It could not be said that Semzar was so gutless as to just take her onslaught whilst trying to run away. When she managed to slip a handful of tracers past his barrier, Semzar responded with a mighty flex, and a second pair of arms burst free from his trapezoid muscles. These arms were not of flesh but of the same translucent purple force that formed his barrier. Their fists were enveloped in dark-blue flame, with long wisps of it trailing off. Out of the four tracers that made it past his defenses, only one managed to hit—the other three were punched out of the air by these newly formed arms. In the process, they fully detached from Semzar’s body, now floating above his shoulders. As for the single tracer that struck home, it smashed right into the side of his face. Its scarlet-black explosion elicited a counter-burst of blue flame and a smattering of purple shards akin to explosive reactive armor.

The obvious answer to the question these arms posed was an attack that could not be shot down—Cinder Flash or Wandrei Faust. As things stood, she couldn’t get close enough to land a Cinder Flash. Barzai, though not able to inflict serious damage, aided in herding the bastard away from Casus and towards one of the bursters which she had quietly dropped earlier.

However, before she could lure him to one of her traps, Semzar finally found what he had been looking for inside his jacket—a silver ring, with a faceplate wide enough to cover the entire lowest segment of a finger and a four-pointed star of deep red gemstone as the centerpiece. It was none other than his father’s “Crimson Star” ring! The mafioso slipped it on his right-hand ring finger, his flesh deforming hideously before the band expanded to fit him. Then, he began a reckless counterattack. It was a barrage of superhumanly fast, yet also amateurishly telegraphed punches, his fists wreathed in blue flame. With each punch he sent flying a fist-shaped construct, each taking with it only thin ribbons of that blue fire. They were fast, to be sure, but not the speed of bullets—between the volume of fire and size of projectiles, dodging them was much like dodging particularly pretty fertilizer rockets. It was as if, with the ring on, he felt safe enough to finally stop running. Krahe deduced it had to be a defensive artifact of some kind.

Nonetheless, dodging Semzar’s rocket punches meant she wasn’t attacking, and eventually, he might get lucky. Unlike him, she couldn’t afford even one unlucky hit, and she had to keep pressuring him. The only solution that came to mind was smaller movements and closer dodges, though it would bring her closer to danger. Whether one dodged by a meter or by a centimeter didn’t matter, so long as one didn’t get hit. Less time spent dodging. Thus, more time for counterattacks.

“Sharper.”

Thirty centimeters.

“Sharper.”

Fifteen centimeters.

“Even sharper!”

Five centimeters.

The fire licked her skin and left the sensation of hot water behind—like going into a sauna from the freezing cold. It wasn’t even hot enough to cause a surface burn.

She slipped into a state of absolute focus and perfect efficiency of motion, a pinnacle of clarity that warriors from eras past had spent their lives training to achieve and maintain for short bursts. It was something she had taken for granted, considering it one of the absolute basics thanks to neural implants, cognitive conditioning, and hormone controllers. Krahe had slipped into that familiar place a few times since her rebirth, always in the midst of battle, but never to this extent. Never fully. She had never managed to truly snap into the zone until now, only ever veering in and out for moments at a time. The reflexes, the muscle memory, the cognitive conditioning—it was all still there. She just had to get into the right physical state to set it off.

ZERO HESITATION

MAXIMUM FOCUS

ACCELERATED COGNITION

TACTICAL SUPREMACY

A LONE OPERATIVE

PREVAILS AGAINST ALL ODDS

RAZORMIND

“You stole that thaumaturgy, didn’t you?!” she mocked him. “The flames are barely warm! Could you not simply adjust it to remove the fire element? Could you not even go to the effort of stealing a fire affinity to go with your stolen thaumaturgy?!”

No verbal response came, but Semzar’s flames visibly grew, both in size and brightness, and so did the number of punches he sent flying her and Barzai’s way. In turn, they became even sloppier, as did his positioning. Frankly, he didn’t seem to be thinking about positioning at all, which was itself a problem. No thought meant that it would be harder to manipulate him into standing near a trap-burster. Nonetheless, Krahe managed it, more by pure luck than her own efforts. With a snap of her fingers, the burster went off right at Semzar’s feet as he was standing atop a table. He was consumed by a great burst of pyroclast and splinters, which in turn was dispersed by the reactive outburst of his wards.

Then, Semzar did something unexpected, if only because it was too logical. He closed the distance, and not with a careless lunge, but with a steady, yet quick approach while keeping up his offense. If he closed the distance, Krahe would have less time to dodge his flying fists, his barrier would take up more of her field of view, and she wouldn’t so readily detonate any given trap-burster lest she herself be caught in the blast. Even if she were to do such a thing and, say, dive beforehand or skim just out of the blast radius, Semzar could read that as a tell. This was all assuming that Semzar was thinking tactically rather than rushing in like a frustrated moron.

Krahe did what she could to manage the spacing, but even Astro Diving and Skimming could only go so far against someone who could bound around like a suited-up cyber-ape. Not wanting to dump a Cinder Flash or even Cinder Strobe straight into his barrier, Krahe decided to simultaneously mix him up and refine her Tar-whip thaumaturgy by employing it at this close-mid range. Right now, in this razor-like mindset, centimeters from death and burning up from inside, she knew she could grasp it, much like a self-destructive artist could grasp his best work whilst overdosing on hallucinogenic toad saliva.

And indeed, right there, in the refulgent moments between engagements when the world seemed to pause, there her answer was. Refining the lash’s thinness and velocity only got her so far—the final step was hidden in plain sight, being the simple incorporation of her fingers as an additional layer of casting. By quickly opening her hand to act as a triggering gesture, the thaumaturgy came out as five separate threads centered on her palm, and each connected to the tip of one finger. They sprung forth with the speed of a bullet, lashed at their target, and then disintegrated into smoke. A fair portion of the lash’s quickness and the velocity of its filaments stemmed from the left arm’s increasingly superhuman characteristics, fed both by Krahe’s physical attribute growth and by the Atomica’s monstrous Throughput. Thaumaturgy and the filaments’ whip-like motion did the rest of the work.

The combined velocity and gossamer-like thinness of each thread created the illusion of Krahe cutting things through sheer force of will with the mere gesture of her arm.

With a slight adjustment, she could detach the filaments from her palm early, allowing her to use them for a more traditional swiping attack. Forming a single, stronger cutting filament was still an option, especially if she wished to, for some reason, dust off monowire martial arts.

And so, after a monowire she had named it “Black Lasher,” or just Lasher for short.

The original had been a legendary armament in its own time, the first “true” monofilament whip capable of cutting straight through the most advanced hard armor composites. Her version was perhaps not so universally effective, but it had an undeniable point of appeal in the form of overwhelming cutting power that allowed it to be effective even against barriers and wards, despite being predominantly lacerative in nature. In terms of efficiency, it didn’t even remotely hold up to Cinder Flash or Tar-tendrils in their intended roles, but that didn’t matter. One couldn’t expect to always have the exact right tool for the job. Black Lasher came out faster than Cinder Flash and had a range somewhere between it and Tar-tendrils, allowing it to fill in where the other two fell short, not to mention its ideal use-case for cutting through flesh, which Krahe dearly hoped she would get to demonstrate against Semzar.

For now, she was satisfied with seeing his disconcerted look when the filaments ripped into his barrier and his hard entropy spiked much like it would with a purposeful kinetic attack. In concert with a hail of mescalt bullets, it was only a matter of time before he would have to drop his barrier or go into meltdown. Semzar, knowing this, turned to the logical answer and spent his entropy on trying to either kill Krahe or stop her from hitting his barrier.

One fist passed by her arm, close enough to agitate her wards, yet nothing happened. Another passed near her leg, tearing a yawning gash into her trousers and leaving the edges smoldering. Another, still, ripped her bodysuit on the left side, the gel already closing over the superficial burn it left behind.

Semzar realized that she had no wards. Whether they had collapsed from damage or from implanting this new voidkey, it didn’t matter. To him, that realization was a shining ray of hope; it was victory within easy reach. He just had to get one, maybe two good hits in. How hard could that be?

***

As the battle carried on, Krahe felt time rapidly catching up to her. Even if she instantly stored any generated Isotope inside her arm, its presence within her body nonetheless caused damage—negligible damage, at first, but it gradually built up. Eventually, despite burning away as much Isotope as she could by generously tainting each and every one of her thaumaturgies with it, she exceeded the left arm’s capacity.

Each use of Thaumic Fusion poisoned her, yet in turn, each Implosion-Burn set rampant thaumic power coursing through. Only 95% of the power generated by Implosion-Burning went where it was supposed to. The remaining 5% was tearing her apart from within, and now the damage was starting to show. Her skin began to split open, scarlet light shining through.

The more she deteriorated, the more Semzar’s terror grew, and the more his already fragile grasp on focus slipped from his bloodied fingers.

To Semzar’s gaze, which instinctively understood anatomy for the purpose of assessing a would-be host’s suitability, she was worse than a rotting corpse. She was poison. Death on two legs in more ways than one. No… not death. Murder on two legs.

“Why? Why? Why won’t you die already?! Whywhywhywhywhy—”

Each “why” was accompanied by a flaming fist, a machine-gun cadence of thaumaturgic strikes potent enough to strike down their target, each ripping apart furniture and flooring when it inevitably missed. Dust and debris wildly scattered into the air all around her.

Each fist flew mere centimeters from its intended target. Krahe swayed as she walked, moving no more than necessary to avoid each fist’s generously telegraphed trajectory. With every movement, minute bursts of flame sprung forth from the many glowing fissures that split her skin. The wild currents of magic that leaked from her being set her hair billowing in all possible directions, and the dark smoke of entropy shrouded her. Semzar could swear she initiated a purge every ten seconds, as if mocking him, and all the more infuriating still, he never managed to hit her during one. Even while devoid of magic, she denied him at every turn. Each time he got close, she would simply vanish in a plume of smoke and appear elsewhere nearby—sometimes less than a single step’s distance, other times a full three meters, and everywhere in between. It was Astro Skimming, that much he knew, but he didn’t know the maximum range. It had to be something like five meters; it couldn’t be more, but he wasn’t even certain of that much at this point.

There wasn’t a person behind those eyes, which swirled and flickered with green light. Indeed, through their apertures peered not a human but a demonic being of murder. A single-minded obsession, a whirling madness, spilling out with such pure hate and revulsion that Semzar thought, perhaps, she was employing an ocular curse. He had felt it before, having been the subject of curses, and he recognized that curse-like will flowing in abundance from her gaze. Only, she was staring not at Semzar but through him. For a moment, he genuinely considered if Blackhand intended to use his corpse as a medium to directly strike at his father or at the Benefactors. He well and truly came to think that this was the true reason she was after him—such was his coping mechanism for the reality that his own actions had directly led to this.

And the music. Why was the band playing? What was this trite love song?!

“Mad machine—I chase down my prey on a speeding bike! Mad machine—this fire burning in my chest defies logic! Time flies, chasing us, like a suffering, wounded beast. My burgeoning ferocity has me in its grasp—”

Another line came, but Semzar didn’t hear it. That infernal bird screamed over it, “The more masks I remove, the less human I become!”

Then, wasting not a moment, the red-eyed thing bombarded Semzar’s barrier with explosions and began orating, for lack of a better term. It spoke in a man’s booming voice, the volume perfectly synchronized with the music, creating a confusing and frightening cacophony. Perhaps the most frightening aspect of the tirade was twofold; the plethora of alien words used and the fact that Semzar, somehow, understood all of them, their meaning imbued into the sound itself.

Thus spoke the raven.

“AT AGE TWENTY-ONE I SLEW THIRTY MEN WITH MY BARE HANDS I STRANGLED SEVEN WITH THEIR OWN PLASTIC INTESTINES I STRUNG THE HEADS OF THEIR KINDRED FROM THE RAFTERS AND DROWNED THREE MORE IN WHITE BLOOD. BY MY OWN HANDS I FORCED OPEN A STEEL BULKHEAD AND HAVING THUSLY BEEN CRIPPLED I BIT OUT THE TENDONS AND THROATS OF THREE WHO SOUGHT TO VIOLATE MY FLESH, AND TOOK THEIR LIMBS FOR MYSELF.”

Blackhand rapidly closed the distance in the form of a flittering smoke-demon, emerging only momentarily to lash at Semzar’s barrier, cutting gashes into the floor with each flash, gusts of flame erupting from her palm each time she opened it to cast the thaumaturgy. He couldn’t comprehend how it worked—it appeared to simply cut , but it was such an outlier. Why would she have only this one arcane thaumaturgy when everything else was either energetic or construct-reliant? He glimpsed the glittering remnants, thread-like in appearance, but they were so short-lived that he assumed them to be the bare minimum to which she could reduce the thaumaturgy’s visibility.

A dense mass of smoke erupted from her mouth, writhing forth like a swarm of ravenous insects moving to envelop him. Semzar’s fists, both those he set forth and those which defended him, scattered it handily, his own thauma neutralizing Blackhand’s. Even still, what remained of the cloud swiftly moved in to fill the gaps and obscure his sight as best as it could.

“I HAD THE BUNKERS OF THE CITY OF ANGELS UTTERLY DESTROYED AND I COUNTED THEIR OWNERS AND SPONSORS AS DIGITAL GHOSTS I TOPPLED THEIR SPIRES OF STEEL AND GLASS I TOOK THEIR brAINS FROM THEIR DATA TOMBS AND DAMNED THEM TO THE NERVE LATHE. I LEARNED FROM THEIR DYING SCREAMS THE NAMES AND HOMES OF THOSE THEY SERVED AND HUNTED THEM IN THE SAME MANNER.”

Despite the fact his eyes could somewhat see through the smoke, it added to the numerous elements acting to overwhelm his mind. He didn’t even know it, but he had already been driven on the back foot—even as he lashed out and forced Blackhand to back off, Semzar didn’t think. He didn’t make plans or consider how he would finish her off. He was just reacting.

She appeared from the smoke, far too close for comfort, and Semzar’s first reaction was not to strike—it was to pour his will into the Crimson Star ring. The artifact replied with the cruel knowledge that it wouldn’t be ready for some time.

At first, it seemed as if she was punching into thin air from several meters away, but as she reared her fist back, a row of fanged mouths opened down the length of her arm. In perfect concert with the punch, great black tendrils erupted from these maws, and Semzar’s entropy surged—the impact was more than twice the strength of a Yellow Atropal. His vastly superior reaction speed and physicality, driven by muscle memory and instinct not his own, allowed his body to counterattack instantly whilst Semzar was still reeling from the impact, despite the fact he had not actually weathered a strike himself. As he set loose a barrage of lightning-fast punches, she was already gone, and that damnable raven had returned, resuming its tirade.

It mockingly danced between his punches, moving in an erratic manner only ever so vaguely connected to the flapping of its wings.

“ANCIENT ARMS OF NUCLEAR FIRE I UNEARTHED FROM AN AGE LONG PAST AND WITH THEM PUT TO THE TORCH ALL THE WORKS OF THOSE WHO WRONGED ME. ON A QUEST OF TWO MONTHS AND THREE DAYS I DEVASTATED THE DOMED VILLAS OF XIAOSHENG AND SCATTERED COBALT-60 AND NERVE POISON OVER THEM I TURNED THE NOBLES WHO LIVED WITHIN TO SHADOWS UPON THE STONE AND OPENED THE BELLIES AND SEVERED THE LIMBS OF ALL WHO SERVED THEM. THEIR WALLS I CAST DOWN AND LET THE BEASTS OF THE WASTE FEED UPON THEIR FLESH.”

Spinning in place, now entirely disoriented, Semzar released a guttural scream of frustration as he hunted for Blackhand. He glimpsed her shape at last! But he was merely reacting, and he had glimpsed her in the midst of executing a premeditated attack. Before he could even chamber a punch, let alone release it, a singular tendril with a mace-like head whipped around him and buried itself into his left side. An explosion of fire and razors followed, tearing away a vast swath of his wards. The shockwave smashed into his barrier from the inside, and the pure kinetic force, having caught him off guard, sent him tumbling head-over-heels. Swarming pyroclast followed in his wake, sticking to him and shredding away. Semzar had no choice but to shroud himself in fire, burning an enormous deal of thauma just to cleanse the lingering deathsmoke from his body.

But it never stopped.

She continued her onslaught without relent, and so too did her familiar’s tirade. It just went on, and on, and on, fading into background noise. In the brief moments of mental clarity, the tirade somehow pushed itself into the empty space. Atrocity after atrocity. A life of endless murder and conquest. Within the last minute, the raven had recounted the merciless extermination of six mafia families, each dwarfing the Hashem Family by far.

***