BlueShear
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Chapter 92
🕑 Added 2024-11-13 19:09:07 +0000 UTCNialla looked on in blank stupefaction as explosions rocked the bulk of her wayward offspring. What little of them remained after that initial salvo anyway. Concussive slaps of blooming silver decimating their ranks in very short order—each violent eruption of concussive force touching upon the barest hint of primeval origins. Backhanding them from the sky in rapid succession, even as they rushed to close the gap a series of… less than conventional aerial maneuvers easily maintained throughout the battle.
Although it pained her to admit, she’d greatly underestimated him.
This despite her knowing she would be a fool to do so. Just because he’d prove little challenge for her to deal with personally, did not mean that, for his rank and tier, he wasn’t a veritable monster. For one thing, she couldn’t fathom how he was able to bring such complex workings of devastation to bear using nothing but his alignment in such a resonance dry backwater.
And as for how in the yearning abyss he’d gotten his hands on an ascendant boon while still squarely in the spirit condensation realm? Well, she grumbled to herself, they weren’t called heaven’s chosen few for nothing, now were they?
The exact nature of his explosive, inexplicable growth aside—a mystery she would waste no time in unraveling once his vessel was safely secured—it simply should not have been possible for someone, even of his caliber, to achieve so much in so short a time. It practically reeked of outside tampering. Something she couldn’t abide if she were to have any chance of getting away with what she’d planned.
It could be that she didn’t have nearly as much time or privacy as she’d thought. Perhaps now was the time to hurry things along? To step in personally, even if it meant risking the system’s wrath prematurely? Although… on second thought, perhaps not. It could be that her get weren’t nearly so useless after all.
After minutes spent in hopeless pursuit, a spiraling cloud of her remaining offspring were finally able to converge on the free falling form of their earthbound quarry. The reason for the sudden turn in their luck immediately apparent when no concussive boom accompanied their presumption. Nialla smirked. It would appear the boy ran out of his ammunition well before she ran out of hers. Well, not by much, admittedly, but no matter. Even so, she knew it would mean all the difference in the end.
***
Buffeted by howling winds and beset on all sides, he was given the briefest glimpse of the setting sun’s radiance, before its golden rays were consumed by a rippling tide of darkness. Possessed of a wrathful will all its own, the curtain of night, with its sea of crimson stars, struck out without mercy, nor reservation, only malice.
Battering him from everywhere at once and in every way imaginable—it tore at him with invisible claws, slapped him around with massive paws, and otherwise made to clean his clock with an unmistakable intent to kill. The blows were as fierce as they were unrelenting, and if it weren’t for his |Detonation Weave| absorbing each impact with a brilliant flash of silver, it was entirely too likely he’d have been crushed beneath the weight of its unceasing onslaught.
As it was, he still found himself nearing the point of no return. It wasn’t long before his mantra glowed bright enough to illuminate the press of midnight bodies. Until he could clearly make out individual expressions from within the shifting murk—the snapping, snarling, churning mass. Swirling about him in constant motion. Pushing, shoving, fighting amongst themselves in an attempt to better get at him. Like a miniature star surrounded by void, he shone a brilliant silver—very nearly blinding in his radiance.
His derma-weave swelling to dangerous levels, expanding well beyond its intended bounds. Absorbing more punishment than even it could reasonably handle, and rapidly adding to that ominous tally with every second that went by. It was entirely possible that, if he didn’t release all that pent up energy and soon, his mantra would see to it all on its own. And in bloody spectacular fashion at that.
Which was why, when he felt that his |Detonation Weave| couldn’t take a casual shove more, he released the iron hold he’d maintained on its nature, and allowed it to do what it did best. What it’d been named for. All at once, every scrap of absorbed kinetic energy was released in a cascading wave, and his entire world was replaced by an impenetrable wall of light and sound.
***
The detonation of concussive force was so violent, so sudden, that, almost unbidden, it dragged her eyes away from her designated task. Whipping her head around, if only to make sense of the thunderous report, she could only gape in astonishment at what she saw.
At least she could be forgiven for her lapse of focus.
The blooming ball of silver energy, like a second miniature sun in the sky, was nearly impossible to ignore. She was only human, after all—well, at least she still liked to think of herself as such—and if a spectacle like that didn’t grab you’re attention, she really didn’t know what would.
It was just a shame that her brief stint of inattentiveness nearly cost them their lives. With as sudden lurch of panic, she did her best not to show, she snapped her attention back to the task at hand. More specifically, the sword lying in her lap—with its gelatinous coating of bucking red energy, thrashing as if to break free from its restraints—and the sixty odd cutting spheres orbiting her person which she’d still yet to infuse into the blade.
Mastering herself, she wrenched control from the proud energies, establishing dominance over the cutting forces before stabilizing their turbulent nature with a thought. She didn’t dare let out a sigh of relief, lest they take that as a sign of weakness, but the ease of tension was felt all the same. Of course, that was when the gale force winds of the ensuing aftershock arrived, buffeting their griffin mounts almost to the point of toppling them—as if dinghy’s stranded on the open sea—very nearly robbing Eleanor of her hard won self-control.
Flicking one last glance up at the dissipating cloud of silver, Eleanor was just barely able to make out a lone figure amidst a steadily darkening sky. He shone the bright color of daisies, of tart drinks on summer days, the cheerful sort of joy filled radiance that made her heart ache—her eyes to prick with unshed tears. She quickly looked away before a chink in her composure could invite challenge—set the metaphorical hounds to nipping at her heels, as it were—but not before she caught what she could have sworn was a black comet, streaking towards the lone golden star in the sky.
***
Scarface wasn’t just angry. He wasn’t merely irate. He wasn’t vexed or distressed or upset or unwell. No… no he was well past all that by now. Well past feeling. Well past sense.
After all, what was a candle’s flame to a bonfire? What was a gentle wave to a tsunami? How could you possibly encompass, how could you possibly quantify, something so large it defied all measure? How could you hope to apply labels to what he felt, when the truth of the matter was he didn’t feel anything at all?
Did the puddle feel wet? Did the earth feel dirty?
When the truth of the matter was, he was beyond simple feeling. When the truth of the matter was, he was the embodiment of wrath.
Spirit roaring through his channels like the wind whipping past his ears, Scarface took one last [Quickstep] forward—appearing before the creature in the space of a blink, arm already cocked back and ready to…
“REVERBERATING STRIKE!”
The world around him narrowed down to a singular point. Time likewise slowed as if in sympathy with his cause. It’s beady yellow eyes shining in stark relief. The contour of his fist as it inched ever closer. Ripping up and over before crashing down like black lightning—the entirety of his accumulated momentum released in this singular, soul healing strike.
And then there came the soft feeling of knuckles on flesh. The rippling of skin and muscle before bone gave way. The warping of facial features as structures never meant to bend were forcefully pressed inward. Crumpled. Caved. And finally the satisfying squish, squelch, pop, as fist broke through the final barrier to freedom, and the creature's head exploded like an unripe melon.
Scarface had already retrieved his gore drenched fist and leapt back in preparation for the inevitable counter, before he realized what exactly it was he’d just done. Looking down at his fist, then back up at the still upright corpse, it took him several seconds to fully come to terms with his accomplishment. A clump of brains sloughed off a red drenched knuckle.
After all that…? After everything this insolent dog had put him through…? Could it… could it really be so easy?
“You know, I’d always wondered why, if all we’re made of in this astral plane is weirdly unspecified spirit stuff, should there still be such a thing as crucially vital areas?”
BANG!
Scarface ripped a clean jab through the creatures skull, splattering it’s head into an unrecognizable slurry.
“So it got me thinking you know?”
Before his very eyes, what’d been a chunky red spray of gore only moments earlier quickly dissolved into a shining yellow mist. Mist which then gathered about the spasmodically geysering stump of a neck—swirling rapidly before reforming into that smug expression he so despised.
“What if there was another way? I mean I already know how to alter my not-body into different conceptual matter states right?”
BANG!
“And so that then begs the question, is that spirit stuff suddenly no longer me if it’s, all of the sudden, removed from my not-body?”
BANG!
“And if so, is there a way to maybe fix that inconvenient little discrepancy?”
BANG!
“Enter: the stubbornly willful, and destructively denial prone, aspects of cleaving! A hell of a time to work with—I mean, if you’d thought crushing was dense, you don’t even know the half of it—but damn if you can’t argue with the results!”
BANG! BANG! BANG!
Scarface punched and punched but no matter how many times he put his fists through the skull of the insufferable creature, it would reform barely a second later—chatty and hale as ever. It was infuriating.
“WHY! WON’T! YOU! DIE!”
The boy scratched his newly reformed cheek.
“Hmm… I don’t know? Maybe you’re just not hitting hard enough?”
“AAAARRRGHHH!!”
Scarface howled his impotent fury. The creature, on the other hand, actually had the gall to smile.
***
Gritting his teeth through the unbelievable amounts of pain he was in, Jun managed to put on a brave face despite the silent scream that’d made itself a prominent fixture in his mind. It wasn’t so bad, he told himself. It was barely even excruciating. He tried his best to focus on the positive side.
Whoever said getting your brains bashed out on replay doesn’t hurt like a son of a bitch deserves to test out their faulty hypothesis naked, on fire and, preferably, for the rest of all time.
What? He said he’d try; said nothing about being successful.
BANG!
…ouch. That… yeah, that one had hurt. Big guy must really have some serious pent up issues in need of addressing. Something to do with his mother, perhaps? Poor guy. You really shouldn’t keep that sort of stuff bottled up, you know.
BANG!
Clenching his fists, he managed not to scream. It was a close thing. In all seriousness, he might’ve been playing it off on the outside, all cool and collected like—rambling on about something or another, he wasn’t really paying attention—but the truth was this constant stream of damage, and the rapid fire upkeep, were steadily taking their toll.
His thoughts were becoming muddled, illusive, unwieldy, and not just because his mind was literally somewhere else most of the time. How he was able to think at all when that was repeatedly the case only giving ever more credence to his ongoing theory that spirit bullshit was just a whole bunch of nonsense.
Really, it wouldn’t have been so bad if only he could actually fight back. But, as had been strictly defined within the terms of concessions, unless he honestly deemed the guy in front of him to be a Worthy Foe, with a capital W, the best he could do was politely ask him to kindly move along. He snuck a glance at Mr. Anger-Management Issues in between bloody knuckles.
BANG!
Yeah, that didn’t seem very likely. And, unfortunately, no matter how good his left hook, the guy just wasn’t giving off big worthy challenger energy. It was a predicament to be sure. He ate three more fists to the face before he figured he’d made his point.
That should be enough, shouldn’t it?
He briefly caught the eye of the ascendant body snatcher someways away before his vision was once more eclipsed by fist.
Yeah, that’s probably more than enough.
Switching tactics—from stand still and take it, to run away like hell—he briefly glanced down at the platform he’d been standing on all this time. A person sized yellow palm—razor thin, like a paper cut out—which did almost as much damage to him as the overeager brute. Tiny yellow hands sprouting from the flat surface like wild flowers constantly ripping at his rapidly regenerating calves like there was no tomorrow. The consequence of using a mantra for something other than its intended purpose. Honestly, he’d been so distracted by attenuating circumstances that he almost forgot they were there.
“Splitting Chop!”
He figured he might as well get into the spirit of things. With a pulse of cleaving aura, a quick thought, followed by a splitting headache, he summoned more hand shaped platforms to hover in mid-air. Improbable. Impractical. And that it worked at all was entirely too convenient for it not to be intentional.
If it were any of them that would allow for this sort of bullshit application, it would be cleaving, wouldn’t it? Crazy bastard.
He could practically feel the patronly ideal lean forward in genuine anticipation. Jun would try his best not to disappoint. He leapt from his platform onto the next, not moving particularly fast. Ignoring the enraged Cthulle, and the ragged chunks the brute routinely tore out of him, he maintained a steady pace—the best he could manage under the circumstances, juggling so many mental processes as he was. A hop skip and a jump later and…
BANG!
Another splitting chop left him with five more evenly spaced platforms.
Only a hundred or so more to go before the final confrontation.
He glanced briefly at the hovering spec of the far off ascendant while his head was still intact.
Would it kill her to meet me halfway?
Jun sighed.
BANG!
This… was going to be a long walk.
***
|Hero’s Valor| (Cleaving Aligned—3rd Aspect)
My will unwavering; blessed of generous aplomb—with good cheer and honest valor might I face each worthy foe with honor.
Etheric Concessions: Conviction Unwavering, A Worthy Foe, Borrowed Time.
Description: The more I delve into the nature of this concept, and, really, the nature of concepts in general, the more sure I become that this entire system is somehow rotten. As in, it doesn’t make any sense. Like, there’s this clear dissonance between what’s widely advertised and, when you get right down to it, what’s actually happening. I know I like to poke fun, acting as if there’s this big bad entity on the other end of the line that’s actively working to sabotage me.
The joke being that, of course, that can’t be true. They’re not gods, after all, they’re concepts—the perfect ideal of a thing entirely divorced from ego—but honestly? I’m not so sure anymore. It’s almost as if each of the concepts I’ve come across was somehow modeled after an actual person—with their own likes and dislikes, flaws and petty grievances. And although it still embodies the totality of whatever, say, cleaving is, it isn’t exactly removed from the personality that… I don’t know, birthed it? Was birthed by it? No, if anything, that ego holds more sway on mortal comprehension, than the actual concept itself at times. It’s the entire reason my concession theory works, actually.
Want to do something ridiculous? Appeal to the patron’s vanity and we’ll see if we can’t make something happen. Now, I’m not saying I’d like that to change anytime soon, since that would be rather bad for me, I’m just saying that it feels… wrong. In ways I don’t entirely know how to explain. Anyway this mantra effectively makes me un-killable so long as I, quote unquote, “never lose out hope,” am currently inside of an astral plane, and don’t crap out mentally which is an easy thing to do because this mantra is taxing as all hell. It’s kind of the worst, actually and I sincerely regret making it.
Concessions are as follows:
Conviction Unwavering: An oldie but a goodie. Falter even once and you can kiss your retirement fund goodbye. Not too bad when you have no other choice but to succeed, but if you’re prone to folding under pressure, I would not recommend it. That way you’ll not only fold down the middle but get chopped in half just for good measure.
A Worthy Foe: An honorable warrior never punches down and never runs from a good fight. Essentially, if the opponent is clearly outmatched you aren’t allowed to lay a finger on their pretty little head, while if you’re clearly outmatched you’d better hope you’ve got an ace up your sleeve because retreat means almost certain death.
Borrowed Time: The unrealized potential of all the lives lost in the heat of battle borrowed at great cost. See Absolute Burial for a more in-depth description.
