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214 - Right Hand of Courage [Cherno]
🕑 Added 2024-06-04 05:02:46 +0000 UTCWith 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 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, panickedly shoving the jambiya back into its sheath and grasping for something else inside his jacket — doubtlessly another artifact.
The fly-man froze mid-step, for but a split second, only to spin 180° 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 sent the mafioso heir into the air. His Barrier took the brunt of it, and he 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 at this point emerged from her dive a few dozen meters away. She started pelting Semzar with 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. A drummer, a singer-guitarist, a bassist, and a keyboardist with a thaumatech piano — effectively an enormous analog synthesizer. 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… And made a request. “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.
“...Or else.”
With that, he flew off to aid his master.
As the instrumental 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 his eyes and the seams between his skin-plates, Casus choked out these words: “That… You can make that choice. I have no such liberty.”
He reached out for his 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 join 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 could be heard as the binding wires heated to red, orange, yellow and white, soldering the connection. The graft’s internal tubing, too, had been severed, and it, too, reconnected with a gruesome sound and the leaking of blood between muscle bundles where the arm had been rejoined. Golden light erupted from between each and every muscle fibre of the limb, and with the gruesome sounds of metal scraping, it twisted itself back into shape.
The process actually 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 utter panic, trying to create as much distance as possible between himself and 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 could take sent brilliant, burning pain shooting through his body, piercing through the pain that enveloped everything 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… Just for a moment… Om, Zavyarana sowaka…”
There, in the depths of a flesh-stripping blizzard of despair, Casus found a golden ember of fierce will, burning ever more brightly 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 it burst a figure of ebon-black, blacker than the blackest night. Its only distinguishable features were its blindingly-bright halo of golden fire, 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 was facing down 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
