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295 - Golden Death From on High [Sturmblitz]
🕑 Added 2023-09-10 06:13:08 +0000 UTCA/N: I forgot to write the paragraph where Joseph actually swings his mace. Fixed.
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Death’s Lieutenant pulled the trigger at the exact right moment, no sooner and no later, to ensure that its single shot would strike at the same moment as the five others. It was not a mere comet, but a meteor worth comparing to the great feat enacted by Sigmund during the Battle of Ubul’s Tomb.
For a moment it felt like the world froze, even without any input on Zef’s part, and her eyes met the Flesh Sculptor’s.
Five hammers from the heavens descended, five bullets forming the claws of an illusory dragon-claw to tear apart their prey, and in their wake, a ghostly, snarling head of Eisengeist, wrought of ghostly-green, eyes and maw both billowing golden flame as it flew.
In the next moment, the Flesh Sculptor was gone.
No body, no clothes, not even the slightest sign she had been there remained.
Counterintuitively, the collateral damage was minimal. The vast and terrible power of a Dragon Descendant had been given a clear purpose, and swiftly scattered once that purpose was fulfilled. The shockwave had torn the shingles off of the buildings in the immediate vicinity, and a substantial chunk of architecture had been outright erased below where the Flesh Sculptor had floated… But that was it.
Zefaris shivered. It was half out of thankfulness that Eisengeist’s power had been spread out over such a large area, stifled by the cursed mask… And mostly directed at Teutobochus.
The other half was excitement to see what a Thundercannon would do to one of these shells.
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Meanwhile, halfway across the city, a man known by many in his own sect as “The Mercenary”, found his solo tactics to have turned against him.
Joseph had spent the battle picking off stragglers with his mace and custom rifle, as well as shooting off obscuring rounds to screw up enemy intelligence. But now, he had been tracked down by a group consisting of a Red Robe, two Blue Robes, and five Black Robes. Normally, not an issue, but these eight were clearly a cut above the rest.
He fired a kinetic proliferator round into the chest of an eight-meter-tall humanoid made of swirling crimson aura. Within its mass floated all eight of the cultivators. The white crystal bullet ignited, streaking towards the formation-creature like a shooting star, only to explode in tendrils of white just before impact, smashing into it in an effort to throw it backwards. All such an expensive round did was stop it for a half-second. His mace thrummed on his hip, having built up a huge kinetic charge… But it was beyond safe limits. He couldn’t swing it without either breaking his arm, or doing something that would unequivocally reveal his true identity.
Then again, he was far from any of his fellow sectmates. Putting his rifle on his back, Joseph focused on escape for now, taking a sharp turn into an alleyway too narrow for the giant to pass. It would just change shape, but that was an extra delay to give him time. He quickly kicked back a mouthful of Witch’s Brew, keeping it in his mouth as he also took a crystalline pill. It crumbled between his teeth like rock sugar, but unleashed a burning flame into his mouth, only to be flushed down alongside the elixir. A power he had never quite gotten a full handle on ignited within him, and the Mercenary took wood-knot mace in hand, exiting onto the open street and turning to face his enemy as it came out of the alleyway.
He would need some space for this.
“Eight Stars of Calamity shine in the heavens. They bring death upon the fools who stand before me!”
The correct incantation was: “They bring death upon the enemies of the Estoras name!”
But that hadn’t been the truth since the time of Estoras himself.
His mace thrummed with power, blue flame seamlessly mixing with its vast kinetic charge. The noise and feeling when he brought it down were both truly concussive, and no wonder. Where once had stood buildings, between which enemy cultivators charged at him, was now only a desolate channel. It had half blasted, half burned a path straight ahead, forming a tunnel five meters across and coated with a fine, fleshy slurry.
Joseph collapsed on the spot as his flame sputtered out. He dragged himself through the streets, killing three more Black Robes on the way before he set down in a nicely out of the way building for the time being. He would recover thanks to the Witch’s Brew, but the battle would likely be over by then. Cultivator battles tended to either go on for weeks, or end within a few hours, with next to no nuance of timeframe.
The Estoras Family’s secondary line had lacked the resources to properly practice the Seven Calamity Armaments, so they had developed their own version, allowing them to harness the same power without all the tattoos, instead leveraging the secondary line’s access to certain unique alchemical ingredients. They had mutated themselves into being able to wield the Calamity Flame in a more limited manner that demanded special pills. Joseph personally didn’t give a rat’s ass about inheritance disputes, that was centuries apart from him. He’d just figured that if anyone could give him the resources he needed, it would be the Newman Sect. Thus far, it had worked. That Ersatz Soulfire Pill had been made only weeks ago.
Something caught his eye as he set up his rifle; a burst of red light from an apartment’s windows, followed by a man leaping out of it onto a rooftop. He wore a tattered crimson robe, showing swollen, pink flesh beneath, and a dagger dripping with blood was clutched in his hand. A deep red, almost burgundy-coloured, miasma wafted off of him. Joseph loaded his longest-range bullet, and, going off of the trail of destruction in that area to determine Strake’s proximity, he sent an aetherwave message to the man to point out the priority target.
One shot wouldn’t be enough to take the man down… But it would be enough to slow him.
Atrine-enriched powder, packed tightly around a single hair of Dracofulminate, which he had glued in place with a paste of gunpowder soaked in Black 7. He’d found simply asking to go much further than it would in any other sect… And it helped that he was one of the few disciples who had a gun that could withstand the power, making him a prime tester candidate for when the elders were away. The bullet was a spitzer-head made of a steel on the softer side, with a cold-iron penetrator.
The golden comet tore off the man’s arm, sent him careening to the ground… And smashed the living hell out of Joseph’s shoulder. It wasn’t dislocated or broken as far as he could tell, but it absolutely warranted another swig of Witch’s Brew.
