Chapter 326: Done Brown
My sight fractures into a thousand pieces, each and every perspective originating from a different location upon my flesh. It's disorienting and so dearly damaging to my mind, but it rapidly switches, forcing me to see myself from an outer view.
I lay broken, shattered, bleeding from dozens of gaping wounds. I didn't even realize I lost my left leg. Blood pools out of it with a torrent as a low growl punctuates the broken streets of Blackstone, filled with the bodies of men, women, and other races. As it echoes against the stone alongside my heartbeat that accelerates to hundreds of beats per minute, I see my back creak and groan, shifting upward, all within the span of a split second. Then, a symphony of bone cracking resounds as Haen raises her scythe once more. I try to move, but I do not own my body right now, even as Painforge hurries to keep up with my heart. Yet Painsforge is not controlled by me. The pain... it comes from and is changed into raw power by another being dwelling within my flesh.
Haen's face shifts underneath her bone mask, but I can't see her expression clearly. What I do notice, however, is that she steps toward me even faster, swinging that scythe down with determination. As the edge swings for my head, bone proliferates from my skull, covering it entirely.
The tip of the scythe strikes my head, and I fall back into my eyes as everything shakes. Darkness encompasses me for a second before an even lower growl breaks it into a kaleidoscope of light.
A blade extends from my skull, veins of black running down it and into me that are entirely blocked by bone and flowing blood. Glancing down, I find the Bloody P—I find Blodwyn missing. He's doing that thing again. Pautuhm.
Even with the pressure bearing down on me, the blade endeavoring to sink deeper with veins of infiltrating Ether, the bone upon my face extends. From my face, it grows downward, covering my shoulders and my missing left hand, creating one of pure bone in a moment.
Then, the hand moves on its own as I'm forced to only watch. The bony, interlaced segments wrap around the blade with a creak as my head twists upward. From this angle, I can see the lower half of the Angel's face. It's a skeletal woman's face contorted into a grimace of effort, and Blodwyn forces us to stand. As if puppeted upward, we wrench the scythe up and stand.
The missing leg is already back as if it never left. The demon growls out a cry of repulsiveness as I fully recover within the moment it takes to stand. As I do so, strips of bone continue to cover my arms, creating long nails that hang from my fingers like blades, even on my prosthesis.
Haen steps backward as a cloud of darkness envelops her, leaving her scythe behind. However, a tired voice echoes throughout my bones the moment she enters the gloaming. And as it speaks, we wobble, nearly falling to our knees.
"Tired. Very tired."
The words are simple, almost childlike, as I realize Blodwyn might be a total mind now, blessed with a soul from his Angelhood, but he is young. Minutes old, weeks if you count from when he advanced. A second after he speaks, I regain control of my own flesh, and my senses heighten a thousandfold from the fleshy bone adorning my face, shoulders, and arms.
I stumble forward, gathering my balance forcibly as I clench my hands, both filled with a bolstering power. Quietly, I whisper under my breath. I try to communicate as I would with Lily, hoping that its youthfulness doesn't rob it of speech.
"Sorry for waking you early. How long can you keep this up?"
While I wait for an answer, I scan the cloud of darkness with my eyes until I feel a pull on the scythe I hold, the boned tips of my finger keeping me from touching it wholly. I grip it tighter, using both hands to restrain it as I trip to grab the shaft, but the force is too much. It drags me over the stone before I near the darkness, and I quickly release it from my hands, not wanting to enter something that even my sight of chains can't clearly see through.
As I release the weapon, I backstep, still trying to get my strength, senses, and body under total control. I can hear every single breath within this battle, each as if they were inches from me. My feet wobble from excessive use of force, even as they remain exhausted.
Vast lines of dark red Ether flow from the area around my skull, where Blodwyn has shifted to reside. This Ether digs deep into my muscles, flesh, and skin, repairing it while rejuvenating it, but I can already sense the river running dry. Blodwyn woke up, yet I can discern it wasn't without a price.
Gritting my teeth, I stand still with a slight crouch, ready for anything from Haen. Virgil is still on the ground, and behind me, so is Elizabeth. She's not moving, and a worryingly long slash covers her front. However, with Blodwyn's aid, I can hear her slow and forced breaths. The necrosis is the worrisome part now. I can't help but quickly look back, and I find that she forced her way through the line of demons to reach me. The other soldiers and Sigileds are fighting to reach us; Dawn isn't very far away either.
I step further backward, attempting to buy some distance as the thought comes across my mind that Haen can worsen wounds that she's dealt from afar. Cursing myself, I surge forward as Virgil slowly moves, grabbing his bloody skull with a slight jerk. Good. He'll be back up in a second. I know he will. He's the only one who has ever been able to keep up with me. Before I move, I inhale a sharp breath, something deep in the back of my mind opening itself to me. A hearty exhale leaves me when I feel my own blood accelerate on its own without a push from my heart, my mind guiding the motions.
It's an ephemeral feeling and one that isn't likely to help here, but the consequences of this little feeling are colossal. Twilight. I just used Blodwyn's first Sigil. A smile extends slightly onto my face as I regain my resolve and focus. I'm not alone. Never have been.
An Arbalest hurls me into the dark as I strain my senses, endeavoring to discern what is what in the gloaming Haen has created. I can hear her; I know I can, but there are so many noises that I have issues figuring out which is which.
And the instant I enter, I finally receive my reply from Blodwyn.
"No know."
Cursing silently, I find myself enshrouded in the suffocating darkness, my senses stretched to their absolute limits. I attempt to tone them down and focus on my immediate surroundings with decent success. I'm used to things like Echo and whatnot, so the stimulation doesn't ruin me. But I'd be lying if I said it wasn't distracting.
In this abyss, I search for the demon whose features remain hidden behind a bizarre bone mask. In her grasp, she wields her scythe once more, the Claymore retrieved at some time. The urgency leads me onward as I vividly remember the power of her attacks. She leaves behind grotesque and terrible wounds that can explode with a fury later. If I don't occupy her focus, she will finish off Virgil before he recovers, and Elizabeth for sure. I need to fight her and buy time until Dawn reaches Elizabeth.
I barely survived her attack earlier, and I am confident it was because of both my unique birth and Virtue. I cannot allow such a fate to befall them. Both would die instantly.
Closing my eyes as all I see are a flurry of interlaced chains, I concentrate on my other senses that yet remain. Temper removes my sight as all the others prosper. Each sound, every scent, and even the faintest shifts in the air become vital clues in my relentless pursuit. The shroud of darkness may obscure my vision, but it cannot conceal the telltale signs of her presence.
Low footfalls resound within the darkness, hurried breaths, dripping blood, and the stench of death are the things that guide me.
As I move cautiously through the inky void, I listen intently. Beyond this veil of darkness, the cacophony of battle rages on, a tumultuous symphony of clashing steel, shouts, and desperate struggles. My senses are a double-edged sword, for they allow me to perceive the entire combat outside, and I must sift through this auditory chaos to discern the elusive whispers of my foe. Even though I've found them once, I need to hold onto them throughout the cannons that have entered the field.
Time inches forward, and I hurry onward, scanning for her and gradually getting closer as the signs become easier to lock onto. I am on the precipice of discovering her location when, in a cruel twist of fate, I hear a swirl of air beside me. I twist around, flinging my left hand of bone out, and as I remove Temper, I find her scythe hurtling at me, only a foot away. Shifting backward, I wrap my hand around the shaft, hardly catching it before it sinks into my flesh.
But as I twist around with the scythe forceful shove, the darkness clears, revealing her malevolent form right before me. A bony hand, one simply so skinny that the bones jut out, reaches for my face with a deep black that suffuses it.
She lunges forward as if to grab my skull without a word of warning. I lean backward, finding her lower face visible at this close distance, a grim visage of malevolence. Painsforge roars within my ears, partially pushing away the darkness from my elevated heartbeat and blood flow. With focused strength, I pivot, throwing a kick right at her chest even as she comes for me.
However, she is faster than I expect, and I have to bend my leg, slamming a knee into her side as those bony fingers touch my skull. In a fraction of a second, her fingertips sink deep into the mask that Blodwyn has made, nearly inching into my brain as if no defense ever existed, but before she ends me, her body tumbles to the side of my knee.
As she falls, I do as well, hardly catching myself with my hands from the obscure position. I hastily propel myself to my feet as I hear her coming again, this time even faster. She's just like Virgil. She grows more powerful in the dark.
A tight smile grows as I ask my partner for some more aid.
"Anymore, Blodwyn? I need it, now."
I try not to be too demanding, but with the current circumstances, I can't really help it. However, it doesn't seem to matter as Blodwyn groans again, bone shifting as my blood accelerates even further, the artifact somehow affecting my heart guarded by Death's Lantern.
And from the few hundred beats per minute that I remember from the first time he did this, I feel it multiply in force. A thunderous roar rings from my chest as Painsforge stutters to keep up, my practice with the skill not enough to match Blodwyn's fervor. My hands shake from the blood flow and power as the bone gains a slight tinge of red.
I look ahead as the darkness parts even further, my heartbeat so fast I can't possibly measure it. All I know is that it hurts. A growing pain in my chest warns me of this effort. Too much, and it'll burst. But for now, I need to kill this demon.
I Arbalest forward, heading straight to where she vanished in the smoke. I practically teleport as Virgil does, shifting darkness with my step before arriving beside her. And as I do, she is only barely reclaiming her weapon, so I press her. The boned implements on the edge of my hands slice at her as I go low, striking for her unguarded legs. Her skirt-like dress covers her lower, but it is a flexible material, far more accessible to stab than the tight metallic gown above.
She practically dances backward, curving the scythe at my neck as she does her rotating evasion. I follow her, ducking her the blade just as I witness a knee impact the back of her skull. Stumbling forward from an appearing Virgil, I take the point, diving for her to take her to the ground.
I manage to wrap an arm around her as she retaliates, sinking her pale, leathery hand deep into my chest. It completely ignores Adumbral, not even bulging the Bulwark as it enters me. She searches for a heart, only to find coursing blood and lungs. Still, she strikes, ripping out my lung as I stab the concealed blade of my prosthesis into her neck. The knife plunges into her neck, and we both flinch in pain. But, the pain only emboldens Painforge further.
In the corner of my eyes, I see Virgil limping toward me after just barely standing up. Rearing back and then forward once more as we tumble on the ground, I strike Haen repeatedly. She screams into my ear with a Banshee's wail that shakes my mind and obliterates my sense of sound, but I hold on, even as she eviscerates me.
I manage to wrestle the demon beneath me, restraining her wholly. But as I do so, her scythe soars through the air once more. Before it reaches me, however, a shadow latches onto it and vanishes, Flickering so that Haen cannot control it. Her malevolent form writhes beneath my grasp as I wrap a tight bone grip around her throat. Her hands, like nightmarish talons, threaten to overwhelm me. Blodwyn does its best, but I can feel the life leaving me.
With a surge of desperate determination, I give up on strangling her. Instead, I go all in on striking her, betting that I will outlast her, blow after blow, each landing with a resounding impact. The pain is a constant companion. Each organ she removes from me is forcibly regrown, but it's never fast enough as Painsforge beckons her to try harder. Closing my eyes, I only use the senses from Blodwyn's merge of my skull, wholly focused on outliving her.
But she is a relentless force, undeterred by the punishment I inflict upon her. Haen is not only a demon, born with a more robust form than any human, but she is also an Angel, elevating that even further. With a cold and calculated cruelty, she reaches inside my body, her hands like instruments of death, and she rips out my organs without pause. The agony is beyond description, each moment a searing torment.
I refuse to yield, to surrender to the darkness that threatens to consume me, even as she wraps those leathery talons around my spine. My eyes widen as I worry she'll cripple me, but Blodwyn, with one last resounding groan that resembles a dying monster, sacrifices parts of itself to create more flesh in the way that Haen has to first eviscerate.
My chest is virtually a cavity of tossed salad. Only the salad is my innards. I clench my fist and slam it into her face, finally breaking her mask into a thousand segments that soar all over. Her face is contorted into agony, so direly concentrated on killing me that she doesn't even care about her own injuries.
The moment her head swings back from the impact, a shadowy form returns in the darkness, and with a pivoting step, Virgil brings Haen's scythe for her own body. The curved edge falls without a sound, tipped by a swirling purple Necrosis. It reaves into her back before Haen can control her weapon from afar, splitting her nearly in half. The floor rapidly glows with an even deeper incarnadine from her blood, spilling at a heightened pace from my own strikes.
Coughing, I haul myself away from her, searching my hip for Lily with my right hand. I quickly find her, the Colt's voice intertwining with mine.
"Wyatt! You're so badly hurt! Shoot her! I can handle it! I promise! Do it!"
"Kill her, Virgil!"
My friend swings for Haen with the scythe, but she raises her hand, pausing him in place as she regains control over the weapon. I'm unsure if it's an aspect of the Claymore or her Sigil, but I don't care. More organs of mine litter the street than an entire company of men would have.
Sending a silent thank you to Blodwyn as I feel my heart slow down and the bone shifts away from my face, I pull the trigger. A profound weakness suffuses my body, robbing me of even more life as a river of darkness connects Haen and me. Her open flesh is stolen from her as her life enters the Blooming Spider Lily, and Lily, in turn, heals me.
Flesh reconstitutes, as virtually every part of me is made brand new. But with that recovery, the weakness deepens even further.
I fall to my hands and knees as the darkness fades around me, my vision darkening all on its own. Heaving every gasp of air I can, I glance around, finding Dawn behind with Elizabeth, protected by many soldiers as they cheer. In the corner of my eyes, I can see her two arms already returned to this world. The sight fills me with relief despite my own words. The main front of the demons step back wearily, passing Virgil and me without contest as they eye us closely.
The shadowed man limps over to me and reaches down, grabbing me by my shoulders and lifting me over his. He turns to bring us back as I open my mouth to thank him and congratulate him on his new weapon, but a resounding crunch of stone from our rear stops us.
A voice that I was, honestly, never expecting to hear again enters my ears. I don't know how to feel as the killer of Kai Vinson, my 'mother' speaks to me.
"I see you've heeded my advice, little one. A little bit of madness, indeed."
Virgil pivots slowly, facing the two of us toward Aniwye Mhwee. She stands just as tall as before, a giant, one-eyed ogre that towers over humans. Her demonic nature is evident via her innate strength, allowing her to wield the cleaver in her hand the size of a horse despite having Sigils focused entirely on the mind. Even without a Ether or a Sigil, she could beat down any Base Sigiled, I reckon.
The Soul Eater smiles at us as I struggle to return a response. A thousand questions run through my mind, for I know Aniwye is no puppet to the Mother Below.
"Aniwye... what are you doing here? Why are you serving the one below?"
The demon guffaws, her massive body juggling. The many creatures behind her step back in fear, careful not to evoke her anger. Aniwye points upward at the heavens bereft of stars before answering.
"No, little one. I serve only the world as a whole, myself, and your father should I ever find him again."
Her answer astounds me. What? Then...
"Then why? Why are you trying to stop Vincent!? His rise should help you! It'll stop the Gods!"
Aniwye's head droops, and her humongous eye stares directly at me. I can see her expression sink to a lowly grimace before she gives me an answer.
"That is true. He will likely have the power to hold back, if not directly, kill most of the wakening Gods. Betting against the Wastelander, the Swarming Tide, the Executioner Of Dust is a fool's gamble. He's had a Flee On Sight Order placed upon him since he was eighteen. Yet... it is precisely his power that I lead the path to weaken his stands."
Virgil remains still, choosing to let me speak instead, but I, too, stay silent as Aniwye continues.
"For, little one, if he rises, millions will die. The rise of any God is brought with turmoil. Even the Devil, a God of balance and order, of chaos and rules, left behind nearly a million dead in his Apotheosis millennia ago. One as violent as Vincent may just destroy the world. At least the early Gods were born only of Ether, not flesh. They had no rise. They had no turmoil. They had no struggle. They only were. But us? We leave behind mayhem every step of the way."
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