LIGHTNOVELONLINE 112 – Wandrei Faust
It was somewhat amusing to see three individuals arc overtop the wall as if they’d just jumped on a trampoline. One was an evoy with an uncannily humanoid build, wearing a suit, the other was that pure-white Inax from earlier, while the third was a Mamon Knight of the insectile variety with a pair of cleavers as his weapons.
“Barzai. Kill.”
Less like a living thing and more like an autonomous missile, the crow whizzed down into the alleyway and set upon the evoy, turning him into a maelstrom of whirling ghostly mantis-blades, snapping jaws, and swarming insects. Krahe wasn’t sure whether this was a panic response, a legitimate attempt to strike down the crow, or both.
While the True Eidolon distracted one of her foes, Krahe wasted not a moment more to raise both her hands - her left pointing palm-first at her foe, her right aiming the muzzle of her gun at her bicep. The action, admittedly strange as it was, confused them for just long enough to let her form the necessary construct-shell, her left arm becoming clawed, rocky, and monstrous. Cleavers already moved, and the Croupier already set forth a withering shower of wicked daggers to punch holes into Krahe’s wards, but she had time enough; her wards would hold for the moment, doubly so against kinetic attacks, and no more than half of the Croupier’s deluge actually hit head-on to begin with. Of the hits, a third were grazing, causing them to be lacerative instead, and thus ineffectual in more ways than one. Krahe felt sympathy for the inax woman; she, too, had felt the disappointment of a withering barrage leaving its target very much alive, mere seconds earlier.
No matter. Cleavers would tear her to shreds if she let him get close. A pull of the trigger accompanied an incantation in an alien, eldritch tongue.
“Wandrei…”
Click. Boom. No bullet came out; its dregshot form burned up, in an instant, into formless thaumic energy, a stream that empowered the theurgic talisman rolled up inside the shell casing, and, in the same moment, carried it out the barrel of the gun. It was much like an extremely forceful application of a talisman, the sigils burning with a hateful glow as it adhered to her arm.
“Faust!”
A surge of power, burning, seething, a slithering presence surging through her arm, implicating itself within the construct. The talisman burned up in an instant. With the bursting of a liquid akin to boiling blood, the hollow forearm tore free and went careening forwards. There were two alternate modes in which the Wandrei Faust could be set loose; Chasedown, and Standoff. Chasedown would try to grab the target and restrain them, requiring a manual detonation command. In Standoff, the arm would instead try to get within optimal range of its target before firing its payload - the range was around three meters at present. Despite its speed surpassing that of a Red Reaper, Cleavers side-stepped its approach; he would have already struck her, had Krahe not been prepared, had she not skimmed to a spot in his 4 o’clock blind spot. He quickly spun around and reacquired his target, but a diagonally-rising pillar of stone smashed into his groin and threw him backwards. He was unharmed, but displaced and forced to reorient himself once more.
Meanwhile, as her Wandrei Faust changed targets to the evoy, Krahe fusion-formed a burster in her hand. Another gunshot carried it, the Six Trees Killer flying right at Croupier’s face. She stopped it with her barrier, but the grenade’s impact - and the kinetic component of its blast - smashed her off her feet a moment later.
She skimmed in the Croupier’s direction and raised a wall of cover, already turning to face Cleavers and forming another clawed arm-shell. Another shot. Another talisman. Another missile.
Just as it left her arm, she saw the first one passing to her right. It held the evoy by his torso with its fingers digging through his wards and into his chitin, dragging him against the wall so forcefully that it tore the facing off. Cleavers had righted himself and leapt at her, and despite unfurling his armor’s wings, he couldn’t dodge. The black-clawed fist struck him and mercilessly dug its fingers into his armor, carrying him away.
At near-enough the same moment, both flying forearms smashed their respective victims into the black jade wall by which Cassius was entrapped. With a spark of intent, both arms flashed with reddish-orange light, with streaks of golden-yellow mixed in. It was accompanied by a sound akin to a high-pitched scream, as opposed to the ominous buzz of her own anathemic power ripping the air. The pulse lasted perhaps one-third of a second, and from the seams of both the evoy’s and Cleavers’ plating, light and boiling fluid burst forth in equal measure. They bathed Cassius’ horrified face, both light and fluid in equal measure.
GRUDGE-FILLED GRASP
DEATH BORNE UPON CLAWS OF HATE
BLACK HAND OF DESOLATION: WANDREI FAUST
Before she could say or do another thing, the Croupier dashed past her wall. Krahe had heard her footsteps, and had already prepared a smoke eruption. Before long she had the Inax in a rear hold, though she had torn an impressive chunk out of her wards, and Krahe was fairly certain she wouldn’t have been able to restrain her without using several tar-tendrils and an unconscionable amount of entropy.
“I can still leave only three corpses in my wake. Do you want to continue this?”
She had no reason to take mercy on the Croupier in particular; it was a simple gut feeling. As for killing Cassius, though not something she was opposed to, would cause more of a stir than she wanted.
After not receiving a response from the Croupier, she choked her out and instead turned her attention to Cassius.
“Well? Do you want to fire another flare? Call more to their deaths? Or do I just empty your pockets and walk out of here? Either works for me.”
“...Alright,” he sighed, deflating in his stone shackles. “I’ll make sure you get to leave my territory without anyone on your tail, but that’s all I can do. For all the money on your head, you’re fifty times the trouble it’s worth.”
