LIGHTNOVELONLINE 221 – Razgriz Pt. 2 – Volume 2 FINAL
Krahe’s side of that exchange was significantly uglier and more painful. That double-fisted punch had not only burst one and scorched both of her lungs, it had also bruised her heart. Her impact with the wall didn’t do her many favours, either. As she slumped to the ground she slipped out of consciousness, but Barzai’s shrieking call inside her own skull dragged her back into the world of pain. Groaning on the inside for lack of strength do so vocally, Krahe mobilized a monumental force of will, ripping open a wound-like grin within the palm of her left hand. She used a tendril of tar as thin as one finger to reach inside, and by the power of Thaumic Fusion, she brought out the silver-cased injector… but she couldn’t raise it up to drive it into her own heart. Her left arm gripped the implement, but she could barely raise her wrist. Once more, Krahe gathered a monumental force of will, gritting her teeth such that she felt one of her molars crack under the pressure. A strained groan rose from her throat. Blood began leaking from her nostrils, steaming as it ran down her face, and her vision was dyed crimson a moment later.
With a weight comparable to a mountain, Krahe raised her arm and pushed the injector’s monolithic needle into her chest. It scraped against one of her ribs, and with a sensation of icy heat, it pierced her heart. That same sensation soon flooded her, and pain returned as an ocean of clarion clarity — at once, the serum refused to let her ignore her state, yet also clarified her thoughts. Since implanting the Atomica she had been burning herself alive from within, but now she also felt that way.
What had felt like a protracted struggle had, in fact, taken a few seconds — so short in fact that the cloud of dust her impact with the wall had created was still yet to dissipate.
She nonetheless got back up, feeling her own insides writhe as they rearranged and pulled back together. Layers of skin, ravaged and baked to coal, sloughed off, revealing bare flesh underneath, threads of new dermal tissue already growing to cover the gap. It was then that Barzai returned to her, perching sideways on her left forearm.
And so, she raised her hand and once more ignited a flame, collapsing it into the light of anathema.
Tendrils of blackest black, suffused with glass and dark jade, twisted together from her wrist to form a nest. Within it Barzai perched, cackling, and as Krahe emerged from the cloud of dust, the raven began screaming the final stanza to its tirade. Though the sound reached her ears, her mind was so utterly focused on moving forward and not collapsing that she didn’t process what he was saying. She only noticed that at some point he stopped.
At the sight of Semzar, still staring at her in disbelief from behind his barrier, a deep, guttural disgust cut through it all, through the pain and exhaustion. It perfectly matched just how sick she felt. From the boundless well of vitriol she had refined and distilled throughout her life, a rebuke bubbled, and Barzai spoke it alongside her in perfect synchronicity.
“YOU ARE A TAPEWORM. THAT BODY IS NOT YOURS. RETURN IT TO ZAVESH.”
Around the framework of black tendrils, solid panels began forming an icosahedron. Semzar snapped out of his daze and once more began sloppily loosing flaming fists Krahe’s way, but even as wrecked as she was, it took minimal movement to dodge them. He wasn’t even putting the bare-minimum thought into them as he had done before — by now, Semzar was lashing out in pure panic, his ring flashing a dim light that spoke clearly of just how doomed its fool of a wielder was. There was not a chance in hell it would be ready before the Daemon Core was.
But… Just in case.
Krahe opened three more mouths along her arm.
And spoke the Words. She knew not whether or not there was any point or benefit, but she did it regardless.
With the first Word, three flaming fists closest to her were cast aside, tinged in red and black, and sent flying back at Semzar, changing shape mid-air into the clawed talons of Wandrei Faust.
With the second Word, several chairs and tables were sent flying.
With the third Word, the windows blew out.
With each word, the Daemon Core’s formation sped up.
With each word, the ember at its core burned ever brighter, with ever more wretched hatred for its victim.
THREE KEYS TO SWING WIDE THE GATES OF BLACKEST BLACKNESS
THREE WORDS SO MIGHTY NO MORTAL MIND CAN HOLD THEM
THREE BREATHLESS MOUTHS WITH WHICH TO SPEAK THEM
At the moment of completion, as Krahe gestured forth to sic the Daemon Core upon Semzar, the baneworm had the good judgment to strike, rightly thinking that she was not in the ideal state to dodge his strike. Krahe, without even thinking, raised an unassisted barrier, a swirling, undulating mass of smoke and sparks, almost alive in appearance. It didn’t matter how much entropy it cost her, and it would not have mattered even if that impact had sent her into meltdown. Rather than redouble his assault Semzar began feverishly looking around, and when his gaze fell upon the couch where he had sat, or rather upon the unconscious body of Casus Aristedes, he thought he might still have a chance. But by the time he began moving in that direction, the Daemon Core had, with unsettling swiftness, caught up to him, floating ominously overhead. One of the shell’s panels cracked.
In the next moment, screaming death poured forth and obliterated everything below his meatsuit’s head, burning a farcical silhouette into the floor tiles. Crimson light filled the ballroom and poured out of all available openings. In every way that mattered, Semzar was already dead. Only an anathema-poisoned, mutilated, dying baneworm remained, writhing impotently within its skull in a vain effort to escape.
AN EYE OF CRIMSON IMPRISONED IN BLACKNESS
ITS GAZE ERUPTS FORTH TO SCOUR AWAY THE UNWORTHY
BLACK HAND OF DESOLATION: DAEMON CORE
Krahe, with every ounce of will left to her, stumbled over to Semzar’s head, leaning on furniture along the way. Slowly, with great effort, she stomped and stomped until the skull cracked open and Semzar flopped out. He was severely discolored, veins bulging beneath his slimy skin, and blackened anathema burns covered a third of what remained of his body. He didn’t even try to escape, twitching in her grasp. She brought out a souldreg extractor and jabbed it into the dying worm. A multicoloured mass of souldregs filled the vial halfway, the natural pearlescence marred by black and purple threads and specks. After stowing it away, Krahe struggled back to her feet and ambled over to the couch, sitting down next to Casus.
Every screaming muscle in her body insisted that it would be fine to fall asleep, that the Inquisitor would arrive any time now. Krahe didn’t buy that, and forced herself back up. Lacking the strength to do anything so glamorous as carry her unconscious comrade out of the mansion, she dragged him along instead.
Having already entered the mansion, Yazata was in no position to witness the light show. However, out of anyone, she was particularly well suited to hearing the Words, to feeling the reverberations of a high theurgy being carried out to the utmost extent. Feeling the abrupt dimming of Blackhand’s magical signature that followed the theurgy, the Inquisitor continued making her way further into the mansion with renewed urgency.
With her pack of red hoods in tow, she came across the two of them at the foot of the staircase leading to the ballroom’s main door. To say they were in a sorry state would have been an enormous understatement. Casus bore numerous wounds, his right arm was wrecked, and so was the Silberblut Coupler. He was unconscious, but besides the filth, he would be fine. Blackhand, who was dragging him along, resembled the burnt-out husk of a dead anathemist more than any living thing. The left side of her face was completely overtaken by anathema burns, as was a significant portion of the rest of her body. Trails of blood crusted her face, yet somehow her bodysuit was pristine. Then, a chunk of burned skin sloughed off, and fresh skin made itself known underneath. Calbian Molting Tonic. Unmistakable. That she lived in her state was no longer a surprise — the question became how she was able to walk in her state given the tonic’s clarifying, painkiller-neutralizing side effect.
Yazata didn’t get to ask any of the many questions swirling in her mind. Blackhand locked eyes with her, smirked, and uttered with a death-like whisper: “Ah. Good. You must be the Inquisitor.”
With those words, she also collapsed.
