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Behind him, he could hear the distant sounds of gunfire, staccato and more singular barks, of those who had dared attack Beacon and their defenders. Atlas' soldiery and drones, Beacon's own less capable machines and armed guards and, of course, the Hunters both student and teacher, all rose against the assault on their home. Sparing a glance over his shoulder, he saw the fires glowin on the other side of the building, and in the distance, the billow of dust and ash that meant a building had fallen. High above, a Nevermore screeched, lured by the sight of fire and emotional reactions to the attack, and lances of fire, literally in two cases, swatted it from the sky as it loomed too low for its own safety.
War, if on a small scale, was ever a brutal and climactic machine of evolution.
Somewhere in that mess, he was sure, Glynda would be in that fight, crushing those before her under a deluge of their fellows, their weapons, and detritus around them, like a dark avatar of retribution, ripping asunder those who dared to lay a hand on her home and her students. Around her would be students, armored and garbed as they were for battle, and soldiers fighting beside them. With blood and fury and fire, they would push through the enemy, win the day, then turn to the Grimm their fight would summon and win the day yet again. First against fire and steel, and then next again against fur and bone, they would stand and win. Honor for the fallen, comradery and credit for the wounded, and glory for those many who escaped unmarred and fought their hardest.
But that wasn't his to pursue, not now at any rate. No, his was the fury, righteous and hot, that bubbled in his veins like liquid fire, cracked the concrete he trod upon like so much glass with each titan's step, and roared in his ears like the dragons who had raged against him when he found them. The dirt and soil fared no better than the concrete once he left the concrete path between the crop fields behind Beacon, the soil and plants crushed under his weight, compacted in the way a path would naturally be after hundreds of men and women walked it.
Evidence of his fury, leaving the marks of hundreds in each step, the poetic aspect of his mind offered without prompting.
"Fall!" He and his rage filled, passion driven, faith directed mind as he broke through a bus obscuring his path, one he had a thousand times brushed around before. Now as broken as Cinder would be, he knew when he saw her, standing across the clearing - his clearing - with her back to the cliff. Between them, the cracked, smoking, despoiled circles he had used for his holiest of prayers. Fuel for his rage and indignation.
"Ah, Professor Knight." The woman smirked, smoothing her red dress with one hand, the other kept behind her back. With the same free hand she waved at the clearing around them and in as innocently cruel a voice as he wagered she could manage, asked, "Do you like the festivities I organised? Your little fair was just so much fun, I felt I just had to return the favor to show my gratitude properly."
"What have you done…" He murmured, snarling after a moment, pointing his winged spear at her and baring his teeth, "What have you done, Fall! You desecrate my holiest of sites, attack a place of innocence, all for what? The power of the girl you crippled?"
"Oh no, this get together is all for you, dear Knight." The woman sneered, pacing along the cliff edge tauntingly, one wary eye always on him even as she turned to pace back and forth. "All the chaos, the fighting, the death out there? All for you, dear Knight. My mistress and I wanted you to feel right at home, a proper welcome for you, whatever you truly are."
"For me…" In that moment, he wished for nothing more than to cross the clearing and throw her from that cliff she was so interested in treading, but the knowledge of the trap he'd walked into stayed his hand, alongside the sensation of life around him, knowing they were her allies come to strike him down.
Walking into a trap was one thing, throwing himself where she clearly wanted him to be, from how she'd positioned herself, was another entirely.
"Whatever game you are playing, surely your lot knows you won't be walking away in any shape to attack the Maiden after this." He stated plainly, stepping to the edge of his broken, desecrated circles and scowling angrily as his blood boiled. Patience, he chided himself, fingers flexing along the haft of his ancient spear, resting the base against the ground in front of him. Meeting her eyes and seeing her smile, his own narrowed and he asked, "But you knew that already, and so have a separate detachment sent along to make that attempt."
"The Maiden is a side project at this point, really, but what can I say?" She shrugged and chuckled in a cold way, eyes ever sharp and watching him carefully. A cruel pantomime of mirth and excitement that sent a chill up his spine and fire through his veins. "I'm a bit on the greedy side, I suppose. And you deserved a nice party, to make you feel at home."
"Hmph. As you like, glorified harlot that you are, but if you think this is like my home you are sorely misinformed." Or rather, if she thought his home was typically like this, though he didn't dwell on it beyond that. Instead, he turned his attention to the woods, watching the edge of the darkened forest warily. "Now then, girl, as you know enough of what I am to challenge me with a shard of Priscilla's scythe, I am going to ask where you got it."
"I got it from my queen." She didn't expand beyond that, and the Undead knew not to bother asking.
Then she finally brought the other hand around, her left one, with the dagger in her grip carefully, looking over its sharp, fragmented shard of what once was. His knuckles tightened around his spear until the wood, ancient and infused with Souls and Titanite, creaked in protest. She saw his reaction and chuckled, continuing her pacing while the presences he could discern around him moved closer. Readying themselves, no doubt, for the attack in a way that had him wondering if they knew exactly how he sensed and noticed people's presences.
"You mentioned a party, Fall." He rumbled, Pyromancy flame wreathing his hand in his fury made reality, the bright reds and oranges crackling around his fist audibly. The woman's eyes snapped onto it in wariness and he smirked, asking in a low tone, "Did you invite our guests, though? Or did you intend them a surprise, not knowing the extent of my ability to discern them?"
The attack seemed prophetic in that it prompted exactly the reaction he'd wanted, the ambushers reacting to their plan's foiling with an attack to seize his even feigned openness to it. To one side, he saw a flash of blue and his palm snapped up and then swept to the side in an arc, fire billowing out into the trees before him and earning a surprised cry from his attacker. On his other, Hazel swept in, upper body bare for reasons he didn't know, arm cocked back in a no doubt powerful blow. Extinguishing his Pyromancy flame for the moment he stepped back in response, fast enough that wind stun his bare arms and his vision swam as the Undead's body pushed his speed to the furthest it could go.
The fist swept before him as the man's feet slammed into the dirt before him and Deacon brought his simple spear around and across, cracking across his foe's chest loudly. Hazel ignored the welts it raised entirely and grabbed it, attempting to yank the weapon free for only a moment before the Undead wrenched it even further to the right, off-balancing him as his blue-garbed ally swept in.
The Undead felt the metal of the leg that slammed into the back of his head and grunted at the flare of pain it brought, letting Hazel stagger away and turning to glare over his shoulder as the younger, silver-haired man staggered away from his back. "You are yet young, Black." He warned the man, the only warning he would grant him, regardless of whether the young fighter knew that or not. "Leave or I will kill you, this is no battle where mercy shall be offered, or your youth considered before I act."
"If you want to talk about a lack of consideration about age, you should talk to Ozpin." Hazel rumbled before him, hands holding two pairs of glowing, bright crystals in each hand. Crystals that, before the Undead's eyes, he brought down into the joints of his arms and then into his hips, lightning crackling along his body as he roared, "He's the one you should be the enemy of!"
Without a comment in return, the Undead warrior thrust the tip of his spear towards the dark skinned man's face, forcing him back and then turning to force Mercury back with the whistling spear tip as well. Now, he bellowed fire in Hazel's direction and moved on Mercury, pressing him back into the woods that even now began to choke and smolder with smoke, ash and fire. The young man knew better than to attack him, spending the few seconds that Deacon focused on him backpedaling and focusing his entire being on evading his rapid thrusts and whistling swings.
Then he turned, thrusting at where he felt Hazel to be, forcing the furious, charging man to stop and lean to the side or be impaled through the throat by his long spear. He slammed his leg up to boot Hazel back a foot and used the force to turn, spear whistling through the air before Mercury could capitalize on the opening. The silver-haired man ducked under it and rolled, landing on his back and lashing up towards the Undead's face with both legs and whistling air. He took the blow rather than move, gritting his teeth as his head was forced back and his other arm lanced up into the youngest man's side.
The blow hurled the man up and into the air, sending him sprawling across the clearing towards his mistress where he pushed himself up on hands and knees, hand pressed to his side while he hacked. Hazel's fist lanced up into his face once and the other answered, slamming home again and driving him back into a tree hard enough to crack the bark beneath his skin. The Undead thrust into his leg and Hazel snarled, blood flowing forth freshly as Deacon wrenched the weapon free, drawing a line in the soil made up of the man's blood.
Hazel shoved out from the wood with a roar and Deacon caught the arm that swung at him by the wrist, turning on his heel and hurling the man across the footpath into and then through the tree on the side the man had come from. Still the man fought on to stand, bleeding and with no doubt broken ribs, and the Undead closed on him, slamming a foot up and into his jaw hard enough he saw a tooth mixed into the blood from his burst lip. Before he could fall to his back the leg lashed to the side and into Hazel, booting him out and into the clearing as well.
His eyes met Cinder's as he stormed into the cleaning, a fist slamming into Mercury's head as he rose and surged towards him, driving him onto his back with a cry of pain. He left the an there, reeling, and booted Hazel to his back as well, resting a boot atop it and holding him there. Pinned by a titan, the bloody-lipped warrior could only grunt and struggle, hands gripping his calf and shin and trying to pry him off. A spear levelled at his throat ended that rather soundly, the Undead meeting his eyes until his hands flopped to his sides and Hazel, oddly calm, looked to Cinder.
"Your plan looks to have failed, Fall. A fact that should have been evident at the onset, against one such as me and what I am." Deacon snarled, bearing down on the man below with more of his weigh. Beside him, Mercury staggered upright and away, a hand pressed to his side and face pinched in pain and eyes narrowed in anger. "No I loathe to do so," he began, meeting Cinder's flat face with a small, confident smile, "I must. Surrender, Fall, and your compatriots will be allowed to live."
"And me?" She asked, an eyebrow raising coyly while a foot slid back and she stepped to the side, away from his spear arm. Turning so her knife-arm was between them, and the only threat to him with it, she asked in a sly voice, "What about me, if I surrender?"
"You desecrated my holiest site, your life is entirely forfeit." He answered simply, adding after a moment, "You may only buy your compatriots' lives, not your own. That is non-negotiable, and I will already have to make effort to not relish your just destruction. These two," he nodded between Mercury and Hazel, "and the third, behind me, however, may be spared your justice."
Looking over his shoulder, he met the gaze of another stranger, standing two yards away where he himself had broken into the clearing prior. The man turned one should towards him, fist holding the scabbard of his sword and the arm facing him holding the handle of his blade, jaw clenched in some manner of effort and arms trembling slightly to match it. But what could he be struggling with-
"Semblance!" His eyes widened and he turned, glaring hate at the smiling women before him and thrusting his long spear towards her.
The woman dodged back, dangerously close to the edge of the cliff, and to the side. Away from him, leaving the space behind him clear. Behind him, he heard the man cry out, and then searing pain at the join of his right shoulder that sent him staggering to the side, off the man below him, a wave of angry, crackling red sputtering through the air past the cliff. It disspiated in the air and he snarled, raising his left arm into a defensive stance before him. His right arm, however, spear still gripped tight in its fist, fell the other way and lay still, thudding on the ground and spraying red across the soil.
Hazel and mercury were moving inside a moment in spite of their injuries, but the Undead was undeterred by the loss of his favored limb. He spun, lashing out with a backhand that Mercury managed to catch on the leg he'd aimed to kick with, the limb curling defensively just in time to catch the blow. As the younger man was batted aside, the Undead turned, slamming a kick into Hazel's shin and staggering him back under the titanic force. Skin split under the blow, leg bleeding, but hazel seemed uncaring for the injuries still.
Semblances were an annoyance, truly, he decided as he lumbered forward and pivoted sharply at his waist to counter the man's now stumbling attack. His fist slammed home into Hazel's shoulder and something broke inside it, the arm going limp entirely as the massive man stumbled out of reach, arm broken beyond use. The stranger joined the fray then, fast enough to seem a blur of black and red even to him, and cut a deep furrow across his back that drew blood and exposed ribs.
Then, thunder cracked and roared in his ears as the Undead screamed in earnest pain for the first time in the entire fight, lightning from the sky arcing down and into him. He stumbled to the side, clothes burned and blacked, skin no better along his shoulders. Bleeding from his severed arm and down his back in bright rivulets, he stumbled towards Beacon and met Cinder's eyes flatly. Eyes that burned with fire like fury, the woman lifting into the air at the cliff edge slightly, hands holding flames and wind stirring under her. Mercury and the stranger spared her stunned glances, but Hazel did not. The woman ignored them all, of course, smiling haughtily as he stepped away from them, bringing his good, if numbed from the lightning, arm up in front of him to defend himself.
"It was quite chivalrous of you to offer me and mine such a generous surrender, Deacon." She smiled, a cold thing that vanished as her off hand again reached behind her and drew for the the knife, the woman looking at it curiously for a moment. "I don't know what exactly you are, but my mistress says this will kill you permanently. I've seen what it does to a single, normal man, but I wonder what it will do to you?"
"All which you shall find out is the feeling of having your soul ripped from your very body." Again, he summoned his Pyromancy flame and, in a low, threatening voice laced with all the fury his titanic body could contain, he snarled and moved. Before they could react, he knelt suddenly, slamming his fist into the ground and sending out a wave of fire hot enough that the dirty baked into sheets around him to ward them off. Kneeling, he began to pray, "And as the warrior bled and battled, the goddess did see him and- Agh!"
A gun cracked once, and then thrice more, rounds ripping through his jaw and violently whipping his head to the side. His remaining hand came up, feeling the bone and flesh hanging from his ruined jaw and he snarled in realization, the sound wetter and hollower without most of his mouth. Turning to the man in the fine clothes leaning against a tree, golden gun resting in the crook of his left elbow, bracing his right hand still, the Undead's eyes narrowed. Another round cracked forth before he could move towards Watts and he snarled as the bullet tore through flesh and bone, turning to see the front of his jaw skitter across the ground.
"Your magic requires speech, Deacon Knight." Cinder explained, the battered warrior turning to look at her cruel, pleased smile, "My plan was to rob you of that, and cripple you. A plan that has succeeded completely. Now, for the last step of the plan. Watts!"
The pistol cracked twice more, the rounds tearing into his left kneecap this time. He snarled and staggered to the side, Hazel lunging at him and slamming his fists down into his wounded side's shoulder hard enough that when they came away, his little fingers hung limp and broken. He was forced down on his wounded knee by the force and tried to rise, before the hands came down on him again and forced him down again. On his good side, mercury shot forward with bursts of Dust or air, slamming gunfire fast kicks into his head. The Undead snarled and lashed out, catching the man by a foot when he tried to evade and, using him as a screaming, breathing weapon, beat back Hazel for breathing room.
Trying to rise again, he hurled Mercury out and away, far over the cliff to fall to his demise. All thoughts of mercy, now, were as soundly perished from his mind as Mercury himself was now and he turned at the sound of feet. The red-bladed man swept to the side and cut across his chest, the Undead parried with his arm, protecting his more vital organs and then lashing out with a powerful left hook he'd hoped to catch Adam in the jaw. The man was faster than Mercury, though, and danced back just out of reach before Deacon felt Hazel slam his body into his back, kicking his feet into the backs of his knees to force him to them.
"Adam!" Cinder called, lighting cracking down on him as his sword came up and he snarled in pain, the weapon coming away glowing and his arms shaking, sweat beading along his face's bare parts. Seeing it, Deacon roared through his ruined jaw and rose, slamming his head back in search of Hazel. "Hazel watch out, Adam, take his legs!"
That was all the warning he had, a split second later having the arc of crackling red burns over the ground and take him just below where Hazel's feet were, cleaving through flesh and bone like fire through ice. He fell with a snarl as much fury as pain and caught himself on his remaining arms and ruined knees, trying and failing to rise before lighting cracked once more, into and through his lower back. The powerful heat cooked through him, leaving a smoldering hole, and he finally sagged to the side and grunted in pain.
"Now, to finish this you insufferable-" He rolled over at the woman's words and how close they sounded, landing on a back burnt almost raw and bleeding. From his hand, fire spewed hot and directed, a torrent that slammed into the woman's face and earned a pain filled screech of raw, pure agony.
Hazel was on him in a second, legs wrapped around his bicep and bracing as hard as he could against his shoulder with them, his own hands gripping the Undead warrior's wrists, binding him as best he could and straining against the warrior's struggles. Strained and pained, the man cried out, "Cinder, stab him! Before he breaks free!"
She ignored him, grasping the burnt side of her head and falling to her knees with a scream, smoldering and smoking as her hair and skin burned. He tried to rise and the man, Adam, was there, slamming his red blade through the Undead's chest just under his collar bone. Panting and backlit by the forest burning around them, the man laid a hand on his chest and pushed away, snarling under his breath and collapsing on the ground beyond.
"Well, look what the brats dragged in." Watts joined them, standing over them, face a mask of pure pleasure at his predicament. He tried a snarl in answer but only blood came forth, the man chuckling and giving the sitting Faunus a nod of appreciation, "Good work, I could do without his sanctimonious-"
"You bastard!"
"Oh boy, here we go…"
"You ruined my face, you ancient son of a… A whore!" Cinder snarled, storming over to stand over him, face a scowl where the skin still existed.
The entire left side of her face was burned now, the hair burnt away entirely on that side for a fist-sized chunk of space and blacked beyond, falling away in ashen sprinkles. Her eye had been burned away as well, permanently shut, and the burn scar stretched from there down almost to her collar bone, the barest hint of her cheek bone bare for it. For an idle moment he wondered how she was standing, but her entire body was trembling, so she was no doubt on her way into a shock fuelled unconsciousness.
He'd ruined her, and all he could do in response was smile for her, teeth bloodied and body heaving for air.
Her only response was an incoherent shriek of rage, left arm rising and following, burying the scythe-shard into his chest once, twice and then a third time. He roared in pain, felt the corruptive influence taking hold, eating his flesh and bone away, and tried to summon forth his Pyromancy. It flickered in his hand and died, Hazel letting him go and wrenching Adam's sword free for the Faunus. Through pain so fierce and deep it sent him into shock and his vision into swimming darkness, Deacon saw his body smoking and saw his chest cave in before, finally it began to collapse inwards entirely. Blackened and falling to pieces, it caved in, like a house burnt out from the center finally falling to gravity.
His vision swam once again and his head rolled back, before he faded into sleep.
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He felt cold, he realised quickly. Cold wind on his, but most of him was swaddled in something soft and warm. He was bare of most clothing, beyond simplistic seeming cloth pants, and the next thing he noticed was his toes. Wiggling, curling and uncurling, they were there. His hand as well, laying in the cold wind and on top of the fluffy thing that swamped him. And he was exhausted, he noted as well. In a way he hadn't been since he'd been a normal Human, training all day with the other knights, breaking himself to reforge himself into something useful. Knights who he couldn't even recall… His hand twitched in sadness and anger at the realization and suddenly another pair grabbed it, holding his hand and rubbing circles into the back of his large hand.
His eyes shot open and he made to rise, before a gentle voice chimed above him pleasantly, "You are awake, and that is good. But you must rest more before you make to move." He did, in spite of everything, and laid back against the lap his head rest on, fingers playing with his hair as his eyes met soft, kind, lonely ice blue, set over a pleasant if sad smile.
"As you wish…" He rumbled, relaxing against her and ignoring their surroundings in favor of simply looking at her. He knew she had earned ire filled gazes and the ignoring of her fellows in Anor Londo, before her interment, and so simply looking at her brought her joy.
"Very good." Around them, her ruined tower where they'd first met sat as they'd left it, wind howling around them but unable to interrupt their words. He ignored it still, beyond a cursory glance, and returned to looking at her, earning a pleasantly pleased smile from the great half-breed. "You were rather badly wounded in that fight, were you not?"
"I… I did, yes." And those wounds were gone now, he didn't add. She seemed to know though, humming and running her fingers through his hair, parting and straightening it to better frame his face. Idly, he noted, "My hair is long again… I shall need to cut it."
"I should think not." She chided, sounding like a mother telling her child not to do a foolish thing. "It is rather pleasant, the way your hair frames your face."
"But my Lady, my covenants are-"
"Are ancient and voided, for you were but a petty knight sworn to Lords at that time that you spoke them. Or do you think the ghosts of dead gods care for your old oaths, long since fulfilled?" She chided softly, ceasing her ministrations for only as long as it took to swat him on his great nose. "You understand, right, Deacon? That is the name you go by now, is it not?"
"It is." He nodded, "And I do not understand what you mean, no, my Lady."
"Oh of course you do not, silly me." His eyes narrowed and she chuckled, an oddly bell like, childish sound in her great frame. Gentle, musical, and pure. "Knights have ever been bound to oaths and honor, but you? To you, it always seemed less like ties that bind and more like chains. Imprisonment, to dead words of dead languages, spoken to gods so long dead their bodies are not even as dust any longer."
"One should not so casually break faith with the gods." They could be vengeful, and karma tended to take action where a god would - or could - not. "What about Beacon, though, my Lady? What about-"
"You may worry about these things soon enough, my sweet, dear knight. For now, simply rest your head here, and sit with me. Speak with me, even." She spoke in a softer, almost brittle voice in a quiet and weak way, like she was afraid he would refuse her and knew she would break down if he did. Pleadingly, she added after a moment, before he could answer, "It has been so long since we truly spoke, you understand? Since we sat together like this, in this lonely little place."
"I… Have my duties, Priscilla. You know that." Her face pinched and his heart seized, and the Undead rushed to add, before she could get truly upset, "But I have time to sit, and speak, Priscilla. What, ah, what did you wish to speak about?"
"This… Beacon. This academy of monster hunters and protectors, to which you have decided to offer your support and comradery. Do you… Like it?" His confusion at the question must have shown on his face, for her hands returned in full to their idle ministrations, relaxing him while she spoke, "You are helping mortals of another Age, and not for any benefit to yourself. Even your oaths don't demand you work with them, at best one would argue they would demand you go out into the land. To slay the Grimm where they are, rather than stay in some school, writing books and training students."
"I… Needed information on the world-"
"But when you had enough information to understand the world you found yourself in, and access to maps and topography, you yet stayed at the Academy." She pointed out, soft eyes hardening and looking into his. Demanding answers of him, more steadily than Priscilla had ever dared to before. "You choose to stay, choose to be there. And so I ask, are you happy there?"
"I… I believe that I am, yes." He nodded, "I want to protect the Academy, to train the students. Originally, I sought only information and respite. Now, though…"
"And yet you abandoned it for your personal shrine." The new voice was deeper, filled with a base and intimidating power that seemed to crackle through the air.
The Undead turned and half rose form the woman's lap, staring at the robed figure standing at the precipice he had so many times used to return to Anor Londo. The great figure was instantly recognizable by the crown on his head and the robes he wore, even if they were in far finer a state than when he had last seen them. Ruined as it had been even before his pit the crestfallen, burned creature on his sword and left it bleeding in the ash of the Kiln.
"If you truly cared for the Academy over oath and faith, you would have stood and done battle for it as it burned." Gwyn, the Lord of Sunlight, explained for the dumbfounded knight. Turning to him, the Lord smiled gently, the face of a grandfather looking at the warrior as he returned to gazing out into the empty landscape around the Painted World and leaning on his sword. "If you truly love the people of this world, then you must abandon petty, ancient faiths to we dead gods and lost Lords."
"But, Lord, I cannot violate covenant with the gods- With you!" He stood now in spite of Priscilla's wishes, standing between the woman and the Lord, arms spread in an offer of peace and respect. "To do so would be to dishonor myself. I am but a knight, I cannot hope to-"
"You are a knight, but you are far more than a simple knight." Gwyn argued sternly, leaving his sword behind and turning to look at the younger being. Approaching him, the Lord reached out and laid a hand on his shoulder, a foot below the Lord's own while the Undead warrior glanced to it in shocked reverence. "What did you think my plan was, in splitting my soul apart, and erecting the Bells of Awakening? If I meant to serve as kindling myself or path Undead into the Flame, then these things would have been against the point. Would they not?"
"Yes, I… Suppose they would." The Undead heard Priscilla stand beside him and glanced up to her face, only a couple feet above his own now even with her great height. To the Lord he asked, "What, then, was your plan?"
"To forge a new, more powerful Lord than myself or my allies, to begin anew the cycle of life. The Souls, Lord and otherwise, of the great Lords, of the Undead in your path, of beasts and monsters…" He squeezed the warrior's shoulder and smiled through his bushy, great white beard. "You need not hold yourself to covenants with gods when you yourself are one, Deacon Knight, Lord of Cinder."
"Lord of… Of Cinder?"
"Yes. As I was when you took the dregs of my life from my dessicated body, but stronger by an exponential factor. A Lord of Cinder is connected to the core of life, the First Flame itself, and that connection is dictated by the strength of the person." The fallen Lord nodded to him, "You are the strongest Lord to yet exist, but you are more than a Lord of Cinder or Sunlight ought normally be."
"And yet I fell." Deacon rumbled sadly, shaking his great head and sighing. "What, I wonder, will happen without me to protect the world?"
"Such is a fate to fear, but not one that we need fear now." Gwyn answered simply, stepping back from him and returning to his sword, pulling it from the stone and bringing it to rest against the ground before him. The Undead turned to his half-breed companion but Gwyn answered before he could even ask the question, "Lady Priscilla's power can destroy much, but the Flame itself is not subjected to it. Though a Lord of Cinder will be harmed greatly and crippled for a short time by its strike, only a Lord of Cinder or one powerful enough to become one can truly end a Lord of Cinder."
"To destroy you or Lord Gwyn with my own hands, as you are now, I would need to be far more powerful than I am." Priscilla explained, smiling gently at him and shrugging her shoulders at the plainness of the statement. "My interment was in large part due to the fear of many gods for my power, but more than that was due to my ability to end Undead."
"T'would be hard for an Undead to face legions of Undead to test and strengthen them if Lady Priscilla's powers ended so many that would come for her soul." Gwyn explained simply from where he stood, only a few feet from the dropoff that would send them to, presumably, Anor Londo. "You are a Lord of Cinder, every bit my equal and, in parts, even my better. But I see that you seek release before you will ignore the old oaths and owed tithes. So as Lord of the Gods, I unbind you of them."
"Unbind me…"
"He means that you are free of silly promises you already met, and open to only the jolliest of cooperation with people you think worthy of it." The Undead spun at the familiar voice, eyes widening excitedly as his brother, Solaire approached from the entryway. The warrior cast his weapons away and spread his arms expectantly, "Come, brother! It has been so long and I desire a brotherly embrace!"
"Solaire!" He crossed the arena in four great steps, sweeping the moderately smaller man up in his arms and crushing him against his chest. "It has been so long! How are you even here? How can you be speaking to me?"
"Lords of Cinder are unique, with powers their own." Gwyn explained simply, the knight setting his armored brother down and turning to the other Lord while Solaire knelt and bowed his head in reverence. Gwyn waved a hand and Solaire rose again while the paternal giant smiled and asked, "Do you have an inkling of what your Lordly power would be? Given how you faced down your foes throughout the Age you fought in?"
"I don't…" He trailed off, edges of his mouth tugging up with the threats of a smile, "I summoned allies, like Solaire and Siegmeyer, and others besides."
"Indeed, my dear Knight." Priscilla offered with a small but bright smile, gesturing for the leaping point with a wave of her hand. "Now, it is time for you to rise, Deacon. Rise and put an end to this party, as that cruel woman so called it."
"And do so with allies numbering as many as you would like, you just have to pick them!" Solaire added, fists on his hips and head thrown back as he laughed at the image only he saw at that statement. An action he often had done, in their travels when they met or even journeyed together. Growing more serious, the man rumbled threateningly, "I would look forward to having words with this Cinder Fall, though, for desecrating a holy site consecrated in my name. Dead faith or not, I still have my pride, haha!"
"Your summoning will be limited on your first endeavor, and so I will join you in this battle. My power joined to yours." Gwyn remarked, looking, impossibly for all he knew of the God's will and demands from before the Fall of the Age, to Priscilla, "Grand-daughter, will you as well?"
"They sought to use my scythe, use me no less, to strike him down." The woman answered in a low, angry voice the likes of which even his nightmares had not done justice. Her scythe was in her hand in a moment, spinning through the air with a sharp whistling before the head landed on the ground and stopped there, kicking snow high from its momentum. "Though I will lack my power in truth, if I take their heads they will never rise again. Regardless of the majority of my soul not being within you, as that knife is but a fragment of me."
"Then I suppose it is time for us to strike back." He rumbled, striding to the edge of the landing and, without a moment's thought, dropping off the edge and into the blackness below.
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"I thought you were a doctor, Watts, so fix this!" He heard the woman snarl, feet away from him and closer to Beacon than he had been when he'd fallen. Around him, he could hear and, in an oddly instinctual way, feel the fire burning at the forest around them. Unmoving, body still unresponding, he called on that fire. That ash. While Cinder hissed in pain, "Dust damn it, Watts!"
"Oh, hold still, rather disfigured you baby." The man snarked with a sigh, apparently treating the woman from his burns. "You've suffered intensive burns and these bandages are sterilised and have an ointment that will help the scarring and encourage the skin and muscle to heal better."
"You'll need a mask to cover the worst of it. I can recommend good mask-makers in the Fang, you're allied enough they may work for you."
He ignored her snappish retort entirely, eyes finally cracking open and head tilting to look at his chest, slowly reforming as ash flowed towards and around him like water. Ash turned to stone formed bones and then the same ash formed muscles and skin, rebuilding him rapidly. He felt the same working itself on his arms and legs, rebuilding what had been taken from him until he felt his toes and fingers flex reflexively in the smoky, hot air around him. With a grunt, he sat up and pushed himself off the ground, turning a glare on the group who had, understandably, assumed him dead and now faced him with masks of shock and fear plastered across their faces.
"You asked what I was, Cinder, and now I shall deign to answer it in full." He rumbled, ash building on itself around him from the ground up, forming padded cloth first and then chain and, finally, plate in a cascading wave along his entire body. "I am Deacon Knight, the Chosen Undead who journeyed through Anor Londo. The Chosen Undead who fought and fell in a thousand battles in that land, and in others, and who rang the Bells of Awakening. The Undead who fought the gods and cut them low, and then descended into the Kiln of the Flame."
"I am Deacon Knight, and I was an Undead warrior, cleric of the Way of White." He finished, helm forming around his head and lending a hollow, intimidating quality to his voice. Raising his summoned greatsword high he inverted his grip on it, stabbing it into the earth and rock below him, ash flowing out from it freely and coalescing around him. "Now, I am Deacon Knight, Lord of Cinder. And I am angry."
"And you wouldn't like him angry." A jovial tone offered beside him, wide, round shield smiling brightly as it always did. Solaire chuckled and waved his blade dismissively at the stunned folk in front of them, still nursing their wounds and, some of them, moving into defensive stances. "Brother, which of these is the harlot that stabbed you? Is it the grossly scarred one currently cowering beside the shirtless man?"
"You died!" She accused, pointing the dagger at him for a moment before it fell to dust in her shaking hand. The dust fell, mixed into the ash that had begun gathering in their location, both natural and unnaturally made by means even the newly dubbed Lord of Cinder didn't know or understand. "W-What…?"
"Did you truly think to use my own power against me, Human girl?" Priscilla asked coyly from his other side, her scythe coming before him protectively while her tail curled on her right side, close enough to brush against the warrior's tower shield beside her. Her eyes landed on Adam, hair matted by sweat from the heat now and horns standing prominent, and she asked gently, "My knight, must we strike down that one? I would rather not…"
"Why?"
"A story for another time, but I… Sense in him a soul linked to my own, albeit so distantly as to be night nothing." Her scythe twitched, blde angling subtly away from him, and she repeated, "May we allow him to leave, my knight? I would not face one with which I hold kinship, albeit of a distant kind as this."
"It would do to have witnesses, to carry the message far and wide to not make of you an enemy, my child." Gwyn, the mighty Lord of Lightning and Sunlight rumbled from behind him, lightning cracking behind them with his words. Old magic in the air, but even beyond the distant ages that had passed, the world around them still responded to Gwyn's fury. "Horned boy, whose name I don't care for, run or die here. Make your decision."
"Kill the rest." Deacon rumbled, nodding his head simply as his comrades surged forward to meet his beleaguered opponents.
Cinder screamed and lightning cracked down from both sides, barely slowing the summoned warriors of the Lord of Cinder's while the ones that cracked into Cinder sent her sprawling across the ground. Scythe spinning, Priscilla closed on the downed woman, smiling sadly at her as the burned and beaten woman crawled away and sought to climb into the sky. The half-breed ignored the spray of fire she shot and pushed her back, scythe lashing out and taking her at the knees, the limbs falling away with a spray of red and a cry of stark pain, the strikes so immensely powerful and backed by her Lifehunt that Aura simply ceased under the edge of her scythe.
Behind the falling, doomed woman, Hazel's fist met Solaire's shield and he cried out in fury, before the warrior cut across his thigh and shoved him back with his shield. That fight didn't last long either, before the man turned to run, bleeding and wounded and giving up now that Cinder had fallen. An honorable man who, with a wave, Deacon ordered be allowed to flee as he saw fit. Hazel was honorable enough, and he wouldn't see him cut down for a fight he hadn't planned and chosen.
Watts' attempt to flee or fight didn't last long enough to tell between the two, the man's three shots cracking into the Lord Gwyn's chest uselessly. Then he'd turned, as though to run, and been smited by lightning cracking from the Lord's hand before he'd taken so much as a step. A moment later, the great Sunlight Sword replaced the lightning and burst through his breast, cleaving the man nearly in two as the Lord stepped through.
Less a battle, and more a domination of retribution and devastation. Gods versus men, and what few didn't flee could do nothing against the gods before them, and so they were broken and cut down with total ease.
"Now, girl, I believe you have something that is not yours." Deacon rumbled as he stepped to the young, crippled woman's head and planted his sword in the soil beside her neck. His fellows surrounded her, and her hand shot up, lightning cracking down into the Lord of Cinder weakly, scarcely earning a grunt from the man before he sighed and went on. "For your attempt on my life, and attack on Beacon Academy, I exercise the authority vested in me as a member of Beacon's staff and sentence you to die. Any final words you wish remembered?"
"You will pay for- Hrk." She stared down at her chest in surprise, then up at Priscilla's cold frown, the base of her scythe buried in her heart.
"Forgive me, but I would not hear you. You took my own body, a fragment of me, and sought to wound one I care for." The half-breed said simply, waiting until the woman went limp and still, and Deacon felt her soul and that of the Maiden's break away from her. Meeting his eyes, the giant of a woman nodded her head and smiled, "Victory is yours, Lord Knight."
"Not as yet, my Lady." He rumbled, turning from the corpse and nodding towards Beacon Academy. "Drive the attackers from Beacon, save the students and Academy, and then disperse. Back into the ash from which you are summoned."
Why he gave the last order he didn't know, the words and idea came instinctively to him, but he didn't fight it. Miracles did the same, in his experience, at times taking and directing people through the proper actions and understandings. This, he assumed, was the same. New powers directing his instincts, which adapted and pushed him to do and say what he needed to in order to control his power. His summoned friends, for lack of a proper term, didn't hesitate to obey the order he gave.
And so, ready for the next bout, he followed after the legends and allies of old, to protect his new home. The battle had been in swing for a while, and overhead Atlas' warships loomed into view over the Academy, so he had no doubt it would be a simple and easy affair.
(~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~)
So the casualties are~
Mercury, Watts, and Cinder's lives.
Also, Adam and Mercury's dignity.
For context, yes, they managed to beat Deacon. But as stated below in some RRs, only by very Dark Souls reasons. Deacon didn't know about Adam's Semblance, and that caught him off guard and ended his chance of a win. Then the enemy capitalized on their knowledge, from Deacon trying to intimidate the fight out of the situation ala Ironwood, and blew his jaw off. Even then, Mercury died because he got yeeted off the cliff and sent flying about a hundred feet to the ground below to go smush. And then it took Hazel grappling and Adam severing his legs too to get him down.
Even that proved to be for naught, because fuck those guys. They didn't know who they fucked with, and the Sunbro Squad (plus best DS Waifu) rolled over them in a few seconds when they came in.
So with proper planning, surprise, overwhelming numbers and crippling attacks, they managed to down an unarmored Deacon. Seems reasonable for the DS feel, even if Lords of Cinder have two phases at least.
And no one saw it coming… For once.
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Adis (Guest) :
Because I am a bigger dick than invading Nakeds wear the FAP ring and wielding Havel's dickhammer.
Betrayal Tide :
Truly, they knew not what they fucked with.
Yes Boss 21 :
No, he made two circles and laid one of the Medallions, Solaire's, on it during prayer and meditation. Otherwise, he wears the two medallions both, or leaves them locked safely in his dorm.
No true death here, and it's Priscilla's scythe fragments, fixed into makeshift daggers.
Also, did you Comment/Review on both chapters on both sites? XD
Guessing Guest :
Neither. He was bested by ignorance, not arrogance. Adam's Semblance was an unknown and crippled him early, as planned by Cinder and company. The moment he was in trouble, he became ruthless and uncompromising, as per Mercury's rather unfortunate Fall.
Get it?
Because… Cinder's name is- nevermind.
Acorn Case :
I use my own interpretations, yes, but as does basically everyone in DS. I hope I did well enough in explaining why Priscilla can kill Undead permanently, but the Gods wouldn't use it.
Two Tacos Tuesday :
First off, heathen, FRIDAY is the day of sacred tacos. Everyone knows this. XD
Secondly, they're *daggers* not *the* dagger, if that makes sense. They are daggers, but not *the* daggers.
Mr Malfunction :
The Chosen Undead loses a lot. It's if him losing - or dying - sticks that matters. If you fight a boss for the first time and don't know what to expect, you tend to lose. Such is replicated here, where Deacon does just fine and fends them all off until Adam's unknown Semblance disarms him, and then Watts disables his Miracle usage by knocking out his jaw.
Losing didn't stick though.
Bob :
Was the Winged Spear.