A commoner was the first to die. Evelyn, long barreled and siderite forged, smashed through the man's face, his skull shattering with a sickening crack. Bone fragments and brains trailed the barrel, a corona of blood following in its wake. His friend, surprised at my speed, twisted round, fumbling as he tried to swing his sword. I spun, nimbly avoiding his clumsy strike, and lopped his head off, the sawblade cleaving through his neck like butter.
As the headless corpse fell, blood spewing from his stump of a neck, I snapped Evelyn up and fired, drilling through the head of a wind mage, who was busy trying to hack down Saito, casting wind blades faster than you could blink.
Saito himself was able to dodge the blades quite handily. He seemed to flow through the battlefield, swiftly dashing from one foe to the next. His eyes were cold, his arms swift and sure, killing with every stroke of his blade. I stared for a moment, entranced. There was no way some high school kid should be able to move that fast, kill that cleanly. And the way he did it, the short dashes punctuated by leaping strikes reminded me of many hunters I'd fought with and against. In fact, it really reminded me of Gehr-
A bullet whizzed past my face, so close I could smell the burning gunpowder. I tossed a couple of knives in the shooter's direction, then leapt, narrowly dodging a boulder the size of a bus.
This was no place for distractions.
I felt the earth rumble when the boulder smashed into the ground behind me, splintering on impact. A piece of shrapnel, fat and heavy, slammed into my back, sending me to my knees. Fire bloomed, scorching my duster and singing my face. A wand flashed in the corner of my eye and the fire around me erupted, transforming into a roaring inferno. My skin scalded from the flames, a ring of fire penning me in.
I dove through it, hissing in agony as the blaze licked my face. Not a moment too soon either, given the way the earth opened behind me, yawning wide enough to snuff the fire and swallow a few unfortunates.
I tugged out a Shaman Bone Blade, tossed it at the fire mage who'd decided to ruin my pretty face.
A gust of wind shoved the blade aside, burying itself in the arm of a common fanatic. The woman screeched in agony, her eyes clouding over with that toxic mix of cerebral fluid and psychotropics. She jerked her gun out of its holster, screaming obscenities and frothing at the mouth. The woman pistol whipped the man nearest to her and broke his jaw. I could see a couple of teeth fly from the blow, the guy's jaw flapping bonelessly. Then she picked up the man, flinging him into the fire mage, and threw herself stop them clawing and biting at them like a Beast.
The wind mage who'd so thoughtfully shunted my blade aside leapt at me, his sword-wand screaming through the air. Then he twitched to the left, barely deflecting Saito's strike. His sword yowled.
"That's the nastiest magic I've tasted in decades! Just what kinda freak you got me fightin', partner?!" it demanded.
I left the kid to it and took a second to focus on the others, grabbing a hapless moron and using him as cover while his friends pelted him with gunfire and ice spears.
Louise hadn't been sitting around while all this was happening. She rolled nimbly, deftly avoiding a swinging sword. She cast an explosion as she came up, the spell smashing through a stream of fire, parting the roaring flame like the Red Sea. The spell slammed into the fire mage conjuring the flame and blew him and his friends apart. Then she pirouetted, evading the swordsman's strike. Pointing her wand at the fanatic, his sword an inch away from her neck, she fired, scattering his brains across the battlefield.
Well, I thought, it's good to know Doll trained her well. Louise was screaming at the top of her lungs, her eyes wild, as she plunged into a fleeing mass of fanatics. What it was she was shouting, I couldn't tell you just that it was a series of curses and insults so foul it would've made Gehrman blush.
I kicked the dead man into one of his friends and sent him stumbling. My sawblade sang as it swung through the air, cutting them in half. I kicked and diced my way through the press as I fought to reach Tabitha and Zerbst.
Some of the less wounded men and women were trying to take them down. The girls leaned on each other for support, with Tabitha tripping their foes with ice and water spells while Kirche roasted them as they fell.
I could see their strength was almost spent. Exhaustion was writ plain on their faces. Their skin was deathly pale and their spells was cast after longer and longer intervals. An earth mage dived, just missing getting his face blown off by a fireball. A pair of earthen bolos launched from his wand and wrapped themselves around the girls. They fell, tangled together, utterly helpless.
It would have been their doom if it hadn't been for the idiot.
He charged right at me, gripping a fat powder bomb in his sweaty hands. "Kyrios Brimir!" he screamed, frothing at the mouth, ready to die in his god's name.
Then his fat legs tripped each other up and he fell.
Fuse fizzing, the bomb flew right at me. My steel shod boot dinged when it hit the explosive, sending it flying into the midst of the girls' attackers. Lucky for them the morons had bunched together, taking the brunt of the explosion. Dust and blood filled the air, caking the girls, but they were otherwise unharmed.
I turned away as they started tearing off the bolos and beelined for the water mage, who'd shifted his attacks to Louise. The kid was getting pressed hard, barely dodging or blowing apart the mage's projectiles.
He was herding her into a group of waiting commoners. Their swords glinted in the sun, mouths set in grim smiles, ready to hack the girl limb from limb.
I quickstepped towards him, shooting the fallen idiot as I passed him, and drove my sawblade down, hoping to cleave the water mage in half.
He dodged, backstepping at the last moment. Water, torrential in its intensity smashed my face and hand. My fingers fumbled and I lost my grip, the sawblade slipping from my hand.
The mage grinned, twisting his staff around, point blank, right at my face.
I ducked, then charged, getting in his guard.
My fist shot out and I knocked aside his staff, a moment before a hail of ice shards fired from the tip. Their frozen tips scared my face as they passed by, cutting furrows into my charred skin.
My other hand smashed the man's face. I could feel bone give way under my fist, his mouth opening to let out a stifled scream. Grabbing him by the hair I punched him in the face a few more times, till his head hung loosely from my fist.
In the distance, I could see Louise mopping up the commoners, blowing them away one by one, dodging their clumsy swings and shots with surprising grace. Unfortunately, she failed to account for a brute of woman, wielding a thick axe, bearing down on her, screaming "Brimir Vult! Brimir Vult!" Louise jerked away from the blade, blasting the bitch point blank. The girl wasn't able to clear the axe in time, however. She screamed as it scored her across the face, blood spewing from the wound. She fell and her hands pressed against her face, blood seeping between her fingers.
The brute stepped forward, her neck and chest blackened from the explosion. Her eyes were wide in ecstasy as she raised the axe high, chanting "God knows his own" over and over.
Cursing, I snatched up the sawblade and quickstepped forward, trying to grab the girl. I was maybe 5 feet away when a heavy gale tossed into a group of very pissed off looking fanatics.
I struck with the Sawblade, cutting through a man and a woman. She managed to get a shot off before she perished, the bullet scraping my neck as it whizzed past me. Sticking Evelyn through one bastard's mouth, I pulled the trigger, blowing his brains out and wounding the man behind him in the process.
My sawblade followed up a moment later, cutting the wounded man down, its serrated edges biting deep. A bullet punched through my duster, fired at point blank range.
I felt the heavy lead lodge itself in my right lung, my breath ragged from the stench of cordite filling me. I head-butted the man, snapping his neck. A water mage, perhaps one of the stupider ones, tried to freeze me, trying to entomb me and make me easier prey for the common rabble.
I shoved my Evelyn into its holster, grabbed a fanatic, and shoved him towards the incoming spell. The man froze on impact, his momentum carrying him forward, shattering into a thousand pieces when he hit the ground.
More and more fanatics came to surround me, and in the distance I could hear Zerbst scream in fury. Within seconds another firestorm burst, scorching my retinas. I just managed to duck under a swinging sword, thrust the sawblade out charged, impaling a man and driving him forward. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Saito dueling with the axe woman, sparks flying as he deflected strike after strike. Louise lay on the ground, struggling to get up.
The Water Mage took another shot and was more successful, turning the ground beneath me into ice. I lost my footing, slipped and fell. Sword points and bullets slammed into me and I howled in agony. Unlike last time however, my spine and limbs still functioned, though it was through a galaxy of pain that I came back up, drawing the blades of mercy.
They sparked as they split, and I cut the throats of the two bastards that had me skewered. I kicked another son of a bitch in the face, and elbowed another, breaking his neck. My blades danced, disabling and killing with each strike, but I could feel my strength fading.
I parried another sword, drove the other knife into the neck of the water mage, narrowly avoiding his spray of sharp ice, like a shotgun blast. My jaws clamped around his neck and I drank deep, the adrenaline letting me drain him in seconds. The swords and bullets sticking out of my back and chest popped out, the holes in my flesh closing. My internal organs may have still been badly hurt, but I was a little more put together now.
The last swordsman hacked at me and I thrust the dead mage at him. His blade stuck in the corpse and I shot him in the face, my last pistol spent. I sighed as I sheathed The Blades of Mercy and picked up the sawblade.
Alright, I thought. Time pull the kids asses out of the fry-
I grunted in sudden pain and looked down.
A small chunk of iron, vibrating from some inner magic, protruded from just under my heart.
I looked up.
Fouquet, still astride her golem, gave me a filthy grin.
"Now!" She barked, and the pair of mages hidden in the mass of fanatics emerged, their wands glowing with repressed power.
In unison they chanted, voices harmonizing, layering over one another. Screaming winds and a roaring inferno surged from their wands. The two primal forces slammed into one another with a thunderclap of barely contained energy, a burst of light that fried my eyes.
Which is why I didn't see the plasma till it hit me.
Once, and only once, I fought a Darkbeast in the depths of Yharnam. Vast and inhuman, its body of rippling bone coruscated with eldritch lightning, and every blow sent 50,000 volts surging through my body.
This was worse.
One could at least recover from the initial strike when facing a Darkbeast, just enough to roll away and stick blood vial in you wounds. But this? This was a continuous storm of agony, lighting every cell, nerve, and neuron on fire. I screamed, trying to step forward and bury my sawblade in the necks of the little bastards roasting me.
Step by painful step I moved, my skin charring away in black flakes. Duster and flesh became one, a seething, bubbling mass that ran down my body like candlewax. I groped blindly for a throwing knife and came up with ash, swiftly floating away on the breeze. My eyes somehow held together and they locked onto the fire mage, my brown orbs locking onto his baby blues.
He didn't like what he saw.
He started chanting faster and his friend joined in. The sanity shattering stream of plasma increased in intensity, but I was walking faster now, my sawblade twitching in anticipation. I held myself together through nothing but sheer hate and willpower, the same as in Yharnam, determined to end these two kozy and that pseudo English bitch if it was the last thing I did.
Then Fouquet waved her wand and the earth rose, wrapping itself around me like a lover, pinning me in place.
I ground against the earth. It held for a moment, than grudgingly gave way. Distantly I heard Fouquet curse, and the earth hardened once more. My legs strained against the pressure, pushing back as hard as I could against Fouquet's spell.
Fouquet stared at me, wide eyed, in awe. Guess she'd never seen anyone live this long when hit by this kind of pressure. Her mouth worked and I could see sweat beading down all three of their faces, desperate to contain me.
My bones started to bubble, and I cursed. I could feel my body breaking down to its constituent parts, organs collapsing, blood boiling, skin totally gone.
Then it stopped.
Not the pain, I mean, but the beam.
I blinked (metaphorically, anyway, given my eyelids had long since disappeared) and stared. Saito had leapt in front of me, absorbing the beam with his blade.
"More!" the blade shouted, demented its joy. "I haven't eaten like this for millennia! MORE! MORE! MORE!
The weapon glowed white hot and Saito winced in pain.
Smoke rose from his hands, the hilt warping from the intense heat.
And the beam, once an eye searing blue, turned black as night, crackling with barely constrained energies.
"Now, Louise!" Saito shouted.
"Explosion!" came the cry, followed by several fizzing orbs that screamed towards the enemy. Fouquet blanched and threw herself away. The orbs hit the stream head on. There was a moment of silence, a strange sense of disquiet that cut through the clamor of battle. Then everything went white. The resulting contact went off at the atomic level and I blacked out for a moment.
When I came to, the forest was aflame, the road had cracked in a thousand places, and more than a few assholes had been caught in the blast. The airship had been blown open, its decks shattered and exposed. Cannons dangled precariously over the ragged edge. Some fell, along with the remains of their gunners. Red bodies, black iron, scorched furniture fell from the sky.
The ship fell to earth slowly and crashed a few miles away with a distant thump. Another explosion flared against the horizon, much weaker than the last one.
I looked around.
Chunks of meat, bone, and armor lay scattered over the battlefield. The explosion had killed off most of the remaining fanatics. I could the few that lived, battered and broken, limping away, trying to flee the battlefield. I grinned, ignoring the agony coursing through me, my heart beating with that familiar rush of adrenaline and fear. A nightmare for the children and these fanatics, yes, but a pleasant day for me.
Any day where you live is a victory, after all.
Above me, the roars of Abhorrent Beasts, cutting through the roaring fires like a clarion call.
I craned my neck up, saw half a dozen descend down through the smoke stained sky. Knights clung to their backs, steel armor bright against the sooty air. They truly were ugly things, a monstrous mix of lion, eagle, scorpion, and man. Wings beating against the hot air, one landed nearby with a surprisingly soft thump, its ape like face snorting in discomfort. Doll and that douche of a knight hopped off its back.
She glanced at me, our eyes meeting a moment. Doll's stance, weary and tense, relaxed slightly. She pressed something into the douche's hand, before stalking off to her sister. I could hear her speak, her voice calm and clear, Louise's dry and confused. Couldn't make out the words, though. My ears had long since been blown apart by that stream of plasma. Honestly, it was nothing short of a miracle I could even see and move, let alone hear.
Void bullshit, eh?
Presently, the knight loomed over me. He didn't say anything, just eyeballed me in contempt and stabbed a syringe into my chest. He must have really enjoyed it too, judging by the way he just shoved it into me, down to the hilt.
I could have kissed him.
Whatever is was, it sure as shit wasn't The Old Blood but it worked. My organs regrew in seconds, the blackened ruin of my flesh and skin flaking away in the ash tainted winds. My clothes, which had fused with my body through the intense heat, fell off in shorn clumps. The smoking leather curled as it hit the earth, leaving me as nude as the day I was born. My legs were shaky as I got up, but that faded away after a few seconds.
I stretched and popped my neck and shoulders, amusing myself with the disgust that filled the knight's face.
"What's the matter, Raynald? Nervous about the competition now? Or is it something else that bothers you?" I asked, raising an eyebrow, a mocking grin on my face. The knight's face purpled in rage, his hand dropping to his sword wand.
"Sorry buddy, I don't swing that way. I know a nice guy though. He has a thing for tall, arrogant, and insecure assholes."
He snarled wordlessly and ripped the sword wand out its scabbard. I kicked my sawblade up, snapping it out, ready to hack his head off, when a heavy wind knocked us both over. Doll stalked over to us, anger writ plain on her face.
It was actually kind of intimidating.
I'd never seen her mad, not once. Of course, she'd been a doormat in her previous life. You could hack her into a dozen pieces and she'd just put herself back together, her face set in that smooth, seemingly emotionless gaze.
Guess things were different now.
Doll walked up to Raynald, told him "grab Edouard and have him stabilize the thief. Get her to the black site as soon as she can move. I need her alive. And take the weapon with you," in a flat tone that brooked no refusal.
"But this wre"-he started to say
"Now," Doll said.
Raynald turned away, seething, but not before spearing me with a wrathful glare.
I gave him a cheery wave, my face set in a smirk.
Said smirk stayed glued to my face as Doll grabbed me by the neck and pulled my head down, my face an inch away from hers. She blasted the strongest Killing Intent I'd felt in some time. My smirk may have curdled but I'm proud to say I didn't piss myself.
Barely.
"Balram."
"Yeah?"
"Stop. Baiting. Him"
"Sure thing, Doll."
She kept it up for a few seconds just to make sure I got the message before shoving me away in disgust. "Men," she muttered, walking back to her sister. Louise stood on her own two feet, supporting Saito by her shoulders. Her face bore an ugly scar, but hey, at least she was alive.
Saito's eyes were glazed over, the shock of it all hitting him like a sledgehammer. Doll draped an arm over their shoulders and led them away to a waiting Beast. It sniffed at Louise in concern before licking her, its monkey face chortling in pleasure. To my surprise, the girl laughed, and the tension in her eased slightly.
She patted the beast then spoke to Saito, before shoving him up with Doll's help into the beast's saddle. Doll grabbed some stuff from the saddle bags hanging off the sides and walked back to me. Louise clambered aboard, alongside another knight. He took reins of the beast and snapped them. It flapped its wings, rising into the air, then blasted off, heading back to the academy.
Doll shoved a shirt of boiled leather, a duster, and leather leggings at me. I hastily shoved them on, feeling a little more secure under the comforting weight. I sheathed the Blades of Mercy and holstered Evelyn, then strapped my sawblade to my back, into the slot so thoughtfully grafted onto the duster.
We walked towards Tabitha and Zerbst, who were being tended to by a water mage. Tabitha was unconscious, her chest rising and falling slowly, her breathing a little faint. A bullet wound marred her shoulder. It was a fat gaping hole, slowly drawing shut under the ministrations of the water mage. A pair of knights stood by, eyes scanning the area, their faces alert and their sword wands out. A horde of bodies, blackened beyond recognition, surrounded them.
Zerbst's hands were clasped with Tabitha's. She looked up at us as we approached, frowning.
"I'm surprised a De Vallière would aid a Zerbst," she said, her voice utterly drained.
"My sister told me what you did, during the battle," Doll replied. "The De Vallière's always pay their debts, Lady Zerbst."
"I suppose they do," said Zerbst, a quiet thread of resentment coloring her tone.
Doll paused, hesitating for a moment.
"Let us speak further, when you've recovered, Lady Zerbst. There are a few matters I would discuss with you…"
Zerbst stared at her, a confusion of emotions playing out on her face. She nodded silently after a moment before turning back to Tabitha.
"Return them to the academy, when they've been healed," she told the knights.
"Yes, my lady", they chorused.
Doll turned to me and jerked her head, indicating a small patch of forest miraculously untouched by the devastation surrounding us.
We walked into the forest and stopped under the branches of a great oak, its leaves rustling softly.
Doll leaned against the old tree, crossing her arms.
I opened my mouth to speak, shoving my hands into my pockets, when they brushed something. I reached a little deeper and pulled it out, staring at a pack of smokes.
"So that's where I put them," Doll muttered. I blinked at her as she held out a hand. I pulled one out, handed it to her. My fingertip sparked and a bleak little flame came to life. Born of The Void, it cast black shadows on Doll's face as I lit the cigarette. Apparently, I still had a connection to that awful place. I'd wanted to find a way to sever it, free myself completely of that horrific nightmare, but Doll bade me not to.
She had started saying something about quantum states and probability distributions but my eyes glazed over after about thirty seconds and I started thinking about the pretty maid I saw passing us by.
At any rate, I stared at the carton, a regal looking black man staring back. A crown of rubies topped his head and a staff of silver was clenched in his hand. His eyes were cold, his posture sever and erect. In his palm he held a golden orb, rays of light blooming from its body.
"Where the hell did this even come from? And since when do you smoke?" I asked, lighting one for myself.
"From the Wangaran Empire, across the Mare Nostrum. And since a certain someone came back into my life. He taught me a number of filthy habits. Such a shame, I was a good woman before he came. Now look at me, as wonton and shameless as any Germanian barbarian." She smirked at me, her eyes twinkling.
I snorted. "Given the way you run those knights, I'd say you were an unholy terror way before I landed on this rock," I said, taking a deep drag. The smoke filled my lungs and the nicotine hit my brain. I sighed in pleasure, relaxing a little.
"I'm merely following the example of my honorable parents, who instilled the Rule of Steel in me from an early age. A lady must be strict and absolute in her rule, lest her underlings and peasants start to get ideas," Doll replied, in an innocent tone.
"And if they start thinking about using those ideas, there's always a hole to toss them in, right Stalin? Or should I say Vicar, instead?" I asked, raising an eyebrow.
Doll puffed on her cigarette, then blew a smoke ring at me.
"Pure results come from pure methods. Acting like the good Marshall or the Healing Church would be counterproductive. Besides," she said with a shrug, "I can give that bitch something she wants in exchange for her cooperation."
"Yeah, Krios? And what's that?"
Doll stared at me, then tossed her smoke away, grinding it under her boot.
"Before we get to that, there's something else I want to discuss with you," she said.
"I fucked up," I replied, massaging my skull.
"Orcs, Balram? Really?" she asked, raising an eyebrow.
"I was overconfident," I admitted, tossing away my own cigarette. "When I landed here, I thought I hit the jackpot. A land of milk and honey, where the only threats were diabetes and alcoholism. Clearly I was wrong. And more than fucking up with those greenskins, I really fucked up when it came to your sister. I should've just told Osman to fuck off. We could have found some way to compensate for the loss of a face, a way that was less dangerous for the kid and her familiar."
"You really should have," she said. Then she shook her head, frowning. "No, I'm sorry, that was unfair."
I started to protest when Doll put her hand up, shushing me. "Louise is the most headstrong person I've ever known-aside from you and Gehrman. She would have gone after Matilda no matter what, even if meant maiming you."
"Only maiming, huh?" I asked.
"She's a sweet girl, really," Doll said, pride in her voice. "All bark and no bite. Or so I thought."
She sighed.
"I'd hoped to spare her from the horrors of violence for just a little longer, but events moved quicker and contrary to what I expected."
"Yeah, I got the feeling you were holding out on something when the girl mentioned you buying a sword for boy," I replied.
Doll glanced at me, then looked away, a slightly guilty look crossing her face.
"It's not that I don't trust you, love, it's just that…well…"
She trailed off.
"I can't keep a secret?"
"No, that's not it. It might even be easier if that was the case. The problem is that you tend to deal with issues in just one way, in a fashion that might not be"-
"I kill, maim, and burn until the problem goes away right?"
"Not the way I would have phrased it, but yes. The game I'm playing is very delicate, Balram, and the slightest misstep can send everything spiraling into chaos."
"Chaos as in things or falling apart or Chaos as in the four cackling freaks?"
"Yes."
I stared at her.
"Maybe you want to start from the beginning," I suggested.
She nodded and sat down on a fallen log, gesturing me to join her. I sat down and she started to speak. "This is the story of a girl who was pretty, smart, and woefully bad when it came to magic. She had gone through life thinking that she would never become a true mage like the rest of her family. Until one day, she summoned a strange looking boy from a faraway land…