[NOVENA]
Hell came unto earth in a split second.
That is all Novena can say about how the peaceful day went from good to an absolute disaster; as she watched Scarecrows pour into the city like a tidal wave, as she watched the citizens of Fortuna get cut down before her very eyes. Watched the very citizens she had sworn her life to protect cut down without any shred of mercy.
Demons poured forth from all nooks and crannies, seemingly out of nowhere, overtaking the streets and even the rooftops in a blink of an eye. Their foul laughter fill the air, the cacophony of the damned mixing with the terrified screams of their human victims to make a death song.
An anguished scream tears itself from her throat, and she fights the urge to fall to her knees in despair, fights the urge to just curl up and cry. But she can't, she can't fold, can't break, because she's a Knight of the Order, a Holy Knight sworn to the service of the Saviour, Sparda.
She doesn't have the time to be a weak person.
"Run!" She roars as she makes her way forwards, going against the tide of the fleeing citizens. "Run towards the Order's Headquarters! Run as fast as you can, and don't look back!"
Novena rips away her coat and hood, as they would only hinder her, tossing it aside. For once, she can't care that she's treating her uniform irreverently. After all, what is her coat to the lives of her people? She draws her blades, her Caliburn on her right, and the short sword on her left, and she dives into battle.
Her usual grace and dance are foregone in favour of faster, far more brutal blows that kills the demons in one strike. No time for her usual antics, what she needs to be right now is a demon a hunter, a vicious one at that.
Novena whips her head around at the sound of a shrill scream, and she sees a child, no older than ten, and a Scarecrow is towering over him, laughing and raising its bladed arm to strike.
The female Knight kicks the Scarecrow in front of her, sending it careening clumsily towards the other demons behind it, and Novena wastes no time in running over to the child. She pounces, face twisted in a snarl, and she drives her blade deep into the Scarecrow, skewering it with no hope of escape.
Novena looks over her shoulder, at the child. "Run! Go!" She barks, and bless the Saviour's name, the child flees immediately. Novena turns back to the demon immediately, wrenching her Caliburn free and then whirling to deliver a punishing kick to a Scarecrow creeping up on her. A Scarecrow lunges for her, snake-fast, and she's forced to bend backwards, narrowly dodging its arm blade.
Using the momentum, she jumps, corkscrewing with her weapons outstretched. Her Caliburn decapitates two of them, while her short sword deflects another oncoming blade. Novena lands on her feet, curled up in a crouch, and she darts up, planting her foot firmly against one demon.
Using them as stepping stones, Novena hastily makes her way to a massive pile of rubble made of crushed cars and broken bits of buildings. Novena climbs atop it, snarling in fury when one of the Scarecrows comes after her, and it meets its end by her blade, cleanly bisected in half.
"Citizens of Fortuna, flee to the Order!" Novena hollers at the top of her lungs, and it works beautifully; people are fleeing towards the gates, no longer panicked and mindlessly fearful. And most of all, the demons are turning towards her, and not the populace. Better for demons to concentrate on her; at the very least, she's trained to handle demons. "Find the Knights, and stick close to them! Do not panic!"
Novena watches the people disappear, faster and faster, and when the gates clang close, the magical seals – demonic deterrents, mild but would suffice for now – activate. The female Knight breathes in pure, unadulterated relief; she may have failed in saving everyone, but she saved most. Fortuna will live again, will recover and once more walk towards the future. She had made sure of it.
Novena risks a glance around, and her heart breaks at the bodies of the fallen, cut down and murdered by these accursed beings. These foul beings that don't deserve to walk their world, much less have the right to live.
The female Knight shakes her head, lips thinning in determination. She raises both weapons, her Caliburn braced against a shoulder, and her short sword held out in front of her in both offensive and defensive stance. Demons laugh all around her, as if mocking her, as if laughing at what she's planning to do. Novena pays them no mind, breathing deeply and squashing her fear and doubts. Those have no place here, not right now, because she has a duty to uphold, a mission to carry out.
"In the name of the Knight, of the Dark Blade, of the Glorious Rebellion..." Novena whispers, the prayer falling from her lips as easy as breathing. "Saviour Almighty, grant me strength to hold up the blade that is promised to defend humanity. Grant me the courage to face my fears, and the demons of the depths. Grant me the soul that endures hardships, endures suffering. Guide me, protect me, and empower me. Allow to me to join You in this Holy War… amen."
She's trapped, alone in the business district teeming with demons. She's alone, one Knight against a legion of demons. She's alone, separated from the rest of the Order, isolated and vulnerable. Like this, with the odds stacked so much against her, her chances of getting out of this alive is… is almost none. Novena actually doubts she'll get out of this at all, what with her standing on a false island of rubble and broken things, surrounded by a sea of demons.
She would most likely die here.
How fitting, that Novena would die during the Festival of the Blade. She would go down in glory, would go down fighting, just like the Saviour. She'll die like the Knight that she is, die upholding her mission until her last breath.
She only hopes Kyrie and Nero could forgive her.
At some unknown command, the Scarecrows leap into the air, blades raised high in the air. Novena looks up at them, and determination settles in her gut, knocks away her fear, her doubts. It leaves her steady, unshaking, unyielding in the face of certain death.
She'll fight.
Novena leaps up to meet them, driving her Caliburn deep into a Scarecrow, and she twists, just in time to bring the stabbed Scarecrow into the path of another's blade. The demon is cleaved in half, and it dissipates, so Novena twists, back arching, legs swinging to gain momentum. She hooks a foot around a Scarecrow's neck, and she pulls herself up to it, using it as a platform as she swipes her short sword across its neck. She jumps off of it, heading for the next demon. Novena executes a front flip, the heel of her boot – coated in blessed steel – connecting with the demon and sending it crashing downwards, with the ripple effect of sending the other demons below to scatter and clear out a space.
Novena allows herself to fall, swords whirling, and she takes out the Scarecrows nearest to her in a circle, widening the cleared area. She twirls her short sword and stabs it into the first Scarecrow, the one she kicked to the ground, and Novena momentarily stabs her Caliburn into the ground, before reaching with her now free hand and grabbing a glass orb from her hip pouch.
Holy water.
Novena slams the orb into the ground, and concentrated holy energy ripples outward in a brutal wave. The bluish white light passes through demons, making them scream and shriek and shrivel, killing them. It didn't take out all the demons, of course things wouldn't be that easy, but it does kill quite a sizeable amount, and giving Novena more breathing room.
Two more holy water orbs, before her chances of surviving disappears completely. She better make it count, take down as much of the demons before death takes her.
Novena nods to herself, and reaches into her hip pouch once more, withdrawing a small glass vial. Novena smiles humourlessly, freeing her Caliburn once more as she sheathes her short sword for a moment.
Now, the swords made by the Order – Durandals for the officers and special operatives (like Nero), and Caliburns for the lower ranked Knights – have a special mechanism called the fuel inject system. What it does it that the engines at the hilt of the sword coats the blade in an accelerant, spreading it along the length of the weapon. Now the blade itself if made from a special metal that causes sparks criminally easy. Coupled with the accelerant, well… Knights of the Order has learnt to wield blades of fire, like the Angels of Paradiso.
Nero, as a special note, has modified his to give a bigger output, meaning bigger flames. To the point that it can cause explosions, really. There's a reason Nero had christened his sword as Red Queen, after all.
Novena has her own changes to the injection system, with the help of Nero. After all, she's not as physically strong as her brothers in faith. It's only logical that Novena does something to even out the playing field.
Instead of coating her Caliburn with the accelerant, Novena's customized system injects holy water onto the blade. Not as explosive, or flashy, but just as fatal.
And so Novena twists the handle of her Caliburn, revealing an empty cartridge, and she pours the contents of the vial into it, pouring every last drop to make sure. She twists the handle once more, closing it, and she wraps her hand around the handle and the trigger this time. She pulls on it, and her Caliburn screeches as the engine works and activates.
The grooves etched onto the sides of the blade fill and lead the holy water throughout the length of her Caliburn, and while it doesn't give of the warm orange glow of the others', doesn't blaze like Nero's, the liquid makes her sword shinier, much more glossy and with the faintest shade of blue tinting it.
As her short sword is too small to support the fuel inject system, only her Caliburn could be coated with a constant trickle of holy water. Novena changes her grip, wraps both hand around her sword's handle while her short sword remains secured at its sheathe. The female Knight settles into a different stance, more a warrior's than a dancer's, and the tip of her blade gleams in the morning sun.
As the demon in her direct line of sight laughs, Novena lunges.
Her usual style – the one she's most comfortable with – involves movements incorporated directly from her dance lessons. Pirouettes, twirls, dips, and the like. Nero once called it too girly, too delicate, but Novena made it work. Made it work well. In her hands, with her training and capabilities, those delicate and girly movements are capable of killing demons just as well as the standard form.
This style, however, is different as it involves the least amount of movement, the quick progression of one foe to another. Economy of movement at its finest, because this style, coupled with her coated sword… it only needs one clean swipe (3 inches long, 3 inches deep, on one of the 3 kill spots-) and the demon - especially cannon fodder like these ones - dies.
Novena howls when a Scarecrow lands a solid slice on her back, ripping the back of her uniform and the flesh underneath. She grits her teeth, feels the torturous burning wrought from demon venom, but she pushes on, aiming for necks as she ducks and weaves through the demon horde.
She keeps fighting, on and on until her arms burn, her once pristine uniform now drenched in the red of her blood. The edges of her sight is dimming, fading in and out of focus as pain courses through her body. She's not undamaged, far from it, and her body is littered with cut and gashes, her only saving grace is her agility allowing her to turn fatal strikes into not-as-fatal ones.
She knows she won't last long, though. Losing too much blood, and there's still more than half of the horde to deal with.
Novena shakily grabs her second holy water from her pouch, and she tosses it into the crowd of demons. It explodes in the usual white wave, and the Scarecrows shriek and scream as they die, convulsing violently before bursting and dissipating into nothingness.
The brief respite also allowed Novena to refuel her sword, the injection system coating her blade once more with the anti-demon liquid.
"Heh, quite the… quite the action, it seems…" Novena murmurs to herself, coughing a bit as her lungs rattled within her ribcage. She spits out a glob of blood, and she grimaces at it. She may be used to the sight of blood and gore and demon mush, still, it's always unpleasant.
Undoubtedly, this is one of Novena's greatest mission, easily surpassing the one where she had lead a hunt for an aberrant Frost just a year ago, her last mission with the General's Squad. That Frost was on the cusp of evolution, almost a Greater Demon. Massive, powerful and one of Novena's greatest kills.
That one can't compare to the sheer significance of this battle, though.
A literal fight for her life. Facing against a legion of demons, with no backups or anyway to get support from the Order. Her being the only one standing between the damned and the citizens of Fortuna.
This battle, is far more glorious.
"As I walk the flaming halls of Hell… I shall fear no demon, for You are with me." Novena prays, staggering back onto her feet. She heaves up her Caliburn, bracing it and levelling the sharp tip towards the demons. "Your Blade, and Your Covenant… they comfort me. You prepare a table for me in the presence of my enemies, You anoint my head with oil. My cup overflows.
"Surely… Surely, honour and glory will follow me, when I take up my sword." Novena manages a grin, all bloody and horrific. "I will join the ranks of your Legion… forever*."
Novena grabs her last holy water, and she dives back into the fray. Slamming the orb down, another wave of divine power washes over them, purifying the disease from her wounds and restoring a bit of her health, and destroying her enemies.
Novena fights with renewed vigour, her sword singing through the air as she fought and killed and destroyed demons left and right. Her eyes alight not with glee, but acceptance. Acceptance that this place will be her grave, the end of the line for her. From the placid smile on her lips, she's quite fine with it. Maybe even embraced it, even.
A Scarecrow swipes a blade against the back of her knees, and Novena howls, dropping to the ground as her tendons are cut. Her Caliburn clatters from her grasp, fallen, and Novena breathes through the pain, snarling and hissing as she bleeds, and bleeds, and bleeds-
A Scarecrow steps up to her, leering down at the fallen Knight with its faceless head. It laughs, mocking and excited over her impending demise as it raises its bladed arm to slice her head clean off. It swings its arm, and Novena closes her eyes.
Nothing ever came, though.
Nothing but a loud deafening bang.
Novena whips her head up towards the sound, and relief floods her entire being so strongly she can't help but sob, tears springing to her eyes as Nero stands atop the roof of the nearest building, and his gun, Blue Rose, in hand.
The white haired Knight shoots down the demons, first the ones around Novena and quickly proceeding to the other demons. He reloads, fast as lightning, and he even manages to toss an orb of holy water, making it explode near Novena as a form of protection. The Scarecrows shriek and howl, and miracle of miracles, they abandon Novena in favour of going after Nero, the demons leaping up at the sides of the building and clawing their way up if they're able to.
Novena used to detest Nero's pet project, but she can and will shamelessly take back everything she said or thought about Blue Rose.
The female Knight slumps on the ground, breathing heavily and trying to recover. As much as she could with the lack of legs, anyways. "Saviour bless that boy…" Novena murmurs, wiping away the tears of relief and trying to stop herself from shaking.
Nero lobs another holy orb, and a massive group of demons are vaporized. For some odd reason, the demons seem to be flocking to Nero, instead of aiming for him because of his distraction. Nero then smirks down at her, all cocky arrogance and thinly veiled relief. "Your age catching up with you, hag?" He drawls, diligently shooting down demons. "Joints getting rickety?"
Novena laughs despite herself, for once extremely amused by the younger Knight's jab at her status as his elder. "I can't even get mad at you right now, you absolute brat." Novena shot back, laughing under her breath. "Thank you, Nero. I wasn't sure if I…"
"You rest up," Nero interrupts firmly. "I'll handle these guys. Here, keep it on you."
Nero tosses his last holy water at her, and Novena manages to catch it with her shaking hands. She holds it close to her, her last line of defence as she rests there, immobile and vulnerable.
And she watches, entrusting the demons to Nero, who keeps firing and firing that gun of his. Novena momentarily entertains the thought of getting a gun for herself, but she quickly dismisses that idea. She isn't a rule breaker, unlike Nero who relishes in toeing the line. It would be convenient though, to have a weapon that can dispatch enemies at a distance.
Nero, the miracle baby that he is, decimates the remains of the horde with just a gun. Novena sits there, disbelieving but mostly frozen in sharp relief and gladness.
She stayed in the business district fully expecting to die. Fully expecting to be overrun by the damned beings and torn to shreds.
Saviour bless Nero, indeed.
Novena can't stop herself; she flops down on her back and lets out a laugh, hysteric and a whole lot relieved, to come out alive in a mission she had expected to end with her death. She's sobbing as well, her hands shaking violently and her breathing coming just a little too fast to be good.
"Hey, hey! Hag!" Novena turns her head, looking up at Nero who is still on the roof top, leaning over the edge with panic written clearly across his features. "You alright?"
"I-I'm fine!" Novena replies, struggling to sit back up. Pain lances down her legs, and she watches the blood pool beneath her legs. She must look a quite the sight, drenched in her own blood as it is. "Actually, no, I'm bleeding so much."
She sees Nero move, easily climbing over the railing, no doubt to jump down to the ground to reach her.
"No!" Nero freezes, eyes wide. Novena clears her throat, wincing at the motion. "No, don't bother climbing down."
Nero scowls, eyebrows furrowed. "But you're injured, you dumb old lady!" He retorts, obviously panicking despite the cool façade he always wears. "Or did your fight knocked around the bits and bobs in your noggin and gave you Alzheimer's?!"
Day by day, Nero's insult increase in creativity. It's almost impressive, if they weren't so infuriating. Novena manages to smile up at the younger Knight though, trying to convey as much reassurance in her expression and eyes. "I'll be fine, Nero. The area is cleared, no more demons in sight. Besides, I have…" Oh. Oh dear. "… a Vital Star."
Nero gives her his blankest look possible. "You forgot you have a Vital Star in your pouch the whole time." It wasn't a question. It was a statement declaring her stupidity.
Maybe Nero is right in her having Alzheimer's…?
Novena fished the aforementioned item from her pouch, and there it is, still mostly full, undamaged and ready for consumption. The face carved into the side seems to be laughing at her, mocking Novena.
The female Knight just throws her head back, and laughs.