My Calling: Night Warriors
Author: Cornell Valentine Gainsborough
"Speech"
'Thoughts'
MAKAI! Separates Chapters
Chapter 8: End of a Tyrant
The feel of battle, two warriors locked in combat, both struggling with all their might to defeat the other before they themselves are beaten.
Such was the case here, but instead, three fighters were locked in combat.
On one side, Pyron, encased in his shell of energy, repelled a set of metallic claws attached by a chain.
On the other side, a young woman with blue-tinted skin, dressed in a Manchurian burial robe, retracted the claws back into the sleeves of her outfit while her sister, a brunette dressed in yellow oriental robes, charged in with a blade, swiping away at the alien. The pair alternated attacks; when one finished her attack, the other would step in.
"Sis, get back!" The one with blue skin ordered. "Here goes!" Slamming her metal claws into the ground, blades adorned with Chinese letters began rising from the ground, almost in a shockwave motion.
Thoroughly unimpressed by this show, Pyron leveled a blast of energy at the ground, tearing up the stone floor of the Coliseum, sending chunks of stone and metal toward the young woman, who was sent flying backwards.
"Hsien-ko!" Hsien-ko's sister, Mei-Ling, caught her. "Are you all right?" No external wounds were seen, but that blast's contents could've easily killed her.
"Damn it, he's strong." Hsien-ko tried to stand, but a bit of debris from Pyron's attack had done some damage to her left leg. "Sis, what're we gonna do? None of our attacks are getting through." If such an answer was available, it was taking a long time to come to them, as Pyron was getting ready to attack again. Without warning, the spheres of the Cosmic Disruption had been formed, and their targets were the sisters whose attacks were ineffective. Mei-Ling remembered this maneuver, the blasts had a level of sentience, and even if she had the strength to both carry her sister and jump away from the attack, the spheres would still follow. Options were at a premium, but time was running extremely short, as the spheres were quickly closing in.
All at once, a pair of leathery wings, coated in a violet energy, covered the pair a mere moment before Pyron's attack would've made contact. Tracing them back to their source, the pair saw a young man about a meter behind them, his arms crossed in an X formation over his chest as the wings shielded them.
"You may want to move." Nelius advised them. Even though his wings were strengthened by the Star mana, he wouldn't be able to hold his defense up for too long. Taking his advice, Mei-Ling scooped her sister up in her arms and took a leap to a higher stand. Nelius quickly dropped his guard and backflipped away, letting the attack crash into the wall.
"No wonder this guy killed Demitri." Shaking his wings to remove the sting from the attack, he was trying to from a strategy, trying being the key word.
"Anita!" Mei-Ling recognized the little girl that was walking into the center of the arena. Hsien-ko had taken a moment to shout to her, as well. "Anita, don't do it! Get away!"
To this young girl with violet eyes, only one name had come to her…
"Donovan!"
MAKAI!
Blade clashed against energy shell, as Donovan commanded the blade to attack. Even as his blade circled Pyron and struck out at random intervals, he attacked as well, but like all the others, his offense was lacking in one critical point.
"Something's wrong. He's got nothing following his strikes." Nelius was carefully watching as Donovan fought Pyron. "Why is he holding back?"
"His own self doubt robs him of what would be his strength." Donovan tried to defend against one of Pyron's punches, but his large prayer beads were shattered, and the punch connected with his gut, causing the vampire hunter to cough up blood. "Half of his blood is that of the Dark. His failure to accept that part of himself drains away what would otherwise be his power."
"He better get it together, and fast, otherwise there won't be anything left of him to accept!"
Donovan was forced against the wall, his lower chest and back bleeding heavily.
"Enough. What sport can there be in so pathetic an opponent?" Pyron had taken to alternating left and right uppercuts across Donovan's face. "So please, disappear from my sight!" Launching what could be considered a miniature sun at the dhampir, he placed enough force behind to send his opponent crashing through the stone stands, rapidly flying upward, spilling his own blood everywhere, until he came to a stop with a sickening plop, crashing against a pillar, then falling onto his bloodied back.
First Demitri, now Donovan… Nelius was seriously beginning to think his chances of defeating Pyron were desperately slim. What chance did he have fighting back against, let alone defeating the being that already defeated someone easily more powerful than he was?
'Wait, what the hell am I thinking?' He shook his head, ridding himself of these thoughts. He left his home netherworld with a mission: to become stronger in both body and mind, and to defeat his former boss. He couldn't let himself fall prey to the same trap Donovan had already fallen to. To just allow himself to fall into this trap would've been an insult, not only to everything he'd accomplished so far, but to himself as well.
Refocusing himself, his left hand went to his back, clutching the handle of his axe. Drawing it out, he allowed his wings to spread before he took a leap, soaring down toward the alien tyrant, orange burgundy eyes focused on the alien.
"It's time to do or die!" With the wind roaring in his ears, Nelius brought the axe across in a sweeping motion, slicing the tyrant in half. Touching ground, he turned around to see if it had worked.
Pyron couldn't help but laugh as his body reformed.
"You think that two-bit piece of metal had a chance of defeating me?" To this, Nelius couldn't help but chuckle. "I take it you find something so humorous!"
"Take a closer look at where I slashed you." Upon closer inspection, one could see a thin line of energy right where he'd slashed. "Donovan's fight against you got me thinking, and it was that fight which gave me a crazy, but viable idea."
"So, you think you've a ghost of a chance to defeat the perfect being!" Throwing his hands up, a ball of cosmic energy, the Sol Smasher, flew from his fingertips toward the young demon. In retaliation, Nelius brought his axe up, and sliced the projectile in half.
"Your evolution allowed you to circumvent the limitations and weaknesses of many physical bodies, but your nature as a being of energy created another weakness, and that is what keeps you from being, as you call it, perfect."
"Be quiet, you whelp of a demon! Be silent, and plague Pyron no more!" Enraged by the mere thought of being called imperfect, Pyron created the spheres of the Cosmic Disruption, and launched them toward the young demon.
Opening his wings, Nelius fired off shots from the insides of his wings, each shot canceling out Pyron's offensive.
"At first, I'd thought Donovan hadn't the power to effectively strike against you, but I was proved wrong, seeing some of his other fights." The shots from both fighters kicked up dust, which Pyron used to launch an attack, flying through the dust to launch an attack. Nelius dodged two punches, and flipped over the third punch, letting the back end of his axe slice across the cosmic being's back, leaving behind another mark. "It wasn't power he lacked, it was the effectiveness needed to break your defense." Pyron threw a backblow punch and the demon backflipped away. Again, the axe came up, and sliced Pyron against the arm, leaving a third mark. "It's your cosmic nature, that both strengthens you and creates your weakness."
"Be silent, demon!" Changing into a fiery tornado, the Orbital Blaze, the cosmic being tore up the ground in a bid to attack Nelius.
"Let's take this up, shall we?" Using a wing to deflect the attack, Nelius broke off and took a leap into the sky. 'Now, I need to finish this. As amusing as this is, I can't keep this up too much longer.' Not too much longer, Pyron had teleported up to him, ready to finish the battle.
"You claim that I have a weakness, yet you seem hesitant to make use of it. Perhaps you were bluffing in an attempt to extend your own life? How pathetic of you, now allow me to snuff out that flickering light in your body!" Pyron reared a hand back…
'NOW!' A voice in Nelius' head told him to act. Tossing the axe above Pyron, he tightened his gauntlet weapons, then dashed toward Pyron, leaving behind a number of hazy afterimages in a conical shape, the Tiger Charge, version 2.
Expecting Nelius to appear behind him, Pyron threw a punch in that direction, hitting a hazy afterimage. Remembering the axe, he looked skyward, only to see a lack of metal anywhere.
"What trickery is this?" Feeling a spark of energy to his left, he turned his attention to that direction, and saw something hurtling this way.
"Calamity Drive!" A bullet of energy hovering around his body, Nelius smashed a fist into Pyron's chin, sending the cosmic one upward. Summoning as much Star mana as he could hold into his frame, he shot upward at an angle, using his axe to slice through Pyron. Halting himself in midair, he quickly turned around and shot upward again, cleaving through the cosmic being three, four, five, six, seven, eight times in a row.
"How, how is it that a mere dark one has driven me to this!" Pyron was trapped inside a bubble of Star energy, an end effect of the Calamity Drive. "I am a god, I am INVINCIBLE!"
Bringing the weapon over his head, Nelius swung it downward, creating a beam of purple energy that hovered in front of him. A second, horizontal beam joined it soon enough, creating a cross of energy.
"Pyron, you are, without a doubt, an incredible being, but your arrogance was your own undoing, for even the gods wither and fade away. Nothing in this universe is without weakness. Dimensional Cross!" The cross-shaped beams of Star mana slammed down on the cosmic being; the vertical beam first, nearly slicing Pyron in half; it was the horizontal beam that finally did the alien tyrant in, causing his energy to collapse in upon itself, like the burnt out star reaching the end of its tether. Of course, when drawn in, there is only one direction to go: outward; the final vestiges of Pyron's energy did just this, coating Nelius in an explosive "layer" of 200 million years of attained, evolutionized cosmic power.
MAKAI!
Well, this concludes the Vampire Hunter Arc of this story. Next chapter kicks off the Vampire Savior Arc of this story.
Until Next Chapter,
Cornell Valentine Gainsborough