Kariya watched the back of the priest's black frock shrink as Kirei stepped into the depth of the hallway, back into the very edge of Kayneth's bloodthirsty reach. Kirei stopped, standing there and nodding, beckoning for an attack to come.
"Scalp!" shouted Kayneth, pointing at Kirei with tattered white gloves.
Kariya instinctively raised his sword in guard as he saw two black tendrils flick out from the blob, crashing into the hallway's walls as they tried to converge on Kirei in a pincer motion.
Kariya realized now that the hallway was too narrow for the mercury whips to move at full speed. When he was fighting up and close, the whips had mostly free reign to move about, but when trying to reach a target a dozen meters away, such as with Kirei, the whips met sturdy stone walls before flesh.
Even if the priest was slower than Kariya, such a difference in physical capability didn't matter in this terrain. Kariya blinked in wonder as Kirei flipped in the air, dodging the clumsy mercury whips with an almost practiced ease.
The whips, sensing that their attacks failed, slithered back to the blob. Kariya, sword bared, stepped forward, but stopped when Kirei raised a halting hand.
"Recover your strength," said Kirei.
Who did this priest think he was? Granted, Kariya could admit that Kirei was far more skilled than him. But skill didn't matter in the face of overwhelming power and defense, which was what Kayneth's Volumen Hydrargyrum amounted to. To punch through a supernatural defense, you needed a monstrous amount of strength.
Before Kariya could protest, Kirei shot a black key towards Kayneth with an underhand, casual throw that was more like a flick. Despite the lax nature of the throw, the black key still burst forwards like a laser, its trajectory aimed straight at Kayneth's head.
Predictably, the mud blob surrounded Kayneth in a thin film, and the black key bounced off the prana reinforced surface with a sparky clank.
Kariya waved his sword at Kirei. "You see? Fighting at a distance is useless. You need me to break through."
Kirei ignored him and threw another black key, this time with a full twist of his body, like a baseball player's pitch. Even Kariya saw the black key as a silver blur, but he still knew it was pointless.
Kayneth didn't, or rather couldn't react to the hurtling projectile, but Volumen was an automated defense. Once more, the film rose around him, forming a barrier, thicker than before, almost like stone, that sent the black key spinning backwards.
"I see," said Kirei.
Kariya could see that the priest was the very image of composure. The priest's posture was relaxed, his breathing steady, his eyes focused. Kirei performed two throws in quick succession, and Kariya noted how his movements were perfect, trained to the point of being mechanical. The absolute opposite of his own wild and uncontrolled fighting.
The two throws were executed in almost the same motion. The underhanded flick transitioned into an overhead fastball, causing the two black keys to nearly be overlapping by the time they neared Kayneth.
Volumen spread its defenses again, a thin film, thin enough that Kayneth's figure was visible as a murky image behind it, flowing up. The black key tossed with an underhanded throw bounced off the wall, but the overhand black key, which tailed behind the previous projectile with but millimeters worth of distance difference, smashed through the defensive film, shattering it like glass.
The black key punched into Kayneth's heart with a powerful thud, knocking the Magus straight off his feet.
Kariya was speechless.
Kirei put away his remaining black keys in the folds of his frock.
"El-Melloi had a defense that operated automatically," said Kirei, sensing Kariya's confusion. "That I could tell from my black keys, which should have been too fast for El-Melloi to react to."
"How did you break through that thing's defense, though?" asked Kariya.
"Because El-Melloi's defense is automated, he cannot control the strength of his defenses," said Kirei. "If I use a weak throw, a thin barrier forms. If I use a strong throw, a strong barrier forms. But when both strong and weak throws are used consecutively, that automatic defense has no time to alternate between the barriers."
Kirei turned to Kariya.
"Need I explain more?" said Kirei. "Or would you choose to trust me now?"
"That'll do," said Kariya. "Thanks"
For some reason, he felt uncomfortable thanking the priest. There was something about how sure the priest was of himself that made his generosity suspect.
A sudden rustling brought the attention of both men back to the hallway's end. Kayneth was standing again, doddering about as he resumed his haphazard walk. A cross, the black key's handle, jutted out from his chest, trickling mud instead of blood.
A laugh echoed across the hallways like a demented siren. It was an aged cackle with an unnerving chirping lacing it, hybridizing it with an insectoid ring.
"Fools," said the laugh.
Kariya stiffened, his clutch on his blade whitening. "Zouken."
Beside Kayneth, Zouken appeared from shreds of darkness, like an ink blot spreading across thin cloth.
"I see you've made a friend," said Zouken. "Grandpa is so very proud."
Words weren't needed. Kariya surged forward, his sword twitching in blood-thirst. Kirei held him back with a stretched arm.
"Stand back," said Kirei. "We do not know what tricks he is concealing, and it would be a shame for you to die."
Zouken smiled. "I see your friend here has a bit more brains than you."
Kirei narrowed his eyes, his pupils going up and down as he studied Kayneth's zombie-like approach.
"Familiars?" queried Kirei. "Puppeting El-Melloi with your creations?"
"That's half of it, but it wouldn't do me any good to lecture soon to be corpses," said Zouken.
Familiars. Kariya rolled that word in his head, and knew what he had to do.
He pushed past Kirei, into Kayneth's range.
"Scalp"
Familiars meant worms, and worms were under Kariya's dominion now. He didn't know how he would use his divinity's authority, but he had a subtle inkling telling him he could. It was like how you knew where your limbs were in absolute darkness: programmed instinct.
Kariya didn't bother dodging the converging mercury whips. He raised his arms into a guard to protect his head, and the whips slapped onto his arms. Coiled mercury met unspeakably hard carapace with a harsh clack, and the end result was that Kariya had an inch deep gash on each arm, while the mercury whips slunk back in defeat.
Kariya ran before Volumen could prepare another attack, and before Kayneth could say another word, he held out an open palm. Pain blossomed from his hand and threaded all across his body, beating at his nerves and straining his capillaries. Divinity, unused and foreign, surged throughout his body, raising his body temperature to intense levels.
He exhaled, scorching steam wisping from his mouth, and gnashed his teeth together as he tried to keep his consciousness from slipping. He looked at his weapon: his palm. His splayed fingers, armored and tapered like claws, his palm shelled with black like a bug. Enlarged capillaries, tubes of pulsing black, wriggled like worms across his monstrous palm, looking ready to burst. He had his weapon primed, he just needed a trigger.
Zouken stared at him without s smug smile, his beady white eyes confused. Seeing this monster, this tyrant that had lorded over all his life, not in control, Kariya felt a thrill buzz through his veins. He wanted more, and that desire became the trigger.
"Die," said Kariya, loosing an emerald green aura from his palm.
Kayneth's body shuddered like it was a rag fluttering in a tornado. It convulsed, bones shattering and organs pulping as it contorted and twisted in inhuman rotations. Worms, some thin, some fat, began wriggling out of Kayneth, from his ears, his nose, his mouth, his eyes, and his wounds. When all the worms slithered from Kayneth, his body, now a broken and twisted mess, crashed on the floor.
"What? This-" said Zouken before his body split apart into a pile of wriggling worms.
Kariya sunk to his knees, and Volumen, cut off from its owner, splashed into a pile of muddied mercury. The pain faded as quickly as it came, leaving him heaving on the ground. And with the pain, the thrill left, leaving him uncomfortably empty.
Killing Zouken had been too easy, too impersonal. He had done it with a power that felt alien to him. It would have been better to wring the old monster's neck apart with his own hands.
"I underestimated you."
Kariya stood so fast he stumbled.
How was Zouken still alive?
"Looks like that Magus really has made you into a potent weapon," said Zouken, his voice disembodied, like it came from various spots within the walls and ceiling. "To think that he would trick me by giving me this puppet, claiming that it would so easily crush you, when all he wanted was to use you to get rid of me."
Kariya didn't have the patience for this nonsense. Now that Kayneth was dead and Zouken wasn't there in person, he didn't have anything blocking his way into the worm pit, where Sakura was. He shuffled forward, his unleashed divinity still weighing his body down,like he was trying to move prosthetic limbs. His sword point dragged behind him, scratching out a scraping sound.
He was at the door, or the remains of the stone barricade Zouken had called the door, of the worm pit. Just a few steps, and he could take the stairs down to save Sakura.
A gargling from behind startled Kariya, and he whirled backwards, sword pointed, only to see Kayneth stand again.
It couldn't be called Kayneth anymore. It was a mangled human body so bent apart and crushed that mud spouted from dozens of wounds like a fountain piece. Arms and legs twisted and splayed, like a hammer had forcibly shattered the bones, held the doddering corpse standing upright despite a lack of any functioning bones and muscles.
A torn jaw dangled loose from the corpse's mouth, and a lolling tongue spat out a garbled mess of vocalizations that Kariya couldn't make out. But the corpse's eyes, as blue and sharp as ever, still held hate clear and focused.
Kariya would put an end to this miserable mess. He ran his sword clean through the corpse's sternum, running forward and slamming the body into the hallway wall, his sword piercing through the back and embedding into stone behind the corpse.
The mud splattered onto Kariya, and he drew back like he'd burned his hand, leaving the sword staking the body to the wall. He looked at his hand, where a splotch of mud had landed on his wrist. Smoke curled from the blob as it sizzled, eating into the black carapace encasing his hand, liquefying the diamond hard shell into a runny goop.
The burning felt exactly like the feeling when he was struck by the mercury whips, but at several magnitudes higher. The pain was bearable, minimal even, but there was this unnerving sensation of raw burning, of a tingling so potent it felt numbing.
"Well, well" said Zouken. "So there was some truth to that deal. Looks like you might be the first one to go, dear grandson."
"Ahhh-Ahh-Ahh!" shouted the corpse, its loose tongue flapping around in a vain attempt to form words. The corpse moved forwards in spite of the sword nailed in its chest, but stopped when it hit the sword's wide handle. The pause was momentary.
The corpse struggled and pushed, and a squelching crunch popped as it forced its way through the handle. A jagged rectangular space, the shape of the handle, was present on the corpse's chest as it staggered forwards, its arms outstretched to grab Kariya. Kariya could see through the corpse's body through that hole, but that changed when mud spilled from the open wound in an uninhibited torrent, pouring like a waterfall that pooled on the narrow hallway ground, smoking as it melted the stone underneath it.
"Matou Kariya"
Kariya turned to Kirei, who hadn't moved an inch from a dozen meters away.
"Keep the body in place," said Kirei as he unrolled his sleeve, baring a tapestry of Command Seals. "I will exorcise the body."
Kariya looked at his sword, still pinned to the wall. Cutting apart the body would be disastrous, as it would just create more openings for the mud to spill from. But getting in range of the body was also dangerous, especially considering the fact that the mud prevented him from regenerating through normal means.
Kariya stepped back, planning maybe to lure the slow and shambling body around in a chase.
Kirei began chanting, one of his many Command Seals glowing. "I will kill. I will let live. I will harm and heal. None will escape me. None will escape my sight."
Kariya took another step back, before he realized what was behind him. The worm pit, where Sakura was.
He had no options. To save her, he knew he had to make sacrifices. He dashed forward, tackling the living corpse and slamming it back into the wall.
"Be crushed. I welcome those who have grown old and those who have lost. Devote yourself to me, learn from me, and obey me.
Kariya kept the struggling body stuck to the wall and plugged the hole in the body with one of his hands.
"Rest. Do not forget song, do not forget prayer, and do not forget me. I am light and relieve you of all your burdens."
The burning dominated his hand, numbing it entirely.
"Do not pretend. Retribution for forgiveness, betrayal for trust, despair for hope, darkness for light, dark death for the living."
Kariya didn't notice when his hand had melted away, leaving the mud to spill on his stomach, sizzling away his flesh until his intestines, pink and fleshy, pulsed in view. He slammed the body back into the wall with his other hand, keeping the corpse pinned while having his remaining palm cover the mud dispensing wound.
"Relief is in my hands. I will add oil to your sins and leave a mark. Eternal life is given through death."
There was no pain, and that made him shudder. He was used to pain, but this foreign, alien numbness was something repulsive to him.
"Ask for forgiveness here. I, the incarnation, will swear. Kyrie Eleison."
A golden flash, and the mud stopped flowing. Just in time, too, as both of Kariya's hands were gone, leaving steaming stumps covered in runny liquid carapace. The corpse slid to the ground, its eyes rolled into its head.
Kariya sighed in relief, and focused on healing himself. He used Monstrous Strength again, restoring the flesh lost on his stomach and regrowing his hands. He wriggled his fingers to test his new set of hands, and saw that they were more streamlined than before, with glossy, smooth black carapace with fingers that ended in polished and thin claws that looked more like needlepoints. His regrown stomach, though, had the same craggy black armor that his hands used to have.
Kariya walked over to his sword and pulled it out from the wall.
"So, are you going to keep helping me?" asked Kariya, glancing at the fading Command Seal on Kirei's arm.
"As the situation permits," said Kirei flatly.
Zouken's voice came online again. "Well, Kariya, how does it feel to have been a puppet your whole life?"
"Are those your last words?" said Kariya.
"No, they are ours."
Was the old fool going made now that he had lost?
"My main body is too weak to escape," continued Zouken."And that thing will erupt now."
Kariya swiveled around in time to see the corpse explode into an eruption of mud. There was so much mud that it filled the entire hallway, and like a flood, it crashed into Kariya, turning everything black.