Speech = ``…..´´
Thoughts = … ...
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...When the wolfs howls to the wind, death comes in soundless feet….
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Fenrir had seen a lot of things in his long life...
Death.., murder, battles beyond the measure and recollection of memory in this world.
Some more strange than others, some not so much…
But this…
This he had never saw it coming…, he had felt it though.
In an instant Lili was about to slain that red haired bitch, just about to cleave through her bone and flesh with her dual saw blades as the princess lay down in the ground in a poodle of her own blood.
So arrogant, so foolish...to think she could beat them only to end up becoming the lamb for the slaughter.
She had the blood, she really had…
And though her lost would be a tragedy for the cults overall plans, he wasn't one that cared about the experiments that the rest of the rounds were obsessed with. Besides she had a sibling which more likely than not, shared the same blood.
And with their strongest warrior now dead, it would probably take not even a day before he had the last remaining princess under his grasp, culling the royal bloodline and securing a good stream of potent blood for those maniacs.
And so, time seemed to slow down as he waited with baited breath those blades from connecting with their target.
He relished the sudden taste of blood that would coat the walls before her lifeless body hit the ground
What he had not expected was from who it came from.
With a horrible, howling shriek...the Theriantropes left arm was severed from her elbow with a sick crunch. Falling flat to the ground the now useless arm while her owner swung wildly towards the hooded head of a massive shadow that had appeared between her and her helpless victim.
The blades connected with their new targets head, and yet there was no sign that they had done anything but poke at it.
The next instance, with the two still above the air. A gloved hand, decorated with bones and talons so sharp they could have been mistaken by small knifes closed tightly into a fist and slammed itself into the woman's exposed belly.
By the darkness, the noise…
He would never forget it...
The way that fist move through the empty space between them was so fast that he almost thought he had imagined it.
Searing the air as if its mere movement set a lit the oxygen around them before it collided with the Theriantropes body.
Tearing through it like it was wet paper, flesh bursting and bones shattering like shards of glass from the now open wound by the motion of the attack, puff of dried and fresh blood coming out everywhere before the shock-waves coursing through the old spirits body threw her away like a rag doll….
Creating a large crater of pulverized stone and fresh blood in the process..
After that, the thing landed on the ground, right next to the fallen Princess…
Leaning down where she stood to the point that he was already kneeling by the time his hand reached her face.
Talons brushing softly against the dishevelled and now dirty crimson mane of the princess, a strange light emanating from the edge of those clawed fingers before he stopped and rose up once again to his full height.
His eyes narrowed to thin slits, studying it now that it was easier to witness in its full glory.
It was big…
Bigger than him by a long way…, easily eight feet tall, towering above anything around him.
Encased in a heavy black leather trench-coat and steel. Massive pauldrons at each side of his shoulders, one marred with spikes coated with blood, the other wearing a laughing skull carved into the totality of its form.
His face, if it could be called that was nothing but a skinless skull of pure ebony white bone…., empty sockets where instead of eyes there were burning coals that burned with the same brightness the flames of hell would, carrying with him a massive scythe like the grim reaper her was...
A part of him could not help but watch it and consider him as the epitome of strength.
A ghost given flesh….
But even though his physical appearance was noteworthy of a warrior without equal, it was what he felt from it that mattered.
Darkness seemed to spill out from his very being, like a toxin that had taken the form of what mortals feared the most. The air around it grew thick and heavy, pushing and scratching the walls of his throat and lungs as if they were been filled with broken shards of glass..
His eyes started to tear up, pain flaring in their depths, optic nerves aching, begin for him to look away from it with the same insistence like he was staring at a sun.
But in this case, it was a wound in reality…, one that did not ask, but demanded his attention.
He bit his lip, taking a step back as he carefully strengthened the grip over his blade...
He…
He was strong…, really strong.
Stronger than the princess who had believed herself invisible, stronger than some of the rounds that had made their way up through their silly tricks and schemes.
Perhaps more than anyone he had ever faced until then….
He should have been wary, he should have been worried, but anticipation burn inside him.
When had been the last time his body had been so pent up for a fight? Whether he liked or not, this battle would be legendary.
A true fight to test his mettle….
There was no doubt about it, this..this man had been the source of all his problems. He had been wrong to believe it was one of his fellow Rounds to try attack him, they were cowards…
But this man? This man was not….
He could feel it, oozing out form his every pore...
The rage, the anger, the sheer pride of one that knows himself victories from a thousand battles without a scratch.
Yes...
He would cherish this fight for the rest of his life once he was done with him.
A warriors existence was to fight and die, to live by the sword and die by it….and it was about Goddammit time he found a worthy adversary.
That did not mean he would go easy on him though...
The sound of growling through barely used vocal cords and gushes of blood told him that Lili ha survived.
If just barely...
Battered and with her body broken by the massive hole in her abdomen where her own guts were spilling out to the ground, if there were any left after such attack she moved away from her crater made grave and stumbled forward towards the newcomer...
What a sorry sight, and she was suppose to be a hero that defeated Diabolos?
Laughable…, but given her continued existence he could get out something of her yet.
He had wanted for the enraged Hero spirit to wait, but yet again, the control he had over it...was tenuous at most.
And so she charged forward with an animalist growl, unheeding of his curses, wielding with one arm her weapon while her teeth bit down the handle of the other blade now that she was left without her other arm..
She sprinted, closing the distance between the two in an instant, the ground shaking and cracking where she had just been standing by the sheer whirling of power still remaining inside her.
The dull look in her eyes gone and replaced with pure murder intent, bloodshed eyes sparkling with one and sole goal as her world became nothing but a narrow tunnel.
To kill the one that had taken her arm…
He had known that of the three heroes, she was the most violent one, spirit or not...
It was like looking at a monster wearing human skin, a shooting star of primal madness that its crippling and agonizing wounds not slow her down, but fuelled her.
Perhaps it may have worked
Perhaps she could have won...
Or that was what she may have believed, only for the skull faced warrior to slap her with the back of hand when she was just a centimetre away from lancing him with her blades. Bones snapping and teeth shattering like star dust as she was thrown flying for a second time, only that this time towards a column which she tore through with her head.
Once again he was thrown off with the ridiculous speed that threw shock-waves rippling through the air, only to happen thrice as he appeared on the other end of the line where Lili was about to land, only for it stop that from happening as he graved her by the tail.
And then slamming her left and right against the cold, cracked cobblestones of the floor.
The ground shook with each bloody impact, craters popping out like fungus where the female Theariantrope faces had touched.
Blood and bones creaking and breaking down under the bloody swings, her shrieks and wails ignored by the silent and uncaring black clad menace as the female Hero was used as a flesh made flail…
Then her tail gave out...
The flesh tearing noisily like strands of string cut by the edge of a knife, the bones following suit a second later as the strain was too much for it.
Leaving nothing but a broken, blood drenched stump to wail painfully in her back side while the rest remained tightly under the iron grip of the warrior.
The hero spirit however was not done, throwing herself at the man, climbing all over him like a monkey and stabbing and biting him with all the strength she could muster, using the chains, the pauldrons and the strange machine attached to his back as hand holders to move through.
Even with one arm and her skull fractured in multiple locations the fact that she could keep up with the quick and fast paced manoeuvres she was working with spoke of how quick and nimble the original was in life.
Then the warrior, unfazed by her attempts, if not down right bored by them graved her by the leg and pried her off from him like she was nothing as he closed his grip around the limb, crushing it to a bloody pulp and slammed her on the ground, the ground shaking as the air was dispelled by the blow.
She would have tried to stand back again had not a massive metal heel stumped her back into the ground, crushing her already open wound.
She trashed, she clawed at the leg crushing her…, but it did nothing but amuse her tormentor.
Then, the skull faced warrior leaned down, stretching out a clawed hand and graved the back of her head while still stomping her back.
It was then that he knew was about to happened..
Using the moment to his advantage he dashed forward, blade in hand swirling with power as he used the moment to strike true at his open form.
From this distance there was no way he could fail, he could already taste the sound of blood in his nostrils.
The way those burning eyes would widen as pain tore through them.
What he did not expect was for a strange, black oozing portal to appear behind the masked warrior..
And even less from it to come out a massive, mechanical construct with and six barrels pointed right at him with such speed that a man of his size should not have been able to do.
Going against the very laws of reality...
He managed to rise up a magic shield around him just as the trigger was pulled, an act done more by reflex than actual thought as his mind screamed at him that to do otherwise would have him having to pick up his lower and upper body from the mess they would unleashed.
That did not stop the pain from coursing through him having that thing fired on him once feel like a stab to the heart, each of the six barrels unloading fiery death at the same time at point blank range and propelling him through the room like a supernova.
Crashing like a pigeon that had tried to fly without wings
It was painful, but he would live…, but by the time he rose from the debris of his rough landing it was too late.
The warrior started to pulled up...
It was a slow, methodical butchery as he witnessed the way the muscles around the hole of her chest tensed by the strain they were put under, one that only continued to grow as the hand clasped tightly around the bloodied scalp of the continued to angle her neck into an unnatural position.
Then her body started to snap.
Tendons were cut, organs were brought to their limits, and her spine uncoupled from its place.
A few moments later and the warrior was left with a disembody upper half in his grasp while the lower section of the Theriantrope remained under his heel, before dropping the now useless lump of flesh to the ground like common trash and stomping her head the same way one would do a cockroach..
He blinked.
The amount of violence…
Even if it was against a mirage and not truly the real thing, was disturbing.
It made his skin crawl…
But in his arrogance he merely attributed such thing to the coldness that had appeared and taken the room by storm.
He took a step forward.
``Impressive, I have never seen something take down one of the chosen heroes so quickly and with such…..brutality.´´
He said, loud enough to be heard by the last remaining individual in the room….
His words calm and collected, soft even….masquerading the excitement inside him.
He received no answer…., the silence between them grew ever deeper, with only the short or large pauses where the sound of the air filtered through the respirator could be heard.
Mechanical..
Dirty...
``May I know the name of the bastard who dared show his face? I want to know what I will have to put in your grave..´´
He spoke once more, taking another step.
Once again, no answer came, there was not even a sign that he had acknowledge those words at all.
The man…, the thing was just standing there….
Menacingly...
Which was strange given that he was not taking a battle stance or anything at all, it felt that its very presence was shrieking at his nerves, as if he was standing before a predator.
It was...a peculiar sensation to be sure, but one he was not thrilled about. Though perhaps, it could not compare with this everlasting silence.
He was the one in charge, he was the one that brought terror in the hearts of the weak…
Not that thing.
Breathing become harder to do, the air was growing thicker and heavier even more than before.
He bit his lip, drawing blood as he disconnected his mind from that ethereal onslaught.
He pointed his blade at the man, energy coating the edge to the point that it had become a small sized star.
``Silent to the end, eh? Then you will die, nameless...like everyone else before you…, what a pity. I was hoping to know at least something from the one that I am about to kill´´
He growled through clenched teeth, shifting his feet into position..., eyes narrowing into thin slits as he grew tired of this emptiness...
Wanting to gauge a reaction..
To see something, anything at all that he was not talking to a wall….
And yet Nothing happened.
Not even the simplest of rebuttals..
The sound of the breather drilled inside his skull…, like crooked fingers making their way into his brain.
Whispering things, but mostly scratching the walls of his mind.
Slowly…
And loudly...
``…´´
[Fuck it..!]
He would not have this…
He would not have it at all...
``I am Fenrir! The fifth seat of the cult of Diabolos, the destroyer of Midg-...´´
Before he even managed to finish his sentence his words died out in his throat, leaving nothing but a surprised gasp as he was forced to push himself away from the imminent threat of death as the dual barrels attached to the creatures left hand had been hefted and fired in an instant.
Delivering explosive fiery shells the size of his head, flying almost at supersonic speed at him, empowered by both the magic circuits carved both in the mechanism and in the inscription in each and every bullet fired.
He would never have been able to dodge in time had his senses that he had honed out for so long from constant combat had not push his body on their own out of the way.
The shells flying threateningly close to him, the heat of their artificial cores scorching his skin and numbing his skull with the awful sound they created as they tore through the air like vengeful banshees.
Slamming and striking the ground and walls behind him and tearing them apart with ease. Chunks of rock and pebbles flew in ever direction, dust coming out from each and every crater that found its way into existence by the barrage.
He clenched his teeth, grinding them so tightly that had he been anyone else they would have shattered by the sheer pressure. Dashing through the air and ground in a blur of motion, magic swirling inside as it powered up his speed more and more.
And he was barely avoiding them.
Had they been the simple muskets or guns his men usually had, or if the thing had just fired the first few shots before moving to clash blades with him this would have been over in a heartbeat,
But it continued to fire at him.
Clearly not very thrilled at the idea of moving to fight on close quarters when he could worn him down with sheer fire power.
After a few seconds that felt an eternity the line of fire ended which surprised him once more.
The attack had ceased as fast as it had occurred..
Looking around, the room was nothing but a broken remnant of what it once was, with parts of the ceiling falling around them as the walls and columns that sustained them had either collapsed or been brutally blown off the earth.
Sweat trailed down his brows and into the ground.
``Bastard! Do you have the slightest of ideas of what you have done! interrupting me like that!? ´´
He spatted, angry and wrathful and such show of disrespect.
Hiss foes had always been too terrified, to dumbstruck by the realization that they were doomed to do anything but listen at what would be the last words they would hear, even those fool hardy wannabe heroes that found their end more often than not at the end of his blade had never dared try to interrupt him when he started to present himself to them.
It was like a tradition of sorts.
And that bastard had broken it like it was nothing...
``I am the nightmare..! I am the hunter..! I AM-...´´
Just like before he could not finish his sentence, biting his tongue at the sudden change in priorities in his brain when his foe disappeared from his sights.
A moment standing still, the next disappearing in a blur of darkness…
His breath hitched, his heartbeat stopped, growing numb inside his chest as time slowed down around him, yet the blood inside his veins only seemed to pump even FASTER..!
He rose his arm just in time as a fist materialized from nowhere, aiming to strike at his head and pulverized it into smithereens.
He felt his arm break..., the bones inside his arm shatter and clawed the flesh wrapped around them mercilessly as they tried to move out of the way of the inhuman force pushing them. Spit left through his mouth as the entire air of his body was knock out in an instance.
But his arm held….
Barely, but just enough as it hardened...
His feet dug into the ground, trying to hold...but it was no use as he was quickly thrown flying just like the heroic spirit.
But instead of creating a crater where his body would lay in some sort of improvised grave, he landed gracefully with a back flip before he touched the ground…
Shaking his head and flexing his fingers time and time again to make sure he had not lost his good arm reflexes as his magic healed up the atrocious wound.
His chest was heaving up and down, with each breath gushes of blood and dead tissue fell down to the ground, the strike having just not damaged the limb almost beyond recognition, but also tainting the flesh with its touch...
Dark spots having form around the open cavities were the bone had protruded through the flesh.
And so the healing took longer as the magic had to chew and rip off the necrotic flesh form his own body.
``Very clever.., thinking that you were gonna be able to hit me by using my own moment of respite against me? Do you really thing I would stood so low to allow vermin like to kill me with just that hit?´´
He snarled venomously, before he showed the arm the warrior had struck. Healed completely, though the clothes around it had burn completely on their own.
He was not sure how a fist could ignite cloth like that with mere speed.
``You hit hard, but its gonna take a lot more than that to put a dent on-…´´
He started to say, only to found himself kneeling on the ground, one hand covering his mouth as a large gobbled of blood slipped through his fingers into the ground below.
Pain coursing through his entire body like a wave of fire that was scorching his every vessel.
What..
What the hell just happened!?
Where was all this blood coming from!?
Had he been hit by a blow he had now saw coming? No! He was sure he had blocked the strike, nor he felt any blade cut through him while he pushed back to attack from those clawed fingers.
He had been protected, untouched.
Then why..
What had damaged him so much?
[No…, it cant be…, how can that be possible!?]
He screamed inside his head, eyes widened and his mouth left open with shock and sheer awe.
It was not the strike itself that had wounded him so badly, but rather the vibrations that had pour through his body once he had blocked it.
His skin and bones on his arm remaining sturdier and strong, even though marred by the attack even with his magic healing him and empowering him.
But the rest of his body was not so fortunate.
The toughness of his vessel becoming his own enemy as the vibrations could not leave and instead continued on until they wrecked havoc inside him.
Rupturing organs and veins...
He clenched his teeth, spatting another gobbled of blood as rage started to brew inside him.
Clever little bastard, you got me there….
He said as he rose from his position, his legs wobbling for a second before he regain his composure, wiping away the blood from his mouth and chin with his free arm.
But that is not going to happen again…, I am going to enjoy killing you for all the mess you have brought me
but that thing remained silent, the sound of those cold, shallow breaths reaching the entire room.
Drilling into his skull with each intake of air.
It however rose his free arm, the one holding the mounted gun once more. He prepared himself to dodge, to cut through the bullets as he was about to flee from the gun and their monstrous payload that had torn through stone and wood like nothing. A hundred countermeasures crossing by his mind of where to move after he dodge the initial barrage.
Only for all those plans came crushing down under his very feet as the man twisted his wrist and with its clawed talons, signalled him to come at him..
To demand him that he faced him …
A simple, sluggish gesture that had barely been paid any effort in doing so, as if questioning the veracity of his threats the same way an adult would consider a baby's wailing nothing more but a nuisance.
He...
Fenrir, the nightmare of Midgar...a mere nuisance!?
``YOU LITTLE SHIT….!´´
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When he returned to the material real he had not expected to find it any more different than he had left it. Perhaps arrive just where he had left, at the beginning of those stairs…, or just a bit forward.
But not too much…
[You have to be kidding me….]
What he had not expected was to be pulled out away from that place and shown that a type of devastation that taken place somewhere else, caused by a battle between three individuals who stunk with the scent of Aurora.
Clearly having arrived mostly at the end terms of it given their looks.
With one, a young looking woman bleeding behind him like a pig…
While the other, another young, so beastly type of girl descending just above his head with raw killer intent and madness, blades descending and cutting through the air.
And he was in the middle of their quarrel…
…
Even though it lasted less than a second, he could not help but roll his eyes at his apparent luck, or lack of it..
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A/N
Here is the new chapter, I hope you like it and that you are enjoying the story so far and I apologize if you do not. I am still trying to get around the light novels and web novel of the story.
Sadly I am feeling a bit sick or perhaps tired...so the updates are gonna stop for a while. It pains me since we were just this close to end the prologue arc and get to the Alpha arc. Once again, I am sorry.