Speech =``...´´
Thoughts = [….….]
ºº
….If you cut a king, you better cut him to the quick…
ºº
He could not die…
He could not, he could not…..
Those were some of the weak, barely perceptible thoughts that lingered inside his mind. Slipping by through the open cracks of his skull and the pool of blood that had formed around his battered body like a broken record.
Unable to come up with something else, too tired to try as he felt the coldness of death sink in deeply into his marrow.
A touch he had never felt in a thousand years...
He could not…
He-he…
He would have gritted her teeth if he could, but he felt too weak to even breath.., blood and teeth falling out of his mouth. Every single second was nothing but utter torture., feeling the way his body was burnt out, slammed and broken into oblivion.
Yet not enough to shut him down and allow him to drift peacefully to death...
He could not die….
He he had to... fight, he had to win…
It was his destiny.
His destiny..
To become the master of this world. To become the one and only that would dictate the laws and rules that will mould civilization for eternity.
To become a god...
Blood-stricken lips churred and twisted with a crooked, feral smile. His face, or what was left of it furrowed with insanity as he felt those wishes become into reality behind the depths of his rotting brain lost in delirium of the agony that he had suffered on, and would continue for centuries.
Yes, yes...that was his dream.
That was his only dream, and he would be damn if he allowed it to fail because of his own folly.
He felt his body slowly stir up to life, his exhausted body finding new life flaring into his seared veins, pushing away the dread of death that had been descending over him, with its callous wings open as he pushed or at least finally regained control over what was left of his body.
It was not much as he crawled like a snail rather than been able to stand from his soon to be aquatic grave, the instincts of his body called him up to flee, to ran away from him but he steeled himself against it and the re-acknowledge of the thought that barely any bone had been left intact.
But it mattered little…, his target was on sight.
The small sized bottle filled with pills that he always carried with him, a bottle that he would have believed destroyed if not down right turned into powder by either the titanic blows he had taken during the fight and then the bone snapping joy race his assailant had pushed him face first.
It must have fallen out and laid there when he landed here...
Yes…, this was his destiny..calling out to him. Red ichor spilled from his lips in an instant, thick and arterial though with different tones of red and black spread all over it. And in spite of the pain that still writhed within he smiled. A gesture that only grew wider and terrific as he stretched his last remaining arm and graved the bloody thing with a shaking hand and went to swallow the entire bottles contempt which could have been in the hundreds.
One true Diabolos tear while the others were the more synthetic and albeit less powerful products that came from it.
By the time the last one passed through his lips, he felt his body burn from inside out in flames of agony, of despair...
And of POWER...
ºº
Thunder boomed violently as it pierced the dense blanket of darkness and rumbled almost for eternity over stone, flesh and bone even before the light of the lightning struck and cut its imposing figure.
Rainwater was falling everywhere, unopposed..., in fact it was falling even harder now than ever before. Turning it all into a pitiful quagmire of debris, mud and blood that was now threatening to his reach his plated knees.
The sewers were probably already overwhelmed, spilling out their contents through busted holes that had tore through the concrete.
Now, bodies were submerged beneath the thicks, cold liquid layers. The skeletons of the buildings that had been desolated by his hand finally fell as the waterspouts of water sank and damaged what little remained standing.
He could feel the drops hitting his body, steadily pattering like arrows as they clashed, fell and slid over the ruined metal of his shoulder pads or the tubes of his respirator, dangling playfully from ancient steel and wicked scars through the passing of time. Glistening the bone and glinting the coal like fire of his eyes, falling from his claws and the soaked bloody, tissue-covered blade of the scythe that remained faithfully waiting for another command.
And if his unblinking eyes did not deceive him, there even seemed to be a kind of heat-emitting mist coming up from the chains attached to his arm that evaporated the storm water even before it reached the affected limbs.
If the heavens seemed to be under the rule of a violent god, then the ground was under the rule of another far worse...
He rose his head, looking at the shrouded firmament that hanged over his head, the tubes dangling by the movement as he watched streaks of lightning tore through the skies and spread out like ethereal tree roots.
But no matter how hard they fought for his body, they were unable to wipe away the blood smeared on himself, as if reality itself made it clear that there was no baptism or prayer that could wash away his sins.
That could erase his shame...
Not that he was interested anyway, only the insane would try to cleanse that which could not be changed.
Or those who believed that something better awaited in the afterlife...
But he knew the truth.
He took a second to push those thoughts out of his mind, to bury the cries of the past over the grave he never properly dug. He looked down at the cultist that remained under his metal heel, the man still writhing, worm-like even if his body had been stripped of its arms or legs.
Squeezing a little, his already mangled body gave way against the pressure. He could hear even before it took place how his ribs buckled and popped like light bulbs, shards of bone and sinew sticking in his lungs, piercing them, slicing through like fish at a flea market.
He could hear the beating of his tiny heart, accelerating by the second, every tiny twinge of agony pushing the organ to unsuspected limits, could hear his blood rushing through his veins, bursting the ducts from the sheer pressure, an event that took place over and over again until he heard the heart receive the same fate.
That was not enough...
Not at all.
His fists clenched tightly, the chains glowed, his eyes reddened with bottomless hunger as if answering in silence the plead, no, command they uttered. One that was rather plain and simple…
Immediately he sank his foot deeper into what was left of the craven body, the cultist's chest disappeared in a resounding meaty crack and a hole appeared in its place, his organs bursting through his open mouth and eye sockets like super liquefy meat. His throat bulging and tearing apart in its endeavour to give way to half his body going up on the wrong way.
Now that...was enough. Humming with satisfaction he pulled out and walked away from his work….
The rest of the square was filled with the bodies or what little could be called remains of those men under the cool flooded ground.
Broken and unmade…, the stench of madness they paraded now driven out from his senses as fast as their lives had been snuffed out from existence. Now only the metallic sour taste of arterial red remained behind to contest with him.
For a moment he had wished there had been a little more of them…
But he would settle for what he had…, even if they had been meagre scraps.
Even if they were worthless of his attention.
``Pathetic wretches…., your weakness disappoint me. I had my expectations real low, and yet you managed to underperform…congrats are in order´´
He growled to no one in particular, the knife, searing voice lost through the howling winds and yet they echoed strongly all around him. The heavens that had shun their gates to him and the dirty corrupted soil he trod being the only witnesses of his words.
With those gone..., now only one remained. The first course of the meal turned dessert.
He looked towards the fallen and temporally forgotten body of the master of this hooded husks of men. Bloodied and battered, his state was a far-cry of what it used to be. He had been, at least the least unsatisfactory result of this day worth of killings. He had lasted, more than he had given him credit for…brave, but foolish.
Until he came crushing down on top of him like a vulture.
But it felt not enough…, he had not made his point clear enough as he still drew breath and that was all that mattered.
He would carry the sentence now…
But just as he looked towards the sole beating heart in his immediate surrounding he noticed something...was off.
Dark as it may have been and the distance between the cumbersome, crooked remains of the human boy he noticed the way he was guzzling down an entire bottle of red pills down his throat with reckless abandon as if it was his last day on earth…
Which it was...
After that he felt something stir up inside the little cultist…, slowly at first, humming softly at the back of his head like a small crescendo from a soft, lonely tune before it grew rabid and without control a few moments later, bursting wildly and without care from each and every pore of his body and soul.
The humans body becoming wrapped in a storm of his own as the magic from his body swallowed him whole in bright scarlet lighting. Even with the mask on, he could tell the way the scent in the air grew more metallic and heavy.
It was not much, not really...but for once he had finally sensed an increase in the mana pool around his target.
No one in this forsaken world had been able so far to do a meagre change of their own aura. They were as strong as they appeared. Which was not much, not even barely above the mud stuck in his iron heels.
Fickle, weak and pathetic to the point that he would have burst out in tears if he was even capable any longer to do so.
Not this man it seemed...
[Ah, so this is a power-up..? Interesting..]
He mused to himself almost absent-minded. To think that the way those pills had found their way into the mans hands would be the very thing that would make a change was..amusing to say the least,
For it was pills..., not artefacts or amulets of any kind or form…, but just pin sized pills.
If that was not amusing then he did not know.
But would they be enough?
Clearly one would not be enough, an idea that the man must have come to the conclusion, so the idiot had done what any desperate fool would do next. He dropped every single one of them down his throat, hoping that when swallowing them he would not burst into a puff of blood and gore by the unhealthy and down right reckless injection of foreing energy into his body like many before he had witnessed in his younger times...
He could see the rippling energy and the way it moved inside the human cultist, how it clashed and adapted to the vessel they had been digested. How it expanded inside him, threads of magic growing like roots of an exotic, poisonous plant.
``Yes…, yessss...finally...´´
Fenrir chuckled to himself, his voice hoarse and weak yet crackling with mania as he took one step forward, then another.
He could feel, even if it was barely noticeable how ripples were appearing around the human. Like a pebble being tossed into the ravaging waves of the ocean. Joining in the disturbance.., but that was not the end of things.
Fenrirs body started to change, and not just internally as bones popped out in place from nowhere while wounds started to meld and limbs and teeth regrow, gushes of blood pouring out from the exposed bones and tore up flesh that had been left. Organs moving around, growing and peeling away the rot and grime that had wrapped around the more exposed sections. Leaving massive scar tissue behind.
Fenrir took a third step, the grip on his blade growing tighter as it started to glow with renew power. His own blood tricking down the length, like a primitive conduit for the energy stored within those blood vessels.
``What you experienced before...was nothing more than a show of what I could do. You caught me by surprise and my own folly blinded me, then it was too late to do anything about it.´´.
The ground started to crack, the air was becoming drenched with magic as it flared out from the humans body.
``You thought yourself smart, didn't you? That you had put down the great and mighty Fenrir by your lonesome?´´
Only silence answered the mans question.
He was not going to waste a single breath in a dead man. That only seemed to infuriate said man even further.
``Have it your way, bastard. Now, the class can really begin...and only I will remain!´´
He started to grow, leaving behind the small, young sized human he had appeared to be, replaced by a tall albeit smaller than him ans scrawny old man. His face creased with multiples lines, his eyes now small pins of blue that glowed with merciless intent, sunken into his face.
Fenrir took the fourth and then the fifth step.., with the move of his new born wrist he pushed aside the flooded ground, leaving the square still humid, though now vacant of the amount of liquid that had covered it until then.
He was smiling, sharp, razor teeth in full display over a pair of lips that appeared had never been able to properly smile in turn.
The cultist brought a hand to his scalp, then his face, caressing the now healed section of his face that had been rip off from him. Lightning struck right behind him, making the sadistic glint on the zealots eyes all the more brighter.
Like an animal stalking for prey…, hoping to scare the wits out of anyone unfortunate enough to wander on his path.
The air wheezed lightly through the respirators in what could in another life be considered laughter.
The fool, he would have more luck stumbling and impaling himself on his own blade than accomplishing anything remotely close to that.
He really was trying his best to look stupid...
``Doing this...its like letting, hehe…., like letting my hair down. I get to do this so rarely…, so please, enjoy it with me for as long as you can, foolish mortal´´
He waited to see more.., but against his wishes it ended right there and then.
Was that all? Really..? His eyes almost narrowed with barely contained frustration.
He just looked...older.
Truly, the man's transformation was adorable. And here he thought he would grow horns and wings before screaming bloody murder to collect his skull for his throne of lies…
He sighed, deeply into the metal mask. Was this the trump-card? Really? He would not mind if he were to use another one if only to make things not become stale and boring.
Sadly, that was not the case for he remained still for as long as the changes were taking place.
He shook his head, feeling the chains start to act up once more at this unnecessary already too long pause from the carnage they desired.
[Truly.., reality is often disappointing... ]
Fenrir or what used to be the human boy rose his head, the blood of his previous wounds still clinging to his flesh, covering the myriad of scars he had left in his wake of violence. His eyes narrowing to small slits as they took notice of him, his lips broken even then wrapped into a malicious grin.
In his eyes he had already won a thousand times.
The fool…., if only he knew.
``Playtime is over…., now.., now you will face not Fenrir, but the Nightmare that tore through this kingdom, the one everyone shudders when its name is mentioned..´´
The man started to speak, his words slow and soft at the beginning, yet growing stronger with each word uttered from his callous mouth.
He then pointed his sword at him, the slab of metal glowing in its entirety in red sunlight. It was joined by eight more blades that flew around him, poised ready to strike in a moments notice.
That was unfair…
He should have brought more.
``Now you will die, but not until I rip off that silly mask of your face..You will die screaming!´´
He scoffed if not almost chuckled bitterly at the absurdity of the claim by pure scepticism of his overestimation of the situation.
And yet, the ghost of a smile had yet to vanish from his wicked lips behind the mask.
Ignorance truly was a bliss, there was no other word to describe this.
If he really wished to continue this road, then he would allow it. He would then in turn enjoy him for as long as he could.
After all...wasn't he anything if not compassionate?
He griped his scythe and dragged it through the ground forward, reaping cobblestones and drawing out dust before he pointed the killing tool, blood still dripping down the ground from those he had slain just a moments notice.
Their bodies still warm behind them. Waiting for their master to join them once and for all.
He would disappoint them.
He pointed one clawed finger at the man, earning his attention, then his ire as he gestured him to come at him.
Ten minutes…, ten minutes was all that he was willing to spare the man with.
No more, no less….
ºº
A/N
We are finally back on track with these two and get things on the road for once and for all, time for round two. The other two may have felt like filler...but I sometimes get bored when I do just one point view constantly.
º
People blowing up by over-consuming magic is a thing from the mc past. In fact, I am surprise I have not seen in the canon story anyone blowing up by taking the pills, no matter how anticlimactic that would be, I would have laughed to the end of times. Nothing the sort happened though, and they way they work are not even explained though perhaps I am asking too much at this point… :(
º
Another thing that baffled me was like the rounds create twelve for themselves, it gives them power, status and above all, the authority they crave. That is the whole point to get to the rounds. then why are some of the underlings holding jars filled with more pills? Is not one enough? So why do they guzzle down dozens? Why did that wolf boy which name I am sadly glad I don't remember survived when swallowing that many? Why was he given such precious resource if he was not a round? Just..why?
º
It was really weird…, so I decided that there were two kind of pills. The real deal, and those that are as small enhancers. That way the cult can actually show why their small fodder even if weak are a force to be reckon when not dealing with the Garden, their full staff is filled with enhance-junky seekers.
º
Kerberosthe: About the Beatrix question, I don't think that is a au difference in which Beatrix is weaker than the rounds, but rather she was weaker than them in the canon story too, though this answer is also biased and not fully truthful either since not every Round is as strong as the rest. We only know 4 of them, and of the Four only two were actual warriors, skilled both in magic and sword-fencing (Mordred and Fenrir) who could beat her not with ease, but without much struggle. The likes of the other two who relied on tricks and others to do their job would have a harder time against her.
º
The other answers that determine how strong she is are not that good as-well.
º
She was said to be able to follow Shadow through their fight, but Cid was merely entertaining himself with her and was not going to end things quickly. It was said that her technique was similar if not on par with Shadow garden recruits which are said to be better than any other knight in any kingdom, but it was not said she was on par with the Seven shades.
º
She has more experience and technique than most of the Garden yes, a hundred years worth is not to be scoffed at, but curiously..she lacks power that both the Garden and The cult posses in their higher ups in spades. And if Mordred could beat Epsilon, then I don't think Beatrix could hold a candle to that guy, let alone heavy hitters like Aurora, Reaper or Cid.