"O my soul, do not aspire to immortal life, but exhaust the limits of the possible."

― Pindar, Pythian III

Chapter 38 - Sevenfold (Part I)

Balmung came on, inhuman limbs churning, servos howling like the damned in Hell. The ground trembled beneath its thunderous footfalls, engines roaring and spewing infernos of flame.

An aura enveloped it, a nauseous haze of seething color. The air around the exo-armor swirled with spidery patterns of pulsing cyan light, swords a blurred halo as they descended to carve me apart.

I was shaking, yes. Wincing with pain and shock, my ears still ringing from the crashing noise. The great wound on my back had gone numb, bile rising in my throat. My limbs felt like cloth, seared ribs and wounded leg ablaze with cold fire.

I wanted to flee. To throw myself aside, to do anything to escape the pitiless tide of swinging metal. It was a thresher gone rogue, a storm of whirling swords surging toward me like a maelstrom, a demented machine racing toward first and final impact-

But I stood my ground. It was the only choice I had.

Chain-lightning teeth snapped shut around me, and the world dissolved into a cacophony of steel.

Rubicante, sword of red iron, carved across the top of the Apollyonian Aegis in a spray of colorless sparks. Crimson steel shrieked on brass, the jolt shooting up my arm. I had a moment to set my feet, a moment to brace - Before its twin, Cagnazzo, hacked down, slicing a matching furrow into the shield's scarred face.

There was a brittle thunderclap as the lightning-wreathed blade discharged, a sizzling wreath of electricity leaping and arcing, the ozone-tainted air burning my lungs-

The next three struck as one.

Nemesis, blade of force, sliced high. I jerked my head back, but I was too slow. Flesh ripped, a bloody tear yawning wide as it slit my cheek to the bone.

My helmet.

Why did I take it off?

What was I thinking?

The segments of my helm folded back around my skull - too late, too late - even as the spreading nausea cramped my gut. For one hideous moment, I could feel the freezing air on my teeth, the humming blade reverberating through my bones as a starburst of agony flared behind my eyes-

Somehow, somehow, I parried Widow's Fang out wide. Gnosis rang on the poisoned blade, and it passed just this close to my throat, trailing noxious venom-serpents of smoke as it hissed past, denied.

And then the Frost Brand hacked into my leg. A dragging cut, slicing across the join where two plates of mithril met. It was cold, so cold it burned, and I staggered back with a yowl of pain, even as I felt blood freeze and crackle with every reeling step.

But it was the last blade, the old ivory of calcified bone, that got closest. Carnifex's pallid edge slashed my ribs, right over the old wound, right where Balmung's fusion cascade had scorched my flesh. The pain was blinding, and I felt vomit splatter against the inside of my helm as my fractured vision - half in, half out - finally swam back into focus.

Fuck-

The wretched stench, the acrid taste of my own bile, yanked me from the haze of agony. I twisted, weight anchored on my good leg as I swept back to strike-

A kick stamped into my shield. The full weight of Balmung's colossal weight drove it home, and the sledgehammer blow sent me sprawling. Pain sliced through my shoulder as I skidded across the slick, warm gore, fighting to keep my balance.

I didn't make it.

One foot slipped, and I went over. As everything tipped sideways, I lashed out with my sword in a frantic arc-

There was an ugly, grating sound, a bitter strychnine tang filling the air. The scent of rotting orchids - overpowering, bewildering - blotted out the stench of death, as my blade skimmed across Balmung's chest-plating in a ripple of distorting energy.

How…?

Staccato, anarchic forces - swirling around the combat chassis like sour winds - had deflected it. Even as blood poured down my cheek, I could feel the backwash gnawing at me, like hot needles stippling my skin.

How do I fight hi-

And then I hit the ground, so hard my wounded shoulder jarred. My head slapped against the ground with the weighty clang of metal on stone, hard enough to see stars.

Somewhere far, far away, I could hear bells ringing.

I floundered on my side, tasting quinine, sweat, iron. I could hear the exo-armor's thunderous footfalls, every piston-driven step ringing on the pavement as it advanced. The ground was already splintered in a thousand places from Balmung's meteoric descent, plumes sifting upwards from tiny fissures as blood - my blood - spattered the stone.

-get up GET UP-

I was lucky. The Vanisher's next scything swing carved only air, the pale sword shrieking as if thwarted. Shield dragging at my arm like an anchor, I rolled to the side, cutting and bruising myself in a dozen different places. Half-dazed, I scrabbled backwards over the ground, armored back grinding against stone as I dragged myself to my feet-

I heard him laugh. A short, sharp bark of laughter, like slow machine-gun fire. The sound was raw-edged, wounded, a white noise-laden crackle: For I'd hurt him, too, and the dark, oily fluid that wept from Balmung's joints was more than merely coolant.

I felt the sting of humiliation as I stumbled back, raising my sword. Through halved vision, I glimpsed the bruise-black silhouette of the hulking juggernaut, so large, so powerful, it seemed rooted to the ground. Chaos and intent poured from it, irregular pulses of static and pain - Rotting the color out of the world, tainting it with that unnatural cerulean glow.

You're poison, I wanted to tell him.

This is all you know.

This is the only thing - the only thing - you could ever be.

But it took everything I had to stay on my feet, and I needed each wheezing breath to push back the black fog of exhaustion. Even as I gave ground, limping desperately away, I knew the Vanisher could close the distance in an eyeblink.

Instead, I heard mechanisms cycling, with a thud of metal on metal.

He wasn't attacking. Why wasn't he-

Swords raised like flesh-cleaving wings, Balmung swiveled smoothly towards me. The machine-giant seemed to shudder, to hunch: I heard the subtle shift in the pitch of its systems, the humming drone of jointed segments and articulating armor plate.

Everything flashed crimson, the grainy red points of targeting lasers fingering my chest. For a heartbeat, I saw that ports had opened on Balmung's torso, short-barreled weapons shifting to aim at me.

Gauss lightning writhed along the charging coils, my shield came up in desperate defense-

I knew what this was.

The death-blast, from before. The iron dragon's wrath, reborn in a truer form. As realization crashed over me, my stomach knotting, I thought-

Now.

It had to be now, or it would forever be too late.

"Quicksilver-"

There was a flash like fire, and thunder smote the air.

The plasma annihilator stood at the pinnacle of YGGDRASIL's tech tree, surpassed only by the linear cannon. It was the ultimate man-portable weapon, a force of transcendent destructiveness- Almost, but not quite, rivaling a specialized caster's power.

Like the Powered Suit, it'd been invited in with Valkyrie's Downfall, along with the fusion blades, the Praetorians and all the rest - An unwelcome stowaway aboard the DMMO's sinking ship.

Accessing it was almost shockingly easy. Any artificer of worth could - in no time - go from fashioning swords and armor to missile launchers, energy weapons and, yes, state-of-the-art flying battleships.

If that seems egregious, you're not alone. The reasoning, I suppose, was that too much investment would deter would-be artificers from experimenting with the new paradigm.

Yet the plasma annihilator never gained the popularity it deserved. For each shot consumed rare Prismatic Ores, while blades forged from the same material endured into perpetuity.

That was its death-knell. For Prismatic Ores were scarce and fiercely contested, while nearly-as-effective weapons were far easier to find.

Like I said, the Vanisher had stopped holding back.

He'd use everything he had, all his carefully-hoarded treasures, to wipe me away like a stain.

And so would I.

Twin spears of scarlet light, ringed with concentric circles, speared forth. A teeth-aching screech followed each beam, like a chorus of dying crows.

I could hear them, over the thunderclap of plasma discharge. See the flash-burst of their retina-burning release, lurid red and bright as neon.

The bow-wave of the blast hit me, first. Pelting stone and flaying grit, swept towards me like a storm. A myriad of tiny impacts, drumming from my armor like rain.

Then the heat. Terrible heat, like the red and raw sun that hung above the arcology, scouring my skin raw.

The fastest wind, as if the door to a great and eternal furnace had been flung open.

The ground tore up. Cracked pavement heaved, rippling like water as grey lightning smote the earth. I could see the arcs of electricity blinking between the scattered shards, skins of smoke and flame slicing the view in all directions.

Underfoot, already-ruptured bodies superheated, vanishing in puffs of red steam. Flesh couldn't stand against something that could burn stone, that made the tarmac boil and glow with molten heat.

It burned across my sight, poison winds screeching and sucking. I felt the air thrumming with the tang of static electricity, the tug against my sweat-soaked skin.

Tasted copper, in the warm liquid that ran from my nose.

This would kill me, I knew. It would carve through failing wards, through mithril plate, with the fury of a main sequence star. Blast flesh and bone apart like ash in a gale. Not even blackened bones would remain.

It would unmake me, like I had never been.

I had no defense against that. The Aegis couldn't protect me, not long enough for it to matter. The remnants of the tempestuous light that flickered within me, at low ebb ever since I'd fallen to earth, would never be enough.

Almost no defense-

Except one.

Because, for one moment and one moment alone, I saw the Platinum Spire, bright and silver against the fading radiance of the false sun.

A moment in time.

The mace caught me full on the chin, and snapped my head to the side. There was no pain, just a brittle spray of pixels…But I went staggering, all the same.

"Shit," I said, rubbing my jaw. "...This isn't working."

With perfect timing, a dissonant clang sounded, reverberating from the bell overhead. There was something almost taunting about the sound, somehow. Like it knew I was dead, and enjoyed reminding me of the fact.

"Temper," Samuel chided, standing just beyond the practice arena's boundaries. The hard-light drones I'd been sparring with, like faceless marionettes of sculpted, mirror-polished steel, had frozen in place with blades and maces raised in silent threat.

He never liked it when I swore. It was too easy to get in the habit, he'd always said, and the supervisors that ran the Ministry for Labor were ruthless in their evaluation. One slip, the slightest infraction, and I'd lose my indenture.

The thought did nothing to help my mood. I'd just come off a mandatory eighteen-hour shift, and I couldn't remember the last time I'd been this exhausted.

Being battered in a DMMO, over again and again, was hardly the way I'd planned on unwinding. But the Pollutant Index was punishingly high, and being caught on the street during a dust-storm was a recipe for suicide…Which why was I'd come back to YGGDRASIL, for want of any better ideas.

"Refresh my memory. What's the lesson here?"

"Not dying," Samuel said. He heaved a long-suffering sigh, squaring his shoulders. "Look, it's not hard - Parrying's just like blocking. You just do it a little faster, that's all."

I gave him a dubious look. I'd spent the last fifteen minutes fending off attacks from sword, spear, axe and maul with my gauntlets and metal-shod forearms, and it hadn't been going well.

"Here. I'll show you."

He stepped forward, his boots making no sound on the glassy floor. Metal scraped on leather as Samuel drew his broadsword, shrugging his buckler into his free hand. On cue, the drones spurred back to life, beginning to circle.

The first drone lunged, spear flashing out in a lethal thrust. My brother's sword batted it aside, his backswing slicing across the marionette's neck in a single fluid motion. But even as the automata shivered apart, the others came on.

He sprang aside to dodge the hurtling mace, caught the swinging scimitar on his guard…

The axe hacked down at him, slicing down so fast it whistled. Overextended, Samuel had no hope of stopping it-

But at the last moment, his shield came up like a wall, and met the skull-cleaving crescent head-on. A perfect, ringing chime pealed out, ghostly ripples quivering and coruscating like waves across a pool's surface.

Invisible force slammed out. It cast the drones off their feet, like dead leaves in a hurricane. They shattered like he'd taken a sledgehammer to them, fragments scattering in a multicolored blizzard, evaporating without ever touching the ground.

My brother lowered his shield, ghost-light fuming from the buckler's unadorned surface.

"-Your turn."

"Élivágar."

Cold - bitter cold - spilled up my nerves, spilling down my spine. It felt impossible, like the echo of a deep, familiar stillness: Coursing through me, pulling me in with a relentless strength.

With my own strength.

For it was something within me, something that perhaps had always been there. Overriding every sense in a rush of inexorable calmness, waving away the smoke and the pain.

As if a thorn of ice had pierced my heart, and turned my blood into pure, clean meltwater.

It felt like the promise of air when drowning.

It felt like life.

I sensed all this, in the instant before impact. Knew it all, with intimate clarity.

Because, for a long eternal moment, time had slowed. Just like it had in Loyts.

As though I wanted it to. As though I needed it to.

I felt the pulse of intention race down my arms, from the very core of my being. Felt it surge into the Aegis, through every channel carved into brass and adamask, making the dully-glowing glyphs burn anew as it rose to meet the unstoppable.

Like when I'd fought the Demon Claw, a lifetime ago.

The shrieking light struck the slab-faced shield, the shock vibrating through the Aegis, through plate, through my bones. It hammered down around me, a burning cascade of refracted fury: Brilliant, blinding, a fatal abyss without end.

It eclipsed everything, swallowing the night, the city, the future.

Everything narrowed down to that single point of scarlet death, swelling to become my entire world.

Consuming. Hungry. Deadly.

I felt the wrath of it in every iota of my being. The slow-blossoming shock of the impact, all those ravening energies transmuted anew. Felt my nose filling with blood, from vessels burst by overpressure.

The crimson-smeared light grew brighter still, and the view through my visor darkened, went black. Sweat stung my eyes as the air in my inner helm grew ferociously hot, my flesh beginning to blister, to swell-

Everything folded to a ringing quiet. I could feel my brother's shield in my hand, the inside of his armor against my skin. The wind tore at me, fighting to rip the Aegis from my grip, to hurl me down into the torrent of burning light.

Everything was falling. Everything was coming apart.

Everywhere except here, in the red-smeared darkness, in the breath that burned in my lungs and the beat of my racing heart. My boots ground deep into the churned-up earth, fighting for purchase as I held, held, held…

For I refused to fucking die here. No matter what.

My grip was slipping. Heat rippled through my gauntlets, and I braced for that last, painful moment. The one where I would feel skin and muscle peel back from my bones, the sharp scream of every fiber in my body, followed by-

…

..

.

And then it was over. The flame and the light was fading, my helm's display clearing with a sob of static. Sounds crept at me now, ghostly echoes of battle. Near, far, all around.

The fountains had been reduced to ash-dusted rubble, the charred stumps of shattered columns stabbing at the sky. Giant, gaping holes had been torn out of the buildings to either side, struck by the hail of refracted light.

Debris showered down from the shattered edges into the yawning gulf, gutted structures sliding apart like calving glaciers. Slowly, so slowly, a billowing cloud of dust spiraled up into the trembling sky.

For time still hummed on, with the stately, surreal grace of a nightmare, and the cold spiral of clarity coiling within me had yet to relinquish its grip.

The Apollyonian Aegis glowed in my hands like metal fresh from the forge, smoke wisping from the battered surface. My sword shuddered back to spark-laden life in my grip, my only anchor in a crumbling world.

I went forward. Moving between movements, accelerating through the strobing ochre ruin. Surging across the liquid ground, pulse pounding in my skull, as falling rubble exploded across my back.

I could see Balmung, now - A looming, almost-human silhouette against the bowing clouds. Hatches had opened in the great metal shoulders, cylinders of glowing metal spat forth, just beginning their slow tumble through the darkling air.

They were the heat sinks for the plasma annihilator, and they were already spent.

In the instant before they hit the ground, I was upon him.

I heard the Vanisher curse, a monotone machine-snarl, as Balmung's target-piper optics locked on me. All six swords rose as one - Cruel, smoking, icy, venomous - each lashing out, sweeping in at me on its own deadly arc.

But I was so much faster, now. As the frozen calm tightened its grip, I saw all the ways they would come, every point of impact and cutting. Like the whirl of each blade, the whipcrack strike of each sword, was preordained.

I saw it all.

The blades of red iron hissed past me, so close I could feel the heat of their electric flame. I caught Nemesis' rippling wake on my shield, smashed Carnifex's scarlet edge aside with the rim, wove past the freezing arc of the Frost Brand in the same abrupt motion.

Gnosis swept down in a rushing murmur, and cleaved Widow's Fang in two.

The sword wailed as it died. The jade-green blade cracked, then shattered with the sound of smashing glass. Sharp chips of metal puffed into the air - a burst of envenomed shrapnel - poison smoke oozing from the ruptured hilt.

My follow-through sawed across Balmung's shoulders, raking back in a spray of sparks. A dense haze of malign energies swirled around the combat chassis, trailing it, moving with it like a swarm of locusts, a hundred thousand bodies slaved to one impulse. Each strike I landed tore into it, made it shiver and coruscate, fighting to hold itself together-

It wasn't enough. Not yet.

Gnosis struck, over and over again. In my hands, it twisted and writhed like a living thing, almost dragging me along. I could feel the pull of it, impelling me into its hissing rhythm, until the ring of metal-on-metal was all I knew.

Faster than my eye could follow, faster than my mind could think, my one sword was doing the work of six. Without hesitation, without pause, each stroke flowed into the next, a balletic dance of steel that knew no end.

I couldn't stop. I didn't dare. For I knew, somehow, that it would mean the end of everything.

I was inside the Vanisher's guard, now. Face to snarling visor, blade scything in rushing arcs. Slicing and chopping, hacking and slashing, delivering cut after remorseless cut from that place of cold, total calm.

The industrial terror of Balmung's form - so large, so powerful - seemed so crude, so clumsy now. With liquid ice pumping through my veins, that atrocious, night-black horror merely made for a bigger target, too slow to retreat, too large for defence. My blade carved through his increasingly ragged defensive shroud in lightning-quick flurries, contrails of raw chaos weeping from Gnosis's edge each time it skimmed free.

The Vanisher roared. No words, just a howl of defiance.

Balmung surged forward, dirty fumes spewing from the Reinforced Armor's vents as it hit a higher register of speed. The engines screamed, a raw, yearning whine of straining metal as they revved.

It cost him, I knew. The combat frame shuddered, its optics flaring brighter still. Fibre-bundle muscles bulged, dark red heat swelling beneath opalescent scales-

And all six arms surged into furious motion, thrashing with renewed vigor. I didn't slow, not for a moment, as my sword tore through the collapsing wash of energies. At last, it bit into metal, and bit deep.

Fragments of broken armor went spinning, as Gnosis hacked a molten groove into the hybrid alloy. In the same breath, I struck twice more - But with a muted shriek of hydraulic power, Nemesis leapt up. A jolt of violet force smote Gnosis aside, nearly blasted the sword from my hands.

The other four speared at me, moving as one. A lashing hail of blades, ready to rip me to pieces.

But this time, this time, I was ready.

The eerie thing was, we fought exactly the same way.

Before, I had no way of knowing: I'd never crossed blades with another player, let alone one who favored the sword. Yet here, now, as we collided - as we tore into each other, in a lightning-speared tornado of whirling steel - it was impossible not to become aware of the symmetry of it.

Two identical pieces, facing off at the center of the board.

Thousands of hours of motion-captured swordplay, bent towards a singular, lethal end.

With Perfect Warrior, the Vanisher's impossibly rapid blade-work was a mirror of my own, swords flickering like a spider's legs, a snake's tongue-

A single sword, versus six.

Five, now.

He must have felt it, the surreal unreality of the moment. How he'd surrendered all control to the forces that impelled his many arms, that drove him like a puppet.

Our blades flew in mad flurries, hammering, drawing sparks. Each seeking a gap in the other's defenses, hunting for the killing blow. The Frost Brand struck frozen splinters from my shield, ice crystals spraying in a glacial arc…But I was advancing, delivering blow after blow, dealing cut after cut from the razor that was Gnosis' edge.

Dimly, somewhere in the near-constant ring of steel-on-steel, I knew what I was doing should have been impossible. Balmung's servo-steered limbs gave each sword the merciless force of a lightning strike. Burnished with black galvoln and powered by integrated electrodrivers, they sliced the air with lethal precision, weaving a web of killing energies.

I was merely flesh and bone. As all five blades converged, there was no way - could be no way - that I could ever hope to counter the rain of blows.

But Gnosis whipped across to meet them, so fast it outran its own shadow. So fast it smoked, shedding a comet-tail of black vapor.

It met two blades coming the other way, flung up in a hasty, last-second guard, and tore through them both.

Cagnazzo snapped, half the blade pinwheeling away, red iron still alive with electric blue fire. Crawling with lurid bloodlight, Carnifex squealed as Gnosis hacked a deep notch into its alabaster edge, trailing crimson streamers as the white sword was smashed aside-

My blade didn't slow, or drag. It cut across Balmung, carving from right shoulder to left hip in one unfurling stroke. It tore through etched beliat and ebony scales, slicing through the solid metal carapace and into the exo-armor's oil-black guts.

Overlaid power systems shorted, in clouds of flying sparks. Motive systems ruptured, lubricant and hydraulics spurting in a great rush. Coolant ducts and fluid-lines wept quicksilver, venting from severed feeds, as I raked the sword back for another slice-

The Vanisher lurched back, hobbled, his combat frame no longer moving as fluidly as before. Shattered scales fell from Balmung's reactor plating, with a staticky hiss of white noise: Even through the cold, cruel calm that engulfed me, I could feel the satisfaction of it, the imminence of the kill.

For I was about to make the world a better place. Here, now, with one perfect strike.

One strike, and this would be done.

My blow carved into Balmung's side, slicing into humming motive systems. Overtaxed mechanisms howled, fighting to compensate as I sliced through a sheaf of spitting cables, wire filaments snapping beneath the hacking blade.

A deep, dire shudder racked the Powered Suit, plate shearing away beneath the sustained trauma-

The Vanisher's next thrust came deadly fast, blade sweating lighting as it speared at my face, but I was ready. I twisted, parried with my shield - the sword deflecting with a squeal of metal - pressing forward instead of falling back.

I had him on the back foot, now. I could sense my moment, as surely as a key turning in a lock.

He had nothing left. Nothing that could slow me, as I drove sword-strokes into Balmung's torn and dented casing, hacking into whirring limbs.

Nothing that could stop me from taking him apart.

I saw it, right then: The gap in the Vanisher's defences. A flaw in his guard, exposed by his murderous riposte. Infinitesimal, for less than a microsecond.

I ducked his answering slash, the lethal arc whistling overhead. Felt my legs coil beneath me, teeth clenched so hard I feared they would crack.

Everything narrowed; My vision shrank to a blurred tunnel, a line that connected him and me.

One strike - All I needed.

All I could manage.

He knew what was happening, the realization surging through him in an electric shock of understanding. In that unfolding instant, he knew he couldn't parry, couldn't bring his peerless blades to strike.

That in the end, all his plans - the sacrifices, the expediency, even the jet-black ebony sarcophagus that he'd so carefully forged - all of them, added up only to this.

This moment.

I thrust.

Gnosis drove at Balmung like a black thunderbolt, like inevitability. Like something that could not be denied.

I felt cords standing out in my neck from the strain, every fibre of my being bent towards delivering that final, lethal blow.

I-

Something tumbled between us, multi-faceted and glittering. Clear as flawless diamond, lit from within like a lantern.

A Sealing Crystal.

A hold-out, a final contingency, a breath ahead of the deathstroke.

For a frozen instant, it hung in the air. Crumpling upon itself, collapsing into a white singularity as brief as it was beautiful.

My eyes widened, beneath my helm's cracked visor-

Barbed cords of sinew wrapped around my sword-arm, wrenching it back. Pain surged into my arm and wrist, like nerves turned to hot coals. Not from the vicing pressure, or even the bone spurs scraping dully against my vambrace - Mere contact was enough to light a fire in my marrow, to fill me with abrupt, gut-twisting pain.

For it had hold of me, and would never, ever let go.

Later, much later, I would learn that it was a yochlol, a handmaiden devil. An oozing horror, warped like a half-melted candle. Its form defied reason, a writhing mass of flailing tentacles and dissolving flesh, with nothing but a hundred blinking eyes staring back at me.

It shimmered like smoke, drifting in the foul wind, a grotesque kite looming overhead. Insubstantial as a nightmare - Except for the jagged tendrils of bone, digging into my arm. Dragging it upwards, like the pull of tangling webs.

I felt its touch in the searing agony that tore through me. It was blinding, breathtaking: Pure, raw torment that sang through every nerve, like red-hot hooks burrowing deep into flesh. It left me retching, fighting the inertia of my own limbs as I tried to pull myself free.

My eyes and teeth ached, a choking clot in my throat. Pain gnawed my fingers, my wrist, my arm. Knowing what it meant only made it worse - For my reprieve was ending, and with it the cold, serene calm.

Time was returning to normal. The frozen moment had carried me this far, and no further.

Utter exhaustion hit, in all its fullness. Like dead hands, pulling me down into the mud. Bleary, blurry color flashed before my eyes, my legs buckling, lungs heaving like bellows.

I couldn't breathe.

Distantly, I knew I had to focus on the red. Had to cling to my rage, staying above the swirling black mire.

I had to fight him. I had to try.

The sword in my fist had gone dead, as heavy and useless as lead. The yochlol's ethereal touch felt like I'd plunged my arm into acid, like my flesh was peeling back from my bones. In a moment, the pain would drag me to my knees, and the Vanisher's swords would rip me to pieces.

Light and pain exploding behind my eyes, as the flat of Climb's shield slammed into my face-

I screamed, the sound echoing off Balmung's scored and mangled plate, so loud it refilled my lungs. I put everything I had left into a flurry of thundering overhand punches, ramming the Aegis forward-

One.

The first blow crashed into the Powered Suit's snarling silver faceplate, denting it. Fragments flew beneath the slugging punch, gleaming visor buckling with a brutal crunch.

Two.

Metal deformed, the force jolting up my arm. Coal-red optics shattered, crumpling inward beneath rapid, repeated blows. That cruel sleek head snapped back on its neck mount, pistons hissing from recoil.

Blood pounding in my skull, I reared back to swing again. Clawing with my remaining hand, gouging my shield's seething edge into that crumpling mask.

Thr-

Something flickered, at the corner of my vision. A whistling blur, broad and jagged-edged, whipping towards me-

The spiked head of the morningstar crashed into my shield, so hard the force nearly spun me from my feet. Fragments of brass and bright inlay rotated through the air, the Aegis buckling beneath the splintering impact.

The horrid shock rolled through me, metal tolling like a struck gong. The swelling, burning sensation of torn muscles seared down my arm, the demon's high-pitched giggles ringing in my ears.

At first glance, the half-melted horror seemed no more solid, no more real, than a phantom. Like a nightmare afterimage, lit from within by pulsing bloodlight - Except I could feel its feather-light fronds slithering against my crumpled plate like questing tongues, intent on savoring every second of my suffering.

Where did he get-

The Vanisher yanked the weapon back, spikes ripping great chunks from my shield. I reeled, arm nearly wrenched from its socket - But the war-flail was already spinning, ready to crush my skull.

Pale, hissing fire breathed from the golden ogre face worked into the metal, bleeding from the scowling mouth and burning eyes. It muttered to itself as it looped through the air, each rotation building momentum for the impending impact.

I couldn't move my sword-arm. Couldn't unclamp my dead fingers from Gnosis's hilt.

Not while the yochlol had me in its clutches, rolling and glistening like chewed meat.

The Aegis was half-shattered, deformed from the massive blow I'd taken. The shield's lashing shards still shivered with liminal power, barely holding together.

It would never be enough, not against a second blow.

I raised it anyway. It was all I had.

Balmung tilted forward, pistons tensing in its frame. Damaged gears and bearings ground, optics flashing to red-

The Vanisher let fly.

Weighted with a core of celestial uranium, the head of the morningstar whipped out on its burning chain. It arced towards me with the finality of a wrecking ball, ash fluttering in its wake.

Dimly, I sensed that it belonged with him, somehow. He wielded the flail with deadly precision, Balmug's monstrous grip more suited to its brutal power than the blades he'd conjured - As if its crushing might, its capacity for demolition, resonated with his own.

But as I hunched to guard, the Vanisher's swords found me first.

Hungry for vengeance, the lightning-edged sword chopped into my breastplate, leaving a great scar of bare metal. Frost Brand thrust straight in, under my faltering guard, the point gouging across my ribs.

Pain, colder than polar ice, exploded across the right side of my gut.

Carnifex tore into my helmet, and ripped half of it away. Cut clean through, the visor sheared apart: the faceplate shredding like tin, winged crest carved in two.

I was lucky. Another inch, and it would have taken my face with it.

I was already falling, when the war-flail struck. It crunched through my shield with the boom of a firing bombard, splintered it down to the nub. Metal split like cordwood, the useless, broken boss of the Aegis rattling around my wrist as I pitched over-

I landed on my shoulder, hard enough for the pain to fold me in half. Half-crushed against my side, my vambrace was scraped down to bare metal, the jagged edges cutting me a little more every time I twitched.

Blood ran down the inside of my arm, like a balm, from where the clawing spikes had punched through. Dazed as I was, I barely felt it: It was all I could do to cling to consciousness, ribs aching with each ragged breath.

I tried to lash out. Tried to raise my sword. Tried to move my right arm, at least.

It was futile. I couldn't break the yochlol's grip. Even thinking about it, of ripping the hideous tendrils of articulated bone away, made darkness bloom at the corners of my vision.

I just, I thought, every bone in my body grinding together.

I just need a moment-

Just long enough for my ruined shoulder to re-knit.

Just long enough for the binding broach of my amulet, fever-hot against my skin, to clear the fatigue poisons from my blood.

I wasn't about to get it.

The strings of the world hummed. Balmung stepped forward, taloned feet crunching against the cracking stone. Slits of crimson throbbed in that mauled visor, looking on with silent contempt.

He was advancing, with massive, ploughing strides. Already, the combat frame was rearming: With a gasp of light, a new sword materialized in its empty hand, a gleaming estoc that seemed to dance like a flickering neon sign in the half-light. There was a peculiar, uncomfortable eagerness to the long slim blade, echoing the way Carnifex squirmed in the exo-armor's grasp.

No mercy for a defeated foe. He had put me down, and he meant to finish it.

But he was wary, still. For I'd surprised him, and I might yet do so again.

The slow, patient sound of the Vanisher's approach echoed up through the desolation, ringing from the pulverized stonework. Together, we'd made a ruin of this place: No stone stood atop another, the ground reduced to a slope of ruined scree. On all sides, buildings had been decimated, blasted down into a strange apocalypse glass, slowly crumbling around the burnt-black plaza.

I couldn't even remember when that had happened.

Did you do that? I wondered, head hanging down. Or was it me?

Through one half-swollen eye, I saw the vermilion nimbus that swelled within it, an echo of the hellfire glow at its nuclear heart. The same unholy light had limned the vrocks, writhing around his summoned devils like snakes in black oil.

Burned, blasted, I felt oddly detached from everything. Everything had gone blurry, gone numb, except for the razor-wire agony pumping through my right arm. Like it was all a tableau, moving before me, and I was watching the final act play itself out.

My fingers felt like they'd been broken, but my left hand could still move. Something scraped against my skin as my armored digits flexed, curling into a trembling fist. Vaguely, I wondered if the shards of my splintered gauntlet were cutting into my swelling flesh.

Strange to say, but I wasn't bleeding quite as much, now. I wondered, vaguely, whether it meant that my body was stitching itself back together - Or if I was running out.

A fragment, bubbling up from memory: Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?

I started to laugh, bloody spittle drooling down my chin, the wounds in my back and side burning like white-hot pokers. Ugly, hacking laughter, breath hissing through the hole in my cheek.

The Vanisher tilted his head, quizzical.

"Well," I said, the words rasping from my bone-dry throat. "-Now I know you're evil."

That shook him. It could have been a flaw in his iron-form, a slipped gear or some minor malfunction…But he paused, like I'd cut to the heart of him. Just for a moment, less than a fraction of a second.

Not enough to warrant a stay of execution, but-

Balmung raised the flail, with a weary groan of protesting joints. There was a wide gash across the Reinforced Armor's chestplate, deep enough to expose the machine-workings beneath. The immaterial, arcane energies that had infused it were almost gone, smoke peeling from its hull as it stepped forward.

"I am in blood," the Vanisher said, his voice rasping from Balmung's speakers. Solemn, stern, as if presiding over an execution. Tiny fracture-lines spidered from the edges of damaged sensors, their tourmaline gleam dulled by a thick layer of char.

"-Stepped in so far, that, should I wade no more, returning were as tedious as going o'er."

My eyebrows rose, as I felt the dim flare of recognition. Almost pleasant, in that briefest of pauses; an instant, halfway between heaven and hell.

What would become of me, if I died here? Who would I be, then?

Would I wake up, from the strangest, longest dream I'd ever known? Or would I be someone else, an ordinary someone else, cast out from such a life as this?

No, I thought, with a faint pang of realization.

I would simply be dead.

The morningstar swung. I heard the whistle of it as it descended, ready to crush me into nothing.

And I said, simply-

"Aquila."

Something winged and furious sprang from the crest of my splintered helm, and hurled itself between us with a shriek of brilliant defiance.

Three forms. Falcon, raven, and…

-Gryphon.

Feathers of burning gold unfolded out of nothing. Motes of fire fell from white-burning claws, as the Vanisher's morningstar whipped around to meet the leaping fury. Less a bird and more a blaze, the gryphon burned high and golden for one howling instant - Then shattered in a nova-shock of radiant power, when the flail sundered it into a thousand shards.

Brilliance seared forth, bright and awful.

The yochlol howled, shuddering through the air as it recoiled. The writhing tendrils lashed around my arm tore free, like armor had turned white-hot. All at once, my hand spasmed against Gnosis's hilt - Sensation was returning, an abrupt flood of it, every bit as agonizing as the devil's touch.

I heard the Vanisher snarl, momentarily blinded. The morningstar looped with a moan of torn air, hurtling straight down. No wind-up, actuators droning in tortured protest: Just pure, shattering force, with the singular goal of smashing me to pulp.

I rolled aside, and the impact demolished the pavers underfoot. Stone crunched into shards, into powder, chips flying in a wild spray-

I willed the fingers of my left hand to close, clenching down around the slender wand of wood I'd lashed to my cuff. As Balmung lashed about, thrashing limbs sweeping about to find me, I raised the Quick-Change Talisman, and shattered it against the ground.

In the end, my salvage had been little better than the Death-Spreading Brigade's.

Looting the dead, especially those you've killed, is a uniquely appalling experience. It makes the deed worse, more tawdry somehow. Like it wasn't enough just to kill someone - You had to rob him, too.

In life, Zero had been a large man, of heroic proportions. In death, the physicality of his stiffening corpse was undeniable: I'd folded his arms over his chest, but it'd done nothing to hide the ruptured ruin of his form.

Prising the Harken Gauntlets from his dead hands had been a miserable experience, made more so by necessity. Once rigor mortis set in, only butchery would have sufficed.

My gorge rising, I'd pulled his mask free, too. Still slick with his blood, the steel grotesque lurked in the timeless space of my inventory, waiting for me to face it.

I'd given both of them - the greaves, too - a brief examination. Just long enough to confirm that they were inferior to what I already wielded. Even then, I sensed the Vanisher's meticulous touch: He'd never arm his pawns with weapons that could actually threaten him.

In the end, it was the wooden talismans that had drawn my attention. Zero had been carrying three of them, held in the loops of his bracer. For circumstances just like this, I supposed.

Alone, they'd been inert. But when I held them close to the Interfector, to Forge-breaker, the black letters had flowed and writhed like fresh ink, reshaping themselves into new configurations. A little experimentation, some fumbling with floating windows, had shown me what they could do.

I'd gone into this fight with the beginnings of a plan, as much as I could plan for the unknown. More than half-dead, it was mildly surprising that I still remembered it.

"Running?"

The air vibrated beneath the Vanisher's howl, the percussion shivering stone.

"Run, then! RUN!" His cold machine-voice smoked with thwarted fury, crackled with blank frustration. "I'll rip off your legs - One joint at a time!"

Phosphorescent blue fluid wept from between plates of beliat, mingling with milky hydraulic discharge. Balmung's head wrenched around on its remaining connectors, still blinded by the burning light.

Rubicante spun round and round in one hand, seeking to pin and butcher me. The tip of the blade struck blue sparks from the stone as I threw myself away from it, evading by a hairsbreadth.

He didn't stop. Balmung kept coming, kept swinging, blades thrashing to find me. I had to duck, to evade the hissing Frost Brand - But the overlapping scales of the exo-frame's lamellar armor were unfolding, a rose exploding in a spray of petals, the razor-sharp leaves spiraling into the air as they went on the hunt.

Two zipped past, with the whisper of flying knives. The next found the weakness in my plate, sliced my arm just above the elbow.

I gasped, as the lance of pain spiked through my flesh. Grunted, really, a stumble thrown into my step as I reeled sideways.

The Vanisher swept round without hesitation, blades slashing out like raking talons-

But Forge-breaker was faster.

The hammer was a heavy thing, almost too heavy to lift. Dazed as I was, I had no time to take the weight, to work it all out.

Instead, my hand clenched down on the grip. Hard, like I'd done in the sewers beneath Loyts.

Until I felt the familiar bite of sterile power, surging up the haft in twisting streamers of radiance.

Until white fire licked into the miasmal flame, smoking around Forge-breaker's head.

The maul swung, bruising the air with its incandescent trail. Pearlescent light fizzed from the great hammer, accelerating as the swing unfolded. For one delirious instant, it felt light, light as a toy, ready to wrench it free from my hands and take flight.

At the last moment, Balmung pivoted, rotating on its own axis to shield itself-

Forge-breaker struck. There was a bang of detonation, of ethereal barriers and phase refractors collapsing. Notched plate crumpled with the louder, angrier clap of thunder, the shockwave whipping around to crack me across the face.

I tasted stone, sweat, coolant, blood-

Hammerscale sprayed, as Forge-breaker buried itself in the Reinforced Armor's right flank. Torso plating caved in, metal collapsing inwards with an appalling shriek. Fragments of color spun through my sight, around a collapsing crater of impacted galvoln, struts of galvanized bone, meat.

Meat?

Balmung recoiled, a great wave pulling back from the shore. As it reeled back, I saw the great wound torn into the combat frame's side, a massive clot of luminous black protoplasm oozing from the rent-

The stench of it hit me, as solid as a blow: Rot, corrupting, decaying meat, fleshy tumors and tissue forming and breaking apart in squirming motion.

There were eyes in it, every one a perfect, icy blue. Eyes and mouths and limbs, forming and dissolving from the suppurating mass in a churning storm.

How could he live like that? How could he bear himself, the truth of what he'd become?

Maybe he couldn't.

Maybe he'd gone mad.

Maybe, through that lens, everything he'd ever done made perfect sense.

The Powered Suit pitched over, with a scream of damaged gyros. Gears spooled as it fought to right itself, the purr of its engines lost in the tortured squeal of metal-on-metal.

"Sam-"

"-UEL-"

Two voices spoke as one. Spat from a drooling, lipless mouth filled with translucent, needle-fine fangs. Uttered through half-ruined speakers in a grinding, toneless machine monotone-

Both smoked with hate.

Before I could lunge, Nemesis lashed out in a wild slash. The killing edge outran the Vanisher's swing - Pure, lambent force sliced through the air, blazing like sunfire. Where it struck, it reaped a devastating furrow, churning through stone like a dozer's blade turning soil.

I hurled myself to the side, as the wave swept past. Pain flared across my ribs as the ground rose to meet me, the acrid stench of ozone burning the back of my throat. Somewhere behind me, far behind me, great blocks of masonry tumbled down with the shuddering crash of a falling tower.

The infinitely sharp plane of severance had brushed them - a feather-light touch, a caress - and shorn clean through.

It could have been me. It very nearly was, as Balmung's arm blurred, hurling the sword like a spear. It spun end-over-end, blade humming with cleaving force: I dodged, and Nemesis bit into the stone, black cracks spreading from where it struck.

A legendary blade, flung like an especially sharp rock.

I would have laughed at the absurdity, if not for the reeling, stumbling desperation of the moment.

For in the end, it came down to one thing: Who could get up first?

I was faster. Faster, at least, than that vast hulking ruin of machinery.

I was battered. Bruised, shaking with pain and sensory overload. I still made it to my knees, teeth bared in a snarl, Gnosis's point scraping against the ground as I leaned on it like a crutch, trying to find the strength to heave myself to my feet…

The yochlol swept down, moaning and chattering. Hooks of barbed bone reached out to rend and tear-

Forge-breaker smashed through the yochlol's skull, and burst it like a pustule.

Putrid gore showered down, streaking my battered plate. With slow, awful majesty, the yochlol's sagging bulk, tendrils still squirming, collapsed onto me. I struggled up, boots and fists churning through pulpy flesh, loose flakes of the devil's skin tumbling in the air. Chokingly foul, they melted where they settled, a hideous waxy slush gathering underfoot.

As liquid smoke rose around me, rising from the yochol's dissolving limbs, I staggered forward. The hammer's leaden weight dragged behind me, fluctuating light rolling within its depths. Each tottering step brought me closer, closer to the Reinforced Armor's crumpled form, systems pulling and straining as it tried to rise.

My brother's armor had done its work. To my eyes, Balmung fumed with bloodlight, as if a fire had been left to smoulder within that huge, dark form. Malevolence radiated from it, harsh as the rays of a neutron star.

Just by existing, it tainted the world. Polluted it, with bleak malice.

I was about to change that.

The dark shape shifted, with a clatter of broken gears. It stirred, levering itself upright on protesting arms.

I plunged forward. Forced myself into a staggering run, raising the hammer to strike-

But I had to close the distance; the Vanisher only needed to raise his hand.

For one frozen instant, I glimpsed his weapon - Not a sword, but a black stave, scrolled wood crowned with a skull of carmine and jade. A chill of silent dread surged through me, pulling at my thoughts.

Don't let him-

Forge-breaker became a blur of scarletite, but it was nothing like fast enough.

"DIE."

And in a way, I did.

That single word rolled through the twisting air. Growing, extending endlessly, obliterating all other sound. The moment stretched like sinew, the taste of wormwood filling my mouth-

A silent concussion imploded the world. An invisible hand gripped my heart, brain, spine, and crushed them into paste. The ugly word of power set my mind on fire, turned my blood to acid, dragged fever through my flesh.

I went blind, deaf, dumb. Everything crumpled inward - becoming small, becoming a black mire to drown in. My heart stuttered in my chest, as I felt every wound I'd ever taken spontaneously re-open.

This was hell, then. To know agony, and not die.

-oblivion-

Nothing, then something in the nothing that felt like pain. Sound swirled back first, then vision, crooked and distorted. Askew, somehow, a shattered window pieced together by fumbling hands.

I could feel blood seeping from my punished ears, my eyes. Heard myself spitting, gasping for breath. Mouth slobbering around broken teeth, wanting to snarl and bite like an animal-

But I could see.

Balmung stood above me, the stains upon its hull crawling away into the air. The weapons in its many hands flickered, jumping to other forms and then back. Heavy, damaged, head downturned at an odd angle from snapped struts-

I tried to move, but a bleak and terrible cold was winding through my limbs. I couldn't feel the sword and hammer in my hands, couldn't feel the shattered plates of my armor. Every nerve was screaming, every muscle in rebellion.

The Vanisher pounced. He was a hell-thing, a monster half-made of iron and rage.

The estoc flashed down, and skewered my left arm to the ground. I felt the bones of my wrist crack and shatter as the blade ground through them. My hand spasmed open, Forge-breaker tumbling free, blinding agony searing up my arm-

Have to stop-

Two swords punched through my plate, and into me.

No, I had time to think, no no no-

My legs went numb, without sensation, as the Vanisher's blades tore through my flesh.

The sword of red iron gouged through my stomach, the wet ripples of lightning burning spastic jerks through my arms and legs. My head wrenched back so hard it banged against the pavers, blood welling in my mouth as Carnifex sawed through my side, slicing through muscle, searching for the beating of my heart.

It was so wrong - the savage intimacy of it, the taste of metal, of ruin, surging up my throat like vomit. As I shuddered, as I convulsed, I felt the beginnings of a scream ripping upward through my torn gut, towards the top of my head-

"At-"

"-last."

Vapor smoked from the edges of Balmung's chassis. The Powered Suit slumped over me, pneumatics shuddering across its half-ruined frame, sparks flickering from the stump of shorn cables.

We were close, now. Face to shivered faceplate, the acrid stench of metal blotting out all else. Broken fittings crackled, as the Vanisher twisted his blades inside me-

I couldn't breathe. It felt like the air was being crushed out of my lungs, everything beyond arm's-length receding into a blur. Death hummed in my ears, seeping to the back of my eyesockets, slithering like rabid snakes.

I couldn't move. My right arm was extended, shaking, clenching Gnosis, but I was frozen, my body rigid from the extremity of the moment.

Have to-

"It's for…the best."

My failing pulse drummed in my ears. Joints groaning, the Vanisher raised Carnifex in a great iron paw. Point down, ready for the death-blow.

"You'll see."

I wondered who he was talking to. Himself, or…?

I tried to answer, but all that came from my ruined throat was noise and blood. A terrible numbness spread through me, the world was receding, fading out. No matter how I strove to stay conscious, no matter how hard my flesh fought to cling fast, to survive...There was nothing I could do.

No way I could free myself from the blades ripping me to pieces.

Nothing.

Except-

"-They all will."

My air ran out. Blackness yawned around me, grinding against my bones. The frozen bite of steel pinned me in place, as the alabaster blade speared down.

It was death and silence and oblivion, rushing to meet me with a sigh of sharpness-

And at last, my mangled mouth shaped the word I had been trying to find.

"[Sevenfold]-"

No shout, not this time.

A wheeze, from torn and split lips. Barely a whisper.

But it was enough.

Gold-bordered nullity unfurled, and a surge of tempestuous light swept me away.

Next: Sevenfold (Part II)