Chapter 17 #2
The right of first entry went to the Gold-ranked raiders.
Aurion Crush took the lead, though Harald thought he saw an ironic smile play briefly across Brianna’s face as she inclined her head as the older Gold-ranker swept up the stairs.
Then she fell in behind him, then the other three less famous Gold-rankers from House Drakenhart, then the swarm of Silver-rankers.
Sam, Nessa, and Harald brought up the rear, Anna joining them so as to remain under their watchful eyes.
The sound of combat filled the air as Harald passed through the massive doors. The House Drakenhart raiders were streaming down the central nave, weapons drawn, and charging to where the Handmaidens stood around the empty throne upon the dais.
Harald grimaced. The urge to race forward was limited by his awareness that he’d be trapped at the back of the crowd. That, and there’d probably be nothing left after Brianna and Aurion got to work.
He could see it now: the Handmaidens would break, flee, and run right into the dwarves. Neat, smooth, and polished.
“Damn it,” he whispered, tapping the Scourge against his shoulder.
“Now that’s a pretty fight,” said Nessa, sounding bored.
And it was. The Handmaidens had erected a purple ward that enclosed them completely, a hemisphere of potent power that had temporarily flummoxed the raiders.
Lights flared and flashed as powers were activated, and then Brianna swung her white-burning Wyrmfall, and the ward shattered, releasing a powerful shockwave that knocked over pews and staggered the Silver-ranking fighters.
“Wait,” said Sam, clutching at Harald’s arm. “There’s—up there!” And she raised her face to search the massive rafters high above them.
Harald peered up. The darkness was velvety thick, and he couldn’t see anything.
“One of them’s on the run,” hissed Sam. “I can’t see them, but I can feel her—moving quickly from rafter to rafter!” She pointed, tracking the passage of something none of them could see.
The rafters were almost thirty yards above them. There was no convenient staircase.
“She’ll make for the cathedral rooftop,” said Nessa. “From there, she’ll be able to escape easily into Flutic.”
“What do we do?” Gone was Anna’s poise and polish. “Call to Brianna?”
“No need,” said Harald. Grim joy filled him. “I’ve got this.”
Harald reached for the Demoniac Body.
He summoned the demon essence from his new private well and activated his Thrones. Power flooded into him and into that holy radiance that came from the Fallen Angel, braiding the black essence. It felt like lighting the face of an oil lake on fire.
WHOOMPH.
Harald’s whole body surged with power.
+8 to Strength
+8 to Dexterity
+8 to Constitution
He summoned the Solace of Aurelum, though its daily charge had already been expended; +4 to Constitution was still a welcome boost. The Aetherlight Circlet appeared around his brow, and the Aureate Master upon his arm.
Equipped with one Epic-ranked Artifact and three Masterwork ones, and complemented by the Demoniac Body, his stats became absurd.
Strength: 37
Dexterity: 35
Con:stitution 45
Ego: 32
Presence: 14
Unholy vitality bonfired up from his core, and his body responded. His bones warped and grew, his muscles thickened and relayered themselves upon his frame even as his skin turned jet black.
And yet, he wasn’t just pure unbridled physical menace.
The demonic essence was tainted by Eclavistra, stolen as it had been from the Handmaidens.
Their essence was seduction, beauty, betrayal.
He felt his shoulders broaden, his hips taper, his face remold itself into something not bestial, nor yet quite human but utterly captivating.
But there wasn’t time to glory in these changes, nor to enjoy the shocked stares of his companions, who’d fallen back and turned their weapons on him.
They’d understand.
Later.
Deliberately avoiding looking at Sam, Harald rushed toward the cathedral wall and leaped. He flew up, thrown by his impossible strength a good dozen yards to crash into the reinforced stone and there punch his fists into the rock to find purchase.
He scrambled up the wall with ease. Dexterity 35 made him nimble and adroit at finding handholds were there should have been none.
Strength 37 allowed him to cling to even a fingernail’s width of rock.
His toes dug in and launched him ever up so that with each leap he flew another five or six yards higher.
A moment later he sprang away from the wall, twisted, and landed atop a giant rafter with perfect balance.
And then he activated Abyssal Imperium, Crown of the Abyssal Tyrant, and the Well of Starless Dominion.
He had but a fraction of demonic essence left in his reservoir. Form had drunken greedily from his reserves, and in the moment, he hadn’t thought to throttle its thirst. No matter.
The dark world up here was his now. Motes of void dust manifested and floated innocently about him even as the darkness deepened and grew hostile to everything that was not Harald. His presence washed out like a crashing wave, and his body thrilled at its unlimited power.
He wanted to laugh.
But there was a hunt to enjoy.
He could sense another presence within the domain claimed by Abyssal Imperium. A sister-presence, kin.
His blood.
No. For a moment he almost stumbled as he untangled his thoughts. Sister to the demonic essence he now indulged in, but no family of his own.
No matter.
The Handmaiden would die.
Harald leaped easily from rafter to rafter, pursuing the demon. She fled, as she should, and reached a corner where she leaped onto a square landing that extruded itself beyond the main cathedral space.
Harald gave chase, confused until he leaped in after her and realized it was the interior of a tower. A belfry?
No matter. He tore up after her, leaping from landing to landing and eschewing the stone stairs altogether. Around and around until they cleared the actual slope of the roof and the first window appeared.
Harald espied all of Flutic laid out beyond, dark and poorly lit, a morass of humped roofs, towers, avenues, parks.
He could barely squeeze through the window, the aroma of his prey clear on the windowsill, and then he was outside, a sharp wind blowing this high up, the cobbled Avenue of Penitence narrow and far below.
The Handmaiden had sought to escape through one of the two main towers that flanked the rose window.
Harald caught sight of her, fleeing lithely up the sloped, tiled roof to the ridge.
He bent his knees, crouched low, then sprang with such force that the stone windowsill shattered beneath his feet.
Up he flew, into the starry night sky, arcing up, twisting and crashing down with impossible grace on the ridge just before she could reach it.
The Handmaiden stopped with admirable self-control, and he recognized her: Sythryxa. Her horns were mighty, her form voluptuous, and an arrow-headed tail lashed behind her. Articulated steel armor was cast with a fearsome array of hooks and spikes, and her eyes burned brightly in the darkness.
In her fist, she clutched a gorgeous crown, forged from black metal and ringed with spearhead-shaped tines, with a lustrous black gem set beneath each.
“Going somewhere, Sythryxa?”
She sneered. “Look who it is. The lapdog. But all grown up. My, but you do make a handsome devil. Tell me, how hard has it become to convince yourself you’re on the angels’ side?”
“Not hard at all.” Harald propped the Scourge over one shoulder.
“To be honest, with this much power at my command? I’m starting to look forward to my next meeting with old Vorakhar.
I feel like there’s a reckoning in our near future.
But for now, you’re my entertainment. Give me the crown, and I’ll kill you quick. ”
“Oh?” She raised a brow in mock surprise. “Am I supposed to be scared just because you’ve discovered the Demoniac Body? Where I come from, that’s just a prerequisite to sitting at the dinner table. Let me show you what real power looks like.”
And she began to shift, to stretch, to grow.
Harald didn’t give her the chance to reach her full growth. He flung himself at her, Scourge screaming even as the darkness coalesced around her mutating form, void blades whispering as they sought to dice her into cubes.
Yet somehow Sythryxa leaped aside, evading him like smoke, and though his blades and void motes had already slashed a score of thin black lines into her white skin, she laughed, delighted.
“So slow?” She landed on the ridge and there rose to her full height, now easily eight yards tall, all elongated limbs, ivory skin, her steel armor absorbed into her body and replaced by overlapping plates of ivory inlaid with black.
Her horns had doubled in size, and her talons were now nearly a foot long.
Her waist had narrowed almost to her spine, while her face had disappeared behind a helm of elongated bone.
“This will be less fun than I anticipated.”
Harald slid to a stop, cracking and dislodging a stream of ancient tiles, and his toes curled about the wooden support beams and boards beneath.
The Well began to drink.
Sythryxa might be powerful, might be beyond his understanding, might be too lethal for him to take on, but she wasn’t beyond the abyss.
Wisps of her essence began to flow down into him, into his voracious Well, and motes played across her ivory armor, scoring it with fresh cuts that wept black blood.
Harald grinned. “Let me see if I can keep you entertained.”
The demon snorted, extended her hand, and a storm of bone blades flew at him, a blizzard of finger-long razors.
The Aetherlight Circlet activated, forging a path right through the center of the storm, and Harald leaped at Sythryxa, sweeping the Scourge at her once more as he unleashed his first pulse of power.
It flooded out before him, crashed into the demon, and caused Sythryxa to stagger, nearly lose her balance. Still she managed to sway aside from his blade and then slammed her taloned fist into his gut.