NOVEL NEXT Chapter 162 - Shadow of the Dullahan
Metal against metal, cracking against each other and sending shockwaves of high-pitched sound in all directions. The sword clashes between those two women were so ferocious and sheer violent that Tristessa thought one of the two blades would eventually break from the impacts.
She saw Astoria gritting her teeth, and a quick snapshot of her unblinking eyes, understanding that she was trying not to miss even a fraction of a second that could cost her her life. And the Dullahan wasn't having it easy either, forced to constantly defend her head -her evident weakness- and focus on deflecting and blocking her new enemy's attacks.
"Can't you help her?" Tristessa asked, averting her gaze from the mesmerizing and, for now, bloodless dance of steel. She saw Auron and Severus edging the battlefield with invisible boundaries. Both aiming at the fighting women; one with his revolvers and the other with his catalytic cane. "Guys!"
"Not yet... Not until Astoria gives us a window of opportunity," the gunslinger replied.
"Exactly, and I can't afford to give away the magic I'll be using," the blood elf added. He took a few precious seconds of focus to look at the girl, his mean-spirited eyes seeking to intimidate her. "Don't try anything stupid. Stay there."
"I know…" Tristessa wanted to skirt the courtyard and check on Vergil's condition, but the danger of crossing paths with Astoria and the Dullahan was more than real. One false step and she could end up being cleaved apart by either of them. "Hold on, Vergil…"
Astoria swung her greatsword in ascending slashes, alternating with downwards as the Dullahan swung her curved blade, intending to damage the front plate of her armor. Forcing her to change trajectory and defend herself, deflecting the attack repeatedly, giving her no choice but to retreat from the platinum-haired knightess' brutal attacks... Until a change of stance allowed her to pierce Astoria's dynamic defenses and strike the side of her chest, near her upper ribs and left breast.
"No...!"
Tristessa's scream was solitary. No one joined her because Astoria not only resisted and didn't lose her poise, but with the gathered momentum, she pulled her arms in. This allowed her to position her sword in a guard position above her right arm and thrust forward.
Making the steep tip impact squarely in the center of the Dullahan's breastplate, piercing the metal and reaching the inside.
"ARGH!"
A cry of deep pain, released from the multiple Discord-layered armored head. So strong was Astoria's counterattack that the dark knightess stumbled and took several steps back, shrieking as living, gaseous shadows emerged from the fissure in her breastplate.
"I'm not done yet!" Having released her greatsword, Astoria propelled herself forward, her speed likely enhanced by that mysterious combat effect called [Essential Dilution]. So fast that she even reached her target before her weapon hit the ground. "RIAAAAAA!"
She kicked the headless knightess in the same place where she had damaged her armor, further shattering the metal plate and causing the Dullahan to fall.
"Finally…!" A celebrating moan. Seeing her Nemesis crashing backward to the ground; atop her own cape of shadows, raising ash in the air, the creaking echo of her armor testing the hardness and coldness of the earth. "FINALLY!"
A cry of premature victory that was accompanied by reactions from people more experienced than her. People who knew this battle had only just begun.
"Ein Atractor Irit!" Severus bellowed, gesturing with his free hand as violet light erupting inside the crystal of his cane, which he pointed at the fallen enemy. "Go now, Auron!"
"Don't tell me twice!"
At the same moment that a large magic circle composed of logical lines and elemental glyphs of gravity appeared beneath the Dullahan, the gunslinger began firing at her, discharging one revolver at a time. When one of them ran out of ammunition, he would throw it into the air, use his [Divinity of Pocket Dimension] to conjure up rapid-reload ammunition, and refill the cylinder. All the while, he continued firing with the other weapon, each bullet successively hitting the head -which the Dullahan hadn't let go- and a large portion of her torso.
To keep her in that pinned position, preventing her from rising while the magic circle collapsed in on itself and conjured a powerful gravitational field.
"May your own vile coil crush you, Dullahan!" the blood elf roared. He advanced at slow pace, drawing invisible lines in the air charged with magical energy to stabilize his spell, without breaking eye contact.
The Dullahan shrieked, her unearthly screams intermingling with the agonizing sound of every inch of metal in her armor, threatening to bend, buckle, break… Resisting the submission of that brutal gravity that had turned a pack of vargs into mounds of exploded flesh and pulverized bones, just as Tristessa remembered.
"Are you all right?" Auron took the opportunity to ask Astoria, without lowering his two revolvers and still aiming at the subdued dark knightess. "You're bleeding."
"Don't worry about me, Casimir. "It's just a scratch," she replied, though judging by the grimace of pain and the lines of blood running down the side of her armor, the wound seemed more serious than she had imagined. "Do you think Malak Drakan will be able to…?"
"I don't know, but don't let your guard down."
Tristessa watched Severus lower his palm toward the ground as the aura surrounding it grew increasingly dense, triggering a new pulse that imploded the air above the Dullahan. The effect was an increase in gravity, her armor and body becoming so heavy that even the ground began to sink beneath her.
"What in the Abyss is that armor made of? Mythrilium? Adamantine?" Severus cursed, beads of sweat running down his forehead and the sides of his temples. "This is no good! Auron, Astoria…!"
A lapse in concentration. A second of instability in the mental equations Severus was solving to maintain the magical effect. A second in which the Dullahan saw a hole, an imperfection between the thaumaturgical gravity vectors, and her body disintegrated into an amalgam of shadows.
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Pure darkness, visible Discord, escaping the imposing gravity into the heights.
"Curses!" Auron fired at that torrent of shadows traveling at high speed around the courtyard. The bullets hit their target but they were causing no apparent damage. "TRISTESSA!"
The girl had lost sight of the Dullahan, trying to follow the possible trajectory of Auron's shots. Her eyes were so sluggish, so inexperienced that she didn't even notice her Nemesis had regained corporeal form behind her; her reaction time was far from the level expected of someone worthy of fighting such a threat.
"NOOOO!" Not even the simultaneous screams of Astoria and Severus were what made her react.
It was the Dullahan's presence, so icy and frostbiting the ashes beneath her sabatons, what made Tristessa turn around and see the edge of that curved black sword heading straight for her face.
Heading straight to grant her dark, ominous Death.
"…Still here, Tristessa?"
There was never a worse time to see the irritating and hateful image of Selene Irandell taking shape in the forefront of her mind, just a breath away from dying. On the other side of the bars of her prison cell, she sat cross-legged on a white chair, dressed as if she were attending a funeral and not a criminal trial. Smiling at her daughter with the vanity of someone who felt infinitely superior at every layer of understanding.
As if she were in control of everything, and that nothing could escape her hands. Not even time, manifested in that broken clock that marked that frozen hour, [7:25:45].
"You are a piece of shit, Tessa. Nothing more, nothing less."
Her insult pierced hard into her chest, making necrotic, gangrenous fluid bubble from the wound; putrefaction and infinite hatred, pumped out by that heart, corrupted and black as cardinal sin. A mischievous, seductive laugh followed. Laughing at her misfortune, at her inability to overcome obstacles. Laughing at how she failed at everything she set out to do, time and time again…
"Do you hear it? Tick, tock… Tick, tock." Her mother's whisper, flowing through the densest and heaviest darkness of that cell. "[Time] is running out for you..."
"No..."
Those beautiful cyan eyes, judging her as if she were a worm creeping the earth, waiting to rot away until not even the carcass remained.
"No!"
"You will die."
"NO!"
That surge of courage made her raise her hunting dagger, and the edge met that of the Dullahan's sword. The metallic material held; the right position to disperse some of the pressure and momentum applied, although even gripping her wrist with her other hand wasn't enough to resist the tremendous force the dark knightess unleashed upon her.
What she did manage was to divert the trajectory to the side, causing the blade's edge to graze the right side of her head.
"Ugh!" Tristessa fell back to the ground, feeling the widespread burning of the open wound on her head, the heat brought by the blood that began to flow instantly. With one squinted, ash-filled eye, she saw the dark figure of the Dullahan standing before her. Her shadow covered her like a veil of freezing Death, approaching, step by step, stopping for nothing and no one. "You…!"
"SYCOMA!"
Severus didn't hesitate to attack with non-elemental magic, further separating their enemy from Tristessa with an invisible repulsion force. This gave Astoria precious seconds to reach and attack, and Auron a chance to grab the girl under the armpits and drag her back.
"You lost all your blessing from Valdrek there, lady! What were you doing with your mind in the clouds?!" he admonished, helping her to her feet and glaring at her with a wide, angry glare. "You can't make me rich if you die!"
"Auron... LOOK OUT, ASTORIA!"
Tristessa had seen the Dullahan use her head to induce Madness with a high-pitched, inhuman scream too many times. She remembered that pattern of extending her arm, using her head as a guiding light within the dark, trying to illuminate her victim's face with an eldritch truth that humans weren't ready to receive.
That's why, when she saw the dark knightess block one of Astoria's blows and point her head at her in that same pattern, her cry was almost automatic.
As was Severus', as alert as she was to the enemy's actions:
"Laudan Verysium!"
White, phosphorescent, and beautiful glyphs emerged around Astoria, covering the knightess with an aura of protection from that mind-breaking, ethereal shriek. Not against the bleeding effect it subjected her nose and eyes to, but protecting the integrity of her brain and everything within.
"Get down, Astoria!" The gunslinger launched an attack, leaving Tristessa behind and beginning to fire as soon as the knightess in platinum-white steel armor threw herself to the side. The armor-piercing bullets found their intended target, that head protected by an abundant amount of darkness, interrupting the war cry and replacing it with one of pain. "Severus!"
"Ein Attractor!"
With this newly conjured, smaller gravitational field, the blood elf immobilized the Dullahan in place.
"Ensis Erasil Rakana!"
Overwhelmed by the attacks, she conjured non-elemental glyphs that transformed much of the ash around her into a horizontal, crescent-shaped arc that flew toward Auron at high speed.
"That looks slow!"
The gunslinger used his shard reflexes and slid along the ground without losing momentum, while Severus had to block the ash-made arc with a rock wall conjured by a Terrum spell. He continued firing until he was close enough to the Dullahan and sheathed one of his weapons, in order to pull a small metal sphere from his dimensional pocket. An object Tristessa recognized once its surface began to glow nonstop, having seen Katriel Strauss use it once.
"A Pyrochromatic bomb for you, Miss Decapitated!"
With the gravity well active, the dark knightess could do nothing to dodge the projectile Auron threw at her, its temperature rising rapidly until it exploded. Turning night into day for a moment, the deafening sound emanated from the Fort and traveled down to Hexel Valley, dispersing into the distance.
"…"
Tristessa had temporarily lost her ability to hear. Her ears were saturated by the blast of the explosion; she couldn't hear Severus's shouts directed at his new companions. Nor could she hear Astoria and Auron's, standing side by side, waiting with their guard up for the cloud of dust and ash to disperse and for them to see the enemy's condition.
Of course, it wasn't the same with sounds of a supernatural nature. Perfectly audible to a soul capable of understanding and reasoning with those words, which Tristessa now began to hear without difficulty:
"Divine Mothers! Holy Endrel and Blessed Margules, your daughter cries out for you! Bless me in this battle, for the destiny that the exalted God of Chaos has decided for us!"
And Tristessa began to hear two sounds she knew, ones that didn't belong to that world. Sounds that brought back memories of her first Death and Resurrection.
A female voice in ecstasy, intoxicated by pleasure and pain alike.
The rattling of the [Golden Chains] being pulled, inside the In-Between.