Herald of death

Cedric summons a set of black leather and cloth armor onto himself alongside a floating scaled cape. It tears off the remains of his ragged and bloody clothes. The collar of his armor opens like a carnivorous plant to unfurl translucent thorns that bite down onto his bloodied neck.

Ethan and Thaddeus move as one, lunging at Cedric in apnea. Ethan strikes first with a powerful, committed blow meant to breach Cedric's guard. Thaddeus fills the space Ethan creates in Cedric's guard, stabbing before he recovers.

For the first time, Cedric looks pressured, his acceleration ability barely enough to dodge them, his wounds hindering him. Ethan had had an inkling as to the price of Cedric's ability in their first clash. But now, he's convinced that in exchange for speed, Cedric loses strength. It is a non-issue when his shallow cuts flood his victims with poisons, but in a two-on-one fight, it stops him from resisting Ethan's assaults.

Thaddeus' blade slashes Cedric multiple times, but the lordling dodges enough to turn them into simple flesh wounds. However, with each strike of his blade, Thaddeus injects Cedric with Ether of his own.

Mid-swing, Ethan pulls back too early, feigning to fail a feint. It grabs Cedric's attention; he lunges to strike Ethan's open chest. Ethan brings his coat into the path of the blade, rolling it around the sword as it pierces the fabric and bone plates.

Seeing Cedric entangled in Ethan's cloak, Thaddeus unleashes the spell he held. His eyes flash with nuclear green-blue light. Stricken by a conic wave of Ether, Cedric lights up from the inside, his etheric pathways shining like white-hot metal.

Ethan wrenches his coat free from Cedric's blade and comes at him with a descending, beheading strike.

"Enough!" Cedric bellows, his blade meeting Ethan's. It slams into it with the undeniable power of life force. The clash breaks Stormshard's trajectory, and Cedric stabs Ethan in the chest through a lung.

Air rushes into Ethan through the wound, filling his lung with poison. It overtakes his sight in a strobing blur until everything around him turns into dark smears.

Not expecting or seeing Cedric's sudden burst of power through the light of his own spell, Thaddeus extends into a thrust targeting Cedric's back.

Spinning, Cedric locks Thaddeus' lunging arm under his left shoulder and shoots his right hand at Thaddeus' neck. The searing light coming from inside him dies down. It leaves him with smoking scars all over his scales. Phantomatic snakes erupt out of his forearm to bite down all over Thaddeus' face and upper chest. "It ends here."

"Have you forgotten what my specialty is?" Thaddeus asks, looking past Cedric to the sky. The levitating snow of his earlier spell shifted to form a large spell in the air, mixing Eldorian sigils, geometry, and phonetic writing. A tear splits the center and expands into a circular breach in reality. Ether floods from it, its intensity reminding Ethan of the beast that died below Mont Silverveil.

"Stop it!" Cedric barks, spitting acid blood.

"I won't," Thaddeus says through the pain. "You only get two choices – fight it or hide the viper in you and flee like a coward, hoping it will be enough to stop it from focusing on your serpentine ass."

Getting the cue, Ethan prepares himself to flood his Ether with life force and to cast a fireball as soon as Cedric dispels his scales. Ethan works through the pain of using his Ether, abandoning the idea of moving to solely focus on his spell.

A large beast, curled up into its silver metallic wings, falls through the tear, unfurling into the gleaming form of a four-winged eagle. Streaks of lightning move across its metallic feathers, casting white flares into Ethan's blurred sight. It unleashes an invisible presence that dwarfs Cedric's – an aura that turns them into powerless preys. It crushes Ethan's swaying focus, dispelling the runes he was envisioning.

"Send it back!" Cedric growls.

"I can't," Thaddeus sighs, resigned. "If my death means yours, it is a sacrifice I'm willing to make for our people."

"My subjects aren't yours to help!" Cedric snarls, his expression taken by both disdain and fear. He digs his claw-like nails into Thaddeus' necrotizing flesh, severing his head and ending his life. His hand pulls a dark green energy out of Thaddeus' remains. It coalesces into a soul, held by the neck as Thaddeus just was. "And like them, you will serve."

Ethan's breathing grows steadier, but he's kept in place by the monster's presence. He rushed into a confrontation with someone who had years to grow and refine his powers; he finds himself lacking. If Cindralis, who has had centuries, shows the same synergies in his abilities, there won't be a fight.

Cedric's shadows expand around him, turning dark crimson. He drops Cedric's soul into it. With a howling wind, the shadows reward him with the red strands of life force, feeding him. The poison escaping his skin thickens and turns white like a dense fog. Dark and death Ether form a helix around the threads of ambient Ether touching Cedric, making the curse he inflicts on it perceptible.

Without his consent, the tainted Ether rushes into Ethan. It races to his wounds; they expand and fester, melting his flesh into a black, dripping ooze. His focus falters, taking from him his ability to cast the spell he was preparing.

'… challenges I would only win on the verge of death. I should learn to keep my mouth shut,' Ethan muses to himself. The poisons in his blood shroud his mind, turning the world into discontinuous patches. He summons the Abyss Watcher lantern through the pain of using Ether, placing it behind him, hidden from Cedric.

Cedric breaks into a run, dragging his poisoned fog like an endless cape. His sprint tears the ground underfoot, scattering fragments of stone.

The beast shrieks. Its wings spread, each lined with arcs of lightning. Electricity discharges from its feathers in serpentine streams. The lightning punches into Cedric's mist and into him. His cape and scales disperse the magic, but there is a kinetic strength to them that tosses him like a fifty cal.

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Cedric rolls across the ground before he plants his blade and drags to a stop.

The metallic eagle dives, each beat of his wings a roll of thunder. It trails ionized air behind itself, filling Ethan's nose with the stench of ozone.

Cedric recovers in a feral crouch before hurling himself at the beast. He jumps aside moments before it crashes its talons into the ground, gauging a wing with his blade.

The beast flies off, bleeding thick, silver drops. It doesn't fester with Cedric's afflictions and coagulates into a weld-looking scab. It flaps its wings to dispel the poisonous fog that clung to it in its ascent.

Cedric extends his right hand towards the beast to shoot dozens of liquid spikes. Powered by life force, they are now barbed and pulsating with dark sparks.

The four-eyed eagle retracts his wings to dive through the spike storm and onto Cedric. The projectiles skid off its feathers like poorly angled shots at a tank.

As he rushes the descending beast, Cedric stops, his attention attracted through the poisonous fog towards Ethan. He jumps to the side, avoiding the beast as it digs a trench into the ground before flying back up.

Using life force, Ethan empowers his Ether, cleansed by the lantern, and absorbs all he can from the purified surroundings. He attaches the lantern to his belt, muting Cedric's curse in the vicinity.

"How are you not dead?!" Cedric barks, eyes twitching between enemies.

Ethan guides the purified and empowered Ether to his eyes and ears, triggering predator's sight to regain his senses and more. He does the same to his rotting muscles, filling them with Strengthening's maximum output.

The four-winged eagle rises higher, staring at Ethan. Its four eyes have a disturbing intelligence behind them. It is waiting, observing the situation.

"You have to be fucking kidding me," Cedric lets out, exasperated. He takes a step back, repulsed by the sight of a walking corpse standing as if unhindered.

"Disturbed by your own handiwork?" Ethan asks amongst gulps of sluggish blood. He pictures every movement of his muscles as his forearm contracts to grip his blade tighter.

Cedric bursts forward, still fed by Thaddeus' life force. They clash in a flurry of spark-casting blows, nicking each other with the tips of their blades.

To Ethan's senses, the world feels slow, but so does his body; his mind, however, races. 'How is it that my mind never feels as clear as when death closes in on me? I wonder what made him this strong. He's faster and more skilled than me, but his grit is on another level. Thaddeus' spell burned his muscles and bones, and yet he moves like nothing happened.'

Cedric breaks off from Ethan with a backward leap. He whips his right hand, throwing an arc of barbed, liquid spikes at Ethan.

Ethan twists his body out of the projectiles' paths. 'I know what I've had to survive to become the killer I am; what did he endure? Or did this world allow him to grow despite his entitlement and ego? After all, with the system, grit is just the press of a plus away.'

Out of Cedric's reach, Ethan casts a blade of Weapon Aura at Cedric's descending foot. It sweeps him off it as the ground he lands on disintegrates. Moving in, Ethan follows up with a downward slash at the falling prince. 'Is this the kind of people the system wants? It rewards killing to such an extent. And the realm of Ascension didn't choose Cedric randomly; it sees him as the level I need to surpass.'

Rolling to the side, Cedric dodges and recovers in a crouch before lunging back at Ethan like a feral animal. He keeps his blade to the side, ready to parry Ethan's next attack while he tries to grab Ethan with his scaled hand.

'Are we so different? He isn't killing me because I'm a danger to some noble ideal; I'm just in his path. I've always avoided endangering strangers to my world, but how many have suffered because I puppeteer some cartel? How many have died in Dubai because I put my own goals first?' Ethan moves back and grabs the back of Cedric's approaching claw. He rotates, throwing the prince to the side while keeping out of reach of his blade.

Through the haze of poison, a memory of Lucian, Ethan's mentor, comes through. They were standing in the shade of a doorway, watching the wake of a boy who died in a car crash they caused while hunting a cartel lieutenant. "There will come a day when you stop, disgusted by the innocent deaths you brought. They will stare you in the face; you can't escape that."

Ethan remembers his answer. 'What then?' he asked.

"Then you'll need to remember how many lives we save with each monster we put in the ground. How many people did we save by our actions here?"

Ethan took some time to guess the answer. 'Short term, a few thousand people from murders and kidnapping; ten times that if our client is serious about cleaning up the streets. Thousands annually from their fentanyl-laced coke.'

"Was it worth young André Luiz's life?" Lucian asked.

'No,' Ethan answered, his eyes on the altar where the kid's photo lies, surrounded by flowers.

"Good. One day you'll need to come to terms with that contradiction," Lucian said.

Extending his right hand towards Thaddeus' corpse, Cedric makes it explode into a black miasma of poison and rot. His sword grabs this poisoned mist as if the blade were casting an aspiring vortex. It hides the path of his attack as he comes at Ethan with a downward slash.

Ethan moves back, avoiding the blow instead of parrying; he won't risk an impact that will blast the miasma on him. In his offhand, he summons life-force-fed blue flames and swallows Cedric in a blazing cone. 'With eight billion lives on the line, where do I set the line? How many people is it worth?'

Cedric dashes through the spell; the fire burned away his mist and encroaches on his armor and cape. His serpentine eyes are red and blurry as if, instead of raging flames, he merely traversed stinging smoke.

Ethan summons his left Purgatory Hand and catches Cedric's blade in his grip. Twisting his torso, Ethan pulls Cedric inward and onto his blade. Stormshard digs into the prince's chest, skidding on his ribs and into his lung.

Blood squeezes out of Cedric's mouth and nose as it pours into his esophagus. It comes in sticky, coagulated blobs. His eyes flare with rage, and he spits it onto Ethan's face. The drops burn like acid, tearing Ethan's skin as they drip down.

Russ' enlarged maw snaps around Cedric's right leg, breaking his tibia. Cedric's blood burns Russ' lips, and he lets go to hide back into the shadows.

Ethan wrenches his blade out as Cedric breaks his from Ethan's grip. They come back at each other in forceful, berserker attacks, their bodies broken down.

Ethan's life force runs out, freezing him in place as he suffers the backlash. Stormshard escapes his grasp to clatter on the rocky ground.

Cedric lets out a gurgling laugh. He throws a punch at Ethan's face, unsetting his jaw. "Finally! You are a fucking cockroach, you know that? And that pet of yours? He better hide in the shadows forever, or I'll rip its guts out."

Ethan's forehead crashes on Cedric's nose. It breaks the prince's skull, sending his nasal bone inside his head. Ethan follows up with an uppercut, but his arm refuses to move; too much of it is gone – muscles, tendons, and nerves.

The monster that has been waiting in the sky screams, freezing Cedric's blood. He spent all of Thaddeus' life force fighting Ethan, and Ethan has none to offer. Unless he runs away, his fate is sealed.

Ethan watches and senses, powerless, as black rot creeps up his chest, flaking away muscle until bone shows through. His ribs spring outside as his muscles and skin melt, letting out the horrible stench of rotten meat. He can only hope that the realm of Ascension truly protects him from death. The rot claims his neck, eating the nerves, and blurring his vision as the corrupt Ether invades his eyes. His thoughts fragment into meaningless sparks of panic and pain; soon there is nothing left.