The steel spears shot straight through the air, tearing past my guard. One buried four inches into my thigh, and another scraped across my ribs, peeling skin back like wet paper. The second rhythm inside my chest slammed a wave of black Ether through my veins, sealing the gashes with liquid soot before the blood hit the dirt.
The pain felt miles away.
"Look at you!" I spat a mouthful of dark blood straight onto her visor as I closed the distance. "You’re leaking steam, lady! Is that all the Great Houses taught you? How to bleed hot air?!"
She swung a massive arm to cut me in half. I dropped onto the slick cobblestones, skidding under her guard, and brought Mercy up in a savage, rising arc.
CLANG!
The edge bit straight into her knee joint. Sparks sprayed across my face, blinding me for a split second. She buckled, a guttural screech of metal grinding on metal echoing off the courtyard walls.
"You dare touch me with those filthy hands, you wretched..."
"Wretched what?!" I screamed back, grinning so hard my face felt like it was tearing open. I grabbed her knee spike with my bare left hand, letting the sharp metal slice my palm to the bone just to anchor myself. "Finish the sentence! Mongrel? Primate? Pick one! You’ve been reusing the same three insults for ten minutes! Get new material!"
I planted my boot on her leg and drove my elbow straight into her faceplate.
THUD.
Her visor buckled inward. A wave of superheated steam blasted out of the crack, cooking the skin off my forehead and cheeks. I barely noticed the smell. The shadow in my brain was laughing too loud for the heat to matter.
Break her, it urged, drooling in the dark of my mind. Break her legs so she stays put.
"Die, insect!"
Her chest plates peeled open, exposing a blinding core of liquefied metal. A beam of white heat shot out at point-blank range.
I threw my left forearm into the path of the blast, dumping every drop of the Broodmother’s blight into the skin. The heat melted the flesh off my arm down to the bone, but the dark Ether locked around my skeleton, absorbing the impact.
I hooked my ruined, blackened arm around her neck before the heat even cleared.
"My turn to play!"
I pulled her helm down into a brutal headbutt.
CRACK.
My forehead split open, blood pouring into my eyes, but the force rattled her entire body. She staggered back, her boots tearing up massive slabs of stone as she tried to keep her footing.
"How..." She faltered, thick black corruption bursting from her throat plates. Without her full focus, the blight was rapidly eating into her core. "How are you moving... your body is destroyed..."
"Destroyed?" I tilted my head, wiping blood off my cheek with my shoulder, a breathless giggle slipping out of my throat. "I feel great! I’ve never felt better in my life!"
I dragged Mercy through the dirt, the heavy blade leaving a trail of black, smoking ash. My legs trembled violently as the Demon-rank stimulants began to fray the muscle, but my pulse forced my knees straight.
"You called me a lesser creature," I whispered, taking another step forward as she raised her weapon with trembling, corrupted hands. "So come on, Regent. Show me how a god dies."
I lunged forward, channeling every scrap of dark Ether into the edge of Mercy. The blade carved a deep arc through her ruined chest plates, tearing straight toward the glowing core within.
Sparks rained over us as metal shrieked under the edge. I was inches from driving the cleaver home and ending it.
The world turned to absolute ice.
Taking the blow full-on, she let the edge cut halfway into her core. The heavy pressure of her aura, previously diluted by her struggle against the blight, suddenly crystallized into something completely still.
Her gauntleted hand reached up and caught the spine of Mercy, holding the heavy cleaver motionless in her chest.
"Enough," she said.
Her voice had changed. The harsh, mechanical screech was gone, replaced by a deep, resonant tone that sounded like heavy church bells ringing through a fog. The black corruption crawling over her armor stopped spreading, held entirely frozen under the weight of her sudden, absolute presence.
"I branded you a mongrel and dismissed you as vermin," she murmured, staring down at me through her ruined visor. "Yet here you stand, flesh melted and bones broken, matching my gaze without faltering."
I tried to yank Mercy free, but her grip was like a mountain peak. The unnatural thrum in my ribs hit hard, trying to force my muscles into action, but her static pressure held me nailed to the floorboards.
"Very well," she said softly. "A creature that bleeds like a warrior deserves to know the blade that cuts him down. I am Astrid D’argent. Lady of Steel. The Iron Maiden. The Dread Monolith."
She locked her crimson gaze directly onto mine.
"By what name does the realm record your existence?"
My head was spinning, feverish and completely unhinged from the stimulants melting my brain. The full name the SIGIL had spat out earlier echoed in my head, Aseren Voric Azthal. I still had no idea where those last two names came from or what they even meant. Back home, I was just Aseren Rowen. But right now, with blood in my mouth and my mind tearing at the seams, none of that mattered.
I wiped a stream of blood from my lip, spitting a dark glob onto her gauntlet, and let out a breathless, raspy giggle.
"Oh, we’re doing formal introductions now?" I grinned, my eyes wild and bloodshot. "Fine. I am Aseren Voric Azthal. The God-Slashing Shadow. The Duke of Pestilence. The Tax Evader of Millhaven."
Astrid went still for a second, her visor tilting slightly as if processing the utter absurdity of my words.
"Insolent to the very end," she said quietly. "Then let us drop the theater."
Releasing Mercy, she took one slow step back.
The air pressure in the courtyard vanished. The surrounding fog blew back a hundred yards in every direction. The plates of her body realigned with sharp, deafening clicks, sealing over her exposed core. White heat stopped venting from her neck. Instead, her armor turned a dull, matte grey, swallowing all light around her.
"I will no longer fight the rot while I fight you," Astrid said, raising a single arm. "I will simply finish you before the rot finishes me."
She crossed the ten-foot distance in a blur, burying an iron fist deep into my solar plexus before I could react.
My ribs caved inward. The shockwave blew out from my back, shattering the cobblestones behind me.
I was launched across the yard, smashing through two solid stone pillars before slamming into the main wall of the manor. Stone collapsed over my shoulders as I fell into the dirt, coughing up a torrent of black, boiling blood.
My vision flared white as my Demon-rank form buckled under the sheer reality of a Dreadful-grade Regent going all out.
Through the dust, Astrid walked forward, step by heavy step, her matte-grey sword drawn and trailing behind her like a line of quiet death.
The alchemical high was dying, leaving behind a cold, hollow void.
My Ether veins felt like frayed wires, snapping one by one inside my arms. The pulse in my chest stuttered, slowing to a weak, agonizing limp. The delirium that had carried me this far washed out, replaced by the crushing weight of reality.
I couldn’t raise Mercy. My arms wouldn’t answer.
Astrid stood over me, her matte-grey sword hovering above my chest. The black rot was rapidly encroaching on her armor now, but her focus remained entirely on me.
"A valiant attempt, primate," she said, her voice quiet, cold, and final. "Targeting my core. Using the rot. But in the end, a lesser existence remains just that."
She drove the blade straight down.
The steel passed through my chest without resistance, piercing through everything in a single, fluid strike.
The cold invaded instantly. The stolen beat stopped. My own pulse followed.
"Aseren!"
A shrill, terrified scream tore through the rain.
Through the haze of my dying vision, the courtyard gates burst open. Aurelia came sprinting across the ruined stone, her makeshift staff clutched tightly in her pale, trembling hands, her face slick with rain and tears. Nia was right on her heels, blade drawn, abandoning all caution.
That was the contingency. If the ambush failed, if I couldn’t finish it alone, they were supposed to buy me an opening or pull me out. But it was already too late.
"Stop! Get away from him!" Aurelia cried out, raising her staff as a desperate, flickering burst of pale Ether erupted from her hands, aiming straight at the Regent.
Astrid pulled her blade free from my chest, wiping the dark blood onto her greave. A single steel tendril whipped out from her spine, catching Aurelia’s Ether blast mid-air and dispersing it into harmless grey smoke.
Ignoring Aurelia’s screams entirely, she turned back toward the altar to resume refining her Catalyst. She had zero interest in meaningless slaughter. She only cared about her ascension.
How pathetic, I thought, as Aurelia’s desperate footsteps closed in on my broken body.
All that talk. All that pain. Surviving the Broodmother, making the pact, drinking those damn poisons... just to die bleeding in the dirt while she watched. I hadn’t even fulfilled the contract. The Merchant was going to claim whatever was left of me.
My sight flickered out completely. Aurelia’s screams faded into distant muffled echoes as the cold settled into my bones, pulling my consciousness down into the dark.
Is this really it?
Then, the void shattered.
[Truth: Defiance]
[Your soul carries an undeniable quality of defiance.]
[Before the first servants of the world learned their purpose, there were those who refused it.]
[They were not the strongest, nor the wisest.]
[They simply would not submit.]
[Some were forgotten. Some became warnings. A few became names spoken long after their voices were gone.]
[Yet the same impulse has appeared again and again, in every age, beneath countless faces.]
[To resist what should not be resisted.]
[To stand when there is no reason to stand.]
[Perhaps that is what defiance has always been.]
[Defy.]
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