207 - Flight of the Crow [Cherno][+Artwork] (Patreon)

The small comfort of using a crowd for cover didn’t last long — Krahe’s aura still pushed people away, and they readily scattered from her even without its encouragement. The stillborns were hot on her trail. She just needed to drag the abominations out of here, and until then, she was glad to let Casus and Tsetse take the center stage. She certainly wouldn’t grace that man-fly with his preferred name, even in thought. 

As she made her way to one of the ballroom’s staff exits, she caught sight of a saurian guard waiting there. Countless scales flowed out of his sleeves as he channeled his magic, swarming towards Krahe. She sent herself flying through that door with a short burst from her arm, her wards gaining numerous new gashes as she flew into the corridor. A handful were only impeded partially, leaving cuts on her trousers and the back of her bodysuit. No followup attacks came — the guard was too busy avoiding the stillborns.

And so, Krahe went tearing down the mansion’s corridors playing a lethal game of cat and mouse with a gaggle of bioweapons. Barzai proved himself invaluable in this matter, as Krahe had him always flying ahead, purposely leaving him visible. The sight and sound of him sent people running well before Krahe would arrive. The eidolon took quite readily to the command to scare off the chaff, harassing people with explosions as he cackled and foretold her coming as if she was an inhuman calamity.

Gradually, the stillborns closed the distance, most of them sprinting on all fours like animals. A few pulled ahead of the pack, standing out as particularly quick on their feet. To her surprise they exhibited a degree of tactical thinking, overtaking her in a clear effort to box her in. Krahe couldn’t help but grin as she pointed her left arm right into the face of the stillborn behind her, releasing her built-up pressure and sending herself flying down the corridor. One of the stillborns that had overtaken her tried lunging at her as she passed it, but she sent it staggering back with a well-placed shot to the chest.

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Yazata wasn’t sure what was going on.

It was not a matter of lacking eyes inside the building. She could see through the possessed Red Hoods — or rather, through the things possessing them. The problem was, they refused to go to the upper floor. From what they saw through the floor, she couldn’t blame them.

Its shape and damascened pattern suggested the astral body of a human Greater Pilgrim, and even carried with it something sacred, but it was… wrong, somehow. Terribly, ominously wrong. A shroud of pitch-black smoke swirled about the shape, obscuring details normally unseen without appraisal, exuding an implicit threat at all times. Like it was daring her to try and look closer, to see what would happen if she did.

As the creatures they were, who supped upon the astral bodies of their victims, it was the ultimate form of aposematism. Yazata would have understood disobedience if she had tried to command her hounds to consume such a being, but they refused to even come into its vicinity.

Nonetheless, she continued playing her part, and simply commanded the Red Hoods to patrol the ground floor.

It was not as if she had nothing better to do than watch from afar. She was here not just to keep them in, but also to counter any possible reinforcements from the outside. Going by the group of four rather ominously-dressed individuals speeding towards the mansion at this very moment, that prediction was correct.

She struck the Black Trapezohedron against her leg, its blade reverberating with a deep pitch. Distortion bled upwards as she spun around to face the newcomers.

“Hear my shining words…”

Yazata spoke, and lo, they heard, but neither their ears nor minds were spared the mercy of human language.

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The sound of thunder carried through the ballroom as two armored figures clashed, darting back and forth with inhuman speed. Bursts of gold-silver flame and invisible shockwaves of sound tore into the floor, forestalled only by the mansion’s abnormally durable construction.

With each clash, Casus grew to understand the rift between himself and Cabral — the rift between Tarnished Silberblut and “Tsetse”. While he now knew that the individual’s name was Cabral, in the absence of a known name for his transformed state, Casus simply shifted his perception of Tsetse from the entity as a whole to the transformation specifically. Even as he was now, he couldn’t match the might of “Abara Morph Tsetse”, it was undeniable. He could keep pace in physical terms, and his increased durability allowed him to weather direct blows, but once Tsetse brought out his sonic weaponry, the scales tilted steeply in the Abara Morph’s favour.

He could read most of them, of course. Most. But Tsetse hadn’t simply stopped evolving since their last battle. In their short battle, Casus had already faced three distinct attacks incorporating the sonic blaster in Tsetse’s left palm. It was a horrible, wretched thing, adaptable beyond compare, as Casus soon learned. Both of them had landed blows on the other, but neither had caused any serious damage — not until the third exchange.

Tsetse threw a quick jab, one which he had thrown several times before as a normal strike, and without anything to hint at its altered nature, he imbued it with an insidious vibration at the last split-second. It couldn’t be more than one-tenth of a second before impact, else Casus would have sensed it coming. His fist smashed into Casus, and speared him through with the same concentrated force as that which had defeated him back then, in the lab.

The shockwave continued through him, blowing fist-sized holes through three men before it shattered a window and dented its shutter. Casus followed, thrown backwards into that self-same shutter. He would have flown right out of the mansion had it not been there.

Falling to the ground, he picked himself up, uttering prayers to Zavesh. The pain was one thing, he could withstand it, and his armor could withstand the damage just the same. He wasn’t the same Silberblut as back then.

He was praying because he had learned what he needed and felt the pain he needed to feel. A small part of him was relieved that Tarnished Silberblut didn’t suffice against Tsetse.