200 - The Ripping Spear in the Corridor of Gehenna [Cherno] (Patreon)

Chaos usurped the reins and any semblance of the enemy’s team cohesion shattered. They all started acting according to their own plans, following whatever plan they had agreed to in only the vaguest sense.

Wooden arms exploded from the walls, grabbing at a silhouette that was not the green-eyed demon, but one of the stillborns. Flammable liquid sprayed all throughout the hallway, soon blazing forth with green fire. The shapes of three canine beasts rose up from a carpet, only to instantly succumb to the fire.

Of the group, the small-eyed man reacted the fastest, barking an attack order to the stillborns as he manifested a spear and shield of cyan-glowing, glassy arcane force. He thrust it forth and a beam of force erupted from it, and wherever it touched, the hardwood floor exploded as if it was being ripped open, subject to enormous tearing force. It even managed to nick Krahe’s leg, yanking her forwards into a wide, low stance.

The small-eyed man let out a sound of triumph as if he could feel that he had gotten a hit, and bashed with his shield, sending an explosion of reflective shards tumbling through the smoke cloud. Krahe was already out of the way by that point, having closed the distance. Another beam came from the spear, reflecting and multiplying, bouncing around in the field of shards and diffusing through Krahe’s smoke cloud, illuminating it in its entirety. The beams converged at a seemingly arbitrary point and tore out the chest of the panicking gangster, whom Krahe had shoved into the same spot where she had stood when she was hit. Just from looking at it, she could tell diffusion in her smoke had robbed around a third of the beam’s strength. It was less than she had predicted, but then, it was pure magic, not light.

Despite the wide range of different abilities presented by her foe, the borged-out abominations were her main concern. A person she could suppress, and that’s what she did, firing roughly down the hallway. But these things, they had no self-preservation, and had the wherewithal to make that actually mean something. Their implanted ward generators were far stronger than the inax surgeon’s version, and their pure physicality easily surpassed that of someone wearing a dregsteamer belt. Combined with their inbuilt weapons and the fact pain or shock wouldn’t stop them from fighting, they were the real threat here.

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A force composed specifically to forestall intruders fell apart into panic and incidental infighting, while the one trained professional struggled to stay alive. Siavash set off two more refracted beams from his spear before a mass of sparks and smoke ripped into his wards and sent him stumbling back a step, falling to one knee. At that point, he instinctively called his shield back, the shards reverting to one whole.

Decision paralysis took hold. Vague silhouettes whirled through the smoke, intermingling and briefly becoming illuminated by bursts of orange and green. The intruder’s footsteps mixed with thunderous thumping and the incessant, obnoxious calls of that raven. Siavash glimpsed the intruder’s form as it tackled one of his men against a wall, burying its fist into his stomach. Thump. Thump. Two flashes of orange, two gusts of dense ash and smoke racing out of the otherwise stagnant smoke cloud. His lower body slid down, and the upper half soon followed with it, tumbling down. The small-eyed man took a shot, but it just flew forward unimpeded, the armored juggernaut gone like a ghost. Just as it seemed like the smoke was thinning out, a black sphere rolled out of the cloud and transformed the world into a choking limbo all over again.

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Before long, just Krahe and the small-eyed man were left. He was breathing heavily, leaning against the wall with his shield held up, looking Krahe’s way as she kicked the head of a stillborn against the wall. Thump. Thump. Thump. Crack. They both pointed their weapons at one another in an uneasy standoff, both waiting for their own reinforcements.

“You… Are too good for your readings. What are you doing, skinwalking as a low mid-ranker? Somehow lost your real gear, hm?”

Krahe didn’t answer. The stillborn’s wards finally gave under her boot, and the lower half of its head followed soon after. She turned her gaze towards the small-eyed man, causing him to shrink back a bit, the grip on his spear tightening as a flare of power built at the weapon’s point.

“Look, I don’t much feel like dying here,” he said, trying to speak to her again. ”That’s way above my paygrade. I’m not with the Hashems, I’m just one of the contractors they brought in for today. What’d you say I just get out of your path and we go our separate ways?”

“Your voidkey. Pull it. Then you can go.”

She could see the reluctance in his gaze, but that resistance suddenly gave way when she took a step towards him. His eyes flickered back and forth, and then, a ray of death screamed forth from his spear, flying right by Krahe’s head, passing left-to-right in front of her eyes. It had never been intended to hit her, but to obscure her vision as the small-eyed man fled — even if only for a split-second. Despite instinctively letting rip a prolonged burst of tracers in his direction, he disappeared beyond the corner.

Krahe gave chase, not in order to kill him, but to pass the chokepoint. From there, she picked out a room, cleared it, and set up shop inside, waiting while Barzai sat on a wall sconce just outside. She had never planned to push particularly deeply into the mansion on her own, and this seemed a good point to wait for Casus. This was also a good opportunity to give the Black Sun Coupler a rest, as Krahe had felt it straining during that last fight. She didn’t expect it to hold out much longer.

A small group ran through the corridor just outside, but none checked inside — their attention was pointed entirely outward, at the things besieging the mansion.