ASAIMC/7/14
They said sit silent and keep an eye on the mist, to call if anything loomed or skulked. Like Indignata wasn't used to hiding from others.
Mercy had called the Lord here on purpose. A high moisture world covered in a blanked of moss which rose and fell in dunes of deep green. Dense fog always, casting constant darkness. Never dry. Always damp and grey, forcing the insect life to adapt lights upon their forms and to keep to the veins of thin streams which trickled through the mounds. If they were disturbed, they scattered, and you could see that through the cloud. It was quiet, save for the song of water, and it was constantly humid.
Always mists. Anything which came was dampened and sodden immediately. Among other things, Mercy had hoped this to make starting a fire impossible.
Indignata had watched her burn for this prediction, and now sat before a fanged growl who lay her head against her vast weapon and seethed, wearing whatever hadn't been scorched and trailing strands of colourless white between her fingers. It was quiet, as it always was, and he sat there listening to every breath, every noise and illusion as Tame slept in silence and he held guard, watching the bugs for a hint of movement. They wouldn't need to travel far, Mercy had mumbled. Their so-called Pyre Lord would arrive soon.
For now, they would sit, atop the crest of a wave of moss near a lake, an outcrop into the pool which lost itself to the grey on all sides, surrounded by fog and gentle streams, to await the return of their next pledge, to emerge from the ribbons of luminous flies and light them ablaze.
"I loved that colour." Mercy stirred, shifting her foot. "The soft blush. It was beautiful." She pulled her head back, staring at her militant friend. "We spent hours making the perfect shade. It's the first time I've spent hours doing one thing in an age. Aside from working." Her eyes turned focus to the pale strands at hand, and a scowl became her brow.
"Did we use all of the oil?" Indignata asked, tempted by the endless hymns of the insects to keep mute, with his voice sounding unnatural against natures song. Mercy nodded.
"Didn't have much. I mean, I can put anything in there and it'll be fine." She pointed to her scalp. "It won't damage my hair. But that was a really nice colour." Her eyes didn't shift, holding the look Indignata gave until he smiled and turned to the lake, sitting still and peaceful with shores of viridescent mounds. Tame had slumped into a slight pit, resting against a heap of risen ground, heaving with the rhythm of rest at the pleasure of a single burning bug, which rested upon his snout. Mercy grinned when she noticed, leaning her nodachi so that she could rest her chin upon its peak.
"He'd eat it if he were awake." She mumbled, her attention refocussing on another bulb which trekked an inch above a separating brook, which split their makeshift encampment in half. It came close with its careless pace and flew before the militant's eyes, illuminating his face as it passed, before moving to Mercy and circling her in a full rotation, slow and critical, as she watched it flutter rings around her head. "I'd eat one, If I were hungry." Indignata let their audience grow bored and faintly retreat from the base, re-joining the stream and drifting away on heavy air before he re-read Mercy's words, and smirked.
"Do you even eat?" He asked, watching her retake his eye. "I've never seen you eat." She shrugged, leaning back from her blade but holding it still upright, surveying the blind horizon and stretching.
"I can, but I don't need to. Seems like a waste of time. And effort. Anyway, you get big when you eat. Helps me keep quick the less of me there is, and I don't need the protein, so why bother?" Indignata nodded and she formed a dimple, shifting her head to rest on the opposite side in discussion with herself. "Then again, I can still taste. Over just not eating, I haven't eaten anything good in a while. Got hired on one once. A house up on a mountain of ice. She didn't show up for a while, the girl I was after, so I sat around for ages, eating and drinking and waiting. Most I've eaten ever, I think. I got a nice dress out of that job. Good trip."
"You get who you were after?" He continued, allowing her a second to hear him and then another to watch her sneer, as she raised her head and stared at him down her nose, her proclaimed undesirable mane tight to her head within the humidity, and a constant sheen to her face gleaming with the angle, high to the reflections of subtle light from the lake.
"Indi, there's a lot of worlds out there. Beautiful and unique, each and every one." She curled her lips into a slyer smirk. "But I've left an ugly stain on wherever your point. Find me someone, anyone, and-"
She span.
Indignata turned.
Both tuned to the echo of something moving, an alien among the moss, watching their pond with critical anticipation to the image of slow, churning, crawling ripples approached.
Steady, precise waves blooming from an apparent nothingness, to glide as ribbons over the clear pool and find harbour at the shore nearest the group, who stood in complete stillness and watched, insects of bright lights hovering around and before them and tracing their lifelines which rang in subdued song amidst the infinite, pure brume.
He'd heard something.
But as his mind raced to catch his motion it remembered, not the sound of liquid on land but of it against something harder, something larger and moving, to swim in silence on a direct course of the encampment. Indignata crouched and took his rifle, glancing toward Mercy who stood with lifeless attention, not fearful or eager but holding her face for a reaction suited to whatever emerged from the haze.
Indignata heard running fluid and the song of the flies, tasted dampness and felt cold, wet steel, unblinking beside the woman he hardly knew but now fully trusted as she raised his sword, still in saya, to waist height and held it forward, kashira toward the lake, ignoring the beasties which drew her outline with bright bioluminescence, following the weapon forward, awaiting a call to act, and something to decide in what way.
Indignata saw and heard and tasted everything he'd had over these past few days on this bloody crucible of atrocities. Aberrant acts of heartless murder, confined to the small spaces of visibility among the dense clouds, which carried nothing but humidity and scents with them.
Scents and smells on mind, and suddenly Indignata recoiled with a hand to his face as what he'd sensed when half of mercy had crumbled to red ash blossomed, and he choked on something trivial to the white haired demon, who's gaze drifted over the body before catching an inclination, and she focussed on the centre, crouching slightly and raising her other hand to reach forward, an inch above the grip of her blade with both arms almost level with cold eyes which observed this peaceful, pretty world torn by her fellow evils, and what would emerge for a second attempt to cleave what both parties knew to be the dual prime combatants of this place. The reasons for their perusal. Their reason for staying here.
The true demon approached.
A dead thing. Indignata scowled, watching a body glide toward them, huge and charred as a machine slaughtered, apparently in silence but ruined visibly, as blackened components followed the ripples as the remains of something grand brought down permanently, stiff and defunct.
But then neither of them looked toward this fallen devil, their attentions instead drawn to the figure who straddled this colossus, and rose from a stoop to stare, straight and unpretending, toward the two familiar faces.
Tribal, she looked to her reception through a wooden guise, a face carved and decorated with the colours of wealthy slaughter in reds and whites and golds, and ladened with loose strands of timber beads which swung with her movements, amplified evermore by the shawl which hung from her shoulders in similar shades, frayed and worn but still clearly woven with care. The intrigue of all minibeasts brough luminosity to her dark skin, dark yet most noticeably unaffected by the airborne moisture, and to the tall knobkierie she held, adorned with the totems and trinkets of a people unknown. Her hair was long and of a sunless night, woven in perfect threads and pleats. She was strong, and attested her might through tightly wrapped calves and the bare upper arm of her staff wielding arm which protruded from the cover of her cloth.
Indignata had seen this all before, and raised his rifle to sight the thing fabled as Pyre Lord, her thick knots of hair falling from behind the false face as she looked from the boy to the woman who maintained her strenuous stance with no sign of stress. It was a standoff, in which nobody advanced yet the conflict approached at a steady crawl, testing each agent to draw whoever would break the silence with their decided fury, whether it be by blade or rifle, or what the Lord was about to do.
Indignata leant over and kicked Tame, hearing a curse but not daring to withdraw his eye, listening as the Grebler shuffled, caught wind and then sight, and joined them immediately, stumbling with a cough, lifting the small sub he favoured and taking it to the demon.
She studied them from her barge, witnessing the composure of Tame as he took an account of all things average save for their visitor, before she shifted and started forward, still off from the shore but walking regardless, striding over the slain motor to the echo of her charms, each step a point of observation until she reached the bow of her vessel and assumed a mirrored stance to Mercy, lowering herself and holding her club straight, footwork a replicant of her partners and he head similarly cocked, to the right and slightly hunched in an almost respectful bow, prompting nothing from the white hair who waited, at the front of the group, like the spearhead of their small outcrop of land which jutted into the lake, knifing toward the vessel.
Mercy had explained to Indignata what it meant to be a Lord of the Pyre before they'd arrived, as a prelude to their declared conflict. She said how, when taking a world from another, the sprawling plethora of possibilities drowns so many routes to combat that some find it a deterrence enough to turn from that place and abandon their scourge.
She'd said how all things can differ in all ways, so that bringing bullets to a tight city or a blade to a barren plane can always collapse to an army, or a machine, or some threat unperceived.
But of the best conquerors of these modern times, among the gauntlet of the Veniam Crisis and long before, a single weapon had always proved efficient. A tool which can destroy a world with a single strike. Choke and crumble on both offensive and defensive fronts. Move an enemy, or draw them in close.
Something which some species have evolved to accommodate, and grow resistant, or immune toward, for its abundance and severity upon their homes would otherwise leave them dust.
The Pyre Lord stomped her foot, the blaring noise matched in its surprise only by the flaring brilliance which blew from the impact, landing like liquid and burning without fuel, without prompt nor effort but glowing bright, drawing all insects to her side as they flocked to the foreign heat and noise, amplifying the centred radiance.
"You're the lead." Indignata said to Mercy, sights clean upon the Lord's mask. "What're we doing?" The flames illuminated each particle of liquid, creating an aura which singed the air and cleared a path, reflected against the perfect waters of purity as a precise replication of what moved above, as a strip of light connecting the two parties.
"We need her in the water." Mercy mumbled, straightening with her words. "Don't let her off." Tame made a noise and stepped forward, planting a leg against a bank and pressing his sub to shoulder, lining a shot at the Lord's feet. Mercy, nodding to herself in silent recognition of a plan unspoken, glanced to her militant, who didn't notice at first but saw only her moving when he turned, unsure as she started down the slight incline.
The Lord, crouched among smouldering embers, rolled her shoulders and lowered the great knobkierie, holding the painted and roped brute of a staff in both hands, prepared for anything quick.
It was a period of jarring motion, as Mercy made her way over the rising waves of green, apparently careless of assault until she reached a certain nothing, paused and placed a hand against her pocket, making gentle noises as she searched, before she turned and looked toward Tame, inattentive in features, her hand still upon her leg.
"Do you have my buds?" She asked, lifting that hand to a single finger and then to her ear, letting it waver beside her head. The Grebler took a second to acknowledge the claim before he grunted and dropped, searching a coat assigned to nobody but one of the few still intact, loosening a pod and prising from its case a dual set of pieces. She was humming now, back to her demon, and extended a hand as Tame tossed the phones toward her.
The Lord watched.
She took them with a swipe and leant her sword against a thigh, nodding to an unheard rhythm until she tapped the plugs in and waited, calibrating something with a dial against the side, and listening for what she desired.
Indignata wondered if she'd been listening to something this whole time, and he simply hadn't noticed. Maybe; he hadn't been looking. He wondered what she listened too, as the count of her movements re-joined her song and she left her upper body to sway as her legs continued, snatching the nodachi with ease which may have passed unnoticed, if Indignata hadn't held the thing before.
Indignata grimaced while he stared. This was going to be terrible.
The Lord didn't move as she approached and didn't move when the corpse she rode rolled against the moss, only smoke lingering against the wet and rising from her as she faced the white-haired woman with the monstrous blade, one from within her collection. At his slight height, Indignata could see the variations in her footwork and modifications to her grip in preparation. She, like him, remembered their last meet.
He could see Mercy burning.
But also, the look on her face when she did.
The bugs made a low mist of their own upon the lake, a sheet of light wavering as luminous ripples to grace the entrance of the Lord who didn't disembark, but instead awaited act or word to prompt her response, observing every movement of Mercy as she ambled forward, muttering to her ears and sometimes slowing, sometimes speeding to the sounds only she heard, until she reached the edge of her safety and stopped, eyes hardly seeing with the relaxed concentration she gave to her manoeuvres.
She listened for a while more, absorbed in the sound, before she looked up, riddled with her marks and lines too fait to see anywhere but up close, smiling with a loose empathy toward the masked devil.
"You're unfortunate." She said, raising her sword level with her hips. The Lord braced, but didn't retaliate. "You may have stood a chance up there." The Lord shifted to an angle of slight confusion, and Mercy paused all breath to stare intently at each minor gesture, at a distance uninterested but truthfully baited upon a sign of weakness.
"You think yourself capable-"
Indignata saw threads of ghostly shade waver and then snap.
Heard an indication of a kick but didn't let it register.
Smelt ash and charred skin, and thought only that this was odd, to come from a machine, before his head emptied to raw vision.
Saw Mercy appear at another's side, blade at hand.
Smoke.
Embers.
A pyre.
Maubaya blinked and saw, instead of a woman standing on a shore, now unpigmented streamers wavering like banners before her face and a deserted bank, her thoughts cutting through all suggestions to prompt her to track the lines, following the ribbons as her brain slowed the event, certain of something she had not yet caught.
She followed the stripes to a mass a few inches from her face, right by her side and just out of immediate sight.
She looked straight into the wide, fanatically longing pit of an eye; a pupil so vast that they looked keen to devour her.
She unfocussed, and saw the deranged elation which played a mouth, as a lesion ever expanding beyond the apparent bounds of a jaw.
The explosion blew the militant and his accomplice back, ploughing with an impact to burn the air as Indignata gasped, his breaths dry for a while as the moisture returned, gaze frantic as he looked from Tame to the smouldering sky, petals of light rising into a wound in the fog, scorched by a directionless detonation of pure instinct. He crawled, hot but quickly cooling toward where he'd stood, leaving the Grebler to groan, without weapon and wild, crashing through streams and weak mounds toward their gentle precipice, now smoking and ruined the further in he looked, his eye drawn to the only things not blackened by the shock, of vibrant colour standing with raised hands upon a float of ash, pushed a little back by the burst, and the flames which surrounded her.
Indignata watched their Lord reach and run a hand across her throat, lifting to stare at the thin stroke of red which crossed her palm. A weak, pointless cut, but one positioned to cleave her from neck to waist. Regardless of its severity, she found herself captivated on the mark, flexing her fingers to let herself slip between each digit, as though letting liquid trickle from her grasp, too interested to turn or give notion to the sounds behind her, as the militant left her on the raft and instead looked to the lake, once more consumed by the mists, lined with the wavelets of something sent skipping across its surface toward a centre, some distance from the shore, to hang, suspended and limp, on the edges of the fog's reach.
A thing, half submerged. Pale and torn.
Indignata stumbled forward, unable to determine what it was he saw but certain without sight, ignoring the Lord who turned to his approach, exhaust pluming from the crater she'd formed and spilling from the breaks in her attire, pooling around the slits of her mask and slipping through, her heavy breaths matched only by the militant's, as he stumbled around the bank, slipping in and out of the waters reach in a senseless stagger, unable to tear his eyes from the thing his brain said was Mercy but his gaze told him to ignore, out of fear of having to see once more what he glimpsed when she had last faced the flaming demon.
The centre of a soft, now calm lake, speckled with red to the fantasy of the curios bugs who swept over the pool, taking their lights to its contents for mere moments, but long enough to leave scars on the mind as Indignata turned and pulled loose his boots, screwing his trousers to the knee and wading in, knowing the lake shallow but not caring anyway, finding himself unable to think as he pushed through, cold and shivering among the conflux of ash and mist in his lungs byet unable to stop either, wishing the body to be finally dead and still, and removed from the pain he knew she endured.
At chest height he came, reaching to the overturned body and leaving his hand to waver when he tried to see what he was taking, unsure what his hand would fall upon as the many segments dissolved into the waters and became more of the violent shade.
He looked at her back, saw things shifting and chipping away as charred skin peeled to the fresh meat growing within, replacing the thin scars with a slight softness to the flesh, spreading from the most wounded points outward and across. He saw dry leaves, dark and hard, crumbling under an uncaring foot. Collapsing stone, disintegrating with a harsh gust.
He saw strangers, storming the farm and lighting fires.
He blinked, staring at the hand which clutched his wrist, holding him from reaching her head.
Keeping him from turning her over.
He grimaced, felt a stiffness to the grip and took it with his own hands, holding her there as segments of her body tore themselves free to be replaced almost instantly, by plumes of curling, fluid muscle which drained from her wounds to fill all imperfections until she loosened his grasp, and allowed him to lay a hand against her short, blackened hair now paling at length and lift her, allowing breath to return to raw innards as she gasped, and he turned her onto her back, a hand against her skull to keep her up.
The right side had gone.
But it was reforming, a cocoon of silky sheets accommodating her features and spreading from her crown and around her eyes, which searched for something inside Indignata's and seemed to find it, a strained, sore smile spreading with the meat to coat her bones and ligaments as things started to reset and recompose themselves.
Still holding her he jerked his coat loose and offered it to her, but she seemed blind to the gesture, caught on his study with wavering lips and heaving chest, shivering as unused flesh swam in piercing cold, her shade even paler then normal, near that of her head of hair, as she reached up with weak arms and ran a thumb against the militant's cheek, nearly unable to speak while Indignata watched, aware of the Lord who crossed the barge to their end, to crouch at the opposite end and leer through the fog. For a second, the militant wondered if Tame's injuries were severe, but as Mercy forced forward words from still building organs, he blanked.
"You found me?" She mumbled, adoration in her tone.
Indignata frowned, but didn't respond.
He could wager what she was thinking.
Breathless and squirming.
"All the way out here? You came all this way?"
Still healing, he thought, as he held her up.
"You're here, Mercy. Fighting a Pyre Lord with me and Tame." He shook her a little and she made a face, looking away for a second toward the closely clouded sky.
"But Indi, you're all wet. You must be freezing." The remnants of flame blanketed a strip of water, as the Lord played with a spark, cracking it into a great crest every few moments. The Militant made an expression of empathy, and propped her up higher, cast in the distant, blazing flares, allowing her feet to rotate toward the ground.
"Mercy, you're not wearing anything. Take this, please." He lifted her arm and threaded it through a sleeve. His coat was thin, because of the weight of the air; it was crisp and clean, but he couldn't imagine moving in a heavy jacket. He'd picked it just before they'd left their craft. They'd gotten lost in hours.
As she wriggled into the overcoat she looked around, a child surveying odd structures, and fell onto the Lord while Indignata helped her, the last remnants of injury reforming as Mercy started to glare, her affectionate eyes shifting to points as the militant pulled her hand through the other end, unsure of what to do as he supported an unaware casualty without aid and faced a distant fountain of fire, spouting up from an uninjured foe, simply waiting until Mercy rubbed her head, running a hand to her left earpiece, still intact, scowling as things started catching up, and she made the connections to place herself here. Indignata hadn't seen anything like it before..
"Indi, go to the shore. I can finish this." She started forward, half wading and half swimming with a trail of sodden white tracing her motion, the molten springs intensifying as the Lord created a spectacle at the far end of the lake, sending up flares of light for the entertainment of her spectators, sending strokes of amber across the pond's surface.
"You've lost your sword." The militant called, reaching for her as he watched her churn. "You can't fight her. She'll just roast you again." Mercy looked over her shoulder and followed with a turn, facing Indignata as she smiled, coat trailing in her slipstream, regaining all sense of self with each stride. Her hands worked to keep her up and she paddled through the clear waters with ease, back to the flames.
"She's not the one firing." She wove a hand through to move the hair from her face. "It's an impulse. Like breathing. Defensive. I'm not sure where she's from, but whatever enhancements she's made, it is fundamentally a biological trait. She stomps fire to intimidate and blows up when she's in danger. Like playing dead, or giving off a false scent." She swivelled back to the Lord, leaving Indignata behind.
"How does that help you?" He started from the lake, making his way toward the bank, reluctant to leave so keeping to the bank to call. Again, Mercy shifted to speak, but she did not turn, Instead keeping an eye of the demon who beckoned her forward with grand displays of heat, sparking into the sky.
"It's all defensive. She hasn't attacked yet." A grin befell her tone. "She's scared. Doesn't know what to do." She sneered. "So I'm going on the offensive." She submerged, dropping below the surface and disappearing into the pool. The waters were clear but from that distance neither the demon nor the militant could see her. You only could if you submerged yourself too.
Uncertain, Indignata looked to the Lord, who seemed curious for a moment, compelled to simply wait for her to rise, but then clicked and stood straight, halting her display, deciding that now she had bored of all pleasures of the hunt, and stood with her grand club brandished, facing a vast and seemingly boundless lake, scanning for a rising head.
Indignata watched, knowing she didn't need air and knowing her strength as the seconds drained by and the Lord looked his way, searching for a distant tell in his figure, guessing at the play, and receiving only a stare, as he focussed on her but searched for ripples or motion upon the shallow lake. The silence here, he noticed, was oddly beautiful. Even as he rubbed dried blood off his hands and watched a woman wishing his death. The sounds of the streams and the bugs played into the quiet, only amplifying it. He wondered if anyone lived here.
No, he corrected himself, staring at the demon. Not anymore.
She grew impatient, exchanging fear for frustration as she fired off short salvos of heat into the pool, just catching the surface but beckoning anything below to rear its head and be scorched, her movements aggressive yet still cautious, away from the edge with space to manoeuvre if something rose, pendants swaying with her irritation and knobkierie close, orchestrating the flames she produced from nothingness, igniting with sudden movements to create sparks fed by fuel invisible.
But eventually she stopped.
Not tired, but composed, her anger exhausted as she slowed, flowing more than launching and keeping the fire close, the edges of her form now glowing with a light smoulder upon the tips of her fingers and toes, drifting almost into a dance which Indignata watched from afar, crouching by the bank and observing the fluid warmth without expression.
Both knew Mercy was watching, the time sprawling to the call for patience as she waited for an opportune strike, her once burnt, now gleaming observation drawn to the wavering monster who progressively flared, the heat inching up her arms and legs toward their joints.
It was incredible, to see a figure slowly crawl with light lethal.
Squatting there, the militant, soaked and cold, could see through the growing mists, which collected into denser clouds, denser than he'd ever seen, the form become concealed, until all that shone was her light, forming the mirage of a silhouette which flickered as a candle would, formless and without structure, lurching of its own design, unkempt and uncontrolled, as the Lord intensified the pyre, swelling and pulsing to an unheard rhythm.
Indignata blinked. He thought.
Impulse had made a bomb. Now, the Lord orchestrated.
He stood and started back, leaving the edge and stumbling away, edging from the lake toward the waves of moss, the intensity of colours breaking through the clouds as though the flames were an inch from his face, bright and caught on every droplet of moisture which speckled the green, becoming pellets of searing, concentrated wrath which sparkled like flaming snow.
He was moving too slowly.
For a second, the soft grey sky and the rich heaps of life beamed with a brilliant radiance, flocking to their source which dazzled any stare, blooming over the blank pond to make it vivid.
Indignata stood in the centre of a sea of blazing pearls, spinning frantically, which approached a grand spire and flat sheet of light, the sunken prints of his feet spared from the embers to trace his retreat.
And for a breath it all returned to normality, save for the profile of a woman on fire, reaching forward with a burning grasp, the heat tracing her extended forefinger.
A tsunami erupts.
A torrent of blazing fluid.
Like the propulsion of a ship, with the force to send it rocketing forward.
Everything almost stops in fluid, liquid, monstrous energy.
The militant collapsed, arm out to guard his face.
He screams but nobody hears, and his left arm becomes cinders.
Indignata fell into one of the worlds veins, collapsing into a thin stream, his face creased in the dreaded terror of anticipation, as the immediate shock is tremblingly exhaled and the agony is let in, and his throat churns with torture as a noise he couldn't understand hacked through and burst loose. His body shuddered with selfish disgust. His mind tries to hack out the top of his skull. His eyes are too warm. Things claw at his side but also break through, a spit fire at his insides.
Crawling, he reached for his pocket and misses, unable to think as he searched for something to tie the wound.
He finds a cloth, one he'd used on Mercy when she'd first burnt, wet and torn.
He takes it in his teeth and tries to stand.
His face stings.
His arm is gone.
Wait.
He falls, bleating to the rhythm of his racing heart. Holding the limb close to his chest he drags himself forward, back toward the pool. Around him, the air is dry, hot and tight, all moisture destroyed, and he heaves with each attempt, splashing through the puddles, inclined to rise with the despair of his arm which surges upward, each point of charred flesh smoking against him, swelling to rise over his hunched form as he chokes on rotten air, guiding hand falling through ruined ground but keeping him up, for the fear of falling upon that wound could raise the lake.
He wonders how he's able to move, weeping with every advance. Wonders how his body can continue, when his mind howls louder than him.
He's been here before.
Indignata kicked forward and landed on his right side, rising as high as he could to do so again, launching himself as quickly as possible, his thoughts of panic curling with his focus on moving, doing the one thing he knew he could.
He reaches, and reaches, and does so until there's nothing to reach and he rolls, sliding in a spiral of hurt until he lands against something like sand, quaking in a ball.
He blinks.
Coughs.
He looks up, and there's a woman with tattoos and dark hair reaching for him, frenzied power and strength illuminated in blue against her face, and then the room is light as a flutter of white bursts in and a torrent of twirling kicks and slashes surrounds him. So close, he would have thought they hit, had he not lay there, on a table, looking up at the vent, unharmed as a picture he'd been shown and the back of a pilot's head turned, giving him a look he'd only ever seen once before.
He's staring at his mother, who leans back and shoves him out of the door, staring.
It tells him to get up and fight.
She tells him to.
They both do.
Indignata looks up and smells energy, like static streaming, seeing the shallow solution which made the grave of the lake, now almost empty save for a light shallow, and sees her standing in the centre.
She's looking at him with a new expression, presented upon reformed features, regrowing quicker than he'd ever seen before. Flooding her skull and giving it its substance. Her face is a river without gravity, painted in the tones of soft skin and pain.
Awful fury, he suggested, as the stump lay motionless by his side, and slight eyes looked unblinking at she, torched, but now rekindled.
Her hair billowed like steam from the back of her head and revulsion blew from the front, turning toward the burning Pyre Lord who approaches, making her footfall hissing gas as a drifting bonfire, embers caught in the wind, which replaces skin and blackens all resistant garments, ribbons of brightness following her.
She has become flame.
Indignata had figured Mercy's strength to be leant to her adaptation, but Tame had told him the opposite. He'd said how it was near impossible for her to grow stronger, as her body simply made itself healthy and prevented any alterations to its original form. She'd been strong anyway, but she'd needed to fill her time upon the breathless world somehow. The Grebler admitted that he did not understand how, but then he decided that trying to understand his colleague at all was a poor attempt, but Mercy had spent however long she was subjugated out there, alone, retching into the night, "working". An air-starved body, built on a strong premise, torn and ruined every second of every day, for a liar's period.
As he watched her walk, Indignata saw no inhuman muscles. No streaks of strength flaring against pale, undying skin.
But what he had seen was her "working" over the past days. Riding from world to world, army to army and fleet to fleet, with nothing but a ridiculous sword and that body. Whether it was strength of the mind or muscle so condensed that it made common meat, Indignata watched a malnourished shade draped over lightly sliced flesh, powerful yet restrained, in comparison to what he knew it could do, and let his head rest against the sand, the edges of the reserved waters lapping the tips of his hair, his gaze cast to the woman who approached the figure ablaze, who had watched bone and meat erupt from scorched ends, and abandoned her club to heaps of raging flame.
So much for his coat, he thought, looking on from the dirt.
"I have something to ask." Mercy called, not slowing but raising her voice over the gentle cracking and calm noises of the remaining waters. The Lord showed no recognition, as fire whined from the mask's eyes. The mercenary gave her a moment, to no response. "We've got weak communications. We had them, actually. Now we've got nothing. I don't want to tire hunting nobodies. Was wondering if you knew who to look out for. Someone everyone's anticipating. Someone well known."
"I don't understand." The inferno returned, speaking in the roar of flames, in a way which left its audience to interpret what was said. "I haven't heard of you. I know High Fiends and Pyre Lords who would crumble at your feet. I'm inclined to hear your name first." The wound had cauterised itself instantly, but the pressure of adrenaline forced a throbbing like none other inside his arm, and he moaned with each pulse. Mercy shook her head, dead toward humour, striding through the shallows with murder in every pace.
"You're dead." She stopped, the ripples of her motion continuing, and faced the Lord who drew to a halt also, flickering and curling as a structureless nightmare. "Who's the worst threat?" A pause. "Who's the worst?"
"Everyone knows who, they just pretend he isn't coming." The demon said, sparks flying and drooping to the simmering pools at her feet. "Don't make me say his name." Mercy frowned, one of scepticism over anger, and the Lord let her head fall to a tilt, making a noise of intrigue as she watched.
"I'm not this crowd." The white hair returned, mirroring the lean toward the other side. "Not my people. Your whole God complex doesn't matter to me. I've killed hundreds of you this week. Become deities, for all I care. Knowing I can kill God's something to fall back on. I don't need it, though. I know who I am. I need to find someone to change that. You know who I am. You don't need a name. I do." The demon crouched, squatting above the remnants, her light a beam across the pools.
"So you're here for the challenge?" The Lord nodded. "Looking for someone to beat you. Or maybe…" Mercy blinked, and her devil sneered in red hot vile. "You're not here for the Kamakara, but you'll fight the strongest." As the mask rolls with heat, an expression takes what was once wood, and makes it near eager consideration. "Then, you are an aid to all. You kill our Yeager-"
"I'm killing you." Mercy said, thrusting a finger like her sword. "I'm just making sure I kill the best. Next. Either the best can kill me, or it can't. Either way, I have what I need." The demon rocked her head back and slowley grinned, nodding.
Indignata didn't care what the Lord said. He just watched Mercy, praying to nothing for a lingering dark, instead of a flare.
"Then you'll find the worst of us Pyre Lords in the D'prabra Kyut. He's already murdered the second through to the fifth. He's wiped out our coalition's best defences. We lower Lords simply hope we can avoid him."
"His name." Mercy said, lowering her hand, patience dead to her tone. "And what he looks like." The Lord dropped her smiles and bowed an inch, watching the woman at an angle, mock caution ebbing on her mouth.
"He's the Six Wing Demon. Son of Ryu, the Great Wing. Look for the beast with the ram's skull for a head. His beauty should dazzle you."
The seconds of silence drew by, in which Mercy expected more, and took a step toward the hunched kindling when nothing came.
"And? What can he do? What's his deal? He big?" The demon laughed, glancing at Indignata and snorting.
"He ate his kind.
"The Utskushi Kenidomo. All of these are just words to you, small devil, I understand. But he's the last, and he had fed from the souls of the Kamakara for an age, before the grand Anubis was forced to intervene. He is like you, in fact. Searching for something to sate his appetite. Now, Anubis is weak, and his little synonyms send their acolytes to dull the flames." She shimmered, chewing her words.
"He's after revenge? He's the one who'll rule the ruins?" The kindling stooped, watching the approaching mists regain their land, giving poor attention to the demands.
"He is unlike any other. The smartest of species came from humans, over the many divisions and recessions of control. They adapted. Evolved. Grew mighty through necessity. Left their world and entered the apocalypse and worked to survive. But not the Kenidomo. Whereas we ambled toward the stars, it is said they existed long before. The true species."
"Why'd he eat them?" Mercy interrupted, to deaf ears.
"He was different. He looked at the hierarchy and scowled. The pretence of his honourable species, modest and humble in their might. The climb, to work through the many steps in his life, already planned by an age-old people. He saw it, and he consumed them all." She trembled, leering. "The Yeager had never before been a Kenidomo, for the Kamakara viewed them as near equals. Those hypocrites, who call us demons, admitting a soulless power. The Yeager cannot be Kamakara. It is the supreme being of what may be called mortals. Our deities…" She snarled the word. "Refuse to give themselves elevation among their peers, but they gave all of us dreamers something to work toward."
"I don't care." Mercy said, shaking her head. "I'm done with you." The devil ignored, speaking to nobody but her horrors.
"But then he was born. He tore from his mother's womb and convinced those egocentric swine that there was a difference. That he did not desire to be equal to his Gods. He had been told that their powers were similar, and he smirked. He saw that his kind no longer needed God, and were their own overlords." Her flaming visage of a mouth burst into a wild, ruthless mockery. "So he ate them all first, before he moved onto royalty." She is wide in her sneer. "A self-sufficient, self-believing, all powerful being, the one thing better than a deity. The one thing more deserving of prayer than a declared idol." She loomed forward, flaring.
"What?" Asked Mercy, the waters at her feet still.
The Lord leant back, relaxing her shoulders, a face of awe becoming her features as she raised her hands, slowly and without violent intent, toward the sky, her words drawn like ooze.
"That capable of killing God. The one thing that could take what made the Kamakara powerful, beyond physical strength. The one thing to rival that mighty, great, blessed and gifted Anubis. A thing those deities looked at and recognised, for the first time, as a true, bloody, cunning, splendid…"
She sings it.
"Demon." Indignata saw Mercy lean to rest on one leg, and heard a grunt.
"People pray to this guy?" The Lord shrugged with a sniff and turned to look some other way.
"A few. They don't make themselves well known." She made a noise like a laugh. "I thought you were going to murder me."
"I am." She turned to give a moment for the rolling mist, watching it glide across the charred shallows, looking back to the flames with a flick. "But what's his name? Who are his followers?" The Lord scooped a pool with a cupped hand and watched it fry, shifting to better address.
"We are an unimaginative bunch." She let her head fall the other way. "But Kebuukism stuck as something to sing loudly among all tongues." Mercy stared, fists balled on the last thing she needed, gazing toward the burning figure as a faint breeze brought the mist back, creeping around her calf's.
The demon observed, knowing her next lines to be the cue of execution, but didn't rise in combat as her fiery jaws opened, and she resigned herself before the white-haired devil to a death considered peaceful. Contested, yes, but peaceful still, in light of who she was slandering by name.
"Kebuuk Naa, the Six Wing Demon." She crouched a little straighter.
"The age-old Yeager." She opened her fingers, and smoke rose from between.
"The closest thing we lecherous offenders have to a patron." She didn't see the faint outline of a man rise behind her, holding straight his sub.
She turned an inch, indicating her sudden awareness, before she switched to Mercy, she oblivious of the subtle cold and discomfort of perpetual moisture, who grinned as she gave a little bow, eyes locked on the Lord.
"The worst of we devils."