'What is with this girl?!'
The Inquisitor was helpless against the rapid fire of Shulia's punches. It was like a machine gun of high velocity blows.
'I need to find an opening!'
But there were none. Not once did Shulia stop hitting him.
His skeletal spider legs, sharp claws and poisoned pincers were broken like straw. The Inquisitor himself was surprised when one of his claws that usually took a good amount of strong blows from the Holy swords was crushed instantly just by a few punches from her.
His Amortal body was in agony. Not only could he snap his neck and die but he couldn't find an escape.
Shulia didn't break a sweat as she continued to pulverize him. It was like his own personal hell.
'I have no other option. I need to use that.'
Manipulating the shadows around them, he sneaked up an attack.
Lost in the delirium of overwhelming him with brute strength, Shulia didn't notice the thin shadow appendage.
She saw it too late as the shadow wire struck her neck attempting to break it.
"Ack! That bloody hurts!"
With lightning quick release she had caught the wire with her bare hands striking cleanly on her palms rather than her neck.
This gave the chance the Inquisitor was looking for. He immediately scurried away to replenish his strength.
"Coward! Come back!" Shulia recovered quickly and chased after the Inquisitor.
The Inquisitor however raced ahead in a pathetic attempt to escape her.
'I was wrong. I was very wrong. It's not that Claudina or Anatole brat I should have been careful around. It was her.'
'She's dangerous. An angry, unreasonable woman with brute strength and an awful temper. She's Rosalinda Carlos.'
'If she catches me….it might lead to the worst case scenario. She might just…kill me.' 'Speaking of Carlos…where is she?'
"Come back, ya scrawny bug! I'll smash ya under my heel!"
'How is she so fast?!'
The Inquisitor tried to put as much distance as possible between them however with his broken body he was faltering.
Every step had been agony.
Every breath was agony. Since he couldn't die because of his injuries, he felt them.
Every crush of bone. Every beheading. Every fire that scorched his skin.
Yet he kept going.
With the sole intention of achieving his goals. The reason why he became an Amortal, his own revival and finally joining the Vessels of Ri'sh.
He didn't come this far just to die like this.
No, no, no. With the sole intention to kill the Saints of Uranus he won't die so easily.
He won't die at the hands of an ill mannered woman. H
e refuses to die. He will keep on living until he becomes the Saint of Uranus again.
So let every broken bone, every rotting flesh, and every agonized breath he takes be a witness.
A witness to his will.
The will to kill indiscriminately.
Shulia tsked as the Inquisitor rounded a corner.
She put more speed in her chase and ran after him.
The Inquisitor hid himself in a cervix of the cave while Shulia ran past. He waited for a few minutes and slowly crawled out.
Hissing in anger at Shulia's direction when he had an idea. With quick steps he went back to where the chase first started.
As expected both Sylvester and Oriane were lying unconscious. Grinning deviously he lifted them in his arms.
He stomped on the ground and his shadow split open to a dark hole with a staircase leading down. He stepped inside and the shadows swallowed them. In an instant the shadows in front of him parted.
With an evil smirk he stepped out. Shulia stopped dead in her tracks, astonished to see the Inquisitor arriving out of nowhere with Sylvester and Oriane.
She scowled. ".... Pathetic. Is blackmail all you can do?"
"If it can get me what I want then yes, blackmailing is all I can do."
He thrust out the two prisoners. "You were the second woman who was able to almost defeat me. As such I will let you choose among the two. One lives and the other I get to kill."
Shulia scoffed. "As if! I will take both of them!"
Saying that she jumped towards him.
"A foolish decision really." He blocked a side punch from her.
She grinned. "Oh yeah? Don't forget I was the one who got you down on your knees. I did it once, I can do it again."
Anger flashed in his eyes. "In that case I have two meat shields who will take the hit for me." He raised another shadow arrow in the distance and aimed it for her heart in secret.
Whilst the arrow got ready he slowly moved them to the place where the arrow will shoot from.
Shulia, completely oblivious, dealt punches and kicks all over the Inquisitor. Somehow she never landed a blow on the two captured saints despite how many times the Inquisitor brought them near to his body. However her blows were haphazardly thrown around unlike how they were aimed for his vitals.
'I might just die before the damn arrow gets ready!' Finally the arrow was ready and Shulia was right behind it.
Smirking in triumph, he let go of it.
However the arrow never hit her. A dagger beat the arrow and made it change directions instead of hitting Shulia.
The Inquisitor couldn't believe his eyes. He stepped back, nearly dropping the two saints. By now Shulia had also stopped, breathing heavily through her nose.
"H-how?!"
A tired voice spoke up, "You were a former saint weren't you? So you can already guess what happened?"
Shocked, he looked down at his hands.
Sylvester was weakly glaring at him. Most of his wounds were healed up. And so was Oriane's.
Blinking he understood what had happened. "You weren't just hitting me randomly but you were also healing them!" he breathed out in disbelief.
"Agh!" Sylvester cleanly cut off his hand that was holding him captive.
He fell heavily but immediately got back on his feet. The Inquisition hissing in anger and disappointment secured his hold on Oriane. Oriane choked.
"Let her go," Sylvester commanded.
"Or what?"
"Then face the consequences." Sylvester ran up front with his Holy sword drawn. He swung the sword over the Inquisitor's head but he used Oriane's body to bat him away.
"Senior, please don't use me as a weapon… A shield maybe but not a weapon, please."
"Silence you fool. Captives have no rights."
Sylvester slashed his torso. "Ugh! There's one brat after another!"
The Inquisitor swiped at his head but Sylvester ducked and Shulia used his back as a leverage to jump and kicked down his claws. The Inquisitor was soon pushed back to a corner.
Shulia wiped away a smidge of blood from her face. "Forfeit and surrender. We have you surrounded."
The Inquisitor was quiet with his head lowered as well if he was reflecting. But his grip on Oriane had tightened so much that veins were popping out from his knuckles. She feebly coughed. "... It's starting to hurt now, Senior."
"Let go of Oriane now."
He looked up with bloodshot eyes and raised his free hands. "I have my goals and ambitions to fulfill. Giving up after coming this far is an insult to my efforts."
He threw two nails up in the air.
Strangely mesmerized Sylvester, Shulia and Oriane couldn't look away. The trance only ended when the nails fell and lodged themselves in Sylvester and Shulia's shadows.
A terrible chill stroked their spines. From the nails their shadows started to become longer and took on a strange semi solid state. Shulia tried moving but she found out she was frozen in place.
Goosebumps were left in the wake of freezing dread.
"Instead of me, how about you fight with yourselves," he coldly said. He stepped back and the shadowy portal formed again.
Sylvester's nose flared in indignation. " Hey! Come back!"
He shook his head already halfway in the portal. "They are your mirror. Your reflection. Your vices and sin, they mick so well one can't distinguish between the shadow and owner."
Hands made up of compressed dark purple materials reached out from the two Saints' shadows. As Sylvester and Shulia stood in horror the shadow beings fully removed them out of their shadows. Those shadow beings had their profile, their clothes and as well as their Holy swords. The only difference between the real and the fake ones were their faceless faces and everything including the clothes, their bodies were made of unknown dark purple materials that looked like rough tree bark and glowing purple lines.
"I doubt you will survive this. But look on the bright side, all three of you will see each other soon again."
His final words echoed in the cave walls, "In the afterlife that is."