“The specimen’s upper eye teeth have been replaced with elongated fangs that share anatomical similarities with fangs found in both predatory mammals and venomous snakes. These curved, hollow teeth are connected by ducts to modified salivary glands that now produce and store venom. Our analysis of samples taken from these venom glands shows them to be highly developed centers of pharmacological activity. So far, we’ve identified two dozen separate compounds that can be mixed at different ratios to produce unique toxins with specific properties. - Excerpt from an Ivory Tower mortisection of a captured vampire.
It had always surprised Natalie how many seemingly poetic sayings were completely literal. Getting hit on the head could really make you see stars, and sometimes falling in love did feel like having butterflies in your belly. Or, enough rage really did tint the world red. The shock of Mak’s betrayal had struck Natalie’s mind like hissing lightning, igniting the wild mania of Molek like dry brush, creating a roaring blaze of bloody wrath.
Murtery’s kidnapping of Kit was bad enough, but what really fanned the flames inside the Alukah was what had been done to Yara. The thrall’s psychic message had been laden with exhaustion and terror. She’d been pushed to her absolute limit and was only hanging onto the stolen carriage through sheer determination. Soon, even that determination, born from an unexpected infatuation, wouldn’t be enough, and Yara would tumble broken to the cobblestones. An ugly end, the Alukah would not allow to befall anything that belonged to her!
Spurred on by this fury that danced between protective and possessive, Natalie had leapt off the ruined watch station with Cole at her side and landed down among the swarm. Before the ghouls could even register her lover’s presence, the Alukah had lashed out with psychic chains, carving a path through the hungry dead through force of will. Yet even with her necromantic powers splitting the corpse-tide like a ship’s bow, an ugly truth became clear before Natalie and Cole were halfway to the plaza’s edge.
“The carriage is too fast, we’ll never catch them like this. We need a new plan!” Shouted Cole, voicing what both of them had realized.
Natalie snarled with impotent rage and tore a nearby ghoul in half with her claws. As rotten gore splattered onto the pavement, she began imagining what she’d do to Mak once they caught him. Oh, he would pay for taking Kit and hurting Yara, he would pay with every drop of blood in his drunken, soon-to-be carcass!
A strong hand grabbed Natalie’s shoulder and spun her about. She nearly lashed out with her claws before realizing it was Cole. Their eyes met, and the Alukah bloodlust wavered at the sheer intensity contained in his gaze. With a voice as cold and clear as winter nights, he said. “We don’t have time to waste on anger. Can you send your wolves ahead? Have them bring down the flesh-crafted elk?”
Her first instinct was to let him taste a bit of her rage, as punishment for trusting Murtery. But something about his eyes, the strength hidden behind their unnatural blue, made the vampire hesitate long enough for the woman to start pulling herself back from the edge. He was right, wrath would have its moment, but right now, they needed cunning. As for his suggestion, she doubted her wolves would be fast enough. In fact, just following after the carriage like hungry street dogs was a bad idea. Shortcuts were required if they stood a chance of catching Mak.
Putting her hand on his, Natalie squeezed it slightly. “I’ve got a different idea, one that’s worked before.”
Using their eye contact, she sent out a psychic tendril to Cole, which he tentatively accepted. They’d need such a link to communicate once Natalie’s plan was in motion. She then turned from Cole and started moving toward the road’s right side. “Let’s put that goblin Moroi’s blood to better use.”
For the second time that day, a cloud of bloody vapor started to spill out of Natalie. The dense crimson mist swirled out from her eyes, nose, and mouth, coating her body in an ever-thickening mass of red. Unlike before, the bloody cloud did not squeeze on her body, but instead lay heavy like a thick winter coat. As the line between her flesh and the fog melted away, Natalie started running on all fours. With every step, movement became easier, as a new form coalesced around her. Out from the final dregs of crimson emerged a great black cat.
Before, when Natalie took this shape, she’d kept her normal body mass, but this time, she’d added to it by quite a bit. She was probably as big as a northern sabre-lion, but with all the extra strength of a vampire. A transformation like this was painfully expensive in blood, but if anything could reach the carriage in time, it would be her current form.
Turning about, with uncanny ease for something her size, Natalie opened her huge jaws and bit down on Cole’s collar. Then, with an almost casual toss of her head, she lifted him up and over onto her back. He let out an impressive stream of curses, but still managed to land well, getting good handholds of her thick fur. Yet he wasn’t her only passenger; the two rats were also hanging onto her pelt for dear life.
Once it seemed no one was going to fall off, Natalie sprang over the ghouls and towards the nearest building. She sank finger-long claws into its structure and propelled herself up to its roof. Once there, instead of slowing, she leaped to the neighboring building. Worn shingles and timber let out sounds of protests, as several hundred kilograms of big cat landed atop them. But they still held together long enough for Natalie to leap to the next roof and then the one after that.
No longer trammeled by the ghoul-packed streets, she bounded forward, slowly shortening the distance to the coach. With every jump, her feline senses caught more and more of the carriage, or more accurately, the creatures pulling it. Even amidst all the pungent odors of Harmas, the elk-things stood out like a signal fire atop a tall hill. They reeked of spoiled fruit and perfume, along with a subtle but concerning undercurrent of sex and animal musk. But foul as these fae-crafted beasts were, there was no denying their efficacy. The carriage was hurtling down the main throughfares, with shocking speed.
So if Natalie was going to catch Mak, she needed to be more efficient with her rooftop shortcuts, but that was much easier said than done. Murtery knew this city well and had a clear route in mind, while she was making things up one leap at a time. If she stood any chance of cutting off the carriage before Yara fell, then Natalie needed knowledge of Harmas. But thankfully, the city was in no shortage of prospective guides. A trio of rats had given her fantastic insight into the plaza and its immediate surroundings, so what else could the night creatures of this ruined place offer?
Psychic chains slithered free from Natalie and expanded out in a great swirling web. Creating and controlling the chains was becoming easier and easier as her growing power eagerly settled into this familiar role. At her direction, each chain found the mind of a nearby kindred animal and sank into their memory. The myriad rats and bats she found offered no resistance to these new psychic links, letting Natalie collect the information she needed. Deciphering and utilizing the dozens of mental maps now crowding her own mind was hard, but she’d always had a knack for this kind of work. Soon, the pieces settled into place, and she better understood the city around her.
Due to being built upon three islands, most roads in Harmas were narrow and winding; they barely fit between the countless buildings fighting for the city’s limited space. Meaning there were only so many main thoroughfares a speeding coach could take. Mak’s options were limited, especially if he didn’t want to get bogged down in ghouls or debris. So Natalie could guess he was probably headed for one of the bridges over the Alidonar. The same one Cole had been shot on, in fact. In itself, that was already an ill omen, but considering where the bridge led, this cast an even darker shadow over Murtery’s actions. The central island was where the corrupted court and all other manner of fae-born threats resided.
Natalie pushed her transformed body even harder while trying not to think about all the dreadful reasons Mak might have picked this destination. With her speed and shortcuts, intercepting the carriage right before it reached the bridge was possible, but Natalie seriously doubted Yara would last that long dangling to the speeding vehicle. She needed a closer point of ambush, or otherwise, find a way to get Yara out from under the jagging coach. Thankfully, the myriad scraps of information she’d been absorbing from the city’s creatures pointed her towards a good option.
Up ahead was an unpleasantly sharp turn that, according to her sources, had tipped over more than one poorly driven cart. Mak would need to slow down if he wished to avoid such a fate. Bounding between rooftops, using up more blood than she probably should, Natalie hurried towards the curve in the road.
Cole finally managed to catch enough breath to ask. “Where are we going?”
Natalie sent her ideas and logic through the psychic link they shared. Cole replied with a nod and a grunt. From what little he let spill through the link, clinging onto a big cat while it took stomach-churning leap after stomach-churning leap was pushing even his constitution to its limits. The poor man just couldn’t catch a break when it came to her transformations. Still, her efforts weren’t for naught, as they were nearly at the corner, while Mak was lagging behind.
Landing on the roof of a dilapidated inn, that once must have prided itself on its corner location, Natalie slunk over to the edge, and peered down. Cat eyes had many advantages, but seeing things at a distance wasn’t one of them. The ground below was just a blurry mess of different greys, but thankfully, her ears and nose could more than compensate. Coming down the road was the manic drumbeat of hooves on stone; the carriage was close.
Primal instincts started to take hold of Natalie as she prepared for the ambush. Her body shifted side to side, in the pre-pounce dance she’d seen Stocking and so many other cats do. Her long tail twitched constantly like a clock’s pendulum, counting down until it was time to strike. Cole, for his part, merely braced himself while muttering a mix of prayers and curses. If things went according to plan, Natalie would pounce upon the elk-things and bring them down, while Cole went after Mak. It was an utterly mad scheme, but one well within both Alukah and Homunculus’s ability.
Speaking of the elk-things, their gods-awful stench was wafting up to the rooftop. The carriage was almost at the corner. In one final act of preparation, Natalie reached out to Yara and sent a simple message through their link. + Hold on tight, we’re about to strike. +
Only a few seconds later, the pattern of hoofbeats shifted as the elk-things slowed in preparation for the corner. The carriage then came into view, its blurry form at the center of Natalie’s predatory focus. With enough force to crack shingles, she pounced, hurtling down from the rooftop like the atavistic terror she was. In the moment before impact, Natalie’s vision finally clarified, and she realized her jump had been a little off; she was going to slam into the coach’s roof and side instead of its beasts of burden. This was unfortunate, but still manageable; what was less so were Mak’s reflexes.
In the time it had taken Natalie to fall two stories, the madman had picked up, aimed, and loosed his crossbow right at her. But instead of sending a blessed arrow right into her heart, the weapon launched a small cylinder that detonated barely six meters into the air. A cloud of strange, yellowish smoke bloomed out from the cylinder and washed over Natalie. Instantly, her eyes, nose, ears, and mouth erupted in itching, burning pain. Then a dozen lines of white fire erupted across the rest of her body, as something terribly sharp cut into her.
Robbed of all her senses, she smashed into the carriage with as much grace as the world’s largest bag of onions. The coach’s roof cracked loudly and buckled in on one side. Natalie frantically tried to sink her claws into the slanting roof and pull herself up, but every movement deepened the cuts covering her, letting the jagging sulfur seep into the wounds.
“Brace yourself! I’m sorry, but this is going to hurt!!” shouted Cole as he clambered off her and onto the roof. Before she could ask what he meant, Natalie felt another blade sink into her flesh, perpendicular to whatever was cutting her. A snapping noise cut through the air, and the sharpness lessened across certain parts of her body. But before she could react to this change, Cole yelled, “Fuck!” and the band of sharpness around her back legs grew so so much worse. In less than a second, she was cut straight to the bone, but her problems didn’t end there. The sharpness yanked her down with horrible force, and she was pulled beneath one of the coach’s wheels. Bone broke, flesh tore, and she tumbled to the ground and rolled half a dozen times across the cobblestones before coming to a stop.
A plaintive yowl escaped Natalie’s bloody maw as her pain-addled mind slowly realized she was missing some parts. Everything below her cat form’s hips had been torn off. As this truth settled in, her control over the transformation slipped away, and her feline form started to melt like crimson candle wax. Thankfully, the worst of the pain faded away with the dissolving body, letting her focus on reabsorbing at least some of the blood used in that transformation. It was enough to keep her from experiencing torpor or frenzy. But she’d used up much of her cistern’s contents, including all of the blood she’d stolen from the goblin Moroi. There wouldn’t be any more impressive working from her unless she found something to drink.
But before any plans related to feeding could be put into motion, Natalie needed to figure out what in the world’s name had happened to her. With a worrying amount of effort, she forced open her eyes and immediately regretted it as the last of the sulfur kissed her goodbye. After flinching from the burn, she rolled to her side and started pushing herself upright. But a strange metallic noise, accompanied by the sensation of something slithering over her body, made her freeze. Cautiously, she looked to the sound’s source, expecting a fae serpent or skeletal centipede about to strike, but instead found coils of shiny wire partially wrapped around her.
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“Jagged edges.” She muttered as the coil’s nature became obvious. The explosive Mak used on her had contained more than sulfur; its innards held a mess of thin wire that had wrapped around her body like a particularly cruel hunter’s snare. The wire had cut into her flesh, letting the sulfur seep into the wounds, while her fruitless struggles just drove it deeper in. A weaker or simply less lucky vampire might have been torn to shreds by this weapon.
As that sobering thought settled on her, Natalie noticed how one of the wires had been messily split. Cole’s handiwork most likely. He’d been trying to cut her loose, but hadn’t counted on the severed wires getting tangled up in the coach’s wheels and pulling a still-bound Natalie down with them. That she and the wire had been spat out of the spinning axle instead of being horribly wrapped around the carriage’s bottom was another stroke of luck. But if she and those cutting wires had gone beneath the carriage, then… Oh gods, what had happened to Yara?
Natalie frantically sniffed the air, ignoring the sulfur sting, as she sought any sign of her thrall. She instantly scented the tantalizing aroma of fresh human blood, and her stomach turned to lead. After scrambling to her feet, she cried out. “Yara? Yara, where are you?!”
“H-here, mistress.” A familiar voice rasped from a little ways away.
A surge of relief filled Natalie, and she spun about to find a crumpled form lying a dozen meters down the road. As she hurried to her thrall’s side, that sense of relief vanished upon seeing Yara’s condition. A truly terrible number of cuts and bruises decorated Yara’s body, and one of her ankles was visibly swollen. But those injuries barely caught Natalie’s attention, as her focus was on the length of white bone sticking out from Yara’s broken arm. Blood flowed freely from the grievous wound, and to Natalie’s great shame, her hunger stirred at the sight.
While doing her best to ignore her instincts, Natalie came to kneel beside Yara and tried to think of what to do. She knew how to clean and bandage minor wounds, but an open fracture was well and truly beyond her steel price.
“I’m sorry, I couldn’t hold on.” Yara whimpered as Natalie frantically looked around for something to staunch the bleeding.
“Don’t apologize, just… just stay with me,” Natalie replied while looking over her shoulder towards where the carriage had gone. Was Cole still on that accursed thing? Or was he already coming back to them, with a rescued Kit and captured Mak in tow? No, she couldn’t risk being optimistic right now; she needed a solution.
After tearing off a section of Yara’s pant leg, Natalie started to put pressure on her split-open arm, only for a terrible scream to escape the thrall. As her wail turned into a shaky rattle, Yara whimpered. “Hurts, it hurts.”
Natalie’s dead heart twisted at that, and she started to babble out an apology before an idea struck her. What was it that Isabelle always said about vampire venom? Something about their fangs being an entire pharmacy? While she couldn’t hope to replicate Isabelle’s organic alchemy, Natalie knew the basics of her venom. The sting wasn’t the only thing a vampire’s bite could inject; in fact, they had a whole range of options to mix and match. Some of which might just be what Yara needed right now.
Reaching into her pockets, Natalie grabbed her yew amulet and pulled it free. Odds were she’d need it to stay in control during what came next. “Hold still, Yara, I’m going to make it better.”
She leaned down to her thrall’s neck and gently sank her fangs into Yara’s flesh, then injected her venom. A shuddering gasp escaped Yara as the mix of sting, numbing agent, and pain reliever flowed into her bloodstream. Fresh red flowed up from the wound into Natalie’s mouth, and she was unbelievably tempted to keep drinking. But with her amulet's help, she mustered the strength to pull away from the meal and lick the wound shut.
Shaking slightly with both vampiric hunger and holy cold, Natalie forced herself to keep working. She moved over to Yara’s split-open arm and spat her coagulant saliva onto the wound. While undeniably gross, this trick worked, and the bleeding slowed, then stopped.
Natalie looked up from the stabilized injury and started to say. “How much are you-”
She trailed off upon seeing the tears flowing down Yara’s face. But before Natalie could start to panic, her thrall whispered. “I didn’t want to die.”
“What?”
With her working hand, Yara reached up to her throat and repeated herself. “I didn’t want to die.”
There was genuine surprise and befuddlement in her voice, more than what could be chalked up to the venom. For a moment, Natalie was confused by this, but then, as Yara’s fingers traced where she’d been bitten, it made sense. Despite everything, Yara had thought Natalie was going to kill her; that she was about to be put down like a lame horse. But instead of accepting this grim fate, like she’d been told to do half her life, Yara had wanted to live.
Not knowing what else to do, Natalie just put a hand on Yara’s head and muttered. “Good.”
After a few moments, the venom finally pulled Yara down into unconsciousness, leaving an exhausted Natalie to just stare down the empty street and wonder what was happening with the carriage and Cole.
Cole looked on in horror as his lover’s lion form was pulled beneath the carriage by Mak’s diabolical wire bomb and spat out behind the vehicle like poorly made sausage. While cursing his own idiocy, in thinking he could just cut her free like a snared rabbit, Cole moved to the coach’s rear and readied himself to leap to the cobblestone speeding by. But before he could jump, the telltale creak and clatter of a readied crossbow caught his attention. Cole ducked and spun to his right, barely avoiding the bolt that whizzed past his head.
Mak was kneeling with one knee on the carriage’s roof, his other leg on the driver’s seat, with his crossbow aimed at Cole. There was no hesitation in Murtery’s posture, just the cold certainty of an experienced hunter. He’d aimed to kill, and unmortal or not, that shook Cole. But, the lack of offered quarter was only half as unsettling as the human leather mask Mak wore. If it was of the same make as the ones Yara and Kit described, then there was no denying how far Mak had fallen. The man Cole had fought beside would have sooner lost a hand than use a fae trinket crafted from a desecrated corpse.
Squeezing Requiem tight, Cole allowed himself one final glance over his shoulder before things got bloody. To his relief, he caught sight of Natalie emerging from her ruined transformation right before the carriage finished going around the bend in the road.
“You might as well go to the bitch before she yanks your leash.” Mak hissed. He’d set his crossbow down and in its place held a long length of heavy chain. Almost casually, the broken man began to spin the chain, turning it into a blur that leaked arcane frost.
Cole took a deep, steadying breath and called up his own power. Pure preservation flowed through him, and his body became near-unbreakable. Letting out his now icy breath, he levelled Requiem at his former mentor and asked. “Why?”
In answer, Mak lashed out with his chain whip, sending a palm-sized knot of links right at Cole’s sternum. The paladin knocked it away with Requiem’s head, and a shower of ice crystals exploded out from where the two weapons met. But before Cole could press the attack, the chain snaked back through the air and went for the paladin’s legs. After parrying this blow, Cole found a dozen more like it coming for him. Some of the rapid, unpredictable strikes slipped through the paladin’s guard and scored hits on his body. But instead of bouncing harmlessly off preservation-infused armor and flesh, the chains injected a metaphysical venom. Bitter entropic cold clashed with the magic filling Cole, putting cracks in his defenses.
Upon realizing that attrition wouldn’t be the winning tactic here, Cole lunged forward from his position at the carriage’s rear. But the violent creaking and squeaking of wounded wood forced him to pull back. Natalie’s effort to climb onto the coach’s roof had badly damaged its middle section, trapping the two combatants at either end of the vehicle. Something which suited Mak just fine, as he took full advantage of his weapon’s reach advantage. Cole’s former mentor wielded the chain whip with such efficacy that the Paladin genuinely couldn’t tell if Mak was manipulating it with skill or spells. In all their time working together, Cole had never seen Murtery fight like this, as he’d always preferred less direct methods. But it made sense for someone like Mak to keep such a deadly tool hidden. In fact, Pantheon alone knew what else the hunter was still keeping in reserve.
Cole couldn’t afford to play this safe; he needed to subdue Mak with enough overwhelming force that there wouldn’t be an opportunity for more deadly tricks. As the next deluge of chain strikes came for the Paladin, he didn’t even try to parry, instead letting them rain down just long enough for him to catch the whip. Instantly, the links in Cole’s grip released a burst of extreme power, but he’d expected such a countermeasure and channeled a glut of holy preservation into his hand, negating the surge of icy entropy that would have turned even a paragon’s forearm into a mess of frozen meat splinters.
Not knowing how long he could protect his hand like this, nor how fast Mak could unleash another blast, Cole acted quickly and yanked on the chain. Murtery instantly gave his weapon slack and kept his balance, but Cole wasn’t done. In the same motion of hauling on the chain, he hurled Requiem in axe form at Mak, who ducked under the spinning weapon, which was when Cole unleashed the third part of his ploy. Taking advantage of the split-second when Murtery’s head was down, Cole rushed forward and pushed off the damaged roof with all his strength. He lunged towards Murtery with all the aggression of a furious brown bear and wrapped his arms around Mak’s torso and tackled him off the coach’s roof.
They landed on the driver’s seat, but momentum carried them forward onto the elk-thing’s harness. Having rolled with the tackle, Cole landed with his back smacking against the wooden rod running from the coach’s front to between the flesh-crafted beasts of burden. The awkwardness of the blow knocked the wind from him, but that didn’t stop him from trapping Mak in a crushing bear hug.
Cursing and thrashing, the hunter tried to get free, but lacked leverage or any other advantage. Atop the coach, this had been Mak’s fight, where his speed and skill could shine. Now that it had turned into a brutal grapple, Cole’s strength and toughness would decide things. In fact, the paladin’s biggest challenge wasn’t Mak’s struggles, but trying not to crush his ribs. Cole’s goal was to squeeze the breath from Murtery and knock him out. Something that wouldn’t take much longer, considering how hard Mak was fighting without having taken a proper breath.
Throughout all of this, the elk-things kept galloping away, occasionally letting out their horrid cries, seemingly uncaring of the mess happening just behind them. As Mak’s thrashing slowed down, Cole let himself start to think about what to do next. He’d needed to kill or incapacitate the elk-things, or they’d probably take the carriage all the way back to their stable. Which… was maybe something Mak had been counting on?
Perhaps he intended to use the coach for more than an easy way to escape with Kit? Was the stolen vehicle and the human leather mask a disguise of some sort? A way to sneak past the corrupted court's defenses? But if that was the case, then why kidnap Kit and steal the lantern? Such a bizarre betrayal couldn’t be simply chalked up to Mak needing a good method of infiltration. Hells, if Mak had just helped in the fight against the Baron and then explained his plan to get into the court, they would have probably agreed to aid him. The only thing that made sense was that Mak needed Kit and his lantern for something, something that Cole and the others wouldn’t agree to.
Before Cole could even start to consider what Mak intended, a surge of magical power welled up from the hunter. The Paladin’s eyes widened as he felt the sheer amount of arcane energy being amassed by his former mentor. All around the grapplers, the air started to hiss and crackle, as a cold beyond the darkest winter blizzard began radiating off Mak. The elk-things shrieked in a duet of pain as black frostbite spread across their rumps. While beneath Cole’s back, he could feel the wooden rod creak ominously, as some of the leather straps snapped. This was a killing cold, an aura of unimaginable ice and entropy. It was Mak’s last gamble to free himself before he passed out.
For a moment, Cole was more confused than threatened, potent as this working was, his own abilities, both holy and unnatural, could counter it. Then, as he felt the steadily growing size and scope of the aura, Cole understood. A paladin’s magic came from their divinely infused soul; they spent pieces of themselves to cast spells even a hierophant would balk at. But if they overused this mighty gift, it didn’t just kill them; it destroyed their soul, ending them with such finality even a god couldn’t save them. By writ of his nature, Cole was somehow immune to these most dire consequences, but Mak was not. This was a suicide attack.
Cole loosened his grip on Murtery slightly and shouted. “What in the world’s name are you doing?”
Using the little bit of breath afforded to him, Mak croaked out. “Forcing you to make a choice. Let me go or let me die.”
Torn between confusion and frustration, Cole replied. “Why?”
“Why? To show you what needs to be done, and that you aren’t strong enough to do it!”
Cole took a second he didn’t have to spare to try and understand Mak’s words, but was still nonplussed. “Do what?
With a spatter of frozen spittle, Mak cried. “To use the weapon Master Time sent with you! That changeling and the lantern are key to avenging this city and saving our world!”
“You think our god would condone this?” Cole growled.
Mak let out a bitter, broken laugh. “You don’t need to approve of something to know it's necessary. This is why I’m still alive, to spare you this sin and to settle my debt with those I failed.”
The magic coming from Mak reached a new height. At any moment, the entropic aura would reach a tipping point and kill him. “So make your choice, let me die and take this burden yourself, or let me live and do what needs to be done.”
With a whispered curse, Cole made his decision. He twisted his body to the right with all his strength, hurling both himself and Mak off the carriage’s front. Cole struck the cobblestones hard and started to tumble, but let go of Mak before he could crush him. The hunter was sent rolling away, his body kicking up a cloud of icy dust as the street beneath him cracked and crumbled from the entropy aura. The carriage hurtled on without them for a few dozen meters, until the exhausted and wounded elk-things finally stopped. As the stolen coach skidded to a halt, Cole got up from the street and realized where they were. It was the jagging bridge again, the one where he’d been shot.
After glancing up to make sure the sun somehow hadn’t vanished from the noonday sky and that he was safe from any sniper vampires, Cole trudged over to where Mak was getting to his feet. An effort that was taking a lot more out of him than it had Cole. Shakily, the Mad Paladin rose and turned to face the Homunculus Paladin, with his chain whip in hand. The human leather mask had been torn on one side, revealing a quarter of Mak’s bruised and battered face. Despite his exhaustion and injuries, Murtery’s expression was one of grim determination.
“For what it’s worth, I’m glad you chose this. Even if you are a monster, you’ve always been a good person. So just let a failure like me damn himself while seeking a scrap of redemption.”
Until now, Cole had been too confused and shocked to be properly angry. But after hearing Mak’s goatshit reason for creating this entire mess, rage came easily. As icy vapor swirled about his preservation-infused body, the paladin stalked towards his fallen colleague while drawing his hunting knife.
“No, I will not allow this.” He snarled while pointing the knife at Mak. “I’m going to end this idiocy, and then see how many of your bones I break before I finally beat some sense into you!”
Mak’s eyes went wide, and he took an unconscious step back from Cole. But the fallen paladin quickly recovered and shook his head in dismissal. “How is it that someone can be a softhearted fool, and a baleful monster at the same time?”
Murtery lashed out with his whip, sending multiple coils of chain at Cole’s face. The furious Homunculus easily dodged them, then lunged forward, just as something clattered to the ground at his feet. It was a small package leaking smoke.
“Fuck!” Cole swore as he tried to kick the explosive away, but he was too late, and his world became a thing of blinding white and shrieking thunder.
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