As the final days of the month unfurled with unexpected haste, the redhead was being chased down by assassins hot on his trail. Rounding a pillar, he swung his blade, felling fleshy gristle with one stroke after another.
He went after the fallen foes, patting them down, rummaging through the corpses. It was something that had caught her eye, increasing in frequency.
She mulled over the savagery, wondering what purpose it served.
Apart from embellishing his swordsmanship, he had not shown anything that would prove to be a catalyst for her ideals to be furthered. She found it to be nothing more than time he had wasted. Time he could spend bettering himself than carving up cadavers.
She nibbled on a stray length of flesh, beside her cuticle. A finger that had turned into a knackered wreck, raw and bruised.
Lilith stood beside the railings over the top, eyeing the fallen bodies, red and fresh. She wished there was a panel that hid her, as she took in the sights. But then again, she wasn’t as keen on peppering glass over her furniture.
Lost in thought, she realised, her protege had slid out of sight. “Show me what you’ve got lad,” she whispered. “Reveal the fruits of your labour, or else it’ll all be for naught.”
A wince resonated, earning her attention. She peered over the railing, in search of the perturbance.
She began climbing down the stairs towards the training grounds, relieving a sigh caught in her throat.
The Selection will be upon us. Soon.
Shifting her focus, a flicker of crimson popped up in the corner of her vision, alongside a metallic sheen.
Releasing the weight of her knees, Lilith dropped parallel to the stairs, eyeing a bony blade slide a hair’s breadth over her nose. Supporting the weight of her descent with a hand, she launched herself off the stairs to the bottom, clutched by a fanning intrigue. Whipping up dual miasma infused cerise sabres from thin air, she instinctively sliced off the bony blade hounding her, halting the crimson haired assailant in his ambush.
Her lips curled into a sly grin, a twinkle of amusement dancing in her eyes as she bore witness to her protege’s improvised weaponry. A broken blade, its jagged edges fused with the remnants of shattered bone, extending from his ulna and radius. In his other hand, a claw hammer, gleaming with a thirst for battle, was poised.
“Well, well,” said Lilith, her voice laced with surprise. “Starting already? I thought you would want to catch your breath, after finishing up those cannon fodder assassins.”
Azrael launched his attack without warning. The fused ends of the broken blade dislodged from flesh, hurtling through the space dividing them.
Caught off guard by the audacity of his assault, Lilith’s smug demeanour faltered. Her instincts kicked in, parrying away the shard with a flick of her wrist. In that instant, she inverted her grip on the sabres and launched a frontal assault with the blades, gunning for the redhead’s exposed throat.
Sliding under the sweeping cerise blade, Azrael made his way up the stairs, reverting his gnarly flesh, from blade back to hand.
“What’s the matter? Is that all you have to show?”
Wordlessly, he turned tail and clambered up the rest of the stairs, leaving Lilith and jagged blade behind.
“What!? At least take it outside.” She exhaled exasperatedly, chasing after the fleeing Azrael. What’s he up to? Once the rush wore off, she couldn’t help but drown in disappointment. Is that bony blade all that he’s got? Maybe a month was too short a period or maybe I should push him harder, stab him with abject brutality and hasten his evolution!
Without her realising, Azrael had slipped in, past an open door. A stench more pungent than rotting vomit, stung her nares. It harboured a grotesque carpet of decay littered with a labyrinth of rotting corpses. Biting on her lower lip, she followed after him, past the frame.
The chamber was a haunting remnant of a massacre, the air heavy with the putrid scent of decomposing flesh. Dismembered limbs and tattered remains bore witness to the savage aftermath, scattered haphazardly across the desolate floor like a tribute to the gods of death and savagery.
She scaled the macabre mound, each step bringing her closer to her protege, who stood as a sentinel within the confines of a four-meter-wide ring, cast from the remains of the dead.
“You’ve been awfully quiet. What’s with all the hide-and-seek routine? Do you want me to praise your crop circle?” And someone better clean up this mess afterwards!
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Azrael wordlessly motioned with an index finger, taunting her.
“If this is what you have been working on in your spare time, then I must say, it looks less promising than a haunted house.” Lilith tightened the grip on her sabres, stringing the cerise blades along her frame, vanishing from sight.
Azrael looked about with a raised eyebrow, instinctively sliding his katana out the sheath. He parried away a cerise blade, gunning for his left shoulder. Simultaneously, he swung his claw hammer to deflect a secondary stab at his throat, barely keeping up with her lightning quick strikes.
“What’s the matter, slowpoke? Feel like caving in?” Lilith channelled a surge of miasma through her cerise sabre, producing an offshoot from her blade that cut into Azrael’s wrist, severing his left hand and claw hammer off his grip, in one fell swoop.
He staggered back, paying no heed to the lost hand. He aimed his exposed forearm bones, sharpened to jagged edges, lengthening under the sway of miasma, towards Lilith’s sternum.
In a swift move, she propelled herself upward, leveraging the very blade dashing towards her, as a platform. Her boot swept across the edge, her heel cracking into Azrael’s chin.
The redhead flew back, before he had time to process what had happened. He surrendered to a rotting bed, carved from the dead. He groaned and shifted about, his jaw hanging loosely off of fleshy gristle.
A self-satisfied smirk tugged at Lilith’s lips, as she landed on her feet, relishing her triumph in drunken self-indulgence. “Another point in my favour,” she taunted. Her eyes were fixed on Azrael’s fallen form which urged a sudden rush of solemnity to overtake her coyness. Her teeth sank into her lower lip.
Dispersing the vibrant cerise sabres adorning her grip, she extended a single index finger aimed at Azrael’s heart.
“Is that the extent of your abilities, lad?”
She had no choice but to concede. It was the end of his creativity. The only tricks he had up his sleeve. It was time she took drastic measures. Even if it could result in his end.
A cerise flash erupted from her finger, unleashing a decisive blow reverberating through the disquieted chamber. The acrid scent of cauterized flesh singed her nostrils, mingling with the swirling tendrils of aromatic smoke curling off Azrael’s lifeless form.
Lowering her finger, she brushed aside the dissipating pall of smoke, while reaching for his throat.
I hate goodbyes.
Agony ruptured through her extended palm. She found a protruding, blood-stained bone, peaking out a hole in her hand. A yowl parted her lips, prompting her to recoil, ripping the unorthodox protrusion out her gash. In a swift motion, she summoned her cerise sabre, its vibrant hue contrastive against the scattered death.
From the shadows, past the fallen redhead, a half-torso emerged. Fashioning tousled, matted brown hair, it had an empty socket for an eye and a missing nose. Crawling towards Lilith, the intent in its glazed pupil was as clear as murky water. Her face twisted, as she murmured a bewildered, “huh?”
Suddenly, piercing fingers, cold as ice, seized her from behind. Instinctually, she swung her cerise blade in a sweeping arc. She severed a rotting, emaciated hand from a shambling corpse within the throng of the two dozen other corpses that had begun encircling her.
At some point, the stench would have been her primary concern. Or rather, the scattered mess tarnishing the room’s cleanliness. But in that moment, something shook her from the depths of her being. An innate tenderness, crawling over her skin, bursting into gooseflesh.
A sharp pain ruptured her thoughts, erupting through her leg, as moulding teeth sunk into her right calf. Without hesitation, she channelled her power, infusing her legs with miasma. With a surge of strength, she drove her left foot through the half-torso, obliterating skull and decaying matter with a resounding crunch.
“Oh fuck! What the hell is this!?” Lilith’s voice quivered with disbelief, past clenched teeth.
Mouldy, skeletal fingers reached for her arms while gaping, toothless gums gnawed at her flanks.
“No, no, no, NOOOOO!” A cerise arc cut through the air. Dismembered heads spilled liquid brains down throats, and emaciated bones from hips. Gasping with a set of wide eyes, Lilith’s sanity began slipping. She desperately weaved a flurry of malleable cerise sabres till she culled their numbers in half.
The dismembered corpses remained motionless, while a rapid rush of ragged breaths escaped Lilith.
“Did that do it?”
The strewn bodies rattled, flesh rustling over flesh, bones clicking back together, snapping joints in place, albeit into a haphazard tangle past gnawed flesh. The cadavers began intertwining their fragmented forms, bursting her bubble. The carcasses rose from the dead once again, mindlessly advancing towards her.
“Give me a break, you fucking pests!”
“Not until you yield,” a voice hissed, accompanied by a glimmer of metal. A claw hammer emerged, its sinister contours coiled around her throat, threatening to leave its mark upon tender flesh.
Gasping heavy, heaving breaths, and tingling from head to toe with a wide-eyed sense of disquiet, Lilith exclaimed, “I give up!” She tapped her hand against the arm ensnaring her neck.
“Very well,” said the voice. With a snap of his fingers, the walking dead came to an abrupt halt, frozen once more in a grotesque, statue-like state.
A tuft of crimson fell from the periphery of her vision, producing a countenance adorned with a smug smile. “You never saw that coming, did you?” he taunted.
Crumbling to her knees, she buried her face in her palms.
“I didn’t expect to catch you so off-guard,” continued the redhead, sheathing his katana and securing the claw hammer at his side. Extending his fingers, he offered a helping hand.
She took his hand, exhaling a relieved sigh.
Looking up at him, she tightened her grasp.
With a firm tug, she reeled him in and promptly threw him to the ground. Twisting her body, she mounted him, restraining his hand behind his back.
“What the fuck was that?” she asked in a quivering snivel.
“Ow, oww, ow,” he said. “If you didn’t like my new ability, you could’ve just said so.”
Exhaling a breath, she loosened her hold on him, easing herself off him.
“Dammit,” she muttered, straightening her posture, and running her uninjured hand through her hair. “You scared the shit out of me.”
With a sudden shift in her demeanour, she wrapped her arm around Azrael, pulling him in close.
“You’ve become one hell of a monster.”
The redhead raised an eyebrow. He shifted his eyes in a confused flit, opening and closing his mouth in a wordless flap.