﹄O, Death...Become my blade once more﹃
Attima tested the battle hardened acuity and mettle of the great wyrms that traversed its holy soil, pitting them against trails that would earn them recognition across this ineffable sanctum. Only then could they bathe in the ascendancy that followed. Apparently, all their worldly struggles prepared them for this moment. The slaves shackled into subservience, the corpses of the lesser whose suffering couldn’t be afforded any kind of remorse, and even the success gained at the expense of one’s kin. They were all mere stepping stones that lifted the dragons to this place. They made each step in life a footprint of undeniable dominance, control, and power…so that the sweet kiss of death would whisk you away to this sacred paradise. It was absolutely disgusting… Fu**ing repulsive.
As Zen looked upon the mulch of gore sluggishly churning before him, as if the viscera itself was waking up from a long slumber. He couldn’t help but feel a pull towards absolute carnage. He wanted to reduce everything here that thrived on such horrid principles to the very same gruesome state as the Brute he had just defeated. None of them deserved a warrior’s death…not if they proudly luxuriated in this land while their latest generations stained the world with further atrocities. A sharp breath hissed from his nostrils as the fleshly sludge began to coalesce at the core he had tainted with vile magic. This temptation to carve punishment and ruin into those who he felt deserving manifested as a sound trapped in his own mind: a steady roar of wilding rapids becoming more and more chaotic. The Ocean beckoned him.
His hand coiled tightly around his blade as his gaze lifted up ahead of him. He… could not let himself be dragged down that path of destruction by the thrashing tides roaring in his mind…his heart… not now. The last time he had done so without first thinking of the ramifications, Aella had gotten shot… an event that snowballed into further discord that brought them all here in the first place. His grip tentatively released slightly on the hilt of his blade. This was not the time to get swept away by rage; He couldn’t risk any further consequences seeded by his blind fury. The tides in his mind steadily began to still. He needed to get back to the others.
An invisible dark magic pulsed around him before completely stilling not a moment later. The brief blast made the grass tremble and the branches from the nearby trees stir…but more importantly it made the gore of the Earth Brute move more rapidly around the fractured and corrupted core. The more allies the better. He could enlist the resurrected minion to distract these other creatures and any other to come while they focused on fleeing. Zen took one step forward, steeling himself to enter the fray once more to aid his allies and the familiar buzz of teleportation prickled around and he felt himself blink out o-
Suddenly, an anonymous pull tugged at his core, his heart rate spiked as one honey colored iris and one sickly green one flashed behind him. Danger… he couldn’t see it…didn’t know where it was coming from…but every fiber in his body told him that he would be cut down if he didn’t focus on evading at that very moment. The attack came swiftly, so swiftly that Zenith couldn’t weaponize any amount of arcane prowess to easily warp out of the way. Instead, he ducked…and above him…the visible canopy of trees ahead of him were beheaded, cut down by a flash of red that the sword saint barely managed to observe. The crowns of the trees toppled all around him, but Zenith couldn’t gawk at the feat at all… not while caught in the chaos of battle. He sprung to the side from his crouched position and rotated to face the source of the slashing attack behind him, but was met with several bullet-like shards of red before he could locate the form of this new assailant.
PANG PANG PANG!
The bloodthirsty blade parried three of them, some flying past his body before he teleported away…this time positioning himself on the opposite side of the now cut down clearing to avoid the projectiles. He stood up, holding his katana in front of him with both hands at the hilt, finally maintaining a position of defense and readiness. Warmth trickled down his brow…a black vein of otherworldly blood curled around his hazel eye and down his cheek. Standing before him…was…a knight? Clad in obsidian plate mingled with flexible leather that looked coarse and blackened as if it were scorched by fire. Ruby jewels were sprinkled across the gothic chest piece, the vambraces, and one at the center of the smooth featureless helm; All of which glimmered with ancient magic. The figure wore a raven colored shawl of sorts like a hood, and it draped down the back of the knight and joined with an incarnadine cape that fluttered as if in slow motion… On closer inspection though, the cape wasn’t a cape at all. It was…
At that moment a single droplet of black blood trickled down the middle of his eyelid…before it peeled away from that upper ridge and turned into a droplet that fell right in front of his mortal eye-the one that proved he was not completely consumed by the insidious presence inside him.
Blood…
Zen’s eyes flashed to the knights feet…and there…he saw a pool of vermillion ichor follow after the new opponent, conjoining with the cape. This figure…manipulated blood.
What followed occurred in the following seconds just as Zenith realized that he had come to the realization much too late to seize any kind of advantage. The Right green eye flashed with unholy energy, instilling fear into the figure before him. At the same time the droplet of blood changed its trajectory and shot into Zen’s left eye. The swordsman hissed and teleported further back, distancing himself from the weaponized droplet that could have done far more damage from that distance. He made a motion to wipe his brow, but there was no stopping it. Much like his own blade’s ability, the wound he had suddenly ripped open as his own ichor was pulled out of the wound dramatically-as if the cut was arterial in nature. Zen fell back, momentarily disoriented before he teleported again…this time closer to the knight in a horizontal cut that was immediately parried by a rising spine of solidified crimson blood…a spike that was once part of the knight’s cape. The shower of the cut on his brow began to be weaponized as well, turning into serrated shards above and in front of him.
Zen needed to keep repositioning…and he needed to end this…quickly. Hopefully the fear would make this being sloppy and-
Zen’s eyes flashed wide as his head suddenly throbbed. His vision was the next thing to go as color and shape began to bleed with everything else. He became nauseous…dissoriented. Shi* this Hemomancy was mastered to the point of full dominion even over his enchanted blood! He needed to flee, find a range of effect. Zen warped again, much further back this time as he surrendered the initiative to strike swiftly and lethally, though he couldn’t find his footing and toppled to the ground. Not far enough… And then…
SNAP…CRACK…
Both of Zen’s arms bent unnaturally, his elbows hyper extending the other direction with a near wet crack before his wrists folded much further than normal. His fingers flayed out, dropping his bloodletting katana. Zen gurgled a cry…and then it got worse. All over Zen’s body…black spikes erupted from his skin…his own blood…made into a weapon…and ripped out of him from the inside. It sprayed some of his essence as well, still liquid and yet to be claimed by the knight’s ability just yet…and then..from each injury…the bleed effect was placed. Zen’s body erupted in showers of obsidian ichor that rapidly bled him out. He gasped…the darkness of unconsciousness creeping in from the edges of his compromised vision.
He was too slow…
Plap…plap…plap…
The knight waded through the growing pool of blood beneath the swordsman…and as he walked he left steps of vermillion in the black ichor of Zen’s blood. Still bleeding dramatically, the sword saint looked into the knight's visor…the fear…had worked…but beings could turn fear into action…and this being…considered Zenith too dangerous to live. And so the bloodknight stared down at the sword saint, who had collapsed onto his knees with a wet splash.
Additionally, this knight was very much in its element…the ability was far beyond what Zen was capable of in this form…though in a word of spirits that didn’t mean much. Zen, however, was flesh and blood. Mortals like the swordsmans…like the other trespassers who combated their own obstacles…were the perfect prey.
”n-no…” Zen managed to grunt out. He couldn’t move his body no matter how hard he tried to resist. The feeling of his own blood compelled into stillness also seemed to create a disconnect with his own mana, and he could feel that trying to teleport would be incomplete and greatly ineffective. The dark haired man’s eyes fluttered again. He was going under. The concussive eruption of earth behind him was completely muted…the sound of the knight stopping and conjuring a blade of black and red from the ooze beneath him was as well. Dam*it…all it took was one singular moment of vulnerability and everything would be pointless! Zen found himself utter a whispered curse against his arcane restraints as his vision…blacked out…his heart…made several pitiful beats…before it too…stopped. There was just one sound now…those tides…roaring with renewed life deep in his subconscious.
The knight, without a word, delivered a singular swipe then…a move that would lop off the sword saint’s head. And yet…that didn’t happen. Instead the blade sank a third of the way into Zenith’s flesh and suddenly got stuck. The knight tilted its head in alarm and tried to yank the weapon from the wound…yet it did not budge.
“haha…HA…HAHAHAHAHA, you cease to amaze me keybearer! You will indeed make a great vessel for the end! And in the event horizon of absolute oblivion, everyone will see that it was you and your choices that set the foundation of its finality!” the voice of the Lord Unholy echoed in his mind.
The dark miasma surrounding them both rippled. The knight frantically searched his surroundings, its cape fluttering high defensively around him as new and darker arcana began to erupt all around him…all around the pool he was in. slowly, Zen’s head lifted as his wounds simply…bled…his blood had lost its liquid properties and instead became a viscous tar like bile. His heart did not beat and yet…he lived…but that wasn’t exactly true was it? no…While mortality was all he ever wanted as a golem-to feel human…to be acknowledged as such and treated like someone who deserved a second thought from his peers…it…it was no longer what he wanted. Humanity came with hurt… came with disappointment… came with an ache that could not be healed with medicine or magic alike. He wanted that to vacate him completely…so that he could execute a linear…objective. Now, he wanted to become more like what he once was…and so…his divine biology…impressionable and malleable…soaked in the vile energy within him…and turned him…into a lich in that very moment.
“I will not die…not yet…I have too much to do…” Zenith murmured, his voice carrying a secondary more serpent-like voice with it. That insidious green eye…became brighter.
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𝕯𝖎𝖉 𝖞𝖔𝖚 𝖐𝖓𝖔𝖜 𝖆 𝖘𝖜𝖔𝖗𝖉 𝖍𝖆𝖘 𝖆 𝖛𝖔𝖎𝖈𝖊?
𝕾𝖍𝖊𝖆𝖙𝖍𝖊𝖉 𝖎𝖙 𝖍𝖆𝖘 𝖑𝖎𝖙𝖙𝖑𝖊 𝖙𝖔 𝖘𝖆𝖞, 𝖙𝖔 𝖇𝖊 𝖘𝖚𝖗𝖊,
𝖇𝖚𝖙 𝖞𝖔𝖚 𝖓𝖊𝖊𝖉 𝖔𝖓𝖑𝖞 𝖕𝖚𝖙 𝖞𝖔𝖚𝖗 𝖍𝖆𝖓𝖉 𝖔𝖓 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖍𝖎𝖑𝖙
𝖆𝖓𝖉 𝖎𝖙 𝖇𝖊𝖌𝖎𝖓𝖘 𝖙𝖔 𝖜𝖍𝖎𝖘𝖕𝖊𝖗 𝖎𝖓 𝖞𝖔𝖚𝖗 𝖊𝖓𝖊𝖒𝖞'𝖘 𝖊𝖆𝖗.
𝕬 𝖌𝖊𝖓𝖙𝖑𝖊 𝖜𝖆𝖗𝖓𝖎𝖓𝖌. 𝕬 𝖜𝖔𝖗𝖉 𝖔𝖋 𝖈𝖆𝖚𝖙𝖎𝖔𝖓.
𝕯𝖔 𝖞𝖔𝖚 𝖍𝖊𝖆𝖗 𝖎𝖙?
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