Chapter 191: 191 – Liability

Zelsys didn’t know if she would be able to channel Graze Pulse again in time, and she never would find out. It was the Red Mantis herself that leapt at the projectile and grabbed it out of the air, spinning around on the heel of her good leg and throwing it back at the Queen. 

Confusion overtook Zel’s killing instinct, and she fell into a state of absolute caution - fully prepared to continue fighting at a split-second’s notice, but a mere observer for the moment. Cleaver at the ready, arm-cannon’s trigger lever in a vice-grip, the beast-slayer watched what the Red Mantis would do next. It didn’t do a whole lot to alleviate her confusion.

The Queen blocked the projectile with one of her gigantic stone arms, barking a question in Pateirian that sounded equal parts accusatory and confused. Still, just loud enough to be heard over the fray.

The Mantis gave a likewise, short response in Pateirian, her tone relieved and scornful, yet calm. 

Despite the doubtlessly horrendous pain she was in, despite her numerous injuries, despite the violence all around, despite the eyeball-sized bullet lodged into her temple, there was not a grain of undue emotion to her tone. Somehow, by some divine feat of composure, the Red Mantis sounded utterly, immovably calm.

In a breath’s timespan, the Queen’s authority and anger was replaced by the heart-scrambling fear of someone who had just heard their own death sentence. 

Another question screamed so loud it briefly overtook even Strolvath’s music.

With a clack of her mandibles and a brief look back at Zelsys, the red one grabbed the centipede on her stomach and pulled it off. Tossing it aside she reached behind her back and dug her thumb under one of the plates on her lower back, and pried this one off too. Afterwards she tore through a thin flesh membrane, and pulled free a tiny, thin slip of milky-white stone with jade-green flecks. It was as thin as the blade of a knife, as wide as the red one’s thumb, and thrice as long as it was wide. Something was carved into its surface, but Zelsys couldn’t tell what.

“I am glad to let you know that you’ve been deemed a liability!” she called out in crystal-clear Ikesian, holding out the carved slip between her fingers. With a gesture of her left hand, the slip took on a bright silver glow and began emitting a thick trail of Fog.

With a bestial howl of utter desperation, the Queen reached out and tried to grab at the Mantis with her left arm and fired off harpoon after harpoon. Yet her attacks just bounced off an invisible wall, as if the stone slip had just conjured an impenetrable barrier out of nowhere.

Unmoved by the display, the Mantis continued to speak as if she were reading off a legal document. Still she used Ikesian, making no effort to conceal the fact she was doing it so that Zelsys would understand what was being said.

“By Divine Decree, our soul-binding contract is null and void!” continued the red one as the talisman’s rope of Fog began to coil around her like a snake. 

She turned back to Zelsys once again, and in a much quieter voice said, “Count yourself lucky that this is bigger than you. When I see you next, you’re dead.”

Before Zel could say anything - or even think of something to say in the first place - the Mantis made an exaggerated gesture to her left and exclaimed an incomprehensible chant. She repeated the same thing upward, downward, and to her right, each time chanting a slightly different line. Each time she was more thoroughly enwreathed by Fog, and by the time she finished the fourth line, it was difficult to even discern her silhouette.

Then, there was nothing. 

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No additional flash of light, no thunderclap, no gate she stepped through.

The Red Mantis just vanished where she stood, leaving in her stead an absence of light and a fading cloud of Fog.

“I don’t… I don’t think I can even be surprised anymore,” Zel thought as she let out a deep sigh. She wanted to grasp for surprise, to let out a chuckle of disbelief, but it wasn’t there. The precipice of normalcy was far out of sight.

Zelsys shook her head and regained her bearings, expecting the Queen to redouble her assault, this time directing it at her. It didn’t come. 

Clang. Clang. Clang.

Gunshot after gunshot, Zefaris bombarded the Queen. Some of her bullets bounced off the parasite’s stone arms, others bounced off the gemstones that protruded from her head, but a few embedded themselves in her skull.

Clang. Clang.

A lull in the gunfire. Zefaris opened her eye, sucked in a deep breath, and exhaled all at once with an exclamation.

“Move!” she yelled, and her stone eye expelled a blindingly-bright silver missile that struck the Queen’s forehead nearly instantly. Its impact made the bulbous thing whip back so violently that it was a wonder the mother-bug’s neck didn’t snap, but it certainly stunned her.

In this moment, Zef’s attention turned towards Zelsys. It was a brief meeting of the gazes, a wordless agreement to ignore the ridiculous events surrounding them until such a time came that they could think on the absurdity of it all in safety. An agreement to just finish the job, dispose of the Queen, and get it all done with.

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“Betrayers, child-killers, foul whores and putrid posers! The blood you shed waters the soil from which your demise grows!” belted the old soldier as he pilebunker-stomped the Sister’s broken form into vaguely recognizable meat with rapid-fire sonic pulses took the function of a meat-jackhammer. He wasn’t even bothering to rhyme at this point, moreso just screaming his own rage and sorrow in vaguely lyrical form.

The rhythmic calls of “BUNKER! BUNKER! BUNKER!” from his second voice were just background vocals at this point.

When he finally managed to destroy her lungs and rupture her heart, he thought to stop himself. He thought that it was enough, only to find that the locust still moved.

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