Chapter 166: 164 – The Lighthouse

Alcerys dragged him out through the half-open door using the First Arm, pulling him by the foot straight onto Emberthorn’s blazing edge. Her blade left all of its quills inside the man when she ripped it out, so it was perhaps a mercy that he was dead before she even got to the other side of this checkpoint.

As for the last checkpoint… She reached out, stretching the First Arm to the sentry towers at the structure’s sides, and pulled their occupants to their deaths upon the cobbles, closing the distance all the while. The tank fired twice in her general direction, but she was all too small a target and its crew clearly lacked the proper training to operate it. 

She unleashed a charge of the Second Arm into the engine vent, hoping to force the crew into opening the hatch to escape. When, inevitably, they did as she had expected, she dragged them out one by one, and in turn slew them.

Past the checkpoint, it was all but chaos. The streets she walked were deserted, contrasted by distant thunder of guns and massed noise of people screaming out in defiance. Then, there was the conspicuous absence of announcements. 

Alcerys spared exactly one more soldier on her warpath towards the lighthouse, and he happened to be a Grekurian. It was in the final stretch as she neared one of the edifice’s several entryways, and he was the only man left behind in the midst of carnage and burned-out tanks, hiding behind one of the burned-out wrecks.

It perhaps helped that when she walked into his sightline he panicked and called out, “Who goes there! Is - Wait, a saint?”

Lowering his gun he continued, “They sent a fuckin’ saint?! Is that how much worse things are than we were told?!”

“...Ah. The halo,” a thought shot through her head. Going by the triple-barreled blunderbuss in his hands and the design of his uniform, he was an arms specialist. Responsibility fit for a lieutenant with none of the respect, doubtlessly stuck at his rank due to lack of replacements.

“Renegade Inquisitor… And I am not here on behalf of the Statehood,” she corrected him.

She saw disbelief flash in his eyes, smothered as his gaze jumped all over her. Modified inquisitorial plate, check. Flaming sword that clearly isn’t an Aquila Calibur, check. No gas mask, check. Strange arcane artifact, check. Arcane constructs that are clearly not those employed by inquisitors, check.

“Renegade...? What- Nononono, I’m not getting involved in this,” he shook his head, getting up from his spot as he turned to walk into a back alley, presumably to get even further out of sight. “This reeks of church business. I wasn’t here.”

If anything, the soldier’s caution was admirable. She would’ve had done the same, had she been in his position. Alas, her work entailed scaling the Rigport Lighthouse, the city-state’s seat of power, in the hopes that Cao Hu would be found there. Failing that, she would scour the immediate surroundings in the hopes of tracking him down… Or at least making sure he wouldn’t be back before the riots stoked by Strake could shake the city of his subordinates.

And so it was that she continued on her way to the lighthouse, striding amidst the still-smoldering embers of a battle that had ended mere minutes prior. In fact, she was certain she heard gunshots and rioting within a short walk’s distance, calls for Cao Hu’s death so widespread that they could be made out amidst the fray.

Rigport’s steam-engine heart was being stirred by the embers of revolt.

Alcerys was more than happy to throw a shovelful of coals into the firebox.

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The Rigport Lighthouse towered into the heavens, an unimpeachable monument to human capability, one of the tallest structures of the modern world. Its base was wrought of dark-coloured boulders, massive hunks of solid geopolymer that interlocked so seamlessly one might be fooled into thinking its bronze-plated upper levels were simply built upon an exceedingly fortunate natural stone formation.

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Numerous windows and gargoyles dotted the great tower, coloured a nearly solid green by the protective layer of corrosion, highlighted by gold-coloured brass ornaments. 

It had been surrounded by a gigantic moat, once, which had long been repurposed as the sewage-filled heart of Rigport’s sewer system and built over.

The tower’s sheer scale demanded multiple entrances, with a grand main one in Lighthouse Square, two secondary smaller ones at roughly one-third increments, and several much smaller ones for the staff, plus an escape tunnel underground.

Despite how long it actually took her to reach the tower she never had to worry about either of her constructs fading, with the Eye’s tremendous power permitting her to simply feed the techniques enough energy to remain in standby. In effect, if she just kept Fog-breathing and maintained her focus, duration would not become an issue.

The entrance was, unsurprisingly, heavily guarded. 

It was too cramped for tanks and golems, and so, past a shallowly-inclined stairway and barricaded doorway, a hedgehog of guns and spears awaited. 

They fired on her, one by one, their leaden bullets clanging off her plate and being swatted out of the air by her halo. Only a few of them held guilt warranting punishment… 

But they were enemy combatants to a man.

Indiscriminate killing was counter-productive, but what she was about to do would be all but indiscriminate.

The Charred Judge gripped her sword with both hands, taking rapid, full-chested breaths, a hair’s width short of outright hyperventilating.

The Eye of Fierřy Judgment moved as if with a will of its own, its gemstone acting as the head of a serpent that wrapped around Emberthorn’s crossguard.

“By the righteous judgment of mine unerring eyes, I usurp the Stars of Calamity which shine in the heavens...” she uttered, pouring lungful after lungful through the Eye, into her blade, stoking the flames of its edge from blue-tinged wisps to a howling, swirling inferno. Its cold-iron mass grew and swelled, distending into a barb-covered wall of writhing, burning metal, a charred monstrosity of living steel as tall as her.

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