Chapter 93: 91 – Stars of Calamity

A sword swung at her chest by a man from the left, no feint, completely telegraphed, but the attacker had the fortune that the Butcher was currently busy being used reverse-grip to cut a swathe of burned meat through the lineup of four soldiers to her right.

Zel pushed through, entering into a full spin and using her right leg as a counterweight, sweeping the sword-swinger’s leg whilst beheading a man in front of her. Using the momentum she jumped off the slumping headless corpse, spinning through the air and outright kicking off the heads of two more men by the barbarous mass of her leg-plates.

Severed limbs and screaming men soon littered the ground in her wake, leaving two-thirds of the soldiers who had made it to the second floor for the Mercenary and the Governor as the Homunculus continued her warpath.

Without so much as another thought, she continued towards the staircase, using yet another corpse as a jumping off-point with such force that its spinal column exploded through its back end, and so she went running down the oval wall of the staircase.

If Estoras wanted a show, she would give him a show.

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Crovacus didn’t even see her go down that hallway, he just saw her face suddenly turn into a harsh bestial grimace and she took off sprinting, scream-laughing the entire way down as the sounds of cold-iron and butchery resounded. Even that Mercenary that he’d hired from Arnys wasn’t left unfazed, and nothing had made him so much as raise an eyebrow up til now. He had ducked behind the door after firing, deftly loading another shell into his breechloader, smiling warmly the entire time. It was utterly ominous, the genuine contentedness on that man’s face contrasted with a blazing desire in his eyes.

The second shell had a milky-white gem, which he fired into the doorway, followed by a fleshy thud and choked screaming. A half-mutated man with a sparklock pistol in one hand and a knife in the other fell through the doorway, a smokescreen of dense white Fog violently spraying from his mouth and where his eyes had once been as he thrashed about. 

Firing his revolver through the Fog screen he took a long drag of the cigar, reveling in the preternatural influx of arcane power brought on by hundreds of gelt burning ‘twixt his teeth.

“By the honored name of my noble line, I call down the Stars of Calamity which shine in the heavens...” he invoked, calling upon a power he hadn’t wielded in years, the power which the Aquila Calibur mimicked. Among others, their forebears originating the iconography of the flaming sword was a point of pride for all bearing the name Estoras. 

Crovacus rapidly recalled arcane equations which he had engraved upon his brain through thousands of hours of study and training, semi-consciously directing the delicate balance of essentia into his sword arm, gathering it within the storage glyphs inlaid in cold-iron on the bones of his forearm. Streaks of blue fire slithered out from his forearm as if emerging from his veins, moving down to envelop his hand and then the blade. 

The sword-wielding which he practiced was not fencing, for it was not practical to fence with a weapon such as this, each of whose swings equated a cannonball in destruction.

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The Mercenary fired off another shot down the hall, caving in the skull of a soldier fortunate enough to get through the Fogscreen before he once more ducked behind the wall to reload. He nodded at Estoras, recognizing the building power enveloping the governor’s weapon. It would’ve surprised him more if it went unrecognized, iconic as it was.

Finally, it took hold. A smoldering reaction that fed into itself, a searing toroid of arcane energy undulating through his sword arm with such intensity as to blank the mind with pain were he any less accustomed to the strain. He drew in a breath of Fog and sprinted headlong through the Fogscreen, shoulder-tackling the first soldier in sight and unloading two shots into his gut. He kicked him away and completed the incantation, unloading the rest of his bullets into the closest soldiers: “...They are the Calamity Sword, and with its might the craven things of this world shall be brought to heel!”

Dropping the gun into his wide trousers pocket he gripped his saber with both hands and, stepping forwards, delivered a long upward swing as his blade became enveloped in a flaming manifestation four times its own actual size. A tidal-wave of smokeless, scorching death spilled forth and the hallway was enveloped in an inferno of blue fire that consumed flesh, yet left the wood and paintings untouched.

The scene was not unlike a particular incident that Estoras had witnessed involving an Ikesian field cannon and three phials of CP-T instead of a cannonball. Only, this was different, for though they screamed, they were screams of confusion - for the Calamity Sword was insidious in that it inflicted more pain on the wielder than its victims. Even as they burned to death, they felt only numbness washing over them.

He felt the short-lived essentia reactor in his arm sputtering already, just after one full-powered swing, his sabre now just barely enveloped in fire. No matter, its strength would build back soon enough. In these coming times, he too would have to find time to build his strength back up, to relearn how to kindle this furnace without the aid of horrendously expensive alchemic aides.

Another drag of the cigar to finish it off and revitalize the technique. He swung at the charging survivor, cutting his legs out from beneath him, then kicking him at full power with a lungful of Fog to propel it. There was a crack, a pop, and a geyser of blood from his stumps as the man was sent careening across the hallway, over the burning corpses of his comrades.

“Don’t fuck with this governor!” proclaimed Crovacus Estoras, walking down that hallway with the Mercenary in tow, who did the dirty work of finishing off the survivors with his club.

As they neared the end of the hallway the sound of slaughter was accompanied by that of commotion, an orchestra of civil unrest, and at this very moment, Estoras felt a melancholy for having let himself go like this, but he also felt a tinge of happiness knowing that reigniting his old strength would be the best bonding he and Halxian could hope for. 

“They used to call me Rushing Dandy because I could do this in the blink of an eye…” he lamented to the Mercenary as they made their way down the stairs, only to be met by yet another image of carnage and the front door blasted off its hinges, and in the middle of the street...

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