Chapter 97: 95 – Paint it Red

They had been told that it was tall, but-

“It’s her! She stinks of alchemy and my dead brethren!” chittered the Transformed, breaking Shang’s train of thought. He recklessly charged ahead, fury flashing in his eyes and his mandibles gnashing. The woman spat a tiny orb of light at him. There was a flash of light, a miniature thunderclap, and he doubled over forward, smashing his skull on the stone floor. He got up and charged her again pulling out his sword, but this time she just kicked his arm clean off and grabbed his head. With a sickening crunch, she ripped his mandibles clean off and proceeded to gut him with them, stomping on his head for good measure.

Shang hadn’t even thought to try stopping or saving him, in part because he had courted death by daring to break formation, and because he himself thought the Transformed to be lost causes. Madmen cursed by the emperor.

“Halt! Lay down your arms and-” one of his lieutenants began in perfect Ikesian, having learned this specific spiel phonetically. It didn’t really fit the situation, and the homunculus seemed to agree, interrupting him by laughing. 

“We have no quarrel with you, the Estoras is just manipulating you for his own benefit!” lied Shang in an attempt at actual communication.

“Oh shut up, won’t you?” she mocked. No, it was more like she just released a dam of concentrated vitriol, eagerly spitting every vileness she could conceive of as she slowly began to walk towards them, horrifically malformed cleaver in hand. “You and your ilk have proven time and again to hate my very existence, to come after me at every opportunity. I bet I’m marked a target right alongside the governor! Walking weapon, meat-puppet, homunculus, butcher. Whatever you want to call me, go ahead. Just choose your last words wisely, ‘cause I’m about to turn this tunnel into a mass grave!” 

Shang was certain that she knew only a few of his men could even understand what she was saying, that this was just an intimidation tactic… Until she overtly brought up the names of their benefactors. Her voice was full of malice and mockery, like there was no doubt in her mind that she would be victorious. Like she just wanted to humiliate them. 

There was no point in communicating with this creature after all, just as they’d been told. He gestured for his men to fire. A hailstorm of bullets was loosed down that tunnel, a continuous flow borne of gun-belts and stolen pepperboxes, the gunmen arrayed in a three-row trench sweeping formation, which too, was stolen.

The woman held up her blade as a shield. A great many fell to the ground, her weapon ringing like a thousand bells at once.

A great many, still, struck true, ripping open skin and muscle all over - her arms, her legs, the sides of her torso. A single one seemed to strike a rib and bounced off,  the jagged edge pushing up her chest bindings. 

...And she laughed.

“Is that the best you can do?!” she howled before she took a deep breath that somehow only made the left side of her chest rise. A pitch-dark ichor spilled from beneath her bindings, before it lurched inward and with a sickening crunch the rib popped back under her skin. 

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She exhaled a long plume of Fog, but as the left side of her chest lowered, so did the right side rise. The smell of ozone filled the air, sparks danced across her skin, her heartbeat began pounding so forcefully and rapidly that it looked like she had an engine in her chest. Those silvery lines upon her body took on a moonlight glow, spreading out and expanding almost like some arcane analog to a strongman’s popped-out veins.

And her wounds… They didn’t bleed, not truly. What blood had come out of them hadn’t just congealed, it was like tendrils of blood pulling the sundered flesh back together!

There formed a dense congregation of those lines over her stomach, pulsing and swirling just before a bulge traveled up her throat and she exhaled a veritable curtain of Fog. The gunmen thought it to merely be a smokescreen, and readied to fire a second barrage.

Shang bothered not to command his men to bring the cannon to the fore and fire it, but instead, gripped by the fray, he drew in a breath of Fog and pushed the thing forward in one mighty push, knocking over three of his subordinates and crushing one’s fingers in the process. With a gesture he invoked the First Formation of Fire, flicking the small bead of flame into the cannon’s touch-hole. Thoom. The tunnel filled with smoke and swirling embers, and there was… No impact. Just a weak, yet simultaneously deafening clang as the leaden ball slammed to the ground.

Afterwards - as the second barrage came - a small number of ringing clangs sounded. An all-too-small number. There was, however, a far greater number of leaden balls clattering to the floor, robbed of all momentum. 

Panicked thoughts flashed through his head: “Oh. Oh no. Not a kineticist. Why didn’t they tell us that it was a kineticist?!” 

No matter, such a defense would inevitably dissipate, and when it did, there would be a window of opportunity sufficient to put her down. Yes, this was a brief respite, time enough to reload. That’s what Shang told himself. But then, the curtain was dispersed by a foot passing through it, striking the cannonball with the clang of steel-toed boot against the leaden sphere. There was an unnatural disconnect between the moment contact was made and when the cannonball moved, and when it did, it came soaring right back down the tunnel at full muzzle velocity, carving a path through four of his men. 

She had kicked it back at them, briskly walking forward as she continued to mock them: “Is that the best that you’ve got? Are those your biggest guns?!”

Then, she raised her cleaver and the sawteeth on its back came alive with a cacophony of screeching and chittering that reverberated all throughout the tunnel and drowned out everything else. Yet, the words that she growled right then somehow cut through the noise.

“BUTCHER, BRING ME THEIR HEADS!”

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