Marshal woke up, unable to feel his face; Lucien was flinching, his core flickering, and his mouth speaking. But Marsh couldn't hear.
To his side, Lorelai was still burning, and there was an odd shake in her body, shivering despite the heat she had given off.
He rested a hand on her, and it was so hot he noticed his fingers had no more skin. The cold diamond rested on her smooth skin. He couldn't even feel it. Or even see that well, as blinking, he found he only saw through one eye. He wanted to speak, but there were no lips to do so with—just an open space for air to rush in and out of.
Then he heard it.
Her voice.
Rosalind screamed, howled, and cried to the pits themselves.
"I will fix this!"
Cass was next, followed by Amara, cracks, glass, and burnt fibres.
He knew those scents, he knew the weapon.
Eitherite.
"Fuck, fuck, Rosa…?" Lucien said.
Marsh could feel the man's teeth chattering, his pistol drawn, his will to survive battling against his instinct to fight; he needed to jump in. He was no soldier; that was Marshal's world.
Then, raising a hand, he presented it to the fairy.
Lucien faulted, "There are so many. I- I-"
Marsh growled and pressed his broken leg to steel. A hiss escaped from his breath, a fractured bone splintering in his leg. It wasn't a leg he could run on.
So he limped, pressing his finger on Lucien's chest, then to the steaming Lorelai, still burning, still silently fighting Voidium.
Lucien stepped, but Marsh gripped the man's gun and pointed the barrel against Lucien's chin. His finger lingered on the trigger, his eyes meeting the man.
A growl came from Marsh's lips, quick, stern, and then he turned away. He flicked the hammer back and chambered the next round—one sole spent casing in his fingers.
It was empty anyway.
Marsh dragged his shattered mess of a leg, bone popping out of socket, fangs, tense, rigid, a tear rolling down his cheek.
He entered the next room, just another hall as big as the last, the windows slightly tinted under his boots. A group of rough, armoured men lingered in the center, the guns on their backs, ranging from standard stunning Voltite all the way to mind warping Neurite—the worst of the lot, a yellowed barrel of contraband, an Eitherite anti-material rifle.
Then, feeling a sharp thud touch his temple, he looked to his side. The barrel pressed against his skull.
"Who or what the hell are you?" said a Warg.
"Stop fucking around and shoot him." Said a Yeti.
Marshal blinked slowly and deliberately, attempting to gain any moisture his eyelids would give him. Then his sight fixed on her.
Rosa screamed—howled—a sound no general should ever make; her lower leg was gone entirely, melted to her knee. Eitherite he knew that type of wound instantly. The sort of thing demons used to use, like chemical gas, basically melting others from the inside and out.
"Why, why," Cass repeated her actions like a broken record, her expression locked in a loop of panic and momentarily calm, back and forth. "I'm not worth it." The girl said.
He watched her fumbling around, a cloth torn from her dress; each strip melted, her fingers trying and failing to bandage Rosa's leg. It was useless and wasteful even to try.
"Hey, ghoul boy," said the Warg, his gun pressing into Marshal's head. "Answer my question: are you some kind of Daemon or what?"
"Do you think I'm deaf, you thick bastard?" The yeti pirate said.
A squat Warg growled at the reversed-legged Yeti, both Theri demons, but there was a clear pecking order to them.
"Let's finish up and return to our posts," the Yeti said.
Marshal wanted to say, 'What post?' They were all in an empty corridor outside the mist; not much was unique about this place. Abit the big bright words 'vip' on a sign above.
Then the Warg cocked his rifle and turned his barrel at Rosalind and Cass. "Why do you always get the women?" He said, "I deserve something at least."
Marshal felt his core click, a burn, a wrath spool up inside. Marshal darted his eyes to the gunman. The barrel was no longer on his head, but now it aimed at his sister, his fucking family.
A dull voice climbed the surface, his insides, his bones vibrating—the hunger calling his name.
"Hate her not, she is my to kill!" Shadow hissed, his voice a distant whisper.
Each word popped each bloody syllable, darkening his hold. Had he possessed both eyes, he might have witnessed the black ooze filling and completing them, his vision narrowing, hunting, preying for the taste, a succulent bite.
The Warg loosened his belt. "You can't have all the fun." He said, "That one is a succubus and vampire; imagine the cunt on that."
Cass screamed. A sound he didn't remember ever hearing from her.
Because the pirate's hand was already on her wrist. Dragging.
Small. Final.
Like a flame shrieking into ash.
He stiffened. His body didn't move—his soul did.
That scream wasn't fear.
It was a child's cry.
Like the one he'd failed.
Like the one on his list.
Not again. Never again.
HE MADE A PROMISE.
"Gut them," Shadow hissed. "Spill their insides. Do not let them take another. Don't let them add another number."
A thread pulled. And snapped.
Marsh growled—eyes fading black.
Rosa screamed, "Get off me! Fuck off!"
"Our list is long enough," said Shadow.
And Marshal jammed his bony fingers inside the Warg's leg, and in a scream and crystal fire, he flipped the Beastman like a stake. Then, he followed through with a stamp, which did not just break his body but punctured a hole in it—skewered it like stapled flesh.
"Daemon!" screamed the Yeti.
Marshal flicked the blood off his ankle, the wet surface of the tiles glinting with crimson. Then, maybe not as quick as he could be, melted body and all, a bullet punched his chest. Then another and another, each heavier than the last. The spread of glass-coated rounds pinged off his jaw, leg and hip in a mad spray.
Each bullet felt like a knife that took chunks of flesh. His whole body was cut off bit by bit, finger, ear, rib, forearm, thigh. But oddly enough, a smile crossed his face, and he moved forward.
"Just fucking die," the Yeti screamed. "Die, die, die."
A second man lifted his Neurite rifle—an annoying thing to handle.
Marshal didn't even look as he blew that man's brains out, Gravium round painting the wall in gooey graffiti.
But Marshal kept walking, bones as hard as diamond, skin as soft as paper. And he charged. The Yeti screamed, Voltite stunners sparking off his skin, panic letting loose. Shadow howled him on, as he dropped the gun, and chose something more him.
The pirate moved his rifle point-blank at Marshal's temple. "Get off," he said and fired.
The first bullet hit his rib, shattering it like glass.
The second tore through his leg, muscle peeling away from bone.
The third struck his skull—his unbreakable skull—and for the first time, he felt something inside him fracture.
Marshal stumbled back, hissing and growling at such a thing. He was Shadow, Dragon Slayer and death himself, but now his foolish host had worn down his blade and dulled his edge.
Marshal clinched his fist and charged back his elbow like a piston, his muscles like an explosion. Then he punched the Yeti's big, thick face, the first one pushing him back, the second breaking his nose, the third breaking a jaw.
"Stop!" yelled a voice
The fourth caved-in bone.
"Marshal, stop."
The fifth eyes came out, the screams growing louder.
His lips—what was left of them—peeled back over bared fangs, his grin stretching wider as the wet cracks of breaking bone filled the air.
The sixth, his fingers tasted brain. And he didn't stop. He went again and again and again. Each harder than the last, each making the hole bigger and wetter, until—
"Marshal—" She tried to pull him back, but her arms were weak. Too weak.
He wasn't stopping. The skull was already caved in, but he kept going. Again. And again.
His breathing was ragged, a growling echo in his ruined throat. His fingers—painted with something thick and grey and red— flexed again. Ready for more.
She forced herself to move, to grab his leg, to dig her claws in.
"Marshal." Her voice cracked. "We're not going to hurt you."
He didn't look at her. He didn't look at anything. He only saw the next thing to kill.
"Stop." Cass cried.
Marshal felt a bullet pierce his side, air like a balloon deflating his lung.
Marshal growled, turning to the one who dared shoot him.
A crack, then a flare. Smoke—then movement.
Lucien, dragging a half-melted girl behind him. One eye shut—gun smoking.
Lorelai… Lorelai wasn't moving.
"You need to stop," Lucien said. Not begging. Not commanding. Just… tired.
Marshal felt an odd lurch in his gut, the face he made, the face Cass and even Rosa made—horror, fear, hesitance.
He looked at his fingers and didn't find a pirate, but Amara's bits painted the wall. The sight of two pirates quickly dispatched, blown apart, caked in glass. His eyes narrowed to Amara's bloody leg, the hole in her chest and then, finally, the space where her head should be. Gone…
"Marshal." Said Rosalind.
The silence after wasn't peace. It was recoil. The Neurite round woke him up.
Marshal felt brain matter dribble down his arm. It was he who would hurt them. His fingers gripped his throat.
"Brother!" Rosalind shouted.
He needed to stop himself; he was the threat; he was the monster. He was no better than a daemon. No, he must be put down.
Rosalind thrashed, her arms clawing helplessly at his legs.
"Stop him," Rosalind cried, "Lucien. Help me."
The world didn't need a dragon slayer. It didn't need him.