BOOM!
BOOM!
BOOM!
Shards of bone exploded outward as Amon twisted his body, narrowly avoiding each one. He wasn't a fighter nor did he want to fight that thing but Luna had dragged him along. That barbarian woman! How dare she!? He was a delicate, harmless thief, not some brutal murderer like the rest of them!
Baffled and enraged, he acted on instinct. With a flick of his wrist, he stole a flying shard out of the air and manifested it beneath his feet. Using the stolen fragment as a platform, he leapt upward, driving Midnight Shard into the towering mountain of bones.
The austere tachi bit deep, and Amon yanked himself free, sliding down the Lord of the Dead's body with the blade still lodged in its side. The creature's massive form shuddered, and its hollow gaze locked onto him.
Even weakened, the Lord of the Dead was a terrifying foe. In the novel, it had taken an entire army of Sleepers to bring it down, and that was after the bone-eating vines had drained its strength.
Those very same vines were here now, constricting and gnawing at the monster. Kido's last creation and her masterpiece writhed around it, digging deep into the ossified titan. In the story, she was supposed to die… yet here she was, alive, forcing the Lord of the Dead into sluggishness. Its blows came slower, its might diminished, but it was still far from defeated.
Gemma was tanking like a lunatic... Or zealot, slamming his shield against every strike that slipped through the vines. Medici wasn't far behind, holding the line with Dusk Shard in hand, grim as ever.
Amon, of course, didn't keep most of the shards for himself. He wasn't a hoarder, he was a thief. And a thief didn't take everything. No, Marauder stole what he wanted. What mattered. To Amon, stealing was never a job. It was a passion. A way of seeing the world. Everything was loot, not just weapons or coins, but feelings, chances, even love. If it existed, it could be stolen.
Maybe that was why he'd started changing, bit by bit, ever since he'd grasped the "acting method" back in the Hollow Mountains. His mindset was shifting in ways he didn't fully understand. But who cared? The point was simple:
He'd given Medici both the Dusk Shard and the Zenith Shard. Luna got the Dawn Shard. And he kept only two for himself, Moonlight and Midnight Shards.
Moonlight Shard was perfect for cowardly surprise attacks, slipping into shadows and cutting throats before anyone even realized he was there. Midnight Shard suited his build better, and more importantly, it was stubborn enough to drag him back from the brink of death if things went sideways. Those were good enough reasons: one to end a fight before it even started, and another to save his own life. And gods, Amon hated fighting and he loved his life.
The rest? Meh. Shields weren't his thing, and he didn't even know how to use spear. His so-called "mastery" of daggers and short swords had only come from digesting the Marauder, anyway. Training with relentless determination? What a joke. Leave that crap to idiots like Nephis. He didn't need to train, he would cheat his way up to power.
As for the Dawn Shard… it was wasted on him. He never kept followers, never wanted a crowd at his back. He was a solo act through and through. Sure, he wanted to create his own clan one day, but it wouldn't be a big one, it would be made of elites, anyway. Luna, though… Luna would draw people in, whether she liked it or not. The shard fit her.
He'd even thought about handing it to Medici. After all, the guy was already gathering hunters around him. But in the end, the choice was obvious.
The crown just… looked better on Luna's head.
Amon caught himself staring, groaned, and ducked as a bone spike tried to impale him.
"What the hell am I even thinking about right now?!"
At the same time, Medici slammed the Flag of Life into the damp chasm floor. A pale green glow pulsed outward, soft and steady, knitting wounds and dragging breath back into weary lungs. Beside him, the Dawn Shard gleamed with silver light atop Luna's head. The crown forced their memories to rank up temporarily, sharpening even dormant ones into deadly tools.
The Lord of the Dead shuddered, its titanic frame convulsing as Kido's vines coiled tighter. But the monster fought back, detonating parts of its own body, a mountain of bones bursting outward, shards raining down like a storm of knives.
Gemma and Medici surged forward in unison, shields braced, intercepting the deadly hail to guard Kido and Kai. Luna swept Seishan into her flesh cloak and yanked her away from the barrage, but a jagged shard punched clean through her shoulder, nearly severing her arm. For an instant her limb dangled uselessly, then the meat knit back together with grotesque speed. Luna hissed, but didn't falter. She dashed ahead again, planting flesh bombs into the bone-mass. The explosions tore gaping wounds into the tyrant's body, acid eating into its marrow.
At the same time, Kai seized Seishan and vaulted into the air, then plummeted back down, dropping her like a living meteor. Her warhammer came down with earth-shattering force, caving the creature's skull and showering splinters in all directions. But it wasn't enough.
The catacombs split wide. Legions of skeletons poured out, clattering forward at a full sprint to reinforce their master.
Amon cursed under his breath. With a flick of his hand, he stole the tyrant's control over them. The bony soldiers collapsed mid-charge, lifeless heaps rattling against the stones. Not that they had ever been alive, just puppets on strings, cut all at once.
Amon licked his lips, eyes flicking restlessly across the battlefield, hunting for a crack in the monster's armor. He was running on fumes. Skeletons kept spilling out of the catacombs, endless, shrieking things, and every heartbeat he was splitting himself three ways: cutting their strings with theft, dodging death by inches, and scouring that mountain of bones for the Tyrant's core.
The Lord of the Dead convulsed, a groaning shudder rippling through its frame before a forest of bone spears erupted outward. They fell like hail. Medici and Gemma braced, shields up and caught the worst of it, but the impact hurled them backwards. Luna's flesh cloak snapped around Kido, wrapping her in grisly safety. Seishan twisted aside, hammer sparking as she swatted spears from the air. Kai vaulted skyward, arrows hissing down in rapid volleys.
But Luna... Luna was about to be shredded. Immortal, yes. Regeneration, sure. But pain didn't vanish just because wounds closed, and she was about to be torn into ribbons.
Amon's jaw clenched. He didn't like that.
He flicked his wrist, theft snapping like a whip. The bone spears vanished in a blink, stolen mid-flight, then reappeared above the Tyrant, slamming down with the same merciless force. The colossus staggered, half its body caving under its own weapons.
Amon dropped to a crouch, palms on his knees, lungs burning. Sweat slicked his temple.
"Just ten more meters!" he roared, voice ragged. "Lure it out!"
Luna nodded, her face serene, but inside her thoughts whirled like a storm. She shot forward, flesh bombs bursting in her wake, each one detonating in a spray of corrosive blood and meat that forced the Tyrant stumbling back.
Kill. All I need is to kill it.
Her gaze remained calm, almost gentle, but a smile began to creep across her lips: stretching wider, sharper, until it split into a manic grin. Her arm warped, skin peeling back as muscle hardened into a grotesque mace. With a sickening crunch, she smashed it against the Tyrant's leg while Seishan's hammer slammed into the other. Bone groaned. The giant staggered.
Then Luna leapt. Her arms peeled again, flesh unraveling into jagged blades that carved through the monster's knee in a storm of slashes. She drove one limb deep, burying a fresh bomb inside the pulped joint. The explosion tore its patella apart in a geyser of shards, dropping the Lord of the Dead onto one shattered knee.
Luna landed lightly, smiling faintly as more bombs pulsed and burst behind her in rapid succession. Her eyes gleamed with satisfaction, detached and almost tender.
Just like the lab, she thought, breath steady. The rats, the monkeys… this thing is no different. Surgery, as always needs to be precise.
The Tyrant staggered into the appointed place.
At once, Medici and Amon both grinned, one out of instinct, the other out of calculation. Medici's hunter's blood screamed that this was the moment. Amon simply knew his plan had ripened to perfection.
The Dusk Shard dissolved back into Medici's soul. His palms blazed, torrents of fire erupting before collapsing inward, compressed into spinning spheres of molten light. The air shimmered, heat so intense it made Kido wince and shield her eyes.
With a roar, Medici hurled them.
BOOM!
BOOM!
The explosions rattled the chasm walls, tearing through the mud and stone that braced the fallen statue's arm. A deep, resonant crack rolled through the underground. The colossal limb, already lodged through the catacomb wall, trembled. Then it shifted.
Stone ground against stone. Water surged. And at last:
CRASH!
The world seemed to shatter as thousands of tons of rock and marble plunged down. The statue's arm caved in the Tyrant's body, pulverizing bone into splinters. Fragments rained across the cavern like white hail. But this time, the storm carried no malice, only the ruin of their enemy.
The Lord of the Dead reached once, feebly, as if clawing at the air. Then its arm sagged. The lattice of bones binding its core cracked, snapping apart like brittle twigs. With the statue's crushing weight, the core itself shattered, its glow fading into nothingness.
Amon collapsed onto the cold stone, lungs heaving, sweat trickling down his temples. For a moment he just stared up at the cavern ceiling, chest rising and falling in ragged rhythm. Then, with deliberate calm, he straightened his monocle and smiled.
"As expected of myself," he muttered, voice light, almost smug. "Why bother thinking outside the box when you can set the whole damned box on fire? Truly, wit is mightier than the sword."
He chuckled, though his heart was still pounding. Scary as hell. Too close. I almost got turned into a pile of bones right there. He pushed the thought aside at once. Nope. Can't let them see it. Cowardice is fine if only I know it. That's how my poor 'senior Amon' ended up losing to my poor senior Klein... Wait, that's confusing...
While his thoughts spiraled, Luna sank down beside him. Neither spoke. They just sat in silence, breath slowly evening out, the heat of battle bleeding into exhaustion.
Finally, Kido broke it with a trembling smile.
"We… really killed it. Heh. We did it!"
Gemma patted her shoulder, watching her giddy grin with something between pride and helplessness. Kai, meanwhile, was still too stunned to form words. His wide eyes kept darting back at the fallen Tyrant's corpse, as if afraid it might rise again.
"We… we actually…" he laughed breathlessly, "…hah… we really did it."
Medici said nothing, already half lost in the aura he could harvest. Seishan too kept silent, but for different reasons. Her gaze lingered on Luna and Amon sitting together, a faint twist of displeasure shadowing her calm face.
But Luna ignored all of it. Her attention had turned inward, toward her runes.
[?h??s ??o??n??o?]- Attribute Description: "???."
[?i??a??]- Attribute Description: "???."
She frowned. Those two… they'd been there since her first Nightmare, inscrutable and haunting. Even now, months later, she hadn't unraveled them. What are they? she thought bitterly. The longer she stared, the more a dull anger stirred inside her, echoing that malice she'd felt in the fight. Was it because of these hidden attributes? Was she brushing against the Hanged Man's madness? She didn't know and the not knowing gnawed at her.
With a sigh, she shook it off and leaned back. For now, it was enough that they were alive. Her friends' voices filled the cavern, ragged laughter and quiet relief weaving together.
Then, from above where the statue's hand had fallen, a cold breeze swept through the ruins. Something pale drifted down with it: a pristine white plume, weightless and perfect. It descended gently until it came to rest atop the mountain of bones, a strange serenity after so much carnage.
***
[A/N: I'm actually surprised, guys… Today, I haven't had a single drop of alcohol. Huh. Seriously, this development isn't reasonable! Something must be wrong with me.
Anyway, that's that. But I've decided on something. We need to bring the frauds from Shadow Slave into the light. So today's topic is: Who's the bigger fraud?
1. Effie
2. Jest
Maintain the agenda, guys. Slander never stops!]
***