However, his tone was anything but inviting – it was the voice of a cruel predator who was eager to etch his fangs into their flesh only to tear them apart, making the twins tremble from head to toe with an existential fear they’d never known in their sheltered lives.
To better drive his current mood home, the man slowly, calculatedly raised his arm into the sky and formed the same posture he had while calling the lightning strike down on them.
“Shit, shit, shit!!! We have to go out and fight, we’re sitting ducks in here! We’re going to get fried once the defenses give up!” Amara cursed while shaking from head to toe.
While she might’ve said ‘we’ what she meant ‘you’, evidenced by her next line; “Eve, go and kill him! You should at least be able to draw his attention long enough for us to escape, no?!”
The guard woman who drove them thus far had an ashen expression, but then she remembered the oath she and her entire ancestral lineage swore to the Greenvale family, it was her sworn duty to protect the next generation, no matter how much she despised them personally. “Yes, young lady… Please tell my father I love him…”
Stepping out as things were would give the man the advantage of getting in the first strike, so she utilized one of the many defensive tools of the artifact carriage.
*Hisss!* Strong gusts of smoke surrounded the vehicle, giving her the time needed to step out without allowing her enemy to attack.
Amara and Vivienne watched with eager eyes and a pleading heart, hoping for Eve’s victory. The smoke soon cleared, giving them a perfect view of the upcoming battle.
“Heh, this is quite the nice ride, isn’t it…? It would surely be a shame if someone took it.” The man mused before jumping down from it and turning toward the woman, examining her for a second, and then sighing, “So you’re the sacrificial lamb, huh. I’m sorry that you had the misfortune of swearing loyalty to such horrible masters.”
“… Don’t badmouth the young ladies.”
“I’ll give you one chance. Drop your weapon and get on your knees.”
She didn’t say anything, but based on her determined expression, he could tell that she was here to fight until her dying breath. “Loyal to the core, I see. Don’t worry, you’ll become part of something much greater than being the guard dog of such a wretched family once I consume your soul.”
As soon as he said that, the man’s spectral saber began to flare with its ghostly blue flames violently shaking. The light danced and pulsed erratically, casting eerie shadows across the shattered terrain, as if the weapon itself were alive – and utterly starved.
The flames surged outward for a moment, curling and twisting like predatory tendrils seeking their prey. A low, unnatural sound emanated from the blade in the form of a resonant thrum that felt like it vibrated inside one’s very bones.
Eve’s breath hitched as she gripped her weapon tighter, so much so that her knuckles began whitening to a worrying degree. A bead of sweat rolled down her temple, and she swallowed hard because her throat felt unnaturally dry despite the humid air around her. There was something profoundly unnatural about the saber, something that gnawed at her instincts and sent a primal, bone-deep fear coursing through her.
Eve forced herself to take a step forward, though her legs felt like lead. Her voice was steady, but her trembling hands betrayed her resolve as she declared, “You’ll regret underestimating me!!” Yet even as she spoke, her gaze flickered back to the saber, and to its seemingly insatiable hunger, it was a feel a simple object should never be able to signal.
Be that as it may, Eve was a professional combatant who had lived through multiple harrowing situations, so she gulped once again, taking all her anxiety and fear away from herself in doing so. She steeled her resolve which was also evidenced in her stalwart gaze.
She pointed the edge of her sword at the ominous man, ready to pounce at the first opportunity he gave her.
“I’d always wanted to do this…”
He murmured in a strangely excited tone, then he let go of his saber which hovered in the air as if patiently waiting for him to finish and grab onto it once again, and he aimed his two hands at Eve, with his ten fingers outstretched.
She knew that a spell was coming, so she bolted in his direction, intent on cutting him down before he could cast whatever it was.
The man then parted his lips and in a deep, ominous tone, he decreed; “Your feeble skills are no match for the power of the Dark Side. [Shock Lightning]!”
Eve’s boots thundered against the terrain as she charged forward. Her heart pounded like a war drum, and she fixed her gaze on him, trying to ignore the gnawing sense of dread that clung to her like a second skin.
Then it happened.
A flash of crackling light erupted from each of his ten outstretched fingers. The lightning danced and writhed like a living thing, an uncontrollable torrent of raw power. It struck her mid-charge in the form of a direct hit to her torso and her limbs, stopping Eve in her tracks. A searing pain shot through her body as her muscles began convulsing uncontrollably and her scream of agony ripped through the air.
The smell of burnt fabric and singed skin filled her nostrils as the lightning coursed through her continuously, without ever seeming to stop – which ended up locking her limbs in place as if she were a puppet whose strings had been seized; she couldn’t move her body properly from the paralysis effect of the spell.
But even through the blinding pain, Eve forced her lips to part through sheer willpower, whispering a single, desperate incantation.
“[Aegis Shield]!”
A shimmering barrier of translucent gold flared to life around her. The lightning struck the shield but was stopped, buying her a moment to leap back and recover. Her body still trembled violently from the aftershocks of the assault, but she managed to land on her feet.
Her respite was brief. Before she could fully regain her stance, the man was already there.
A blur of darkness moved with unnatural speed, and in the blink of an eye, he was in front of her. His spectral saber flared with an eerily sentient hunger as the ghostly flames howled with starved anticipation of the kill. Eve barely had time to widen her eyes in shock before the blade descended.
The strike was merciless, precise, and unstoppable.
With one clean stroke, the spectral blade sliced through her neck with the ghostly flames licking at her skin as her head was severed from her body. Time seemed to slow while her head fell and blood sprayed into the air in an arc, painting the fractured ground beneath her in crimson.
But true horror was yet to come, as something would occur in the next moment that would make even high tier gods experience an existential dread of a magnitude they’d never felt before should they bear witness to what Quinlan and his Soul Reaper was about to do.