Daedalus Street remained as it always was. Streets so narrow a person would need to move sideways when passing through. Stairs split mid-way, leading to multiple directions, some ending straight at dead ends.
The buildings here leaned against one another, rooftops starting at one house and ending above another. A compound smell of old stone, lamp oil and choking smoke permeated the air.
Laundry wires crossed between windows at odd angles, strung with clothes that had been hanging long enough to gather dust instead of drying.
Deep inside an empty street shaded in darkness, a dainty foot struck cracked marble, sending tremors across its surface and scattering dirt in a loose circle.
Ragged breaths tore through a woman with harpy wings as she ran with trembling eyes and an erratic heartbeat.
"Run! Run faster! Or I'll catch you!" A euphoric scream clawed from behind her, accompanied by boots cracking on stone in quick, skipping bursts, breaking into glee at every third stride.
Feathers across that harpy Xenos pressed deeper into her wings, blood sliding from precise cuts, painting patches of her feathering crimson.
She threw herself forward, sunlight illuminating her slipping talons against uneven marble, one wing pushing a sidewall, stumbling left into another narrow street.
The person behind her reached that turn. A strip of light caught one working and one dead eye, four nails dripping with warm blood, a sharp knife in his other hand.
He looked at a smear of blood on the same sidewall the harpy had pushed against, brought his knife's bottom to that blood, raking it across in slow circles.
Then he brought the bottom of his knife back, opened his mouth, tongue stretching out to swipe the blood off there.
His face flushed red after a taste. He wrapped his arms around himself, shivering in delight.
"This taste... This taste... Just like chicken!"
He swished his head side to side, knees bending, launching himself into that same narrow alley with even more fervor, shoulders swinging with each step.
The harpy ahead heard those words and forced one last desperate surge into her legs.
Shadows from two houses flanking the narrow street parted ahead. Her talons scraped marble with a sudden screech, eyes constricting. A single drop of blood from her feather snapped ahead, splashing flat against a dead end wall.
That drop shouldn't have mattered, but it nearly made the whole wall quake once, like something on the verge of uprooting.
She didn't have the time to notice and barely caught herself before crashing into that wall, wings braced forward for impact.
Familiar footsteps tapped on marble behind her, every third stride louder than the first two.
"My chicken! Why did you stop? Run more!" The man closed in from behind, legs wobbling mid-movement beneath his cloak, eyes fixed on her, grip on the knife clenching, slackening, clenching again.
The harpy turned around with a jerk, her back pressing deeper into the wall, thighs buckling on their own.
"No! No! Why are you giving up!?" The man burst forward abruptly, knife aimed at her waist, right where arteries would be plenty for maximum pain.
Her talons clutched stone, body sliding down to a fetal position, quivering wings folding over her head.
"Squirm! Why don't you squirm more!?" His heels dug into stone, screeching to a stop before her, arm already stabbing downward.
The harpy buried her face deeper in her thighs. Crimson light bled onto her face from below. The tile beneath her was shivering, its cracks leaking motes of ember.
That shivering collapsed into quakes, those quakes escalated to an upheaval that shook every inch of Daedalus.
The man didn't have a fraction to react. Every inch of ground behind him detonated upward. Melting winds wrenched him off his feet, hurling him skyward like a rocket seconds after launch.
He tumbled end over end. Orario. Sun. Orario. Sun.
Then something eclipsed the sun above him. Hotter. More blinding.
His eyes barely focused, knife swinging free from his hold. A wing full of flaming feathers solidified in his vision.
"Chicken?"
He questioned.
A hoof enlarged in his peripheral as response. His mouth was still open when it slammed into his teeth, pulverizing the front of his skull inward, nose crushing flat.
He was launched back down, a trail of broken teeth and splattering blood painting an arc in his wake.
That man crashed inside another dark alley with a final pop. Exactly like popcorn bursting in a pressure cooker.
The harpy leaned back from her fetal position. A wall of flames rose at her front, protecting her from scorching gale winds.
She brought her gaze up at a sudden sound.
A line of black-red climbing vertically upward was reflected in her pupils for a breath. Then that line reached its apex and exploded into a dome of dark fire that covered nearly all of Daedalus' sky.
She felt her wings heat and cool in turns from the blast's reach all the way here.
Mysteriously, it did not scare her.
.
Bell plunged down from the sky. One hand on Typhon's handle. One palm on Crimson Order's hilt.
Behind him, Omen plummeted, its wings expanding to cover all of Daedalus' sky, visible across every part of Orario.
Beneath Bell's left heel was Dix's chest. Under his right heel was Olivas' chest.
"Die." Dix was already swinging his spear at Bell's heart, his shattered goggles revealing glowing red eyes inside.
Meanwhile, Olivas had his hands spread wide and was laughing without a care in the world.
"She has been waiting for you, Bell Cranel! And preparing! And you finally come! She hungers for your flames!"
Shing. Shing.
Crimson Order clashed into Dix's spear, tip on tip, deflecting it wide.
Typhon punched through Olivas' heart, and he smiled, not a drop of blood dripping from the wound. Instead, he jerked both arms forward in a gesture.
The ground beneath Daedalus shook, then rent open in jagged lines, stone screaming where seconds ago there'd been streets. Houses collapsed like matchsticks, falling on top of countless people living inside.
Bell snapped his head downward and narrowed his eyes. Flames leapt from ground and raced along the streets, threading through cracks in walls, wrapping around pillars.
A two story house that had been mid-collapse shuddered and stopped. The cracks in its walls sealed themselves, lines of amber fire running through it. Inside, a child who had been screaming stopped.
"You're even more human than she thought. So wea—"
A blast at point blank range erupted. Bell's sole on Olivas' neck. His throat shattered from his spine, flinging him down, Typhon still in his chest.
Dix's spear was already climbing for Bell's chin. He wrenched his left toes up from Dix's chest and opened a sliver of space between his big and index toe inside his boot.
The crimson spear had reached his abdomen and was still climbing.
He thrust Crimson Order down.
Through his own left foot.
Crimson Order reached that exact sliver of space in his boot and leather parted as steel cut through, a toe on left and a toe on right, between which passed its tip, right into Dix's chest.
Dix moved before thought, free hand shooting sideways to push Bell's heel aside by fractions. The sword tore into his rib instead of gut.
The crimson spear was screeching above his platinum breastplate when he shifted ahead by a centimeter. Steel screeched on steel, sparks trailing as the spear missed Bell's jaw.
Dix rotated his spear at the last moment, aligning it with his nose instead.
Hot blaze bloomed on his heel. Dix roared and punched Bell's leg with his free hand, shifting the blaze from his centre to his side, reducing the impact tremendously.
He exploded down nonetheless, falling right beside Olivas now, Crimson Order stuck in his rib.
Beneath all of them, those fissures widened further, lips of stone parting like wounds that refused to close.
Something moved within.
Women's torsos rose first, green and brown, lips sewn shut with thread-thin roots. Where hips should have followed, there was only a mass of tangled roots and branches, dragging itself forward in wrong, awkward stutters.
Violas.
Cloaked men surged upward alongside them. One first. Then ten. Then nearly forty.
Evilus grunts.
Those fissures shuddered next, collapsing onto themselves from another monster moving underneath them.
For a moment, nothing.
Then it rose.
A length of something dragged itself upward, its angles all wrong, glistening in the kind of color a healthy thing wears. It kept rising and didn't stop, still attached to the dark deeper down.
It had no head. Just an opening where a head should sit, throat-throbbing, pulsing with faint emerald lines.
Green, slick and smooth skin along its sides split. Familiar things pushed through first. Lips sewn shut with root-threads.
Viscum.
Viscums.
Bell looked down at all of them without a change in expression. Still falling.
Olivas had Typhon out of his heart, spine already mended back in place. He threw the sword aside, and it screamed away, vanishing in the distance.
Dix's fingers were wrapped around Crimson Order's hilt, and he wrenched it out of his rib with a crack. Blood spurted from that wound, he ignored it.
With a swing, he hurled Crimson Order away.
Both of them gazed up at him now mid-fall, lips flat and expressions calm.
Bell extended his arms forward, fists clenched.
A wheel clicked into being above his head. Its eight spokes rotated once.
Clunk.
"Eight-Handled Sword Divergent Sila Divine General—"
The wheel detached from his head and hovered above.
"Mahoraga."
A massive shape of white flesh tore upward out of nothing, twelve feet of it, still rising. Four wings split open where its eyes should have been. A chain bit across its collarbone, dark against all that white.
The Sword of Extermination sat fused to its wrist, waiting for something to erase.
Mahoraga's feet found Omen's wings and it stood there as if it had always been standing there, looking down at everything below with a grin too wide.
Dix's grip crushed into his spear. Olivas shifted, like listening to something whisper in his ear.
Beneath, hundreds of Violas and multiple Viscums spread mayhem, their awareness locked on Bell.
Above.
The Divine General.
Omen.
Below.
Olivas.
Dix.
Violas.
Viscums.
Two sky-dwarfing wings enveloped Daedalus Street from above.
On the ground, all was pandemonium.
And in the very centre of everything.
Bell Cranel.
Suspended between the Divine General above and the army below, flames in one hand and dark in the other, expression unchanged.
...
..
.
***
[300 Power Stones = 1 Bonus Chapter]
[8 chapters ahead on P@tr3on = [email protected]/Not_Aaryan]
...
[Authors Thoughts]
Alright everyone... Here is a chapter. I was having a headache today but I've got you all with another chapter.
Take care.