122 – The Living Storm’s Fury

The distance between them was considerable, but it was close enough.

“My turn...” she said, holding up her war-knife and burning her full lung capacity to fuel Stormsurge as she slowly approached the Sister. It would be a gamble, but it was a gamble she was more than willing to make. She funneled more and more Stormsurge into the tarnished, barely-usable weapon, focusing entirely on making a light show. Pointless sparks, arcing lightning, anything. Anything to distract the Sister from her real intentions.

Even this far away, it was plain as day that what she was doing was working. The Sister stood there, her wings slowly unfolding as if Zel wouldn’t notice. Though Zelsys couldn’t see what her gambit had produced she could hear its chittering, feel the static in the air.

“What is that?! Is she just using that old war-knife as a conductor for the real attack? By the Emperor, I hope she can’t throw lightning bolts...”

Such thoughts raced through the Sister’s mind whilst she prepared herself to dodge whatever high-powered fulgurkinetic assault the homunculus planned to unleash, her gaze entranced by the tip of that war-knife. It had a plume of many smaller sparks raging at its point, as if St. Erasmo’s Fire atop the mast of a great warship.

“Beast-butchering Arts: Thundercannon!” exclaimed the homunculus, turning the blade and thrusting it forward. Without even thinking, the Sister flew upward in an attempt at evasion. It was already too late when she realized nothing came out of the war-knife.

Zelsys couldn’t believe the Locust Noble actually fell for that. By the time the look of sudden realization washed over her face Zel had already taken aim, invoked the technique, and burned the remaining four-fifths of her lung capacity all to fuel this one shot.

Her flight path was direct, her speed low. It was an easy shot to land.

Click.

Click.

An invocation, a spark of will to set off the blaze that would burn up every last wisp of Fog in her lungs.

“Beast-butchering Arts: Thundercannon!”

It was like… Liquid lightning flowing through her arm, violent arcs leaping down all the way down her arm. Muscles locked up and twitched out of control, the milliseconds between trigger pull and gunfire stretched out beyond reason. Zelsys could clearly see every furious arc of bright-white plasma that leapt between the silver lines on her forearm and the trigger lever.

The pain, the burning, the blinding light.

Such rage. Such hatred. Such savagery.

The Living Storm’s fury, screaming to be let free.

A savage beast that didn’t care who it mauled, only that blood was spilled.

Zelsys relished every stretched-out millisecond of the moment before the bullet left the chamber, and when it did, the noise that resounded wasn’t gunfire. It was a thunderclap. The slug screamed death through the air as a ball of pure light, trailing tendrils of silvery wrath that partially formed into the visage of some ephemeral, otherworldly beast’s maw.

It struck the Sister dead-center, burning into her flesh a crater thrice as wide and twice as deep as the lead ball’s circumference. Arcs of white lightning utterly enwreathed her like a sea monster’s tendrils, burning deep gashes into her armor and the flesh underneath as she plummeted to the ground. Her wings went up in flames almost instantly, and many of her plates caught fire as well.

The floor panels visibly shook out of alignment on impact, the Sister’s colossal physique twitching in an appropriately insectoid manner while she struggled to get upright. Every movement only drew out more of the lead ball’s malicious charge, every movement elicited a frightful arc of white lightning to strike at her as electric current surged through her body and locked her muscles. It was obvious that it wouldn’t last for long, that the charge would run out and the Sister would be able to move again, but Zelsys still savored every moment.

She took her sweet time in strolling at her opponent, relishing the residual muscle spasms in her arm that lingered well after she regained control over the limb. Such violent outpour of elemental power - even the droplets that remained within the conduits of her arm were enough to produce arcing tendrils as long as a finger and half as thick.

Yes, conduits - perhaps that was the purpose of all those silver lines.

By the time she traversed even this short distance, the charge had long faded. The lead ball sat embedded at the bottom of a weeping crater in the Sister’s chest.

Standing over the Sister, she just idly watched her for a few seconds. Then, she drove the war-knife’s tip into the unprotected part of her forearm, pushing it in until it hit bone to the sing-song tones of the traitor’s pained voice. It was nowhere near a scream - such trivial pain wouldn’t be enough to do that, and Zelsys didn’t expect as much. A twist of the blade here, a small movement there, all to sever as much connective tissue as possible. This wouldn’t be enough to cut it off, but she took what she could get.

No, this wouldn’t work. She pulled the beaten-up old weapon free and just tossed it aside, bending down and grabbing the Sister’s left wrist at an angle so that she couldn’t grab back.

Press the arm-cannon against the wound.

Another breath. Another spark of will.

A momentary look of confusion flashed through the Sister’s eyes

Click-clack. Click-clack. Click-clack.

Three pulls of the trigger. Three flashes of light, a staccato of miniature thunderclaps accompanied by the spray of blood and a pained howl filtered through gritted teeth.

There was no question of “Why?”

The locust already knew.

A sharp yank. The Sister’s left forearm came off easily enough, blood gushing from the stump. It did so for only a scarce few seconds until one of the red plates that once covered her elbow began to move, shifting into place to cover the stump. Zelsys wondered if those were little legs she saw come out of the plate. Surely not.

Into the slot the arm went, vanishing into the dark. The glyph continued its slow process of lighting up. Agonizingly slow.