◈ Chapter 137:

 

Lyra fell back as the blade of metal whistled past her body, the Lord letting out a scream of agony as he jerked away from her, his tail thrashing.

 

At first she wasn't sure what had happened, but then the Lord held up his tail, staring at the stump, the last twelve inches or so missing. 

 

She was very familiar with those eyes. Many times she had gone down to the dungeon to save those in need and come across the dismembered, their eyes unable to look away from their stumps, the slow creeping horror dawning on them that a healing potion couldn't save them this time, their limb was gone forever.

 

Then came the second stage of limb loss, white hot anger.

 

The Lord threw himself down, hands slapping to the floorboards as he dove to the floor, eyes searching, searching under the bed.

 

A flash of green, then nothing, there was no one under the bed. Only a tube of glossy black scales. His tail tip. The Lamia reached for the blood slick thing, eager to get it back in the hope it could be reattached.

 

Lyra watched in confusion from the blue Lamia's coils, beginning to struggle free from the heavy things now they were loosened. 

 

Not in time to stop Opal rising up behind the Lord as he lay, rising from the shadows, her talon held in hand. She crept closer as Lyra watched, weapon raised and aiming for the Lord's spine as he scrabbled around under the bed.

 

She looked like she had it, but then the Lord stopped reaching, his body turning as he pulled back, and Opal was…

 

Lyra stared in confusion at the Goblin girl, she was… motionless, completely still like a statue. What was she doing!? But then... she understood.

 

Wranvyre pulled himself fully from under the bed and stood, one hand held his blood slicked rapier, the other the tip of his tail. He did not look particularly happy.

 

"You lied," said Lyra staring at the frozen Opal. "You don't teleport, you- you put people to sleep! Freeze them!"

 

Wranvryre raised his arms in a shrug, rapier and tail in each hand. "I am an actor, of course I fucking lied, it would have been rude not to when you threw such obvious bait to build a deception on right into my lap."

 

He sounded exasperated as his arms dropped.

 

"It seems I now understand how you made it past my children of elven blood. You had a Goblin slave, an insider, to somehow let you in." He peered closer at the frozen Opal. "A pregnant one with… a black horn? Curious, did she evolve while on my estate? Hmm a purge may be in order. Starting with this one." He twirled the rapier and pointed it at the black scarf around Opal's neck.

 

Which was why he noticed when it moved. The scarf shuffled and then bones rose from within it, a shield of bones that wrapped tight around her neck. He furrowed his brow as he looked down to see the Goblin was now sheathed in bones, bones streaming up from the floor, a river that snaked back across the room, back to an armchair.

 

The rapier wavered as he watched more and more bones covering her and then came a rat, a rat that crawled from her back and stood on top of the Goblin's head as she was fully encased in bone.

 

It put its paws on its hips and stared up at him even as more rats heaved a horned human like skull up behind it with green flaming eyes.

 

"This is… N-Necromancy?" said the Lord, sounding for the first time uncertain.

 

The mound of bones quickly swelled, the frozen Goblin now fully engulfed, forming a hill, then a shape, a massive rat shape formed from thousands and thousands of bones, one eye socket was empty and one eye socket held the horned skull.

 

Wranvyre uneasily backed up as the giant rat took a step forward.

 

"You joined hands with a Necromancer? To get at me? One so deep in the dark art it no longer even has a living body?" The Lamia considered this, then snorted a breath through his nose and shook his head. "Not something I could have predicted, but… Lyra Bellerhorn, you've turned me into a true hero, one who will be beloved. Your actions will go down with the public about as well as a pint of vomit, people hate Necromancers, everyone hates Necromancers! To ally yourself with such a thing is beyond the pale."

 

Vash eyed the Lamia, the green fire of his eyes glowing steady.

 

"I am standing right here you know," said the skull, almost sounding huffy. "And yes, if you must know I am a Necromancer, a crafter of the deceased, a master of undeath, a Lord of the eternal tomb etc etc, although this pile of bones may have been a minor clue in that regard, as much as it isn't my best work." 

 

Wranvyre didn't reply and instead took a moment to prepare, clearing his throat as if on stage. Then he puffed out his chest and flourished his sword, his voice commanding, filling the room.

 

"Disgusting thing, know now that we of the living abhor your lot, your unholy ways, you anathema to life, you blight upon the land. Know that heroes shall always arise to make ruin your evil, to save the innocent from your undead armies, your deathly conquerings, your fallow wretched kingdoms. Your very existence is an insult to the gods and everything that is good in this world, and your kind shall without mercy be exterminated at every turn."

 

If a skull could have blinked in surprise it would have, the green flames of Vash's eyes still made their best approximation, squeezing down before flaring back.

 

"Uhh, me? You're talking about me? I mean, I just wanted to be left alone, it's not my fault I was dragged out of my quite comfortable home against my will. It's not me who has been conquering anyone, well, at least not for a long time, not my thing anymore, you know how it is. Retirement."

 

"That wasn't for your benefit, idiot." Wranvyre made a cruel grin, as far from anything heroic as could be. 

 

Then he Moved.

 

The Lamia was fast! 

 

The rapier in that moment wasn't so much a rapier as a crude implement, the enchanted blade unbending despite the whipping force it was put under. The blade struck the rat shaped mound of bones, and then passed through it, hundreds of bones cut apart and raining to the ground as more took their place, the shape losing cohesion as it went and the skull disappearing inside.

 

Wranvyre swung again, grunting with the effort, and then again, each time a shower of rat bones exploded from the giant rippling mound as the blade passed through it. He seemed unable to harm it but the mound was so busy holding itself together that it was unable to attack back.

 

Which was everything Vash intended as his human skeleton, now headless, approached the Lord from behind, a rune covered and glowing cutlass retrieved from the wardrobe held in one bony hand. The headless skeleton lifted it, and then struck down at the back of the Lord's neck.

 

Unfortunately it stumbled over the lashing black tail in that moment and the Lord turned at the touch, twisting around near instantly as only a snake could and catching the cutlass on his rapier, the two blades ringing together.

 

Behind his whipping tail collided with the giant mound and it shattered apart, Vash's skull spinning into the air before being caught on a coffee table by a pile of bones forming a large rat paw.

 

Vash's eyes flared green and the headless skeleton skipped its sword off the rapier and slashed for the Lamia's belly. Wranvyre curved back, perfectly arcing his spine and tail so as to just miss the faintly glowing tip of the blade.

 

Wranvyre struck out with the rapier aiming to lop the skeleton's arm off in a counter, but its entire upper body abruptly spun around, the spine acting as a free pivot to dodge and the rapier instead came down on its ribcage, a scatter of cleaved ribs falling to the floor. The skeleton wasted no time in attacking once more and its bones realigned even as it lashed out, the two blades coming together in a shower of sparks even as skeletal rats crawled up the Lord's body, harassing and distracting.

 

Once, twice, parry, slash, over and over the blades came together, the Lamia becoming increasingly irritated as he brushed away the rats, his body slowing as he seemed to realise the skeleton posed no real threat and something was amiss.

 

"Enough of this farce! You mock me with swordwork that is relegated to historical plays? What are you trying to do here?"

 

He ended the fight with a whip of his tail, the skeleton scattering to pieces across the room as he turned to the Skull on the table.

 

"Ah," said Vash, "I think I may be a tad out of practice. Good thing it doesn't matter." The full sized bone crossbows that he had been constructing in the background pulled up onto the table and fired, slivers of bone snapping forward, sharpened bone bolts aimed accurately for the Lord's eyes.

 

The Lord barely dodged in time, catching two of the bolts on the basket of his rapier, the last skimming by his cheek.

 

A line of blood crept down his skin and he dabbed it with a finger. His face twisted in disgust as he examined the red.

 

"You sully my appearance on the stage?!" 

 

He lunged forward.

 

Vash lifted his rat bones to block him, a desperate surge, genuinely panicking under the Lord's rage. Clearly he had not expected his layered plan to have failed. 

 

"Wait!" cried the skull.

 

It didn't matter.

 

Wranvyre brought the sword down, using the enchanted thing like a crude axe, and the skull was cleaved in two, then again, and again, and again, until all that remained of Vash was a scatter of skull fragments and teeth across the blade marked table along with a little black mist whisping into the air and drifting away. All the remaining animated bones fell to the floor as if they had had their strings cut.

 

Wranvyre was left breathing hard, his chest rising and falling, one hand clutching the severed tip of his tail in a death grip, his rapier embedded in the wood.

 

He shuddered, forcefully calming himself, and levered the steel free.

 

Then, seeming to recall something, he turned, just in time to catch motion out of the corner of his eye, turning to find Lyra flinging herself forward, knife raised.

 

His eyes flashed with a black glow and she froze in midair. Exactly as it happened Opal was released from her stillness and stumbled forward, nearly falling into a dune of scattered bone as what she was aiming for vanished from her perspective. 

 

She turned in time to see Wranvyre stab Lyra through the chest, the rapier going through her entire torso and out the other side.

 

"Tch. Off a bit."

 

"No!" screamed Opal, running for him.

 

His tail casually flicked out and struck her across the face. She went rolling, pregnancy hitting the floor hard, crashing up against the bed in a heap.

 

She struggled to sit up, her lip bloody from where she had bit her tongue under the impact, the tang of iron in her mouth.

 

She stared as the Lord held the hilt of his blade, the steel inside of Lyra. 

 

"You- you can't do this-!"

 

He glared at her. "You aren't worth the value of my words Goblin."

 

He turned his gaze back to Lyra, to the rapier, then he began to twist it. The cut through her body was thin, but as he turned the rapier it became a cylinder and blood rapidly flowed from her, pouring and pooling on the floor below, her wool covered legs dying crimson. He began sawing, cutting across her ribs and breast to bisect her, to reach her heart.

 

Opal watched, a stricken feeling she couldn't have predicted twisting up her guts. Lyra was just- she was just a leveler, one of the worst things of this world… but somehow, somehow she had found a soft spot for the wooly girl, more than a soft spot.

 

Lyra's simple perfect stillness as he cut her apart was something her eyes hated to look upon, it made her pulse race and her breath shorten, it made her feel sick, and she couldn't stop the other voice from coming out.

 

"STOP! Y-YOU'RE KILLING HER!...p-please….. please... don't do this."

 

the Lord continued to saw undeterred, like a butcher cutting up a piece of meat, flatly ignoring the Goblin's pleas.

 

BOOM.

 

He paused as the room shook, dust coming unsettled from the ceiling and leaving trails through the swirling sheesha smoke.

 

"What was that?" he muttered looking at the large pair of double doors that was the entrance to his chamber.

 

BOOM.

 

The door shuddered, the wood bulging inward as something huge impacted it from the other side, a scattering of enchantments on its surface glowed bright, desperately holding it together.

 

Opal wiped tears from her eyes and began to laugh a tad hysterically

 

"...He's here! You fucked up, you fucked up snake boy!"

 

"What are you blathering about? What is trying to beat down my door?"

 

"You don't know, you don't know," said Opal scrambling to her feet, "You thought Boner was the only thing we brought with us? Boner is nothing compared to wolfy!"

 

The Lord eyed the Goblin. Seeing something he didn't like he lifted his hand away from the rapier and a green fireball the size of a marble began to coalesce in his palm.

 

Opal raised her hand, as if to present the thing coming through the door, perfectly timed as the doors finally gave in, smashing to splinters as the enchantments shattered in a flicker of blue light, the sheesha smoke billowing outward.

 

In the doorway stood an enormous black teddy bear with a pink scaled Lamia attached to it.

 

Opal's hand drooped slightly.

 

"...What the fuck is that?"