◈ Chapter 139:

The blade faltered against her neck. "Why the hell are you here of all my family Rose. Such a waste. Such a fruitless goddam waste." His eyes narrowed as he stared at the frozen teenager's face.  

 

"I lost Lyra, but that was always tempered by the existance of you, my freshly plucked spark for the stage. Gods…"

 

He pulled back with a groan of frustration. 

 

"What could she have seen? Did she hear? Can I really-? She knows my habits so she would… But then those rumours have always existed..." The Lord muttered into his hand, eyes darting side to side in thought. He seemed to brood on something for a time, his tail lashing with irritation.

 

"Fine. Perhaps I know a way I can more permanently fix you. Heart pins… few know they work on levelers too just fine. Perhaps a perpetual fear of instantaneous death will improve your performance on the stage in the end, my Rose."

 

He trailed off as his eyes caught on the black half formed mist that was spilling through a few rents in the teddy bear's fabric.

 

"But… what is this you have brought with you?" 

 

He hesitantly held out the knife and prodded at the black mist. The blade passed through it pushing aside the magically frozen material. "Curious." He lifted a hand and hesitantly touched a fingertip against what looked like the half formed skull of some carnivore floating amongst it. 

 

A moment's touch and he gasped in pain and snatched his hand back. He examined his finger tip which had turned red, blistering like it had been burned, the flesh visibly rippling.

 

"An acid? Wait, this isn't her ability, this is-"

 

He abruptly jerked back from the bear.

 

"-another leveler hiding inside. Assassin!" He spat. 

 

A hand came up and a fresh marble sized fireball began to coalesce, the flame compacting down into a flaring green ball and hovering over his index finger. He raised his hand, aiming the thing directly at Rose's face, then shifted it up aiming for the teddy bear's chest. Then, after a moment of thought, moved it to the side, aiming for its arm.

 

Fwhip!

 

The fireball launched and shot through the arm like it wasn't even there, a straight line of destruction that blew through the front and out the back in a cloud of shredded stuffing that drifted to the ground. The fireball left a small black dot as it departed through the opposite wall.

 

The Lord tutted as he watched it go then turned his attention to the 'golem', watching carefully and expectantly. He was soon rewarded. Blood poured from a rent in the arm, spattering down in a steady shower onto the floor below.

 

"You found an accomplice. This would be the source of your sudden confidence and reason for coming here now of all times."

 

He raised his hand and three more fireballs began to form, one fireball for index, middle, and ring finger, respectively.

 

"H-hey, what are you doing?" said Opal, struggling up from Lyra as she grasped what was about to happen.

 

Wranvyre didn't reply. Instead, he lifted his hand and fired one of the fireballs through the bear's gut just beside Rose, then one through its chest, and then the last one through its head. 

 

Woolen stuffing fluttered into the air and blood flowed freely from the furred fabric now. The black slick and shiny with wet as red pooled on the floorboards.

 

"The question is, how large is the leveler hidden within?" he mused, three more fireballs beginning to form in his hand.

 

Opal's breath caught in her throat as she watched the fireballs be put through the bear, shock more than anything stilling her. But then she began to move, rage making her fast, and she flung herself backwards, falling into shadow. She appeared far above Wranvyre, dropping from the ceiling, a black talon forming even as she silently fell toward her target.

 

The lord sent the three just formed fireballs into the bear to the goblin's fury. 

 

Both her hands took hold of the harpy talon as Opal flung her arms forward in a reckless strike, using the full weight of her momentum, a single life ending blow aimed straight at the back of the Lamia's head without a care for her own safety.

 

Opal very nearly made it, the talon merely a dozen or so inches from piercing his skull, but then the chair the Lord's tail had been coiled around was whipped up and smashed into her. She was flung aside in a hail of shattering wood, landing badly atop a nearby table with a grunt of expelled breath and a nasty thump.

 

The Lord set his lips in a line as he looked her over. 

 

"I really should stop thinking of you as a goblin slave, dead useless furniture does not attack its owner like this, and more, your weapon… it's strange, even for an evolution." 

 

He lifted his index finger and a fireball began to coalesce.

 

Opal rose from the table, cold horror at what was being done to Rain keeping her motions efficient.

 

She needed more. More power.

 

Black mist like flame flowed from her horn and rolled over her skin, pouring down from her head, her body a bonfire of darkness. She snarled and it spilled into her free hand, a second talon forming, both swelling, one for each hand, larger talons, a Panthara's talons.

 

The Lord's eyes widened slightly as he recognised the cruel shape of them and the fireball quickly snapped forward from the Lord's index. Opal dropped, falling down just as the fireballs passed over her head. 

 

She came up behind Wranvyre, the momentum of her fall launching her into the air and toward the Lord. Of course Wranvyre was already turning, the black knife darting out to catch the first talon. 

 

The two black objects came together with a crashing screech that rattled the eardrums, yet Opal didn't give him a moment's pause and lunged with the unexpected second talon, a sweeping cross aimed for his gut. Wranvyre lashed his tail and hauled himself back, eyes flashing with anger that a goblin slave of all things was pressuring him.

 

But Opal didn't notice his expression because she was already falling, dropping through the air into the nearest shadow. The threat wasn't so much her skill with the talons, or her speed or strength or the talons themselves, it was that where she would be coming from next was hard to predict. Wranvyre twisted to the side, knife raising in a defensive posture, certain that he knew the optimal position she would attack from, a cruel sneer twisting his lip.

 

Instead Opal came up from within his coils, twisting as the talons ripped into the Lord's black and red speckled scales in a flurry of fleeing gore, his scales ripping from his body like hail as his flesh below shredded apart.

 

The Lord turned with a howl of pain and-

 

Opal froze in mid motion, frozen with the Lord's coils surrounding her on every side, his flesh parted around the talons, even still fleeing from their touch.

 

-

 

One moment Rain was stepping forward to attack, the next he was vomiting blood, pints of hot gore spilling from behind his teeth as his insides convulsed, throwing up more and more blood. The mess washed over the cramped wool filled space of the teddy bear's head, staining everything red and splattering over the yellow disks of the bear's glass eyes as pools of blood formed below his chin.

 

He nearly collapsed then and there. He just couldn't breathe, there were what felt like arrows through his neck, in his chest, no, not arrows, holes. Every breath was a burbling bloody mess, a choking struggle just to get air in.

 

He peered through the blood stained yellow disks, his vision going blurry at the edges. 

 

Opal was there, frozen in mid air, Lyra was on the ground. Was she dead?

 

Everything was unravelling. Everything was coming apart. Rose was shouting, but he couldn't understand.

 

He watched in a kind of cold horror as the Lord unwrapped himself from Opal, his face twisted with spite. He said something incomprehensible to Rose, turned, and then sunk the black knife into Opal's pregnant belly.

 

There wasn't time for words or even time to think, Rain thrust an arm forward and an unformed mass of darkness exploded forth, a screaming column of predatory things that snapped through the air, tearing the end of the bear's arm apart in an explosion of fabric.

 

The Lord was forced to leap away as Opal was instantly engulfed in swirling tooth filled darkness, everything Rain had to give.

 

As the darkness swallowed her, Rain drew in the best breath he could, a weak thing due to his perforated lungs, but enough.

 

The following roar seemed to catch the lord by surprise, making him flinch, the bear head masking Rain opening his mouth. It barely seemed to have an effect because it was so weakened, not even rupturing Rose's ear drums below, but it was enough as all he needed was to draw Wranvyre's attention toward him. A centipedal arm suddenly lunged for the lord whipping out from the roiling mass of darkness that protected Opal as he turned toward Rain.

 

Despite the sneak attack Wranvyre's snake like reactions seemingly saved him at first, catching the motion out of the corner of his eye and raising the knife to fend off the centipede. But he had fatally misunderstood what it was that was coming for him. The pincers darted around the raised blade and in one motion snipped his arm off below the elbow.

 

Wranvyre screamed as he fell away, a shower of blood falling with his stump, the knife clattering against the floorboards as it landed along with the soft wet thump of his severed arm.

 

It was the perfect moment to end the Lord's life and Rain shakily lifted a foot and took a step toward him at the same moment the morass of darkness moved.

 

But then the lord's eyes flashed and… nothing happened. The darkness lunged for him just as Rain took his next step.

 

Wranvyre seemed stuck in a moment of pure panic, the mass of darkness sloughing off from the goblin as it moved toward him, unstoppable, unfreezable, his power didn't work on it. He turned on Rain as the thing pulled fully free from Opal and his eyes flashed once more. Opal collapsed to the ground with a pained cry as Rain yet again froze mid-step along with Rose.

 

Unfortunately for the Lord the dark shapeless thing did not stop with Rain's freezing and a house cat's head framed in cruel talons formed just as a Panthara's singular leg stepped from the morass and great room filling owl wings spread behind.

 

"Wha-what is this?" gasped the Lord as he staggered back from the towering bipedal creature.

The cat head looked down at the Lord cradling his stump, then at the severed arm on the floor.

 

Then the creature very deliberately lifted its foot and stepped on the arm, never taking its eyes off the lord.

 

Wranvyre watched as his arm turned to liquid mush under the foot, skin unravelling at the dark touch, muscle shredding into little bits, blood washing outward, finger bones slipping free from writhing flesh and scattering. It was very obviously gone forever, his arm permanently destroyed.

 

He roared his loss-filled fury and lifted his remaining hand, fireballs already coalescing on each of his fingertips and thumb, five in all, the first firing half formed as he recklessly flung his hand forward.

 

The half formed fireball snapped out and shot straight through the darkness, leaving a crater of black mist behind that spilled into the air.

 

The house cat hissed in anger and centipedal tentacles lashed out from its still forming body, whipping through the air in a frenzy, reaching out for the lord in a flurry of pincers.

 

Wranvyre danced backwards, a deep fear written into his eyes after seeing what the black stuff could do if he was touched by it.

 

The horrifying thing needed to die.