◈ Chapter 140:

Fwhip, Snap, Fwhip, fireballs flinged away from Wranvyre's remaining hand one after the other as he dodged and weaved around the lunging centipedal tentacles, each fireball punching a cylinder through the thing's body, the other side of the room visible through the holes. With every fireball shot another immediately formed on his fingertips to replace it.

 

It didn't matter, the thing came on and Wranvyre was forced to retreat, backing up as he continued to fire fireball after fireball through its body, dozens and dozens until he was panting and sweating under the magical strain and the steps of the creature left a trail of disintegrated black mist behind it.

 

The house cat yowled and came on, furious as only a cat could be, increasingly eager to kill its prey. But each dark centipede that grabbed for the Lord was countered with a fireball that lanced down its length, obliterating it. It wasn't long before the mass of darkness was contracting, once several feet taller than the lord it began to falter and shrink down as it shed mass in a misted trail.

 

The cat snarled in frustration as its body disintegrated around it, losing mass until it was at chest height with the lord, even its cat head half turned to mist, only one star-filled eye remaining.

 

The small but deadly fireballs were faltering, but at last, the cat thing died with one final hiss, its one eye staring hatred at the Lord, the last of its body torn apart by the tiny compressed fireballs.

 

Wranvyre was left breathing raggedly, chest rising up and down like a bellows, sweat pouring down his face from too much magical exertion.

 

But he'd won.

 

He turned on the bear.

 

"Th-this is-! Where did you find such a leveler Rose!"

 

With a snarl he raised his hand and a fireball sputtered to life above his index and fired into the chest of the teddy bear. 

 

"S-stop!" cried Opal from where she lay, clutching her front.

 

Fwhip. Another fireball skewered the teddy bear.

 

"S-stop you fucking asshole! Stop killing him!"

 

The Lord flatly ignored her, it was as if he hadn't heard her at all.

 

Opal clenched her fists at her sides.

 

"Stop ignoring me you snake faced multi headed dick hydra!"

 

The Lamia snapped around, his face a picture of fury.

 

"Will you shut up!!"

 

The fireball intended for Rain shot out for Opal's head. Ready for it, the goblin sunk into the floor.

 

"If you think you can fool me into removing my Skill again with the same trickery you are beyond wrong. I-"

 

CRUNCH.

 

Wranvyre blinked at the sound and turned slowly to stare at the giant bear.

 

It was surrounded with a halo of fractured light, the air splintered around its body like shattered glass.

 

Another crunch filled the air and the arm of the bear moved an inch, the air seeming to break around it, the magic that kept it in place misting away.

 

"What kind of illusionary trick is this? h-how are you-?"

 

CRUNCH. The air broke further, sheets of some invisible structure breaking apart, breaking down into nothing, something pushing through the magic through sheer unbelievable brute force.

 

The arm moved, and then so did the whole upper body of the bear, the air splintering and shattering around it, whisping into white mist as it broke down under the pressure, a column of hissing steam rising from the black bear's fur as it shed the magic in sheets of misting transparency. One more sharp motion and the upper half of the bear was fully freed from its imprisonment, mist angrily boiling off its body half hiding it from sight.

 

Wranvyre backed away as the bear was freed, raising his remaining hand in uncertainty and forming a fireball. But then his eyes dropped down, down to Rose. The teenager was still trapped and entirely frozen and remained wrapped around the bear, as was the bear's legs, its hips wreathed in fractured air like a corona of shattered glass.

 

"Impressive that you freed yourself, I have never seen that before. It seems I may have over exerted myself and left my Skill to weaken. But, assassin, you are still trapped as sure as if you were wrapped in chain. My own daughter is your shackle, an irony worthy of a play."

 

The bear didn't seem to hear him, its breath coming in ragged gasps as the pool of blood below it only grew larger.

 

"...Not that it matters, you are on the threshold of death itself."

 

The Lord seemed nearly as worn down as the bear and his hand shook badly as held it up, fireballs forming on his fingertips. 

 

"To tell the truth I'm not even sure what you are anymore. But no matter, you will die here and Rose will never again oppose me. No, she won't even dare a thought against me once I insert her heart pin."

 

The fireball on his index finger snaped forward like a bolt of straightened lightning and lanced through the bear's head. It fell backwards, its upper body going limp, only remaining upright because its lower half was still frozen and locked in place by Rose's motionless tail.

 

The next fireball Fwhipped from Wranvyre's middle finger as it formed, striking the bear in its guts and causing it to convulse. 

 

"Die, die now! DIE!" screamed the Lord, his body shaking with magical exertion as he fired into the bear over and over and over. The next set of fireballs formed on his digits and he laughed with a wild light in his eyes.

 

But before he could move to punch more holes in the bear Opal lunged from the shadows, somehow no longer slowed by her injury, her momentum carrying her forward into a mad staggering charge. She held no talons however, and no darkness was whisping over her body. She was unarmed because she didn't need to be armed. The goblin charged at the Lamia's long tail which lay curled around the room's furniture and lunged at it, rolling with the bloodied tip, flipping head over heels as she carried it across the floor, once, twice, three times, then sprung forward, arms outstretched as she flung the tail forward and straight into the waiting open wolf paw hanging from the ragged remains of one of the teddy bear's arms.

 

Wranvyre stared, not understanding. 

 

Then the paw closed.

 

"H-hey-

 

The teddy bear hauled itself forward, pivoting from the hips, then torso, then shoulder and finally from the elbow and wrist.

 

Wranvyre barely had time to scream before he was ripped from standing position and sent tearing through the air at an incomprehensible speed.

 

The arm came up and then it came down with all the force the bear could muster.

 

The Lamia whipped groundward like a screaming meteor from the night sky and was forcibly sliced through a wardrobe, the solid piece of oak furniture instantly obliterated by the passage of his body, wooden shrapnel exploding in every direction. 

 

If it slowed the Lord's descent even fractionally it wasn't evident. He continued down through the floorboards, planks shredding apart as his body and then tail plunged through into the room below. 

 

The teddy bear twisted violently and the black scaled tail tore through the room, armchairs and furniture shattering or sent flying as the lord was whipped through the floor and the room below like a great living flail.

 

The arm rose, and with it the lord, smashing up through the floor in a tumble of planks, his shirt shredded from his viciously lacerated body, blood pouring freely over his scales and skin, wide terrified eyes visible behind bedraggled hair.

 

The whipping motion just didn't stop and Wranvyre smashed against the ceiling, plaster raining down as he continued in his terrible arc, up over and then down. For the second time the lord was sent through the floor, through part of the bed this time, the mattress shredding apart in a cloud of feathers as he was whipped down so hard it might as well have not been there, the full terrifying strength the bear could apply multiplied by centrifugal force.

 

The Lord had become just a snake being whipped around by a large teddy bear, like a scaled flail.

 

Wranvyre's screaming became muffled as he vanished into the room below again, the sounds travelling below Opal's feet as the bear twisted around, the bear's hips crashing repeatedly against their Lamia girl confines with each vicious motion.

 

Wranvrye came up and then went back down over and over, turning every piece of furniture in the room into kindling and leaving long lines through the floorboards, or was smashed through the wall as the bear changed it up, crashing through the ceiling, into the walls again, through great vases or tables or sheeshas, or through vast ten foot tall lacerating mirrors, heavy stone walls and solid oak and glass alike the lord was used to destroy or shatter, the room obliterated by his whipping body, then again and again until everything standing had been pulverised and was utterly unrecognisable, not even the bed remained, just a sea of destruction.

 

In the end it was only because of the slippery blood under Rain's paw pads that the lord escaped the unending savage beating. He slipped from Rain's paw and was sent flipping head over tail before he smashed against the half destroyed wall, falling down in a limp heap.

 

The clatter of rubble coming to a halt filled the air as the blood drenched teddy bear slowly slumped in its still frozen Lamia harness, unmoving this time not from magic but from blood loss.

 

The room became momentarily quiet, only clouds of masonry dust drifting through the air and the occasional tap tap of small pieces of rubble or splinters of wood falling as everything came to a gradual stop.

 

Wranvyre lay like wet rope amongst the ruins of his room, his body somehow even more of a ruin, his tail and spinal column shattered, his ribs pulverised, his arms bent in far too many places, and all with large jagged shards of glass and ceramic dotted across his flesh. His nose was missing entirely, shorn off when he was put through a mirror, his jaw broken into a dozen pieces, his mouth a toothless hole.

 

A long wordless groan emerged from what was left of the Lamia.

 

His one remaining eye blinked as a shadow fell over him. White wool. White wool stained with red.

 

He stared as Lyra wheezed, sucking in air like her lungs were not working properly. Which was not surprising considering the rapier was still skewered through her chest. 

 

She shook as she knelt by his body, barely remaining upright. But she still raised an arm.

 

A black knife materialised in her hand.

 

The black knife rose and Lord Wranvyre could do nothing but stare with his one remaining eye as it went up and up and up, preparing to stab down.

 

He summoned everything he had, every little spark of strength and force of will left to him. 

 

"Please," he wheezed from a broken mouth, "Not the heart."

 

"Fuck. You."

 

Lyra stabbed him in the heart.

 

She slumped back as the Lord died, his death rattle barely a rasp.

 

Lyra lay there, on her side, just lying by the person she had come to murder.

 

The sheep girl stared at the corpse, he was dead, it was over, and it only cost her having a sword healed into her chest... and what felt like her heart. In fact she was fairly certain the sword was embedded at least part way into her heart because her heartbeat just felt wrong, offset somehow, and no matter how much she drew in great gasping breaths, she still felt winded, light headed.

 

She was a pair to Wranvyre in that way, the both of them with blades in their chests.

 

Her fingers clutched weakly at the rapier protruding from her front. Maybe it was deeper in her heart than she had realised. Things were starting to get fuzzy and dark and she was bleeding around the steel again, the freshly regrown flesh where the sword entered her skin spilling red with blood.

 

Unconsciousness took her.