The air trembled and distorted like heat waves as Asphodel's aura poured out of his new horrifying form.
It was enough to overwhelm even the elite daemons as they buckled and struggled against the immense pressure.
It pushed down on me, too. But it was a little more than a stiff breeze.
However, it looked like he was still transforming, as I saw more roots writhe out from his back, weaving into something massive.
Oh, no, you don't.
Blood coiled around my temporary right arm and settled in my palm, elongating into a crimson trident with tips of crystallized blood.
I took aim, channeled ardor through my arm, enhancing it, and hurled it at the daemon.
The trident tore through the air like a missile, breaking the sound barrier with an ear-shattering sonic boom.
Unfortunately, Asphodel was quicker.
The creepy noodle bundle of black roots that had replaced his right arm lashed out and disintegrated my trident with a mere touch in a flash of black.
I clicked my tongue.
Well, that's too bad.
Then a grin tugged at my lips.
If I hadn't split the trident into two.
As soon as Asphodel destroyed the first trident, the second one emerged from behind.
And this one hit the mark.
Asphodel jerked forward in the air as the crimson trident pierced his back, unleashing a blast of Bloodfire upon contact.
He seemed unfazed by the attack, but it did halt his transformation.
Oh, and it pissed him off as well.
"Do you mind?" his distorted voice was layered with annoyance.
"I do, actually!" I shot back. "Interrupting your enemy's transformation is a textbook technique!"
Well, good news?
He is mad.
The bad news?
He is mad.
"Whoa!" I exclaimed, hopping and jumping across the courtyard as Asphodel obliterated the white stone with his roots, their ends becoming sharp and pointy upon contact.
I slashed at many roots with my sword, the flaming blood running along the blade's edge, and severed many of the roots like a chainsaw on wood.
Spikes of crystallized blood flared into existence around me, wreathed in Bloodfire, and I sent them hurtling at him.
He swatted them out of the sky in a casual arc like flies.
But I didn't stop.
I continued the barrage, adding Vortex Bloodlances and Shredding Gyroscopes, forcing him to start avoiding them.
And he avoided them effortlessly, moving so quickly that it looked like he was teleporting in the sky.
Even when avoiding my attacks, he counterattacked, unleashing multiple arcs of black energy that screamed as they approached me.
Each one was powerful enough to obliterate the hard white stone of the courtyard and rattle my bones whenever I tried to parry the deadly attacks.
But still, not something I can't handle.
I retaliated even harder, using my blood appendages to intercept his attacks and pierce through his defenses.
I used some appendages to distract him with flashes of Bloodfire and pulled back the rest, readying them for precise strikes.
Noticing a gap, I attacked, combining the hidden appendages into a singular sharp spike that struck the roiling chest of the daemon.
His black flesh was indeed tough, but I had accumulated enough momentum to pierce his defense.
And I did.
Asphodel's relentless assault suddenly ceased as he focused on the injury close to his heart.
I used that opportunity well. Two particularly thick appendages shot upward and wrapped around the bundle of roots replacing his legs.
I clenched my fist, and the daemon was suddenly yanked out of the sky, straight to the unforgiving ground.
However, he quickly recovered and ripped away from his bindings before vanishing.
Then, he suddenly appeared beside me and slashed with his wing.
A crescent of black energy aimed at me, giving me no room to dodge.
Gritting my teeth, I deflected the attack with my sword, but the impact felt like getting hit by a train.
I was incapacitated for a moment.
And a moment was enough for him.
His black roots shot out, entangling me in their twisting grasp like living chains.
He raised me in the air for a brief moment before slamming me into the floor.
The stone exploded under my back, and he dragged me across the courtyard, right towards the black pit.
I fought to escape his grasp, but there are just too many roots entangling my body.
There is only one way to escape this, and it's painful.
Directing blood to my hand, I quickly formed a Blood Grenade and detonated it.
The explosion ripped through the roots as they dragged me towards the edge.
Unfortunately, it ripped through me as well.
I rolled to the ground, pain flaring and crimson smoke rising off my heavily injured and burned body.
Before I could use Haema to heal myself, the heavy aura of Asphodel pressed down on me as he landed beside me.
I really doubt he is here to lend me a hand in getting up.
"That looked painful," he said, his distorted voice like knives scraping into bone. "Let me help you."
I felt something sharp and pointy poking me in the back, and I felt sharp pains all over my body as he drove his roots into my flesh.
I suppressed the urge to scream. Despite being used to pain, getting pierced by many black roots still bloody hurts.
I let out a painful grunt as he hoisted my broken and burned body in the air and dangled me over the great black void of the pit.
Some of the roots from the roiling mass sprouting from his neck coalesced to form his smooth black head, complete with the featureless visage and horrifying smile.
"It is a pity I can't just drop you into the Pit, Pendragon," he hissed.
Pain racked all over my body as the roots penetrated deeper into my flesh. Sinister whispers burrowed into my ears, as if the roots were alive and spewed out malevolent words.
It appears I have only one option left.
Although I had never tried it out in real life, it was quite cool in theory.
Oh well. There is a first time for everything.
Just as Asphodel began to pull me towards him, my blood appendages unfurled and lashed out in an instant.
They flattened into flexible crimson blades that slashed away the roots holding me.
Blood rushed out of my wounds and swirled around my body, covering me, knitting into a cocoon of crimson and severing the remaining roots.
Yet I didn't drop into the pit.
The cocoon of blood suspended my body in the air as it swirled over my eyes, cutting off my view of the outside world.
"You're not the only one with a second phase," I muttered as my eyes fluttered to a close.
*******
Asphodel's instincts screamed at him the moment the cocoon sealed shut.
He felt it deep within his very being, a primal warning that spoke of only one thing.
Whatever emerges out of that cocoon is a disaster that would consume him.
So he viciously attacked the cocoon. His black roots whipped forward in a frenzy, hammering the blood-woven barrier.
But each strike of his powerful roots harmlessly bounced off the crimson shell like rain on a glass window.
Then, a wave of ardor passed over him, so dense it was as if the air had thickened.
However, to call it a wave would be an understatement. It was a tsunami of power that caused his body to seize up and freeze on the spot.
And then… everything was still.
No ardor or bloodlust emanated from the cocoon.
Cracks split the smooth surface of the cocoon, spreading and widening like lightning in a night sky.
With the sharp sound of shattering glass, the sides of the cocoon broke open, and two wings unfurled.
They were beautiful and terrifying, each delicate feather made of crystallized blood and glowing with molten Bloodfire within its hollow structure.
The cocoon split open, and the rest of the being within emerged free like a butterfly shedding its chrysalis.
Mordred Pendragon hovered over the pit, the pull of its peculiar gravity nullified by the lift of those massive wings, larger and grander than Asphodel's misshapen ones.
Three huge Blood Loops hovered behind him, intertwined with each other and spinning rapidly into a complex braid, collecting massive amounts of ardor from the air.
His limbs looked like they were made of shimmering crimson glass, with a network of dark blue lines crisscrossing over the smooth, glowing surface.
His body was wrapped in twisting vines of scarlet and dark blue that entered and exited his flesh at his neck and torso, as if threading him together.
A crimson, helical crown hovered over his head, twisting and undulating like live serpents.
His black sclera made the blood red of his irises all the more vivid, while crimson streaks traced down his face like bloody tears, shifting into branching patterns, like veins bursting through porcelain.
And then there was the most macabre addition to this new form.
A jagged spike of crystallized blood pierced his chest clean through, its crimson ends sprouting out of his chest and back.
But to Asphodel, the most disturbing aspect of Mordred's new form is not his appearance
It was the energy he let out.
It was a sickening and terrifying presence, one that he had experienced before.
It was a long time ago, long before he became a daemon, when he was a Luminus, sworn to Queen Phoebe.
It belonged to the only Incarnus that had cornered Queen Phoebe, a mighty god slayer, during the bloody war between the Incarni.
She was called the God Butcher, who brutally slaughtered thousands of minor Incarni and a handful of major Incarni for sport.
The mad goddess who made a mountain of Incarni corpses and bathed in the sea of their immortal blood.
The one who instilled fear into every single Luminus upon her arrival.
Even Naberiax, a Malakh, feared the one against whom the Incarnus of Lux barely achieved victory
The Incarnus of Haema.
The Lady of Blood.
He had felt this energy before, in fragments, when Mordred had used the Madness to fight him.
But this was different. This was much more potent, but it didn't completely feel like the energy of the Haema Incarnus.
It was Mordred Pendragon's power, but it contained a sickening echo of the Incarnus' very essence.
"Why do I sense that mutant's power? What did you do?" the daemon asked the beautiful yet terrifying figure hovering before him with crimson wings.
Mordred gave a small smile, his glowing eyes calm, not filled with the Madness commonly associated with the Haema Incarnus.
"I guess my strand control's catching up to hers, since Haema is her domain," he said lightly.
He tilted his head, feigning to think. "Who knows?"
Then his smile widened. His wings flared, his twisted crown and Blood Loops blazed.
"But I must say. This is bloody cool."
{Haema: Advent of the Scarlet Prince}