The purple vortexes appeared around her, dozens of them, small and hungry. The dust, the debris, the rags of the dead… everything around them began to be slowly sucked into them. She leaned forward, a predator's pose ready to pounce.
Then, the woman began to cackle, sick shrieks of pure pleasure. The wind became a hurricane, emanating from all directions. Her bluish cloak and her hair whipped wildly. Her fingers contorted and, as if cutting nothingness, she began to swing her arms.
Everything around Vernh began to be destroyed. Reality tore. It was as if she could cut through space itself.
Vernh was forced to dodge. A stone pillar to his left was sliced and collapsed. The ground to his right was erased from existence. Every time she swung an arm, something was destroyed.
He dodged and jumped, a deadly game of cat and mouse. Vernh didn't advance. He only defended.
She doesn't cut the air… he thought, his brain analyzing at high speed. The vortex she creates allows her to fold space. The greater the density of the vortex, or the number of them, the more power she gains. It's not brute force… it's distortion.
A final invisible cut struck a massive pillar. Vernh rolled to the side, dodging by a hair's breadth. But he didn't jump again. He stopped and looked at her.
"What's wrong? Hit your limit already?" he asked, turning to her. "I know most men only last 3 minutes. But me!" He puffed out his chest, confidently. "I'm a monster! If you know what I mean, sweet-cheeks…" He shrugged.
Despite the arrogant smile, his eyes watched her with extreme caution. She's not happy about something… What does this woman still have up her sleeve?
"…"
"Did you say something? I didn't hear you, love."
But Vernh's arrogant and playful expression vanished. His eyes narrowed. His posture changed.
"How long… will you refuse to take me seriously?"
"Ah… well… about that…"
"I hate… hate…" The expression of ecstasy transformed into a mask of sick hatred. "I HATE PEOPLE LIKE YOU!"
The vortexes danced around her. The wind hitting Vernh's back almost pushed him toward her. She screamed in rage, the sound piercing the soul.
Her arm came down.
And with it, everything in front of her was, simply, disintegrated.
A wave of spatial annihilation advanced, a tsunami of nothingness that devoured matter itself.
But the blow didn't hit Vernh.
At the last instant, a shape appeared. Circular, deformed, like frozen liquid metal, it shone with the pale light of the moon. A silver shield, which looked as if it had been torn from the moon itself, hovered in the air, blocking the torrent of destruction.
The woman's eyes widened. The shock was genuine. That sick smile faltered, replaced by a furious disbelief. Not even her absolute power, her ability to erase space, had managed to destroy it.
The world, then, seemed to move slowly.
The woman focused on the shield. It was the central rod of Tom's weapon, reconfigured. An extremely thin, almost liquid thread extended from it. She followed it with her gaze… one thread descended into the darkness of the fissure, where the other axe-head had fallen… and the other thread…
Her gaze shot through the ruins, only to find Tom.
The Herald was on her feet, her body trembling, but her posture unshakeable. Blood ran from her forehead and mouth, her clothes soiled with blood and dust. In her hand, she held the third end of the weapon. Her right arm was pulled back, muscles tense, pulling the thread with all her strength.
The woman returned her gaze to Vernh. But it was too late.
The silver shield in front of him wavered and shot forward, flying directly toward her like a lunar saw blade.
She braced for the impact, the sick smile widening. But, as the shield flew, it dissolved. The solid metal melted back into a torrent of liquid silver, a whip of living mercury that hissed toward her face.
At the last instant, as the liquid metal was about to hit her, it split. The chain disconnected from the rod Tom held.
The two ends of silver metal zipped past her, one on each side of her head, missing her by centimeters. And, the moment they passed, they reconnected in the air behind her.
The trap was set.
And only then, with the chain now stretched taut at her back, Tom acted.
She hurled the rod she held in a high, violent arc over the woman's head, a fluid movement designed to ensnare and slice her in the cage of chains.
But in an uncontrolled fury, the woman moved her left arm in an arc behind her. The purple vortexes danced, moving along with her hand.
The shock of spatial destruction struck Tom's rod in mid-air, throwing it far, against the fissure…
It was then that a sharp sound echoed through the ruins. The rod she had deflected… ricocheted.
It had been hit by something of the same material.
ALL OF IT. It was just to distract her.
That rod, transformed into a half-moon axe. The one that had been hurled at her, that fell over the fissure. It hadn't been lost. It had been pulled back, only to be caught by the hands of someone else.
When she realized. The shield was in front of her. Almost touching her face.
In Vernh's hands.
The silver dissolved. And in less than a blink, it reconfigured. The weapon, now held by the drunkard's hand, flowed, transforming into a cruel, straight blade. Going toward her throat.
The bluish gleam of the moon reflected in her eyes. And she noticed too late.
A movement behind her.
The other rod. The one she had batted away with her power, thrown against the fissure. The one that had ricocheted before. It had returned.
With a speed that seemed to tear the air itself, Tom appeared.
She was propelled. Ethereal runes, of a glacial blue, danced around her, forming a luminous crescent moon at her back—a trail of lunar power that catapulted her forward.
The half-moon axe, its long handle, was firm in her hands.
Her face was a mask of fury and blood. The crimson liquid ran from her forehead and her lips, but now, under the phantasmal light, the blood looked dark, almost black, reflecting the lifeless, bluish glow that emanated from her eyes and the runes enveloping her.
And, in the midst of that superhuman effort, with her mouth open from the strain of the attack, the side effect of that power manifested. The blood, which already stained her, began to practically gush from her throat, falling from her lips in an uncontrollable red torrent, like an open faucet.
The attack was perfect. A pincer of silver and vengeance, impossible to block, impossible to dodge.
But in the frozen millisecond that the two blades hissed toward her neck, the woman thought. The fury, once a sadistic pleasure, became an incandescent, white-hot hatred.
They… they really think they can do this?
Her gaze dismissed Vernh's blade, focusing on the bloodied figure attacking her from behind.
This Herald… this insolent brat… doesn't know her place!
The rage deepened, solidified, turning toward the man who had dared to intercept her.
And worst of all… this man… he doesn't take me seriously! WHO DOES HE THINK HE IS?!
The sick smile dissolved into a grimace of pure hatred. Her eyes, the dark blue from before, began to spin. The purple of her portals took over her irises, and the yellow spirals spun like maddened galaxies. The air around her distorted. Her own body seemed to become one, the epicenter of the purple sphere.
Vernh saw it. The seriousness on his face evaporated, replaced by genuine alarm.
SHIT!
He didn't wait. He lunged forward, ignoring his own attack, and grabbed Tom by the chest of her clothes. With a desperate strength, he threw her far away from the ruins, toward the edge of the fissure.
"GET OUT OF HERE!"
He leaped right after.
The next instant, the woman "exploded."
It wasn't fire. It was vacuum. A vortex of pure purple and yellow annihilation erupted from where she stood, consuming everything. The pillars, the stone floor, the echoes of the green flames, the bodies of the empty ones… all of it was sucked in and disintegrated in a deafening silence. The raw power swept through that part of the ruins, erasing them from existence.
Tom, thrown by Vernh's strength, landed on her feet. The momentum made her slide a few meters on the ancient stone, but she held firm. Slowly, the lunar axe dissolved, the silver metal flowing like mercury. She pulled the rods, and the weapon returned to its natural form: one end in each hand, the central shaft arched behind her back.
"That was close…" Vernh panted, landing beside her. He glanced sideways at the Herald.
And what he saw made his blood run cold.
Her gaze was vacant. Blood still ran from her forehead and mouth, but the blue runes shone intensely, now like sparks, like embers, dancing erratically around her body.
The vortex that had destroyed the ruins began to shrink, the violence sucked back into itself, until it vanished.
Silence reigned.
It was then Vernh noticed.
Behind them.
The woman was there, arms open, the smile back. But her face was… wrong. Deformed, the features pulled tight in an expression of ecstasy that bordered on the demonic.
"BRAT!" Vernh yelled, moving to push her.
But he was too slow.
Tom grabbed the woman by the face.
Tom's expression didn't change. Empty and serious, she stared at the woman she held.
And then, the two were sucked into nothingness.
Vernh stopped, his hand outstretched into the vacuum, into the place where they had been a second ago.
A growl of fury escaped his throat. He ran to the site of the destruction.
Where the ruins had been, there was now only a colossal crater. He looked down, and the hole didn't stop. It descended dozens and dozens of floors of the ancient city, piercing the solid rock of the fissure, going deeper than Chisanatora itself.
◇ ◇ ◇
Far away. In a place without light, without the smell of sulfur.
In front of a ruin older than the city itself, the two fell, expelled from the vacuum.
The woman landed on her knees, her body trembling, not with weakness, but with a sick energy, like a demon in ecstasy.
Tom, a few meters away, got up. Slowly. Painfully.
The blue sparks of the runes still crackled on her skin. She placed the right rod in front of her, her body sideways. The left rod went back. Her knee, slightly bent forward.
Even broken, she assumed her stance.