The world dissolved into a single, deafening BOOM that hammered through the warehouse walls and punched the air from Lutz's lungs. The very floor beneath his feet shuddered, dust raining from the ceiling joists. The carefully constructed silence of the Baron's office corridor was annihilated in an instant.
Its time.
The thought was a cold, clean spike of adrenaline, cutting through the last vestiges of contemplation. There was no more planning, no more waiting. The symphony was playing its crescendo, and he had his part to perform.
He moved with the fluid, pre-ordained precision of a master mechanism. A flick of his wrist, a spark from a flint and steel, and the carefully constructed pyre of oil-soaked rags and dry timber in the corner of his small room erupted into hungry, leaping flames. The fuse—a length of slow-burning cord soaked in saltpeter—caught with a hiss, its red ember beginning a slow, inevitable crawl towards the wall he had pre-weakened, the wall that separated his room from the main hall's secondary support beam.
He didn't watch it burn. He snatched up the two heavy, empty leather bags he had prepared. He threw them through the open doorway of his room, sending them skidding across the wooden planks of the second-floor landing. He would retrieve them on his return. His path was not down, but through.
His Superior Observation, heightened to a razor's edge by the imminent peril, painted a perfect, three-dimensional map of the space above the Baron's office. The treasury's ceiling was just another layer of wood and plaster, a false promise of solidity. He had three vials of Dissolving Acid. One would be enough to melt a man-sized hole through which he could drop into the heart of his ambition.
But first, the performance. He had to be seen. He had to draw the eyes of the hunter he knew was coming—the crazy cultist in the shadows. To vanish now, before the true chaos erupted, would be to invite a blade in the back during his escape. He had to be a part of the initial, violent dance, a Viper fighting for his life, before his miraculous, tragic disappearance in the inferno he was about to unleash.
He drew Creed from its spring-loaded sheath. The stiletto felt alive in his hand, a sliver of cold, hungry malice. A slight physical boost flowed into his arm. He embraced the feeling, letting it fuel the persona of a cornered fighter.
He went down the stairs and stepped out of the corridor back into the mouth of hell.
The main hall was a study in controlled madness. The air, already thick with oil fumes, was now choked with the acrid stench of ozone, spent gunpowder, and the coppery tang of fresh blood. The gaping, smoldering hole where the main doors had been was a frame for the disciplined, advancing line of the Church of Steam.
They moved in a synchronized, terrifying rhythm. A Viper, emboldened by the Baron's earlier speech, raised a heavy pistol, his face a mask of rage. A revolver answered from the Church line. The Viper jerked backwards, a dark red flower blooming on his chest. He crumpled, his pistol clattering to the floor.
Another Viper, using a crate for cover, leveled a musket. Before he could fire, there was a distinct hiss-whump from a steam rifle. A projectile, superheated by pressurized steam, tore through the crate and the man behind it with equal ease, leaving a fist-sized, smoldering hole. The man didn't even scream; he just looked down in dumb surprise at the ruin of his torso before collapsing.
But it wasn't a completely one-sided siege, one of the soldiers wielding a steam rifle had their head drilled by the shot of a Viper behind a pilar.
In a moment the entire main hall was filled with a flurry of gunpowder and lead.
Through this brutal, environment Deacon Reverie Noire advanced. She was the calm, unstoppable eye of the storm. A Viper lunged at her with an axe. She didn't sidestep. She lifted a single finger.
"Numb"
A green luster shoot from her finger. The man froze in mid-lunge, his muscles locking, his face contorted in a rictus of impossible strain, held fast by an invisible force. She walked past him, leaving him for her subordinates to deal with.
Suddenly, while a group of soldiers from the church of steam was advancing, they felt a blasphemous energy coming from the ground, they looked down and where before was nothing, now was a circle with many symbols drawn on the ground, on the center was a glowing, crimson metal charm.
Before they could try to escape, a malevolent wave of decay and degeneration was released from below, rotting their bodies from the legs to the head, turning them into rotten meat.
In an instant, 3 of the church's men were eliminated.
Reverie looked at this, annoyed but with a new understanding. "So they have made this kind of preparation". It was then that a shot was aimed her way, but she managed to dodge it without too much difficulty, then she took cover, and focused her intent in her eyes, wich glowed with a mystical purple hue.
In that moment he could see all with spiritual energy on the warehouse, there were 3 bodies that were standing out. "Three beyonders on their side, that should be the baron, his right hand, and that "Butcher". Then, in the entrance, close to her men was a node of sinister energy, the same could be seen on the back of the warehouse, the same on one of the sides.
When her men were just about to step on this trap, she made a complicated gesture with her hands. Instantly both she and her men felt a connection, this was Secret Voice, it allowed for telepathic communication. "Watch out, there are trap rituals around, there is one in front of you, circle it!".
However, as the man closest to the trap stopped in his place, a blazing spear instantly passed through him leaving a smoking charred hole through his chest.
Reverie looked at the culprit and on the other side of the room, was a tall, lanky man with a murderous gaze, he held a flame in his hand.
"Tsk"
In that moment, the Baron wich was on the center back of the main hall, had a steam rifle bullet approaching to him, however, just before reaching him, the bullet changed its course and hit a wall behind him.
This was Distort, the main ability of a Baron of Corruption. He had distorted the trajectory of the bullet. The baron then proceeded to send his hand into his coat pocket, from it, he grabbed a handful of silver shields, he then threw them and scattered them around the room in the direction of the Church of Steam's squad.
Once the silver coins fell to the ground, the Church's soldiers closest to them saw their fighting intent die, they didn't want to fight against the baron and his men, one of the soldiers, who had been hit fully by one of the coins, lifted his gun and shot the companion to his side.
He was instantly taken out by the surrounding men.
This was the effect of Bribe: Charm, wich would make the bribed unwilling to fight the Briber, and in some cases could turn against their own allies.
Reverie raised her open palm once more. But this time, instead of pointing at a structure, she held her hand up to the blood-lit air. A light began to coalesce above her palm, not the chaotic fury of the storm, but something more precise, more beautiful. It was a small, complex, rotating star, its points gleaming with a dazzling, pure white light that hurt the eyes to look upon. It spun faster and faster, humming with contained power.
The fighting around her seemed to dim, the very air growing still in anticipation of the release.
Then, she closed her fist, crushing the miniature star.
Her voice, once more in that resonant, commanding Hermes, cut through the din.
"Starry Amber."
From her clenched fist, a myriad of dazzling, star-like projectiles shot forth. They were not bolts of energy; they were tiny, perfect points of solidified light, each one humming with a transformative power. They fanned out like a swarm of incandescent bees, their paths unerringly seeking the Vipers in the hall. Their intent was clear: to strike, to encapsulate.
It was a breathtaking, terrifying display of power. A wave of certain capture, of a fate worse than death, swept towards the Vipers. Men flinched back, trying to run in futile escape.
But the Baron had been waiting. He saw the flaw not in the stars themselves, but in the command that guided them. In the connection between the caster's will and the target's fate.
As the dazzling stars shot across the room, Baron Gunther Vogler finally moved. He lifted his right hand and gave an order.
His voice, when he spoke, was a low, corrosive whisper that nonetheless carried the weight of absolute authority.
"Distort."
The effect was instantaneous and chaotic.
The unerring courses of the dazzling stars wavered. It was as if a powerful, invisible lens had been placed between Noire and her targets. The laws of aim and intention were subtly, fundamentally corrupted.
A star meant for a Viper's chest veered sharply upwards, striking the ceiling beam above him and exploding into a fist-sized chunk of clear, golden amber, trapping a section of wood in eternal stasis.
Another one, targeting a Viper cowering behind a barrel, swerved violently to the left and struck a Church soldier who was in the process of reloading his revolver. The man's look of focus turned to one of shock, then stillness, as a wave of translucent gold washed over him from the point of impact, freezing him solid in a perfect, lifelike pose, his revolver half-loaded.
Two more stars, their paths now hopelessly tangled, collided in mid-air with a sound like shattering crystal, dissipating in a shower of harmless, fading light.
A handful did find their marks. Two Vipers were struck, their screams cut short as they were transformed in an instant into beautiful, horrifying statues of amber, their final expressions of terror preserved for eternity.
Deacon Reverie Noire's head snapped towards the Baron. Her impassive mask finally cracked, not with anger, but with a sharp, focused intensity. Her amethyst eyes narrowed, no longer looking at a gang leader, but at a genuine threat. The distortion was not a block or a counter; it was a subversion of her own authority, a corruption of her command over the mystical.
Lutz was on the corridor that led into the Main Hall, he had taken out his revolver and was carefully placing his shots, having taken out two of the Church's men.
"Holy shit, this is crazy, all types of otherworldly abilities are being thrown out left and right, if Im not careful, i could die just from the collateral damage."
Lutz couldn't concentrate fully on the fight because he had to focus all his senses on the shadows, one of the sun charms was in his hand, ready to be injected with spirituality and thrown, he was waiting for the danger lurking in the shadows to appear.
"Not being able to wear Umbra in this situation really is problematic".
Back in the main Hall, Karl conjured a wave of fire ravens who went flying throughout the room, leaving a trail of blazing sparks.
They traveled at high speeds, heading directly for a group of the Church's forces.
A man was just about to be carbonized by them when-
"Sea wave"
A potent stream of dark blue water was summoned out of nowhere and propelled towards the group, swallowing everything in that direction, putting out the fire ravens, this was yet another spell corresponding to the Mystery Pryers. Deacon Reverie saved them by a hair.
On the other side, Karl stood with a expression of annoyance. "This woman has a extremely wide range of abilities available to her, they might require an incantation but its still very troublesome."
The numbers of both sides was seeing a reduction, with the Vipers being in slight disadvantage.
"Gunther, our numbers are getting short, should we retreat deeper into the warehouse? We'll be at a disadvantage here in the open."
Next to him, his brother agreed. "Men, come deeper into the warehouse! We'll fight them inside our walls!"
As he said that, he took a Gold Hammer coin out of his pocket.
Karl on the other side, focused flames on his hands, he then kneeled and splatted them against the ground, creating a small explosion that lifted up the dust in the room and created a flaming wall, this was a diversion to let the Vipers retreat safely.
After seeing this, Reverie went out of her cover and recited yet another incantation while slashing the air in front of her with an open palm.
"Wind"
But just as she finished performing this action, she saw that a heavy golden coin had fallen and was bouncing on the ground directly in front of her. This was Bribe: Weaken, and she had just accepted it.
A strong gush of wind came out and made its way towards the area in front of her, with the intent to clear the dust and flaming wall so that her men could stop the retreat of the Vipers, but since she had been weakened a moment before, the wave of wind lacked the necessary force.
With the distraction created by Karl, the remaining dozen of vipers managed to make their way to the hallway that marked the exit to the main entrance hall, except for 1 unlucky soul who got caught in the Church's gunfire.
With this supernatural, chaotic battle going on inside the warehouse, a tall man with tied ginger hair stood in the outside of the warehouse, facing the side entrance, accompanied by 5 men.