The air in the Corridor following the main hall was a solid mass of heat, smoke, and the metallic tang of blood. The Vipers, what was left of them, had been pushed back into a tight defensive semicircle around the corridor leading deeper into the warehouse. The Church's advance was methodical, brutal, but costly. Bodies in beige coats and rough-spun clothes lay intermingled on the oil-soaked, burning floor.
Karl, his face smudged with soot and a cut above his eye, ignored the chaos. His entire world narrowed to the sphere of condensed inferno forming between his hands. He compressed the air, drawing the heat from the surrounding flames, pulling the very essence of combustion into a swirling, white-hot orb. A Church soldier, seeing him preoccupied, took aim. The bullet flew true—then veered sharply upwards, embedding itself in a ceiling beam with a dull thwack. Distortion. The Baron stood calmly behind the line, his flint-like eyes missing nothing, systematically finding the flaws in every attack directed at his brother.
Karl and The Baron possessed a masterful balance of offense and defense, but they were against a true sequence 5, someone one step away from godhood, someone with a wide and varied range of mystical abilities.
The fireball grew, pulsing with contained fury, until Karl had to cradle it with both hands, the heat making the air around him shimmer. With a grunt of effort, he hurled it forward. It wasn't a throw; it was a release. The orb of destruction lumbered through the air, a miniature sun aimed for a collision course with a cluster of four Church soldiers taking cover behind an overturned table.
Reverie Noire's voice cut through the din air, resonant and cold. "Freezing light"
With a gesture of her left hand. A stream of crystal-clear, azure light, so cold it seemed to suck the sound from the air, shot toward the fireball. Its intent was absolute: to flash-freeze the raging conflagration into a harmless, floating sculpture of ice.
But the Baron had been waiting for this. His finger twitched.
The trajectory of the freezing stream wavered slightly. It was not a full deflection, but a nudge. The edge of the azure light grazed the side of the roaring fireball. A quarter of the sphere instantly solidified into a shell of ice, hissing and cracking from the internal heat.
It wasn't enough.
The remaining of the fireball, its integrity compromised, detonated prematurely. The blast was not a clean eruption but a violent, shrapnel-like burst of superheated gas and molten chunks of ice. The two soldiers at the center of the group were vaporized, their forms vanishing in the conflagration. The other two were lifted off their feet and hurled backwards like discarded toys, their bodies slamming into the far wall with sickening crunches before sliding to the floor, unmoving.
The Baron allowed himself a thin, cold smile. He had corrupted the Deacon's perfect counter, turning a contained defeat into a messy, partial victory. The cost of two more soldiers was acceptable. The balance was tipping, ever so slightly.
Reverie assessed the situation. "Tsk, these bastards are taking advantage of the fact that I have to protect my men, while they don't, my vision tells me Krieg's situation isn't good, there was an unknown variable, an additional threat inside the warehouse, it has a degenerate aura, is it that Rose Bishop? What would it be doing here? Is it working with the Vipers, or was he lured in here at the same time as us? Did the Butcher plan all of this? I need to wrap this up as fast as possible, i can feel a fire on the other side of the warehouse, its rapidly expanding."
The Baron's smile was a fleeting thing. It vanished as Reverie Noire, standing amid the chaos like a star of order, lifted her open palm. There was no grand wind-up, just a calm, curling of her fingers.
"Storm."
The word was a hammer blow to the local atmosphere. Directly in front of her, the air convulsed. A patch of darkness, no larger than a carriage, violently materialized into a churning, miniature thunderhead. It didn't hover; it lunged, a black cloud roaring across the entire room. Bolts of lightning, thin and vicious, forked from its heart, striking randomly at the ground, scorching wood and striking down a Viper who was too slow to dive for cover. The thunder was a continuous, deafening roll.
But the Baron and Karl were already moving. They didn't try to counter it; they simply weren't there when it arrived. The Baron took a single, precise step backwards, a bolt sizzling the air where he had stood. Karl dove sideways behind a stout support pillar, the wood splintering where the cloud grazed it.
The storm wasn't the true attack. It was a screen. As the cloud dissipated, it left behind a thick, churning pall of dust, ash, and smoke, reducing visibility to a few meters. The ongoing gunfire from both sides became blind, sporadic pops in the murk. A Church soldier stumbled into a Viper, and the two grappled uselessly in the gloom before a stray shot from one of their own comrades dropped the soldier.
Through this manufactured fog, Reverie acted again. Her hands came together, and between them, a small, complex star of pure starlight spun into existence, humming with captive power. She didn't give them a second to adapt. She crushed it in her fist.
"Starry Amber."
This time, the myriad of dazzling stars that shot forth were different. They didn't fan out in a predictable wave. They flew in intricate, weaving patterns, cutting through the dust cloud like deadly fireflies, their paths erratic and impossible to anticipate until they were mere feet from their targets.
The Baron's eyes, capable of seeing the flaws in a argument or a structure, were useless against this chaotic, sensory-depriving assault. He could hear them zipping through the dust, but by the time one emerged into his limited field of vision, it was too late for a clean distortion. He twisted his body, a star meant for his chest grazing his shoulder instead. But another, homing in on the movement, struck his outstretched right hand.
There was no sound of impact, only a sudden, profound stillness. A wave of translucent, golden amber erupted from the point of contact, engulfing his hand and wrist in a solid, heavy block. The weight was immense, instantly pulling his arm down like a stone. A grunt of surprise and pain was torn from him. He was anchored.
Karl, relying on pure physical prowess, was a whirlwind of motion. He ducked, weaved, and contorted his body with impossible agility, the dazzling stars missing him by inches, one searing a line across his cheek. He saw his brother's predicament immediately.
"Gunther!"
Reverie Noire did not pause. She had drawn first blood. Another miniature star was already spinning above her palm. She held it, her amethyst eyes locked on the Baron, and gave a slight, almost delicate, curl of one finger.
"Stardust Pillar"
The star began to spin faster, losing its defined points, collapsing into a single, blinding point of light. At the same time, a faint, shimmering outline of a vertical pillar of pure starlight began to manifest around the Baron's location.
The air within that designated area began to hum, vibrating at a frequency that felt wrong.
"Move!" Karl roared, his voice raw with a fear he rarely showed.
The Baron didn't need the warning. The feeling of imminent, total annihilation was a physical pressure. He threw himself to the side, his mind working at a fever pitch even as his body moved. He couldn't distort the spell itself. But he could distort its range. He focused his will on the edges of the shimmering outline, pouring his energy into a desperate, corkscrewing distortion of space.
"Distort!" he gasped, the word a ragged thing.
The shimmering pillar's diameter wavered, shrinking by a critical few inches.
It was enough to save his life. But not enough to save him entirely.
The pillar materialized fully. There was no explosion, no flash of light. It was a silent, perfect erasure. Everything within its circumference—a section of the wooden floor, a discarded musket, the body of a dead Viper—simply vanished. It was as if an eraser of pure nothingness had been stamped into reality.
The Baron screamed. A short, choked-off sound of sheer agony. His left hand, from the fingertips to just above the wrist, had been inside the boundary. It was gone. Not severed. Not burned. Erased. The wound was perfectly smooth, perfectly circular, and for a horrifying second, bloodless. Then, a torrent of crimson poured forth.
Karl was at his side in an instant, his face a mask of fury. He grabbed the Baron's amber-encased right arm to steady him, his other hand glowing with intense heat. He pressed it against the clean, gaping wound on the left. The sizzle of burnt flesh and the Baron's choked pain were drowned out by the final, frantic exchanges of gunfire around them.
The Baron's breath came in ragged gasps, his face pale from shock. Karl's searing of the wound had been a brutal, necessary act, the stench of cauterized flesh a testament to their desperation. As Karl melted the amber encasing his brother's other hand with a focused jet of flame, the Baron's mind, sharp even through the pain, had been working.
"Karl, listen," he gritted out, his voice tight. "I've identified her flaw."
Karl's eyes, glowing like banked coals, flicked to his brother's face as he melted the last of the amber. "What is it?"
"We cannot beat her at a distance. She'll always have time to choose a spell from her arsenal and recite the corresponding incantation. Her versatility is her strength, but the incantation is the crack in the armor. We need to get in close quarters. You'll need to trust me."
A grim, determined smile touched Karl's lips. "You got it."
As the last of the amber fell away, the very floorboards at their feet erupted. Thin, whip-like vines and grasping roots shot upwards, seeking to entangle their legs and arms. Ensnare. Reverie was already layering her attacks, denying them any respite. Reverie had used Ensnare.
Karl didn't break his stride. With a roar, he expelled a wave of fire from his entire body, a blooming nova of heat that instantly turned the nascent plants to ash and sent a wall of heat rolling outwards. The Baron, his movements slightly stiff from pain and shock, dodged the remaining, half-charred tendrils with efficient, economical movements.
"Go!" the Baron commanded, his voice cutting through the sizzle of dying vegetation.
Karl was already a blur of motion. He launched himself forward, not in a straight line, but in a zig-zagging sprint that ate up the distance between them and the Deacon. A Church soldier, seeing the opening, raised his revolver. Karl didn't even look; he simply leaned his torso, and the bullet passed through the space his heart had occupied a moment before. Another shot from a different angle was met with a dismissive flick of Karl's wrist, a tiny, precise flame intercepting the bullet mid-air, causing it to drop, molten, to the floor.
As Karl charged, the Baron's remaining hand dove into his coat pocket. He emerged with two gold Hammer coins, their faces gleaming in the firelight. His movements were deliberate and calculated. He threw the first coin directly at Reverie Noire herself, a spinning arc of gold. It was a simple, obvious projectile.
Reverie saw it coming. Her analytical mind categorized it instantly: a desperate, monetary distraction. She lifted her hand before her and recited "Wind" in hermes, causing a gush of wind to blow the coin away before it reached her. She had successfully avoided the "Bribe." A faint, almost imperceptible smirk might have touched her lips.
The Baron's second coin wasn't aimed at her. It was aimed at the ceiling above and slightly behind her. It spun upwards, a much subtler throw, easily lost in the chaos of Karl's advance and the first, obvious coin.
Karl was almost upon her. Reverie's focus narrowed. She opened her palm, her voice resonating with power. "Ocean."
A wall of dark, churning seawater, smelling of salt and deep places, materialized before her and surged forward, filling the corridor of the room, a tidal wave meant to sweep Karl off his feet and drown him in its mystical current.
But Karl had anticipated a area-denial attack. As the wave formed, he planted his foot and leapt, a powerful, soaring jump that carried him over the crest of the rushing water. Perfect, Reverie thought, her mind already moving three steps ahead. His trajectory was now fixed, a predictable arc through the air. He was utterly vulnerable.
She was ready. Her hand shot out, fingers curling as if gripping an invisible throat. The words of Hermes were cold and precise. "Hand of Mysteries."
In mid-air, Karl gasped. An invisible, vice-like force clamped around his neck. He could feel the individual fingers, cold and unyielding, cutting off his air. A triumphant light shone in Reverie's eyes. This was the end.
She began to swing her arm, intending to slam him with bone-shattering force into the nearest stone pillar.
But the force… faltered.
Instead of a brutal, decisive impact, the throw was weak, clumsy. It felt like trying to swing a heavy sack with a threadbare rope. Karl was thrown from his trajectory, but it was more of a shove than a slam. He hit the pillar shoulder-first, the impact jarring but far from lethal, and dropped to the ground, coughing and clutching his throat, but very much alive.
Reverie stared, bewildered. What had gone wrong?
Then she heard it. A soft cling behind her.
Her head turned. A second gold Hammer coin, the one she had never seen, lay spinning on the floor where it had fallen after bouncing off the ceiling. It settled, glinting mockingly in the firelight.
The Baron's voice cut through the momentary silence, cold and corrosive. "It's not a good look for a church officer to be accepting bribes from the underworld"
This was Corrosion, it would cause the affected individuals to become increasingly greedy and dark, performing irrational actions.
Karl pushed himself to his feet, a fresh, dangerous fury in his eyes.