Karl didn't hesitate. The moment his feet hit the ground, he was charging again, a predator closing the final yards.
Reverie Noire's expression remained impassive, but her mind was recalculating. Stopping his momentum was paramount. Her hand came up, fingers splayed. "Freezing Light."
A stream of crystal-clear, azure light, cold enough to still the air, shot from her palm and engulfed the charging Pyromaniac.
Karl had expected something like this, the moment he began charging, the air around him shimmered as he wreathed himself in a thick, roaring armor of flames, a mobile forge hurling itself at its creator.
The impact was solid. Karl grunted, his forward momentum halting as the world turned to ice around him. The fiery armor he'd conjured met the absolute cold in a violent contest of elements, hissing and screaming like a living thing. For a terrifying second, he was a statue wreathed in steam and dying flame.
Then, he took a step forward.
The stream of light faded. Karl stood, his armor gone, his clothes stiff with rime, his skin pale and covered in a faint, glistening sheen of frost. He shuddered, a full-body tremor, and a puff of frigid air escaped his lips. 'Too close. Without Bribe: weaken, I'd be a frozen monument.' The thought was a flash of cold terror, quickly buried under a wave of renewed fury. He was still standing.
He was upon her.
A short sword was in his hand, pulled from his belt in a single motion. He willed it, and the blade erupted into hot flames. The air crackled.
He lunged, the flaming sword a blur aimed at her neck in a decapitating arc.
Reverie's amethyst eyes widened a fraction. She had misjudged his resilience, instead of retreating she had chosen to attack, an irrational action. The time for complex spells was over. Instinct and training took over. She pointed a single finger at his center of mass, the incantation short and sharp.
"Numb."
A green luster, quick as a viper's strike, shot from her fingertip and struck Karl in the chest.
He froze. Not from cold, but from a magical paralysis that locked his muscles mid-action. His charge ended abruptly, his body rigid, the flaming sword held high but unable to complete its deadly descent.
But he had been too close. The tip of the blazing blade, following through on its momentum, caught her as she twisted away. It sliced through the fabric of her robe and seared a deep, angry wound across her left shoulder and down her arm. The smell of burnt silk and scorched flesh filled the air. A sharp, pained hiss escaped her clenched teeth. It was the first real injury she had sustained.
"Now! Fire!" one of the remaining Church soldiers shouted.
Five revolvers were leveled at the immobilized Karl. The Baron, from his position, his face a mask of cold fury, acted instantly. His only hand came up, fingers twisting. "Distort."
The air around Karl warped. Bullets meant for his heart and head veered wildly. One whipped past his cheek, another buried itself in the floor at his feet.
But the Baron was wounded, his concentration split. He couldn't catch them all.
Two projectiles found their mark.
THWUMP. A bullet, superheated by steam pressure, tore into the side of Karl's thigh, spinning him partway around. A grunt of pain was forced from his paralyzed lungs.
SPLAT. The second shot took off most of his right ear in a spray of blood and cartilage. The force of it snapped his head to the side.
The Numb spell broke under the shock of the impacts. Karl collapsed to one knee, his sword clattering to the floor, its flames dying. He clutched his bleeding thigh, his head ringing, blood pouring down the side of his neck from the ruin of his ear.
The Baron's gaze met his brother's for a split second—a look of shared pain and fury. They had drawn her blood, but the cost was escalating brutally.
Reverie Noire stood, clutching her seared shoulder, her breath slightly quickened. She looked from the kneeling Karl to the pale, one-handed Baron.
A smile, cold and utterly devoid of mirth, touched Reverie Noire's lips. The searing pain in her shoulder was a stark reminder of her vulnerability, a sensation she despised with passion. While Karl summoned a roaring wall of flame to block the line of sight of the remaining soldiers, the Deacon's hand moved to the inner pocket of her coat. She produced a small, yellowed scroll made with thick and old paper. Unrolling it with a flick of her wrist, she held it aloft.
Her voice, still resonant despite the chaos, uttered a single word in Hermes. "Restoration."
This was an ability corresponding to a sequence 6 Scrolls Professor of the Mystery Pryer Pathway.
A soft, green luster emanated from the scroll and enveloped her wounded shoulder. The Baron and Karl watched, a fresh wave of grim realization washing over them. The charred flesh knitted together with unnatural speed, the angry red wound sealing shut into a fresh, pink scar. The pain visibly eased from her expression, though a stiffness remained in her movement. It was enough. She had just negated their hardest-won advantage.
'Of course she came prepared,' the Baron thought, his mind a whirlwind of cold fury. 'She has an answer for everything. A walking armory.' His own missing hand throbbed in phantom agony.
Karl's wall of fire roared, keeping the soldiers at bay, but his face was ashen beneath the soot and blood. The loss of his ear was a distracting, throbbing misery, and the revolver shot in his thigh was a ticking clock on his mobility. He glanced at his brother, seeing the same calculation in his eyes. They were running out of time, out of tricks, and their enemy had just refreshed her hand.
"The scroll is a consumable artifact," the Baron said, his voice low and urgent. "She can't have many of those."
"Doesn't matter if we're dead before she runs out," Karl grunted, shifting his weight off his wounded leg with a wince. The wall of flames flickered slightly with his wavering concentration.
Reverie's amethyst eyes assessed them over the fiery barrier. The smirk was gone, replaced by that familiar, dispassionate analysis. She had stabilized herself. Now it was time to end this. She began another low, chanting incantation, the words too soft to hear clearly but the building power in the air was unmistakable.
Lutz hobbled down a narrow corridor, the pain in his left calf a white-hot brand with every step. The sounds of the main battle were a muffled storm behind him, but the more immediate threat was the thing he knew was following. The air grew colder the further he went, the shadows deepening despite the fiery glow reflecting from the main hall.
Ahead, the rickety staircase to the second floor loomed like a promise of salvation and a potential deathtrap. He forced himself up the first few steps, his grip tight on the railing. Almost there. Just need to reach the drop point.
His hand dipped to his belt, fingers finding one of the two remaining small cloth bags. He didn't need to look; the feel of the coarse fabric and the slight grittiness within told him it was the Follyglue mix. With practiced speed, he undid the knot one-handed, the bag now loose and ready in his palm.
He risked a glance back down the corridor.
It was there. A mass of writhing flesh and blood, moving with a liquid, horrifying speed, silently flowing over the floor and walls. It was closer than he'd thought, much closer. The Rose Bishop had shed any pretense of human form, becoming a tidal wave of corrupted biology.
Panic, cold and sharp, lanced through him. He hurled the bag down the stairs, the contents spraying out in a cloud of grey powder and purple specks.
But the thing that had been Sett didn't even slow. With Krieg out of combat, the Judge's Balancer and It's prohibition dissolved, the shadows were once again its domain. Just as the Follyglue cloud spread, the fleshy mass seemed to dissolve, merging seamlessly with the deep shadows cast by the stairwell. The powders settled harmlessly on empty floorboards.
A moment later, the mass re-coalesced at the foot of the stairs, already beginning its ascent. It didn't run; it flowed, a nightmare given form.
Lutz's heart hammered against his ribs. 'Shit. No, please, no.' He turned and scrambled up the remaining stairs, his injured leg screaming in protest. He burst onto the second-floor landing. The air was thicker with smoke up here, the heat more intense. The fire was spreading fast.
He could feel it behind him—a chilling presence, a void of cold in the overheated air. The shadows in the long, storage-filled loft seemed to stretch and reach for him. He fumbled at his belt, his fingers closing around the last Sun charm. He didn't have time for finesse. He injected a spike of his spirituality into it, feeling the familiar warmth blossom in his palm. It was his last light. His last hope to push back the darkness that was moments from swallowing him whole.
Lutz looked back and he saw it, Sett had abandoned the shadows and leaped towards him with his open hands pointed at him.
'Fucking hell' Without time to react, Lutz took control of his hand with the Sun Charm that was beginning to shine intensely with a mighty and righteous glow, and slammed his hand palm open against Sett's face.
"Eat this, shithead!"
The Sun Charm then activated and illuminated the entire room, erasing all shadows in the vicinity and momentarily blinding Sett, but it wasn't enough, with the leap already in motion, Sett refused to abandon the intent to kill Lutz, his right hand grabbed Lutz's neck as he fell over him.
The world narrowed to the pressure on his throat. Lutz's back hit the rough wooden planks of the second floor, the impact driving the air from his lungs in a choked gasp. Sett's weight was immense, a crushing presence of corrupted flesh and absolute malice. The Rose Bishop's face, still smoldering from the point-blank Sun charm, was a ruined mask of blistered skin and one wildly staring eye. He was blinded, but his grip was instinctual, unerring.
'Fuck, no! It can't end like this!' The thought was a silent scream inside Lutz's skull, more a desperate prayer than coherent words. He could feel the terrifying heat building in the hand clamped around his neck. It wasn't just pressure; it was a preparation. Sett was channeling his power, ready to inject a torrent of boiling, toxic blood directly into his body. It would be a death both agonizing and slow.
Black spots danced at the edges of Lutz's vision from the lack of oxygen. His right hand was still pressing the Sun Charm against Sett's face, his nails digging into the unnaturally morphing flesh, but it was like trying to pry open iron bars. His lungs burned, screaming for air that couldn't get past the constriction. Despair began to seep into his bones. This was it. After all the planning, the betrayals, the heist… to be killed in a flaming dusty loft by a monster. The irony was so bitter.
Tears of pure physiological strain seeped from the corners of his eyes, tracing paths through the grime and blood on his face. His frantic gaze darted around, searching the room on fire for anything—a loose nail, a forgotten tool, a miracle.
His eyes locked on the high, grimy window. And through the grime, he saw it: the Crimson Moon, full and bloated, its bloody light a malevolent eye watching his demise.
And then, like a ghost from a saner time, Lorelei's voice echoed in his memory, sweet and warning. "The whispers and screams will be amplified during a blood moon. Do not wear it at those times. You will instantly lose control."
Umbra.
With the last dregs of his strength, his left hand—the one not feebly clawing at Sett's face—jerked down to his belt pouch. His fingers, numb and clumsy from lack of air, scrambled inside. They brushed against cold, smooth metal, against the spherical gems that felt like drops of congealed blood.
He fumbled it out. His vision was tunneling, the roaring in his ears now the sound of his own brain dying. He looked at Sett's hand on his throat. The grip was absolute, but the little finger… the pinky was lifted slightly, not making full contact, hovering in the air as Sett focused his corrupting power into this claw.
It was a gap. An opportunity. The only one he would get.
As the last vestiges of the Sun charm's light died, plunging them into deeper gloom, Lutz acted. With a final, convulsive effort, he twisted his wrist and slammed the crimson metal ring onto Sett's exposed pinky finger.
The effect was instantaneous and deafening.
Sett's body went rigid. The building heat in his hand vanished. His eyes, wide with pain and rage a moment before, now bulged with a terror that was entirely new. A raw, deafening scream was torn from his throat, a sound that had nothing to do with physical pain and everything to do with a soul being flayed alive.
"UGH! WHAT IS THIS?! GET IT OFF! GET IT OFF!"
His grip on Lutz's neck vanished completely. He recoiled, clawing at his own hand, at the ring, as if it were a white-hot brand. Umbra was a conduit, and on this blood-soaked night, under the gaze of the Blood Moon, that conduit was wide open.