A night of gory screams followed. With a black corset covering her toned torso and heavy breasts, the vampiric medusa, or vannorin as most scholars dubbed them, snuck on and exsanguinated each of the huntmasters. They didn’t have the time to scream, to rebel against their fate or strive for salvation. No, they crumbled, one after the other like gagged babes before a crocodile.
Only the growls and barks of the thrashing blood hunters could potentially warn bystanders of the ineffective police’s misery. On the one hand, this vannorin could compare to a top-level High Emissary, while on the other hand, the huntmasters failed to realize that the mauve mist...was her body.
As long as they remained in that mist, she could appear and disappear as she pleased, and even dull their senses. With their inferior abilities, how could they compete? Before the battle started, they were already dead. Holding the last huntmaster’s neck in her jaw, the vannorin dragged him back to the city’s center, and had her snakes wrap and pull the 11 others alongside their blood hunters. Piling them all up to form a grand tower, the vannorin placed her last meal on top, and snapped her fingers.
One red pentagram condensed and swirled at her left, as a pole of solidified blood surged from the ground to impale the corpse-tower.
“As macabre as she’s beautiful,” Kilian thought, for beneath the monstrous hide, the vannorin hid quite the beauty. While she kept the upper half of her face hidden by a blindfold, from the contours, nose and lips, Kilian could imagine the beauty hiding under all the fiendish facade.
With her enemies dispatched, the vannorin lady turned from the slaughter, keen to vanish into the night—she wouldn’t. A dome of black light split the mauve mist screen from above, and from it, an armored man emerged. With the horned, alien-like helmet of a demon knight, a majestic obsidian armor and large energy wings, he appeared like a figure straight out of a sheltered princess’ nightmares.
His visor glowed crimson, and arms folded, the armored man dropped on the ground, facing his monstrous foe with naked indifference.
“I didn’t expect that on this trip, I’d joust with a Fehl Beast. That’s about 100 times better than a blooddrinker. I wonder, who are you that Oliver only leaves this motley crew to deal with you?” Kilian asked, and modified by his helmet, his voice echoed like a cacophony of infernal voices.
With her attention snatched by Kilian’s appearance, the vannorin stared into his scarlet visor, neither advancing nor retreating. But as he met her gaze, Kilian frowned. Fehl was a name, a race, an Arcane Discipline, a plane, but most importantly, a taint. Just like dra was omnipresent, permeating all corners of the world, Fehl existed in all places, in every breath, in water, in the sky and the earth. All breathed it, but in some, it would one day trigger a reaction: the Fehl Taint.
Most arcane researchers claimed the taint linked to an unidentifiable gene present in some but absent in the many. Others, however, believed Fehl sentient, and that in its perpetual depravity, it chose its victims. Regardless of the truth, those tainted by Fehl would instantly develop a mutation, becoming Fehl Mutants.
If there was one thing the world didn’t tolerate, it was the Fehl Taint. Though made superior to their peers, Fehl Mutants typically started out harmless, but once they developed Fehl Magic, the taint would gradually worsen until they finally morphed into Fehl Beasts—creatures of pure madness driven solely by hedonism and destruction.
Who could tolerate them?
That added to the fact that mutants and beasts aside, only Fehl Daemons could use that horribly powerful magic, regardless of race or affiliations, all hunted the Fehl-tainted. For those unable to conceal their mutations, dark forests and secluded cults were their sole options.
With pureblooded humans, random mutations occurred. But in others, the result always was the same. Bloodkins for example always became vannorin.
However, despite the Fehl Taint, Kilian could see that the Vannorin Fehl Beast before him retained her full mental faculties.
How did she accomplish that? No, if she could accomplish that, she no longer was a Fehl Beast but a genuine daemoness.
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“Who are you? A dog of the Arcadian Empire, or of the Technocracy?” She asked as her snake hair hissed in expectation. Behind his helmet, Kilian’s eyelids twitched.
“It’s been centuries since the Technocracy fell. As for the Arcadian Empire, it doesn’t have this much swagger,” Kilian leisurely replied and stepped forward. Feeling the threatening aura rising from his armored form, the vannorin lady stretched her clawed hands out.
“Third Circle Spell: Hellstorm.” With no arcane gestures, three pentagram-shaped circles appeared above her head, firing a deluge of red lightning bolts and barbaric, dark wind squalls that barreled into Kilian.
His black energy wings glittered in their stygian shade, the lightning bolts skewered his blurring form, and he reappeared behind the vannorin to place an armored kiss on the nape of her neck.
“How can you start a relationship with lightning bolts? With such a fiery temper, you will never find a husband—might as well marry me,” Kilian jested, but incensed by the words, the vannorin spun and swept her claws at his protected neck. The move hadn’t reached Kilian that he bashed his right fist into the vannorin’s abdomen, releasing five dark blades that shot from his knuckles and skewered the enraged lady.
But while her mauve blood spilled from five holes, the vannorin flew backward from the fist’s impact and crashed into the adjacent wall.
“In my human form, I am not your match. But once I don this armor, throughout Nargoz, not many can withstand my blows. Why don’t you do the both of us a favor and give up?” Kilian seriously asked, but taking the words as insults, the vannorin leaped from the rubble, soared into the sky, and with her tail zigzagging at her back, she dropped on Kilian.
Lunging at the vannorin with an elbow strike, Kilian struck her neck, but watched her collapse in mauve mist to reappear as his left. Defying gravity, he spun to stab her heart, but again she faded and rematerialized above him.
Throwing his leg like a scorpion tail, Kilian struck the daemoness’ temple, but now she stood at his back.
“You lost,” she whispered. Like Kilian realized beforehand, the mist was her body. Unless it vanished, she could dissipate and reappear wherever it stood. But bent in such a twisted position, no human one could escape her grasp, or so she thought.
As with the huntmasters, the vannorin wrapped around Kilian’s neck and limbs, aiming to crush armor and bones with her tail’s overpowering grip—a fatal mistake. Two cannons sprouted from Kilian’s lower back, firing beams of condensed blue dra that hit the daemonic creature point blank. At the same time, Kilian’s wings kicked into gear, and while the shafts of light blasted his foe several meters away, he flew out of her range, then dove back to slam into her like a flaming meteor.
Battered like a ragdoll, the vannorin cratered and spurted a large moutful of blood. Kilian stretched out his arms, causing mini-dra-cannons and gatling lasers to sprout from his torso, hands, knees and shoulders. At the same time, the Fallen Angel Armor released Dra Vacuums that siphoned all the mauve mist and left the vannorin defenseless.
“That, beautiful, is how you win,” Kilian chided before unloading unending rounds of sky-blue dra beams and lasers on his collapsed foe. Stone, dust and burning smoke sprang up as the relentless dra strike battered the weakened vannorin.
But while her lifeforce dwindled, a massive scarlet energy shield sprang up, repelling the full-force of his artillery, and buying the vannorin enough time to turn into a sanguine mist and escape through the ground.
Crack
By the time Kilian’s beams and laser rounds crushed the blood barrier, the vannorin was long gone. But instead of examining her escape path, Kilian spun toward the royal palace and flew toward it.