The Bleeding Tower

Chapter Twelve, Part One: Acuity and Execution

"Oho! What do we have here?"

The Blade of the Black Hat stood before the enemy with sword drawn, but no stance. Before him were the Darkwater Treaders, not quite the same as Quick Mutants but fairly close on an anatomical basis. Where the mutants had the heads of animals, these folks had snakes for heads. More specifically the upper halves of snakes, among those before him he spied out mostly black mambas and asps. All women, for the males were usually headed by diamondback rattlers and cobras. At the head of this little platoon was a lilim.

He didn't recognize this one by her face, or voice, as much as by her legs. Vall had perfectly human features, and that included feet. This one had hooves. "Nadd. Daughter of Azandra," he greeted without hiding a shred of his annoyance. "I'm telling you plain, you don't want to fuck with me this afternoon."

She smirked and opened her arms for a hug. "Is that how you greet your cousin?"

"It's how I greet a total stranger," he answered. "Don't make me repeat myself."

Her appropriately serpentine smile faltered, as did her arms. "You're no longer under the Crawford company protection. If not now, then when else would we take what you owe?"

"I owe you and your mutie friends nothing."

"I beg to differ," now she leveled an accusatory finger at him. "See, there are a grand total of five people of your calibur still walking the worlds. One is missing but not confirmed dead, two of them are under the other arcs of the Triumvirate umbrella of protection."

"And two of them just so happen to wander off the narrow road," Carrie simplified. "So you bring your minions to ensnare one of them yourself."

"'Ensnare', oooh," Nadd looked pleased with herself, even brushing a stray lock of raven hair behind her ear. "You give me too much esteem."

"Cut the bullshit, what caused the quake? This area doesn't rest between tectonic plates."

"Seriously? The danger you're facing makes you ask about a shake in the earth?" the lilim smirked and drew a twelfth-century Earth sabre from its scabbard on her hip. "I expected your last words to--"

"Danger?" His eyes rumbled with the fury not of fire, but more like a black hole: capable of swallowing light itself and crunching planets in its wake of pure gravity. "You've got a lot of fucking nerve standing before me, backed up by a tet of snakes with arcane rattle guns and gloating about the 'danger' you possess. You walking, talking flesh light. What were you thinking?"

Then came the brainclap. Where Allison had been trained only to use such a device of psychic offense in a cone, similar to a shotgun blast, he had only known how to repulse in a full three-sixty degree area. Had he not taken a half-step forward beforehand, the doors behind him would be splinters instead of shoved ajar. Made of sterner stuff than her mutant posse, she was the only one not to suffer their fate of being shredded to dust. The fact that she was still standing impressed him, even in his upset. "Just days ago, I almost murdered Vall, a demon of much greater calibur than you could ever fucking dream of matching, while in a state of hypnosis. And all she could take from me was my arm, and even then she couldn't take all of it." Carrie stalked closer with a menacing lack of speed, a casual stroll to butcher the enemy. "I took your legs when I was a fucking child, and you call yourself dangerous! The nerve of you!"

"The Malachite!"

Glowing green tendrils of petrified wood somehow still able to move with living and animated grace washed upon the enemy like a tidal wave. Latching onto all of the snakes with a hardness to repel gunfire, one unfortunate goon met the premature end of having her own heart shredded by a bullet, they pulled these inhuman freaks into the earth that eagerly swallowed them up. The Malachite maintained a presence around Jake, not quite a shell but acting in a fashion not too differently from our arms whenever we're not performing an action with them in a fight. Up and braced, at either side. Only these were more like a nonagon formation of tendrils surrounding his person, and one of them just happened to bat a bullet aside as though it were a gnat. He was quick to react, invoking yet another of his familiars. "The Velvet of Needles!"