Some sooner than others, but all to be extinguished, no matter the jewels in which they lived.
Lucian saw a few leech parasites in one of the buildings, the parasites growing on a group gathered around an outdoor fire pit on a patio with views of the Upper West Side.
He thought about engaging them as eyes began to lift from their bodies, tracking him.
In the end he continued onward, looking for something stronger, a not-so-insignificant part of him hoping that something would come after him.
A Death Hunter right about now would be great.
Even if he had to go after Wyatt later, he could always take a nap between now and then, and if he didn’t find time to rest, there was Yoshimi’s potion.
Lucian burst out of a thick window overlooking 57th street.
He turned toward Lexington Avenue, flying above the pedestrians, his thoughts shifting from his brother’s condition to what he could do about it.
And there was only one thing he could do about it.
Grow stronger.
Dipping down toward a crowd of pedestrians, Lucian registered several death dates, nothing out of the ordinary until he saw a parasite he couldn’t remember seeing before.
A man with a thick neck in a tracksuit, his hair slicked back and gold jewelry hanging from his neck, waited impatiently to cross the street, a small, brain-like parasite with feelers suckling at the back of his skull.
Lucian swooped down to address the parasite, his claws growing out of his fingers as he reached it.
Much to his surprise, Lucian’s body was cut in two when the parasite emitted a searing blast of sound, which caused a wave of force to make a crater in the pavement, the pedestrians suddenly gone as Lucian’s plane of existence changed.
Cursing himself for not equipping his armor, Lucian crawled away from the parasite, his cape spiraling off his body and moving to retrieve his legs.
Lucian’s crows zipped toward the parasite as did his two Grim Mechas, who had been following at a good enough distance behind him that, for a moment, he’d forgotten they were still guarding him.
His armor cascading down the top half of his body, Lucian managed to turn himself in time to avoid another attack from the parasite, a grin forming on his face as he realized he’d come across an actual challenge.
His shoulder-mounted cannon appeared and began firing at the parasite, which screeched and hissed like a cat stuck in an itchy burlap sack.
Lucian’s MX-11 took shape as he flipped to his belly, his cape dropping his lower half directly behind him so he could mend.
His first shot caused the parasite to double in size. His second shot had the creature writhing as bulges in its body began to pop, Lucian certain that he was close to finishing the parasite.
Feeling his legs again, Lucian kicked back, his crows whipping around him yet again as they tore into the parasite’s large, feeler-covered body, its skin going from black to a lighter gray color as it formed a pair of legs.
Lucian conjured a line of injurecrows and sent them to the demon bug, the explosions causing enough debris to kick up that it created a cloud that momentarily obscured the parasite, Lucian aiming his MX-11 at the space where he’d last seen the monster.
The smoke cleared.
The parasite was gone.
Lucian glanced around, his Grim Mechas rising just a bit higher than him, their weapons scanning the ground.
“Did… did you see where it went?” Lucian asked Hugin, who hovered just in front of him.
“It must be around here somewhere,” said his spherical creation.
Lucian turned, and as he did, he noticed something moving behind the glass windows of the building.
The creature exploded out of the window, no longer a parasite, now in the form of a man.
It tackled Lucian, the two careening to the ground, tendrils twisting off its body as it opened a terrible maw, not unlike the mouth of an injuresoul.
The eyeless, humanoid form clearly didn’t expect Lucian to punch it in the mouth, Lucian’s two mandible claws growing out of his knuckles and pressing through the back of the parasite’s skull.
Even as it chomped its teeth down, severing Lucian’s arm, his attack held strong, legs popping out of his forearm and stabilizing themselves by digging into the demon bug’s head.
As the parasite tried to bat Lucian’s severed arm away, he blasted it with electricity and fire from his free palm. Standing now, he approached the humanoid parasite from the front as his Grim Mechas approached from the side.
They cornered the monstrosity, his mechas digging into the demon bug with their bladed arms, Lucian equipping his lava sword and swinging at the monster, the three of them hacking away at it.
The parasite continued to screech as they brought it down, the creature finally dying, a burst of light pouring into Lucian’s chest, his bone armor filtering away.
He immediately accessed his Soul Points to see what the parasite was worth.
“Four points?” Lucian grumbled. “After all that?”
He looked to the spot where the parasite had just been, what was left of the creature now a bloody mess of viscera.
Lucian knew he’d have to see to Wyatt first, but after that, he’d really need to get a handle on locating other Death Hunters.
If Wyatt didn’t give him enough power to save his brother, Lucian may have to change his opinion on only hunting Deaths that hunted other Deaths.
Once his arm regrew, Lucian floated toward Fifth Avenue, his hands behind his back as he spun in the air. He dipped down through a tourist bus and landed, his Grim Mechas floating behind him as he watched the endless swarm of people from all walks of life coexist, their death dates innumerable, their parasites practically begging him to go after them.
Lucian sat for a moment, enjoying the scene, the bells of the Saint Thomas Church sounding off, no one paying attention to the beautiful gothic structure and how odd it was sitting in the center of a busy shopping district.
A few angels appeared on top of the church, ones Lucian didn’t recognize.
Rather than disappear, and secretly looking for a fight, Lucian summoned a wall of injurecrows, which he sent spiraling toward the pair of male angels. They exploded into the spires of the church, the angels turning to him, spears appearing in their hands.
The two descended, Lucian rising to meet them with his scythe this time, playing the part.
Recalling his brother’s situation, something moved through Lucian at that moment, a fit of anger he wasn’t quite expecting.
It channeled through him, his armor hardening just as he engaged the first angel, driving his scythe into the man’s shoulder.
Cleaving down, Lucian hacked into the top of his skull, and tossed himself into the other angel, this one letting out a grunt as he tried to grab Lucian.
His shoulder-mounted cannon saw to that, blasting the second angel in the face.
What would have possibly been absorbed at a distance was too much in close proximity, the shot taking off the angel’s head, his body cascading to the ground.
Blood trickling down his cheeks, the other angel cracked Lucian in the side with his spear, Lucian’s Grim Mechas coming in from both sides as they had done to the strange parasite just a few minutes ago, completely skewering the angel.
“Bring him,” Lucian said, a thought coming over him as he looked down to the streets, the headless angel below now lying in a crater, his wings trying to push him upright.
He dropped to the angel, landing on top of him, his spiked whip appearing in his hand.
Feeling absolutely brutal, thirsting for enough power to do something about his brother, and equally annoyed by the Progeny of Light in general, Lucian’s thoughts far away from Danira at that moment, he wrapped the whip around the angel’s wings, tying them off and preventing him from flying.
His Grim Mechas appeared with the other angel, who was a bloody mess by that point, his armor in disarray, the angel’s head hung, a portion o
f his skull now missing.
Lucian equipped his particle-beam cannon.
He aimed it at the angel he had sort of tied up, and started his weapon’s charge.
“You… they won’t let you live, demon,” the angel being held by his Grim Mechas growled. “You’ll… you’ll die for this.”
“Nah,” said Lucian, triggering his weapon.
He blasted the angel on the ground, the man not able to scream out due to his missing head. Even as his weapon heated up, he kept up the pressure until the angel exploded into a cloud of blood.
Then light.
More light than Lucian had ever seen before, the energy firing up into the air and then twisting straight into his chest.
“I knew it was possible,” Lucian whispered, absolutely stunned as his Soul Points materialized.
Lucian turned his attention to the other angel, who struggled to get away, a look of shock painting over his face. “Hold him steady,” he told his Grim Mechas, Lucian not able to stop the grin that was spreading beneath his mask.
Chapter Eleven: Blinded
Lucian paced back and forth along the beach in Portland, Maine, ignoring the man who was, once again, moving up and down the shoreline with his metal detector searching for treasure.
Lucian had grown stronger by three-thousand Soul Points by killing the two angels, but he’d also killed two angels, and he really had no idea how that would sit if Danira found out.
Or more appropriately, once she found out.
He pinched the bridge of his nose, unaware of how information moved amongst the Progeny of Light.
Lucian was certain that they were a much more tight-knit community than the Progeny of Darkness. They had to be.
No, it would be naive of him to think that word wouldn’t eventually reach Danira that one of his kind had killed two angels, which meant he would need to get out ahead of it. He didn’t know if they would be certain who’d done it, but she had mentioned before that they had eyes everywhere, or something of the sort.
“I’m fucked,” Lucian surmised, his cape bunching up a little to massage his shoulders as a pair of seagulls passed overhead, one of them carrying a scrap of something in its beak.
A portal opened, Mastima stepping out in her dark robes which somehow managed to also nicely accent her form.
She pressed her hood back as her robes swelled around her, her completely black eyes falling on Lucian, no light reflecting off them, literal black holes.
“What did you do?” she asked.
“Me?”
She blinked as a response.
Lucian had the notion to lie to her. But he also had the urge to get what had just happened off his chest, and he knew it wasn’t like the female Death was friendly enough with Danira to tell her what happened.
“I got stronger,” he finally said after the two had stared each other down for a moment.
“How?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Who did you kill?”
Lucian’s two Grim Mechas lowered behind him, a show of muscle, the two completely silent.
“You wouldn’t know them.”
“Them?” an indecipherable look stretched across the female Death’s face.
“Yes.”
“You can be quite the nuisance,” she finally said, following this up with an exasperated sigh.
“Am I really that bad?”
Mastima didn’t respond.
“Yet you’ve decided to partner with me anyway,” he told her, not able to hide his shit-eating grin.
“Becoming a true Death Hunter will lead you down the same path Wyatt has found himself on, constantly wanting to grow stronger and bringing on more powerful foes in the process. I would like you to keep that in mind when you decide to go after your next target,” she said bitterly.
“What about an Angel Hunter?”
Mastima followed up her gasp with a cracked grin, one that took Lucian off guard. “Why do I get the feeling that your angel-friend isn’t going to like that news?”
“And she doesn’t need to know that news,” he said, suddenly feeling as if the spotlight had been shined on him.
“Word travels relatively quickly, but I am assuming, or at least hoping, that you already knew that, that you knew that when you took those angels’ lives,” she said, her words cutting into Lucian. “Regardless. Your secret is safe with me; although, I should say, doing things like that is going to make it harder for us to smooth out relations with the Progeny of Light. As a reminder: we’re hoping to end whatever war is to come, not perpetuate it.”
“Then why are you grinning?”
“I’m grinning because of the hell Life has put me through over the last couple hundred years and how I’ve never actually been able to kill one. And I’m stronger than you.”
Lucian nodded, recalling the slightly intimidating female Death cutting through injuresouls.
“It’s less common than you think,” she continued. “Perhaps some new angels decided to come after you, or maybe you’re stronger than even I anticipated.”
“They came at me; I was in a bad mood and I took matters into my own hands. It could be that.”
“How bad of a mood?”
“Do you really want to go there?” Lucian asked, recalling what he had seen at his brother’s home.
“Ah, family related then. I should clarify what I meant by ‘new angels.’ There are no new angels, but they could have been fresh reincarnations.”
“Either way, it wasn’t something I was actively trying to do,” Lucian said as he noticed a glimmer in the sky, signaling Danira’s arrival. “Not a word.”
Mastima smirked, Lucian still thrown off by seeing the woman grin. “Like I said, our little secret.”
Danira landed, her armor slowly rippling down her arms and legs as her two cherub crows spiraled around her body. “What?” she asked the two.
“Nothing,” Lucian said, averting his gaze.
“Shall we go?” asked Mastima, a portal already starting to open.
The sun felt larger with the desert stretching beneath it, an endless sea of sand and critters all keeping low to the ground, many sticking to the burros and other shaded areas they could find. Cumulus clouds above did little to dapple the sun’s brightness, the glowing orb a witness to all.
Danira, Lucian, and Mastima stood on the paved road that sat before the ring of trailers half a mile out, all with their weapons drawn and their armor equipped, cracks in the asphalt stretching before them.
As usual, Lucian was clad in his bone armor, the hardened skull mask formed over his face, the bony outer glaze adding a sharpness to his cheeks.
His shoulder-mounted cannon was ready to go, lava sword in one hand and his newly upgraded MX-11 in his other, a halo of purple light radiating around its muzzle, something that immediately caught Danira’s eye.
“That’s a nice touch,” she said knowingly, the angel in her golden armor, her enormous weapon held across her chest with the halo around the muzzle of her gun similar to Lucian’s. Her mask melted down her face, hardening, covering her mouth.
“Thanks, I’m pretty good at coming up with these kinds of things,” Lucian said snidely as he looked to Mastima to see that she was equally armored, although she hadn’t gone with the bone motif as Lucian had, preferring a blackened metal that had a bit of a glaze to it that made it semi-reflective.
“Shall we?” the female Death asked.
“Let’s,” said Lucian, ready to get this over with.
The three made their way through the swath of land that separated the trailers from the highway, Lucian’s mechas behind him, Hugin and Munin leading a towering wall of injurecrows.
The cacti mostly died off as they walked, the ground hardening, more cracks appearing.
Lucian had the notion of summoning Grimzilla, but he also felt that this wasn’t quite the fight for that, his biggest creation more appropriate for larger-scale fights.
No, this was going to be a mo
re intimate battle, Wyatt and the injuresouls he’d captured versus Lucian’s ragtag bunch, who were going in with a plan now.
Mastima had detailed their strategy on the beach before they left, which wasn’t too different from what they’d gone with during their last fight.
Only now there had been clarity added to it, and they knew what to expect.
Mastima and his mechas would deal with the injuresouls.
Lucian’s crows and spherical IEDs would add to the bedlam while Danira and Lucian kept their sights set on Wyatt.
They approached the ring of trailers, Lucian’s replicants fanning out, Hugin and Munin pressing forward with their injurecrows, enough that they temporarily blotted out the sun.
A flash on the roof of the north-facing trailer drew Lucian’s attention.
“I thought you three had given up,” Wyatt said, the man suddenly standing there with his two revolvers, a musket of sorts strapped to his back this time, a cigarette hanging from his lip. The ends of his duster curled into the air as the doors of the trailer popped open, injuresouls appearing.
A question came to Lucian at that moment, one that only had a second or so to play out before he sprang into action: how was Wyatt controlling the bandage-wrapped monsters? This begged a follow-up question: how could Lucian learn to do that?
The thought fizzled away as Lucian bolted forward, his first blast absorbed by Wyatt’s revolvers, the Death Hunter able to completely absorb the shot with his weapon.
Lucian reached the trailer, injuresouls beneath him reaching up for his legs, only to be met by his mechas, the two of them cutting into the crowd alongside Mastima and her rapidly-moving double-bladed scythe.
Danira’s blast managed to connect, Wyatt stumbling backward as Lucian reached the top of the trailer.
His MX-11 vanishing, Lucian swung his lava sword wide, Wyatt parrying his first attack by once again using his pistols as shields, a clink of metal followed by a spark with each swing Lucian took.
Fire tore out of Lucian’s open palm, engulfing the man, Wyatt throwing his head back and laughing as the flames raged all around him, as they moved up his duster.
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