The Marauder: Mercenary of the Maleficent

The Marauder: by 美琳

          But the Slayer did not dwell on lost causes. His mind moved to his shotgun. With one swift motion, he reloaded and redirected his righteous rage within that barrel. Each firing would be fueled by his resolve. At that exact moment, his opponent swept forth his arm and brandished an ancient wood handle serrated with steel patterns. The end was capped with a silvery horned skull. With a second jolt of his wrist, there was a sound like thunder cackling from the carving's mouth, and two blades of light spouted from its fanged grin, swarming with Argenta script and pulsing with its energy. This axe utilized Argent energy its corrupted state, revitalized with surging hellfire, singeing away any trace of the traditional Argent light blue. This also appeared to be the very energy beating within his chest plate's gem. There was also a shotgun at his belt. But that false honor, or perhaps plainly the sin of pride, decided that he would strike first with blades versus the Slayer's arsenal of mostly big and bigger guns.

          Rather than rampaging into combat like the lesser animalistic demons, the Slayer's opponent began to pace at a distance in a semicircle. The Slayer wished not to waste a moment of useless chatter, and he knew not a word of reason was audible to such heathens. Yet perhaps a futile twinge of humanity urged him to give his opponent a few words before their duel commenced, a worthless offering of honor between sentinels.

          His speech was obscured by his armor's mouthpiece, but even without that barrier, his voice was like a slow thunderbolt roughened by sandpaper, so his words rolled in gradual raspy rumbles that sliced up every other muffed, dithering word.

          "You were never one of us." The opponent paused as if waiting for a retort or savoring the Slayer's annoyance. When the Slayer refused to give him a word, he continued, "You were nothing but a usurper—a false idol. My eyes have been opened. Let me help you to see, Slayer."

          Smack as expected. But now they finally got to the point, the point where the Slayer could communicate in the language he spoke best with demons: an unyielding rain of gunshots.

          Immediate, determined as homing missile, the enemy launched forward, all focus toward, locked on the Slayer's head. Driven by his axe blades, as if the weapon possessed a demon rather than the opposite, and raving mad with battle lust and consumed with only instinct for bloodshed and triumph and total annihilation and no room for thoughts or rationality. A complete slave of this mania, he hacked away again and again while the Slayer evaded at the last moment of every second, not even a window for gunfire. This opponent was a war machine, similar to a farming combine equipped with perpetually moving blades, but mechanically, thoughtlessly reaping destruction upon the battlefield rather than a grain field.

          The slayer evaded again, dashing back to increase the distance, and took a shot. The demon's chest, mostly void of armor, ruptured violently. Revealed rib bones were strung with flesh concealing peeks of pearly white. The shot he fired was from his super shotgun. Old faithful reliably delivered fatal blows from her double barrel every firing since her forging. But against demons, those who cheated death and hung by the last thread of life until the final fiber, fatality needed to be delivered seven-fold more than the human constitution.

          The demon reeled backward. He staggered two steps and let the next slash miss. One breath later, he again lunged for the Slayer. The axe carved an arc through the air just out of reach. But this was not a miss. In the next fraction of that second, a sonic rip seared his ears. A sliver of burning light screamed overhead. Hellfire eclipsed his vision. From that axe swing, a curve of Argent flame was born from the blade, emanating from the edge, like a headless hawk with arcing wings in pursuit. Even out of melee range, the Argent axe could perform aerial strikes.

          The Slayer dashed further away and behind a steel column for cover. He readied his shotgun and fired, reloaded, fired again, and kept firing and reloading and listening for roars of pain. But like ravenous flaming hawks, each strike already knew its prey before it hid. Between shots, the Slayer ducked his head, sidestepped in time, countered with a switchblade extension, which would shatter the light in two and dissolve as fading streaks behind him. These seemingly heat-seeking strikes, however, carried one flaw: while the Slayer was behind cover, each strike took much longer to reel back and launch on a curved trajectory reaching behind the steel column.