"Algernon Black." Yosephine seethed with nostrils flared. She would know that weapon anywhere and the most infamous person in history to wield it thus far, just like the entire world knew. Seeing movement past him, Yosephine noticed Lucy again but this time recognition overcame her face of hate.
"And you're her, aren't you?" The woman asked Lucy in a voice low with remorse as she discerned a slight familiarity with the girl's features and Jared's.
Lucy shuttered from the sudden attention but soon it became centered on Algernon once again as he whisked his scythe out before him in one mighty vertical swipe up, returning some of the energy Yosephine had thrown at Lucy earlier. His blades made the piercing sound of a whistle as it sliced through the air and was followed immediately up by the explosion of magic. Algernon's attack ripped open the stone ground a few feet in front of him up through the stage to the exact spot the woman stood.
It boomed like the bomb earlier in the only other attack that night that had matched such power and the residual force sent bystanders, tables, and chairs flying backward.
Lucy expected the woman to be destroyed just like the stone stage beneath her. But her trill voice broke through.
"You're just another innocent they want to sacrifice on their way to bring this world back to the genocide of the past," Her words rose above the cloud of dust to deeply echo about the frozen castle, though only a few understood exactly what she meant. The last reminiscent of the dust cleared to reveal the pebble remains of the ten-ton caved in stage and Yosephine stood on it without so much as a scratch on her.
"But I'll never let them." She spoke to Lucy as if she were a small child she was trying to reassure. Lucy didn't understand why she was saying such things, but her sympathetic tone terrified her more than the frenzied screaming. "You won't be his sacri-"
She was cut off as Algernon attacked again. This time his scythe split sideways through the air and sent out dark magic.
Algernon planted himself firmly on the ground as magic streamed forward from his scythe, his hair and jacket flying behind him. Lucy fell to the ground on her hands and knee, not even being able to stand beside someone using that much power, let alone understand how he could control it. And it was seeing him so up close that Lucy finally understood why Algernon was so well respected. Why around the world people knew his name, because one man in control of such power seemed like some kind of angel or demon.
Algernon turned his head to the side and Lucy could just see the outline of his strong jawline and all-black eyes centered on his stone face.
No, Lucy silently corrected herself, he doesn't look like an angel or demon. Algernon lifted his scythe high above his head before slashing it down at the woman again. The blade cut through the air so fast it hissed before being followed up by the defining booming of dark magic obliterating everything in its path. He looks like a god.
As the dust resettled again the woman's red eyes locked onto Algernon.
"And you're going to be the vessel they use to destroy the world." Yosephine accused him, as magic dissipated around her, and the sand made from the stage began vibrating. "And you're going to start with her." Her eyes enlarged in rage as she guided the sand into hundreds of razor-sharp glass spears.
"I'll kill you before you can fulfill that twisted prophecy!" The woman yelled as the daggers ripped through the air to swarm like wasps upon Algernon.
Algernon whirled destruction magic from his scythe but could barely match the assault. But what worried him more were the many heads now turned in Lucy's direction.
"Go," Algernon managed to tell Lucy through gritted teeth and as his concentration faltered for the second it took to speak Yospehine nearly cut through him.
Lucy turned to run, knowing she would only be in his way, but got only a couple of yards away when a man barricaded her escape with power leaking from his hands. "Kill the girl!" He shouted to allies of him near enough to hear. "She may be-" But didn't finish his sentence before a shot from behind the man sent him falling to the ground.
Jasper ran between Lucy and her front approaching attackers but were greatly outnumbered, with more still approaching.
"Jasper," Lucy worriedly called as their assailants pooled together dark magic to aim at them.
Jasper gritted his teeth but knew their odds and as the counter of enormous dark magic exploded out to them, he blocked the attack with as much light magic as he had ever summoned before. And even with Lucy's additional aid, thy were still sent flailing back.
Lucy painfully collided with the ground as the air expelled from her chest and glanced over at Jasper who had been knocked motionless a distance away.
The fore front of their attackers stepped past Jasper to Lucy, whose eyes could barely stand to look at hands so painfully lit by light magic.
"Sorry," The man said, with honest traces of sympathy before aiming his hands to Lucy's heart. "But you're too much of a liability to let live."
Lucy's stared back at the searing strike of magic as it released from his hands, but it was an entirely different beam of energy coming from behind that stopped his assault before it could land.
"Back away crazy!" Pecilia said, rallying to produce more counter magic as another man shot a beam of magic at her. And Pecilia was only able to hold against it out of sheer willpower.
Lucy could easily tell that Pecilia was going to lose. And Pecilia knew she was going to lose and die at this rate. She stared resolutely ahead at her magic that was slowly yielding to the man. Oh well, she thought, at least my corpse will be pretty.
Cecil was huffing and in a stalemate with the man, if not on the losing side. He had worked himself into exhaustion trying every different approach to get close enough to kill him, but it all failed. And he wasted precious time and energy running around like a dog while the man toyed with him.
"You attack well," Cyril stated. "But you don't defend well enough."
Cecil gritted his teeth and blinked again. When he was exhausted it became the hardest thing to call upon his weapons ability, and he was quickly approaching the point where he wouldn't be able to use it at all. He had to think of something soon, or he was going to die.
He peered around himself, seeing the one chance he might have. Cecil quickly reappeared behind the man before disappearing again. Cyril responded by swinging his weapon around him again, wondering if the boy would ever get tired of this game, but this time he felt his weapon dig into flesh, and though Cecil's body still stayed invisible under the guise of his weapon, he knew the boy had finally got sloppy. Less than a second later he saw Cecil again, but it wasn't his body that he sliced through, but the body of a dead man Cecil was carrying as protection.
Cecil charged his attacker as fast as he could, running on pure adrenaline for the first opening he had and what he knew would be his only. Cyril yanked the connected razors out of the dead man's body and swirled it back around at Cecil heading straight for him. Cecil pushed with everything he had to get to the man before his weapon reach him first. Cyril used his magic to pull on the weapon harder and faster, seeing it just about to pierce the back of Cecil's neck as Cecil was about to reach him, and then Cecil vanished.
Cyril couldn't respond fast enough to recall his weapon as it came straight towards his body.
He caught a glimpse of Cecil through the corner of his eye, as he just reappeared moving past the side of him, evading his blade that now ripped through his own chest.
Cyril fell to the ground, with the razor chain lodged inside of him, looking up at Cecil approaching him.
"For your age you're incredible," Cecil repeated monotony down to the man. "It would have been amazing to see what you would have become in the next couple of years."
Cyril smiled despite the situation appreciating good irony even at his expense. "Maybe you'll still get to see." He muttered through blood filling his mouth as Cecil just noticed the small crystal in his hand.
"Wait!" Cecil yelled to empty space, as the man was already taken away by the transportation stone. Cecil threw himself down on the ground like a kid in the midst of a temper tantrum, but only had a second to grumble before an even scarier opponent awoke.
Loy's mind started to come back as did his senses, along with the awful stench of copper filling his nose as if stepped into a cloud of blood. Loy had only ever breathed in air that thick with blood once before, and it immediately brought him right back to his stint in Hell. The prince got to his feet where he stood up amongst the dead bodies of men and women. So much blood stained the floor it looked like barrels of syrupy dark red wine had been dumped onto it. And it was a familiar sight to the prince who now started seeing the faces of the men and women of Beal's village on the dead bodies surrounding him. And the bandits dead by his blade all those years ago now reformed right before his eyes in the faces of the terrorist. There was a pain in Loy's stomach so strong it must have been a broken rib, but those were the thoughts and feelings that belong to another part of him, a part that wasn't accessible right now as Loy once again became the demon, bent only on revenge for the innocent slaughtered villagers.
It was like a drop in a bucket of water when it all hit Loy at once, sending out ripples of emotions that turn into tidal waves of rage inside of him. He didn't even process how unbelievably fast he moved to reach the first man with blind murderous intent, his ball and chain unlocked and in hand. He swung it with so much power it ripped, threw the man's stomach, and his organs splattered yards away.
The assailants next to him all turned to Loy, preparing weapons and magic to fight against him. Loy didn't even register their faces, just targets for his chain to slice through. A herd of the men were killed instantly with clean cuts through them until Loy's chain got stuck in the ribs of one particularly muscular man. The prince shredded it free, and as the man's bones flew through the air towards him, Loy ran towards the dying man, colliding his neck with the hilt of his weapon and sending his head flying behind him until it landed at the feet of his colleagues.
They all stared in horror as Loy approached them, his eyes gleaming the same shade of red as the tainted energy his weapon seeped.
Blind rage boiled the blood in Loy's veins, and he charged the rest of the attackers so fast his feet don't even look like they'd touch the ground. He crushed in the face of the first man before the next could register he was before them, and then he made his way through the rest of them, mowing them down without mercy. Some fell onto their knees without the slightest hope of being able to stop this demon right before they were killed by the psychotic prince.
Selice saw Loy, or who she thought was Loy, but was actually the farthest thing from the man she knew. This was a devil wearing Loy's skin as marked by his now blood red eyes. He mercilessly killed everything that moved. And Selice was so afraid of him at that moment that her knees started buckled. She wanted to cry out to him, but not to this person, not to this Loy. Loy had blond hair, but this man's hair was dark red, soaked, and matted to his head as blood dripped down his face and leaked into the white of his eyes before they fell the rest of the way down his cheek.
Selice clasped her hands over her mouth as she tried to hold down her vomit at the sight and smell of the gore as her falling tears mimicked Loy's blood cries.
To the prince everyone was a target to be killed, everyone in his vision, a bandit that killed the villagers that had been a family to him. One of the murderers that had forced him to become a demon in the first place, the demon that would kill them all now.
He couldn't even hear anything. All he saw was movement, and what he saw he moved towards. And Loy saw a scythe swinging through the air as he stalked towards Algernon Black, dragging the ball and chain behind his back so he could swing it over his shoulder and kill him with one good hit. But as he was making his way, Loy felt a tug behind him and suddenly couldn't pull his weapon forward.
The prince twisted around to see the first chain connected to the spiked ball lodged into the ground by a sword whose blade was just small enough to get through the divides. Loy's eyes leveled onto the sword and up to its user.
Cecil looked at Loy's face covered in blood and his eyes glowing orbs of red. It would have intimidated anyone else, but the edges of Cecil's eyes took on the same tint when he fought to kill.
With one hard lash, Loy flung Cecil's sword into the air. Cecil launched himself up, grabbing his weapon as Loy's chain returned to his control. Cecil blinked and for a second disappeared out of Loy's vision to get close enough to scrape the side of his neck.
Loy caught Cecil's eyes as he passed besides him to see the outer corners of his iris rimmed red. Like a bull, it only made Loy more furious, and he drew his weapon back, before extending it out. Cecil was quick enough to move out of the way but didn't like the idea of being up against another weapon with that kind of reach.
Loy circled his weapon back around, and Cecil blinked while jumping to avoid getting hit, but while still in the air his illusion faded. Loy made direct eye contact with him before swinging his weapon. Cecil panicked for the half a second he could as there was no way to evade and just managed to get his sword up to block some of the attack that still sent him flying backward into a stone pillar that cracked when his back collided with it.
Cecil forced himself up to his feet, clutching his side as he saw Loy's attention jerked back to Algernon who was the only one capable of facing that ungodly powerful woman.
Cecil blinked towards Loy, and their weapons collided in the middle even when Loy's line of sight was still fixated on Algernon.
"I don't know where you're looking, but I'm your opponent," Cecil threatened, as their weapons pushed off against each other.
Loy's eyes darkened to a deeper red, as he drew back his weapon and swung his chain as Cecil blinked out of view.
Aloysius could hear the many fights happening around him, but it was Algernon's intense match with the woman that had him and his opponent both distracted.
"I'm taking his next." The man proclaimed with a sly grin at the boy, before charging Aloysius again with even more excitement in his eyes.
Aloysius blocked almost every attack but the few that did land, cut deep. He recognized the effects of a striking stone as the wounds stretched deeper than just their initial swipe through skin.
"You know I've heard some gossip about the current golden cuff users," The man said, smiling at his handy work and Aloysius's bloodied clothes. "They say he was underwhelming at best."
Aloysius took personal offense for his brother and charged again though every blow he tried to land was countered with an injury to himself. It wasn't Luke's fault he had to train with his weapon later in life, making him considerably behind the rest of the users, and Aloysius knew if anyone was to blame it was himself.
"You might just be a little bit better." The man mocked, riling Aloysius's anger.
Orenza dragged Luke as far away from the main source of conflict, as she could. Most of the attackers were already locked in battle or dead, thanks to Cecil who must have killed half of them himself, but he was now stuck in a battle against some brutishly mad man.
"What's happening?" Luke asked, finally regaining consciousness.
"Stay still," Orenza replied, worried he might have a concussion and cautious that he might draw the attention of any attackers. Luke looked up against her orders, feeling a noticeably absent weight from his wrists. His sight lands on his brother's turned away back, who was battling against some man with a stone-infused blade. Aloysius was dripping blood from a nasty wound over his eyes and many other small injuries.
"You don't know the things my brother will become," Aloysius declared, his temper preventing him from noticing the heavy blood loss.
"I do." His attacker coolly replied. "He'll become a sacrifice of war." The man said, leveling his weapon with Aloysius's line of sight. "Or a failure. Just like his brother."
Aloysius's rage darkened as he remembered all the ill words spread about him when he gave up his weapon. But was it wrong to not want to be a murderer? Was it wrong to reject a society that treated him like nothing more than a weapon? Was it wrong to make his little brother take his place instead when he knew all too well what would happen to him? Aloysius was more upset by the part he played in his brother's suffering than everything else combined, and he started to curse the weapon in his mind. Rebuking it for tearing apart his family. His anger began manifesting in a veil of gold forming around the weapons and moving up the rest of his body as magic flooded into him.
Everyone watched on, as Aloysius called the weapon to its final form and its special ability. He gripped the center of the weapon and in the palms of his hands the golden wings started to spread out, and from that form, it started to unfold again until it was two huge razor-sharp wings, even taller than Algernon's scythes. Aloysius stood with the monstrous weapons in each hand, but they never felt lighter than they did now.
His attacker stared blankly at the sight before him. With the glow of magic behind him, Aloysius looked like a fallen angel, who had his wings removed and now wielded them as weapons. It was an extraordinary sight, one that made him pause as he watched Aloysuis' eyes run red.
"No way," Luke remarked, utterly surprised by his brother unlocking the golden cuff's ability. The one he never could. He would have been more resentful if it wasn't such an amazing sight to behold.
Aloysius's eyes locked on the man as a small ball of magic formed in the center of his chest. The man thought if he was meant to synthesize a ball of magic, but one that size was too small to stop him and would never be fast enough to reach him in time.
With the small sphere of energy floating in the center of Aloysius' chest, he drew the wings behind him, locking onto the man as the weapon reached its apex.
"He's really using it," Luke observed, seeing for the first time the ability ever used, but it was Orenza who spoke out loud its name.
"Heaven's revenge."
Within a flash, Aloysius slashed forward the wings, in line with where the man was standing, so fast it broke the sound barrier, sending chairs and tables all around him whirling away as the ball of energy flattened into the smallest stream of magic possible and became naked to the visible eye and becoming impossible to stop.
The man looked down at his chest, where the shot had pierced through before he even saw it move. The hole was small, but it went through his entire body like a needle going through cloth. He coughed up blood but managed to look behind him where as far as the eye could see, everything had been just as easily pierced through. Even the stone walls had been blown through as if they were paper. Still, the attacker grinned from having witnessed such an impressive sight before falling to the ground lifelessly.
Aloysius returned the weapon to its original form, huffing from exhaustion, and as he did, he noticed Luke staring at him in utter amazement and then complete disappointment for his brother who abandoned that weapon when he could have been one of its most powerful yielders yet.
Aloysius read clearly his brother's judgment but only had a second to be disappointed in himself as he noticed the next vital fight.
"Lucy, get Jasper out of here," Pecilia said through gritted teeth, using all her power to shield against her opponent's attack.
Lucy stood up through the massive pain in all parts of her body to run to Jasper, but instead of hauling him away, she lifted her hands, shooting out as much energy as she could muster to join with Pecilila's.
Lucy felt the push and strain as Pecilia's magic didn't want to bind and work with hers, but she kept at it.
"What are you doing!" Pecilia yelled, wanting to cry from the pain overtaking her body as scorching magic ripped through her veins. "Leave you, stupid girl!"
"No," Lucy said, trying to force her magic to coalesce with hers.
"Shut up and leave!" Pecilia shouted with tears in her eyes as the dark magic swelled her blood vessels. "You stupid girl! You never know when to give up!"
"Pecilia," Lucy said, calling upon all her strength to manage the joint attack. "You're one of the only people here that treated me like they did everyone else." Pecilia eyed Lucy wondering how she could be so stupid in the face of assured death. "I'll always be thankful to you for that." Lucy finished, planting her feet more firmly on the ground.
"You're so strange," Pecilia said, tears snapping from both eyes. She wanted to say it was from the strain of their magics trying to reject or form together but it was so much more.
"Leave, Lucy," Pecilia said crying.
The man kept up his steam of attack, but it was slowly being overpowered as their magic toiled together, and while it did Pecilia's mind flooded with memories of her family, who never treated her like such. The shunning from her sisters who were jealous of their plans for her, when all those plans did were cause her extensive anxiety. And she thought of her time at Attwood with Lucy, Jasper, Wilham, Freya, Algernon. The food Freya gifted her even though she had never been deserving of her kindness. She thought about Lucy who always had a gleam of a smile behind her eyes, and Jasper who would go out of his way to check on her. They never rejected her or asked anything of her. They accepted her for nothing more or less than herself all this time, when she had never had that before, not even from her own family.
Pecilia never imagined she could have friends. Not in the world she grew up in where everyone was only looking out for themselves. So, she never quite knew when she became friends with all of them, but she knew she wanted to protect them, more than anything else in her entire life, she wanted to protect them.
Lucy's eyes squinted as they were just about to lose control of the magic before it suddenly started glowing a dangerous bright white. Lucy felt a sudden shift in their streams of energy, like the end of the rope Pecilia had been violently pulling on suddenly let go. Her magic began binding and wrapping into Pecilia's, morphing into an intensely powerful energy that would have been uncontrollable if she were just by herself but with Pecilie their magic overtook the man as he collapsed to the floor hit with the most powerful blast of energy he had ever felt.
Lucy and Pecilia fell to their knees.
"I told you to leave," Pecilia said panting and wiping away tears in her eyes.
With the next to no energy she had left, Lucy wrapped her arms around Pecilia. "I won't." She said as Pecilia cried harder.
Cecil grabbed at his ribs which were more than likely going to suffer permanent damage from the impact of Loy's hits. But he still managed to get to his knees as the madman approached him. He blinked away, but his ability was shortening with his adrenaline running thin, while Loy acted like some kind of machine, seemingly completely unfazed even with the extensive wounds Cecil managed to give him.
Loy ran up at the half-defeated boy, and Cecil planted his feet ready to jump, but the tendon sliced by his previous opponent suddenly ripped open again, and he tripped over himself. Cecil yelled at his legs to work but it was too late as he watched the spiked ball come slamming down upon him, where it collided with two gold shields.
"Loy!" Aloysius screamed, shirking the prince back. "Enough!" The seamstress stared at the prince's eyes, but they didn't belong to the man he met a few days back, these were dangerously red in the hunt for blood.
Loy couldn't put a name to the face in front of him or hear what Aloysius spoke when he hurtled his ball and chain at his newest target. It scraped the side of Aloysius's ribs as he narrowly managed to dodge it.
Selice watched the shell of Loy fighting because that wasn't the man she knew, not the good-hearted boy she had been raised with all her life. This was his skin thinly pulled over a demon that wasn't going to stop until everyone around him was killed. Her heartbeat tortuously in her throat as she watched it rampage and prayed to the gods for Loy to come back.
The psychotic prince instantly followed up on the attack, rushing towards him and wiping his weapon at the next person he was hell-bent on killing. Aloysius lifted his shields to stop Loy from caving in his chest, but the bones in his arms rattled manically from the hit and he buckled to his knees from the pain, which was enough of an opening for Loy to soar overhead of him with his weapon swinging down. Aloysius forced up his shield, but he still got beaten into the ground as stone cracked underneath him and he felt his knees shatter.
Loy would have killed him right then if his attention wasn't caught by the sound of someone screaming out for his brother. He turned towards the source, but his attention caught onto the fight happening behind him, where Algernon was. His eyes darkened as he locked onto his black suit.
"Stop him!" Cecil yelled, trying to reach Loy before he could Algernon.
Luke forced his way to his feet and in the pathway of the prince, calling the cuffs back to him just as Loy's ball and chain plummeted down onto him.
Luke wouldn't have managed to last more than a couple of seconds before Loy outpowered him and was saved by Cecil blinking behind the prince and jabbing him in the back.
Loy shrieked in pain, staring back while he pressed into his wound.
Cecil and Luke huffed in agonizing exhaustion but stood at the ready with their weapons drawn to defend Algernon. Loy stared between the two of them with eyes bloodshot and didn't hesitate to give them the battle they asked for.
The three-way fight became swirling chaos of constant traded blows. Each artifact user moved so fast no one could keep up with their movements, but in the breaks of their blow, everyone could see the prince had the upper hand. Cecil and Luke were weighed down from substantial injuries while Loy couldn't feel his in this state.
The prince launched his weapon down with enough force to break both of Luke's arms who was no choice but to defend against the attack with his shields, but right before the ball left the ground and became unstoppable Cecil nailed the chain to the ground with his sword again to attempt something he never tried before, something he wasn't sure could even work but it might be the only thing that could save there lives.
Loy reacted fast trying to rip the weapon anchoring his into the ground, but Luke planted the tips of his shield into the chain too.
"Go!" Luke shouted, and Loy looked behind himself at his weapon, seeing nothing but Luke holding it down.
This has to work, Cecil thought as the tips of his fingers pulled away from his weapon, for just this second, I need to be fast enough. He remembered his fight with Algernon as he let go of his sword, hoping the blink will last the second he needs it to as he scales the chain up towards the prince while Loy starts to tug it from underneath him. Cecil isn't even sure if his illusion is working as he runs up the length of Loy's chain, his fist at his side piling with magic. Loy continues to look at the base of his chain as he recalls it back to him, and as he does Cecil's figure starts to form out of thin air right before his eyes and the boy's already too close to evade.
Cecil manages one clean hit into Loy's chest, sending the prince flying yards backward.
Cecil stood with his fist still alive with dark magic, hearing how his bones broke in more than a few places from the punch, but not registering the pain as he panted so heavily his diaphragm strained against his ribs. Luke gasped for air as well, from having to hold that chain down against someone as strong as Loy.
"Gods damn it." Cecil cursed under his breath as he watched Loy start to get back up, his eyes still alive and bright red. Cecil made to step toward him but his injured leg finally collapsed under him and he cursed his body while trying to use his sword to get back to his feet.
Luke watched in utter defeat as Loy got up again, knowing this time he was going to kill them, and then Algernon.
Loy took one step forward with nothing but red moving targets in his sight, his heavy metal chain scraping the stone.
Luke and Cecil watched as the weapon dragged on the ground, knowing it was likely going to be the last thing they saw before they died. But the chain stopped moving when Loy felt the familiar and far distant feeling of pressure on his neck. He looked behind him, trying to process the sensation, and noticed two arms connected to a body and a face buried into his back.
"Loy," Selice mumbled, holding on with shaking arms as she was so terrified, she could barely breathe, "Please come back."
Selice's plea was a whisper, barely audible to the ear but some small part of Loy's brain that was still functioning picked up on it, and it reverberated inside his head. Cecil and Luke watched on as his red eyes started to fade away to a crystal blue, and with it, the monster unlocked in him was sealed away and his humanity brought back.
Everything that had just happened, what he had just done, Loy processed as if he was recalling a nightmare. The young prince put his hands over his eyes and started to cry recalling all the evil he had just committed when he lost total control of himself. When he lost his ties to humanity.
Selice caught Loy's head in her shoulders, still shaking herself in residual terror as the prince cursed himself.
Cecil and Luke watched on, feeling pangs of sympathy but even more confusion. But mostly, they felt relieved they didn't have to face that kind of monster. But the relief was short-lived when they saw a red light start to illuminate from the center of the room.