The dead rose!
Birthed by invisible graves, they pulled themselves out of the ground, their desperate hands clutching at Dragan's legs. They were a dull green, their skin almost crystalline, their bodies surrounded by drifting smoke. Aether constructs, to be sure…
…but even so, Dragan recognised them.
Dir, the security chief from Taldan, held heavy onto Dragan's back. Giovanni Sigma Testament, his eyes hollow holes, dragged his morose hand down the side of Dragan's face. The former Commissioner Caesar clutched Dragan's jacket with decrepit strength, the fabric tearing in her grip.
They were by no means alone. Even as Dragan identified old faces, new ones made themselves known, rising from the ground and advancing towards him. Old enemies, back from the dead, alight with vengeance. A chorus of ghostly moans echoed through the street.
Behind Dragan, Hazmuth had hesitated, looking around the morbid scene in confusion and horror, his hands frozen on his bow. The sight alone was ghastly, but no doubt the hunter was worried he’d be caught in this attack as well. He and Victor were only allies of convenience, after all.
It would be all too simple for the ghosts to turn their gaze on him too.
There were more, more of the dead that Dragan did not recognise, but he supposed that made sense. They would be from the bombardment around twenty minutes ago. These figures… these ghosts…
…these were all people that he had killed, after all.
“Did you think the fallen were silent?” came Victor’s soft, melodic voice, echoing down the street. “If so… you're dead wrong.”
His gaseous Aether ran down the street, coiling around the countless gravestones that now protruded from the floor, walls, and ceilings. He twirled his shovel in his grip, pointing it directly at Dragan. A quiet smile spread across his lips, barely visible under his grey mustache.
“Now, you will come to understand the grief of those whose lives you have ended. Prepare yourself. The Jury.”
The dead surged forward, grabbing Dragan and pulling him under, imprisoning him under their weight. Dragan, for his part, did not resist. He just went limp and allowed them to pull him this way and that, until the only part of him visible beneath the hill of the damned was a single staring eye -- glinting out from between two emerald fingers.
Victor stared at the restrained Dragan. He raised his shovel, the point ready to be thrust towards the Cogitant's head. It was sharp and strong enough to smash through skull and pulp brain.
“Heavy, aren't they?” he said, cautiously advancing. “We often speak of the weight of one's sins… but it's impossible to truly understand until you're being crushed by them.”
That cold blue eye stared.
It blinked.
And then… it rolled.
Dragan Hadrien spoke.
“Is this it?” he said, voice quiet, muffled behind the layers of bodies that covered him. “You were talking so big… I thought it would be better than this.”
Victor scowled, lowering his stance. “Talk as you like. I know the fear you're feeling. I've suffered it myself. Right now, you're --”
Dragan Hadrien laughed.
“Fear?” he chuckled. “Why would I be scared of a bunch of dead people? I've already been able to kill them once… right?”
Victor narrowed his eyes. “Impertinent.”
Abandoning words, the gravekeeper lunged forward, ready to strike true and snuff out Dragan Hadrien's glowing pupil. Only…
“Gemini Railgun.”
…Dragan Hadrien killed again.
That bright blue eye had indeed been snuffed out, but not by the hand of Victor. At the last moment, Dragan's eyeball had suddenly popped -- and a spear of light had shot forth, striking Victor in the heart. The technique was insane, but effective: a Gemini Railgun fired from within Dragan Hadrien's own body.
Victor slowly looked down, to the smoking hole in his chest. The shot to his heart had been quite destructive -- you could actually see the scenery behind him. Slowly, mutely, he fell backwards onto the floor.
Dragan pulled himself roughly out of the mass of ghosts, marching forth determinedly even as they clung to his arms and legs. Blood from his empty socket poured down his cheek like crimson tears.
“You figured out that Gemini Shotgun’s origin point is the cloud of Aether around me, didn't you? So you thought you could stop me using my abilities by surrounding me with your Aether. It was a good plan. But… you can't do anything about the Aether inside my body. I can fire shots from there just fine.”
As Dragan spoke, white matter began to bubble inside his eye socket -- a new pale globe appearing to replace the old one. Countless pupils popped into existence on the eyeball, slamming into each other and combining like bacteria in reverse… until, in the span of a few seconds, the wound was fully healed.
It was like he'd never even lost the eye in the first place.
Dragan turned his head, regarding Hazmuth standing on a distant rooftop.
“Three --” he began.
He didn't finish the word. Before he could do so, that massive shovel suddenly whipped through the air, slicing both of Dragan's legs clean off and sending him flying into a wall. Dust billowed down the street as the man holding the shovel slowly rose to his feet.
“The Judge,” Victor growled, using his shovel to support himself, smoke still rising from the hole in his chest. “So long as the dead still torment you, I too will not die.”
The slightest smile on his lips, he pointed his shovel in the direction of the crater he had created.
“Onwards,” he bid the dead.
They flooded forth, limbs and heads and pained faces flowing like a tsunami.
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It seemed that Dragan had miscalculated.
He pulled himself out of the wall he'd been lodged into, collapsing onto the floor immediately. It wasn't that he was too weak to stand, only that he had no legs to stand on. It would take them around thirty seconds to return.
That wasn't time he could spend in peace.
The wall of the house collapsed inwards as the ghosts surged inside, each and every one of them focused on him. From what he'd experienced so far, they were individually very weak, but in great numbers they could hold him down and expose him to attacks from Hazmuth and Victor. Hazmuth's arrows were immune to Gemini Shotgun -- if he got a good shot in while Dragan was restrained, that could be the end.
As the dead converged upon him, Dragan held his hand upwards, curling it into a fist -- and then used a Gemini Shotgun. The projectile, manifested in the space between Dragan's palm and fingers, propelled him upwards -- through the roof and out of reach of his pursuers. It demolished Dragan's hand in the process, but that was an acceptable price to pay.
Soaring over the street, looking down at the battlefield below, Dragan considered his options.
Originally, he'd thought he could deal with The Jury by eliminating the user -- but in this case, it seemed the opposite was true. If Victor's words could be believed, The Judge made him immortal until all of the ghosts he'd summoned were destroyed. He still seemed able to sustain damage, though. Was beating him to a pulp an option? Crushing his body until he could no longer move?
Easier said than done -- and even if he immobilized Victor, The Jury would keep coming after him.
Another hail of arrows zoomed up, and Dragan swung one of his newly-grown legs. The air pressure from the pinpoint kick was enough to disrupt the paths of the incoming projectiles, sending them flying off in every direction.
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Blood flew with them too. Dragan's new legs weren't fully complete, after all -- they were muscle and bone without skin. Even just the air touching them was agonizing. Dragan grit his teeth as he landed atop the opposite building.
Immediately, the dead followed, sliding up the wall like a horde of insects. Their advance was inexorable, but at least this way he could dispatch them as they appeared. Dragan pointed his finger towards the incoming mob -- and then flicked his thumb up, miming a gun.
“Gemini Shotgun.”
When you got down to it, Gemini Railgun was little more than a more involved Shotgun. Gemini Shotgun recorded an incoming projectile then manifested it with a little added speed and force. Railgun did the exact same thing, but then recorded the manifested projectile again and again and again, adding more power with each revolution. The longer he charged it, the stronger it got. Even Dragan didn't know how strong it could get, given enough time.
But against enemies like this, Gemini Shotgun was more than enough.
With each shot, a head popped, craniums exploding into crystal and their owners falling down to the ground. Dragan executed familiar faces and strangers alike, his face a mask, blue light flashing off his features -- the distortion making him seem unapproachable, inhuman even. He fired and fired and fired.
And yet… the number of enemies never seemed to reduce. If anything, they'd seemed to increase -- when Dragan looked now, at the tidal wave of wraiths before him, he saw even more familiar faces. Some of them more than once, some of them he had already destroyed.
Immediately, he stopped firing. Shit. He'd seen something like this before.
An Aether glitch.
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Dragan Hadrien was dead on the money.
When Victor Nezhel had created his ability, The Jury, he had intended it purely to weigh a person down with the hands of their sins. After running a check on the opponent’s Aether, it would call up specters of each and every person they had killed since developing said Aether.
The companion ability to The Jury, The Judge, made Victor Nezhel effectively immortal while the Jury was active. Recorded duplicate organs would remotely take over the functions of any that were destroyed. Even if Victor's brain was destroyed, the one lurking in his Aether would take over for it -- and, once The Jury's target had been destroyed, any injuries Victor had suffered would immediately be healed.
Simple and effective, if a bit heavy on the set-up.
However, something unexpected had happened. Initially unbeknownst to Victor, the specters of The Jury counted as victims for the purposes of the ability. When the target destroyed one of them, it would count as a kill and as such, the specter would immediately be resummoned. If that wasn't enough, The Jury would even become confused as to whether this was a new killing or a repeat of an old one -- and so, splitting the difference, a second version of that specter would be summoned.
To put it simply, Dragan Hadrien could not kill Victor Nezhel without first destroying each and every ghost. But for each ghost he destroyed, two more would appear to replace it. Even ignoring The Executioner, Victor's third ability, he was a very very difficult man to kill.
But not impossible.
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Dragan flew up into the air as a tower of ghosts pursued him, their writhing bodies forming a single mass that stretched into the sky. Gritting his teeth, he pointed his bleeding hand down towards his incoming opponents -- new fingers already squirming out of his stumps like bloody red maggots.
Destroying these things just makes them duplicate, Dragan thought. But that was from me shooting them personally. Does it work differently if I'm a step removed from the damage?
Gemini Shotgun.
Blasts of blue light -- chunks of debris made indistinguishable by speed -- slammed into the buildings below, smashing them into rubble. The stone wreckage pelted the specters like hail, crushing them into crystal shards. Any sense of relief at their destruction was brief, however, as the ghosts quickly reappeared -- now accompanied by their inevitable twins.
Dragan clicked his tongue.
Doesn't matter how I do it. So long as I'm the one performing the action, it still counts as me killing them. Damnit.
As the tidal wave of the dead fell upon him, Dragan retreated into Gemini World -- reappearing a moment later, already running through the gutted inside of a building below. He pumped his arms, sprinting through what was once perhaps a mall, thinking as much as he could in the few seconds afforded to him. Apart from his footsteps and the distant moaning of the ghosts, silence reigned.
Dragan shook his head. “No. I've already played that card too much. We need to keep the extent of it in our back pocket as long as we can.”
Silence.
“Don't worry,” Dragan said, skidding to a halt in the building's central atrium. “I'll --”
Thwish.
“Oh?” Hazmuth purred. “You'll what, boy?”
Numb pain, and shortness of breath. Dragan looked down -- and saw the shaft of an arrow already protruding from the base of his throat, his neck cleanly impaled by the projectile. As if it had been waiting for Dragan to notice, blood began pouring from his mouth, but more than that, alongside that…
“You're quite the healthy young man,” Hazmuth commented, stepping out of the shadow of a pillar, bow trained on Dragan. “It should have taken effect a long while ago. I've never had to administer a second dose.”
Dragan's eyes widened as he collapsed to his knees, pulling the arrow free. Damn it. The arrows were poisoned? It had been working its way through his system since that first one had hit him? It had to be a subtle poison, if she hadn't caught it. Dragan's limbs were shaking uncontrollably, like insects were working their way under his skin.
Hazmuth fired a third shot -- but, even with the tremors, Dragan was able to snatch it out of the air inches from his face.
The hunter whistled appreciatively. “You really are something, aren't you?” he said. “Even now, I don't dare get near you. The wise thing would be to let that undertaker get here and finish you off himself, but…”
He pulled back another arrow, and the tremors finally sent Dragan sprawling down onto the ground. Hazmuth smiled.
“...we are not wise men.”
Hazmuth fired the arrow -- and the instant he did, the building exploded around them.
It wasn't something that Hazmuth had done, and it wasn't something that Dragan had done. Instead, this destruction was the result of a creature -- a massive creature -- pushing right through the building itself, destroying everything in its path. Hazmuth's smile spread into the grin of a true hunter as he saw the specimen charging towards them.
The thing was clearly a paleo-beast, but not of any variety Dragan had ever seen. It had a body plan like a gecko, skittering across the ground -- but its size was far beyond that, massive, the size of a starship all on its own. Quills twitched atop an eyeless face, and its razor-sharp teeth seemed to spread out into a vicious grin of its own.
As it passed into the darkness of the building, bioluminescent patterns began to flare across its back, like a kaleidoscope had been painted upon it. Dragan had to squint as the bright lights, forming the shapes of inhuman skulls, flared against his eyeballs. The brightest light of all shone out from the tip of the creature's long tail, which flexed menacingly in the air behind it.
For the briefest of moments, the thing seemed to analyze the situation before it -- and then it opened its mouth and roared.
The sheer force of that roar was enough to send Hazmuth flying away like a piece of garbage -- and Dragan only managed to save himself by plunging his Aether-infused fist into the floor below. He sent his ears into Gemini World, saving himself from being deafened in the process too, but even so the pressure and the poison were still doing their work. He could feel his body creaking from accumulated damage beneath him.
A long barbed tongue flicked out of the paleo-beast’s mouth and licked its black lips. Even without eyes, its objective was easy enough to see. It was here for him.
Well… Dragan thought grimly. You'll have to get in line.
As the paleo-beast lunged at him, Dragan mustered his strength and forced his hand up off the floor, palm pointing towards the incoming monster.
“Gemini Dominion!”
Blue Aether flashed, and the creature vanished -- recorded into Dragan's Aether. Now, at least, the giant monster wasn't something he needed to worry about. Gemini Dominion could absorb a target without Aether pretty much indefinitely.
That didn't mean he was out of the woods.
Now that he'd captured the paleo-beast, he couldn't use Gemini Shotgun, Railgun, or World. As if that wasn't bad enough, the poison he'd been dosed with was still running rampant inside his body. Even rising to his feet seemed like a supreme effort right now.
Hazmuth had been blown away by that roar, but he'd be back before long. The ghosts would be upon him soon too -- and he had no idea where their master was. They'd backed him into a corner.
Could he maybe use the paleo-beast against them? Release it into the midst of his enemies and let it wreak havoc? If the paleo-beast destroyed the ghosts of its own free will, then surely it wouldn't result in them duplicating.
Archivist, Dragan thought. That thing I just sent in. What's it doing?
The Archivist poked his head out a hole in the ground, his youthful face amused. “It's just sitting there,” he said. “Straight away, it just sat down and started waiting. Didn't even look around or act confused. Kind of creepy.”
Scratch that. If that thing concerned the Archivist, then it wasn't safe to use. What if it just joined forces with Dragan's existing enemies? Even if he regained access to his other abilities, by no means would he be saved.
No, he'd have to rely on the tools he had access to now.
First order of business was the poison.
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To anyone watching, the actions of the Kaiser would have seemed innocuous.
The second it appeared inside Gemini Dominion, it sat calmly down upon the floor, like a dog. It didn’t look at the bizarre environment around it. It didn’t display any confusion at the sudden change in location. The ferocity that had driven it a moment earlier disappeared in the blink of an eye. A machine reset to a neutral state.
It just sat there, waiting, for a short while…
…and then yellow Aether began to spark.