The Raven Calls

Roin ducked under the hail of debris flung towards his back, throwing himself down and to the left with startlingly acute reflexes. Whether it was foresight or simple luck, his lunge just barely scraped beneath the red hot blade of a spear erupting from the wreckage; the top of his head just barely missed the fiery blade, the sharp edge catching a few stray strands of hair and shearing through them like they weren’t there. The sheer heat coming off the blade ignited the severed strands, denaturing the hair with a fizzle of smoke; even his pale skin reddened from the radiant heat, light burns spreading across his cheek as stray tongues of flame licked his flesh.

He hit the ground hard, rolling away from his unexpected assailant just in time to avoid a follow up strike that cratered the ground and turned the stone it pierced molten on contact. Roin was no slouch, from out of his sleeves trailed a thin loop of cord in his wake, snagging the spear just below the strangely cupped guard as it passed where his spine would have been an instant before. An explosion originated from the tip of the blade as it pierced the ground, sending molten stone erupting like a mini volcano as it launched the spear backwards. Roin quickly tugged on the thin loop of steel around the long blade’s end and threw its trajectory off ever so slightly, twisting the attacker's wrist almost enough to almost send the blade flying off through the dust choked gouge in the wall behind them.

Almost.

In an impressive display of strength and speed, the oddly lopsided silhouette adjusted their grip to maintain their grip on the off-kilter spear without issue, wrenching it to the side hard enough to rip Roin from the ground and yank him towards the black silhouette in the dust cloud. The wind of his passage cleared enough dust for me to make out the attacker's general looks from this distance, noting a glowing orange eye visible through a gouge in a familiar bird-like mask. ‘That fucking pyromaniac plague doctor?! What the fuck is he doing here?’

He was in rough shape by the look of it, worse than when I'd last seen him. His cloak was ragged, bloodstained, and badly torn; the armoured body suit underneath looked similarly damaged, if perhaps slightly less so. In the few places the skin on his torso was visible through some jagged gap, it was either sickly pale or an inhumanly bright red. His left side was swollen up dramatically, especially his arm, to half again the size of his right and was a burning red; strange patterns of fire like swirls were visible on his reddened parts of his skin.

He was missing his entire right sleeve, showing off a strange fiery prosthetic seemingly made of a dense, red-orange, and almost liquid fire. His left sleeve was jaggedly scorched off just below the elbow, with what looked like the signs of a crudely stitched on, decidedly inhuman… graft of some sort clearly evident. There were stitches -expertly spaced but somewhat sloppily done, likely book knowledge applied under duress and blood loss if I had to guess- wrapping fully around his forearm in an uneven ring, but the flesh on both sides was clearly inhuman, looking like some strange fusion of flesh and fire into a roiling but impossibly still solid mass of bright red gel that somehow kept the vague shape of a humanoid arm.

Some sort of infectious graft? I couldn't even begin to guess at what might have caused something like that; nor did I have the time to.

Roin somehow detached himself from the wires up his sleeve, ducking forward as the maniac's spear thrust forth with a bang like that of a cannon firing. The blade moved with speed to match the sound, fire trailing from its cupped counterweight like a rocket and very nearly spearing straight through the garroter's skull; instead, it barely clipped the top of his head, burning his scalp and igniting his hair.

Ignoring a thin river of blood coming from a singed gouge in his scalp, he rolled away twice more, spinning around in the second summersault to spring from a handstand to his feet facing the visibly panting mutant plague doctor. Fortunately, the blood gushing from his head wound put out the fire in his hair, though he didn't seem too bothered by his severe bleeding. Perhaps he had faith in his Endurance? He did seem to be bleeding somewhat less than most head wounds I had seen.

Regardless, the crow didn't seem particularly concerned with pursuing him; his cracked beak and single, burning orange eye sweeping the room before settling unerringly on me. I could feel the hatred radiating off him as his fiery right arm rose to point at me, a voice warped and corroded like the throat spitting each word was filled up by a half melted cheese grater escaping his broken helmet, “Stagh- step awawrlggk- away from that rrral- rat! By the Orgarh- Order of thezh- the burnininarg- Burning Feather!” He seemed to get angry at his own struggle to speak, each garbled word drawing a twitch and a half-snarl. “My sensezkl- senses do not lie, it- it carrieeeezh- carries! The Blight!”

Roin scoffed immediately, “Bullshit, you can't hide being Blighted; if the rat was infected, we'd all fucking well notice right about when he started turning grey, dipshit.” I questioned his decision to antagonize someone who'd already nearly killed him twice, but I could admit the sheer balls he showed was impressive.

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The militant plague doctor twitched, his body language screaming rage before he forcibly and visibly stopped himself from lunging. “Grrrrrgrgrl- none of yourl- you! are infeehhhgh- infected, walk away and I'lrg- I'll! let you go unmolllergk- unimpoghf- grahh! without harm.” I Observed the seething germaphobe as he snarled our way, glancing out the corners of my eyes at my ‘allies’ to see if any were tempted by his offer; I was unsurprised to see more than a few considering glances sent my way.

Zildan Gorolfson

Main Title: Little Crow

Level: 178

Hp: 8,247/26,290

Sp: 12,667/38,912

Mp: 4,270/42,368

Main Trait: Demonic Graft: His left forearm has been replaced by a crudely sown on but willingly given arm of a lesser demon of Drelkingor, the unholy flesh is consuming his mortal shell.

I grimaced, he was wounded but he was still frighteningly strong; anyone here with any similar ability to gauge strength might just take his offer. Before my fears could be realized, Lemoi scoffed, “Oh, and did you give that same offer to our friends outside? There is blood on your blade, fanatic, more so than what you stole from Roin.” His words drew my (and likely everyone else's) eyes to the mutant madman's spear, where fresh blood dripped from the haft.

Zildan himself ignored the pack of pointed glares coming his way, his gaze shifting to my wounded compatriot. “Early stagggkgh- stage Dungeon Bloodstone infection?” He ignored Lemoi's accusation entirely, glancing around at the piles of dead monsters -and, more importantly, at the crystals still growing in their pooled blood. “An infectichk- infectious dungeon in the middle of a city? This place must be purghzh- purged.”

His fiery limb lifted into the air, trailing what looked like after images until they persisted into new limbs entirely -one for everyone here. A burning hydra of plasmatic arms sprouted from his shoulder, the dim room lighting up in red-orange firelight as each hand-tipped tentacle of fire moved with all the speed of a striking boa. Abandoning any pretense of negotiation, the ragged crow launched a half dozen fire wrought fists at the crowd of thugs before him.

Most of us dodged successfully, one of us didn't quite make it; the thug that got hit in the back by the crystal spray I dodged was helpless to avoid the incoming execution and took a whip-like punch to the face that burnt the flesh from his skull on contact. He didn't even have time to scream, the air sucked from his lungs by the same fire peeling away the flesh from his blackening bones and dissolving into ash. The hungering flame spread quickly even as the burning limb retracted, consuming his body and gear rapidly.

I grimaced, poofing away as Paranoia warned me the strike I'd just dodged would bend to follow me. The moment I reappeared I needed to duck under a swipe from a redirected limb aimed at someone else. Frantically dodging under a tentacle of fire hot enough to feel uncomfortably warm on my skin even from three feet away and through a layer of heat-retardant oil, I couldn't help but notice most of his attacks had carried through after everyone's initial dodge to target either me or Lemoi.

Even fighting seven -now six- men at once, he remained fixated on purging the sick.

A thrown dagger from one of my allies was turned aside with contemptuous ease, a flick of his demonic wrist knocking the flat of his spear into the side of the flying blade and sending it whistling off into the gloom behind him. Even outnumbered and badly wounded, he was simply better than us. I hated him, a sickly envy of his strength blending with a caustic rage at being targeted for something I didn't choose and couldn't change to swirl in my guts like a molten lead whirlpool.

But my hate didn't bridge the gap between us.

It took everything I had to simply stay ahead of the growing horde of burning prosthetic arms reaching for me, even relying heavily on teleporting away the moment a Paranoia invoked vision started. He was focused on me, yes, but even as four of arms lashed at me, six more freshly grown one's aimed at my nominal associates; and that wasn't even factoring in how the attacks aimed at me took paths to hit others, and how often a missed attack on someone else would divert towards me right away.

It was rather like what I'd imagine fighting an octopus on dry land would feel like, if one set every tentacle on fire. Lashing limbs left trails of scorch marks wherever they hit the ground, walls, or cieling, little fires starting all over the place; whether he was intentionally setting fire to the building he was standing inside or just didn't care, I couldn't tell. I almost found myself falling into something of a rhythm dodging around and vanishing away from half a dozen attacks from different angles only Paranoia even let me see coming.

And then Zildan decided to remind us all he wasn't stationary, the ground erupting beneath his feet as he lunged forward almost faster than my eyes could keep track of. He crossed the room in an instant (the burning hand-hydra sprouting from his shoulder trailing behind him and erratically shifting the trajectory of attacks), landing in front of Lemoi before I could blink. Gripping the half just beneath the cupped guard, he swung the blade as if he intended to use it like a thrusting dagger; an almost ridiculous image that lasted only an instant before the counterweight erupted with a sound like a gunshot, sending the blade rocketing forth just like it had when he targeted Roin.

Only, this time he didn't miss.