These moments were few, but there were rare crossroads in Tyr's life. When he knew that he'd made his decision and it had viscerally altered his path. Most of the time in the wrong direction, and he felt that way now. He'd grown comfortable again, typically sparring against students – most of which had no consideration of his immortality. Playing around.
They might know of it, but they didn't want to harm him. An experienced mage or trained fighter had no such interest in playing to his ego. They had a job to do and were in the process of mincing him like a side of pork to see said job done.
Raj had been dead. Or at least, he should've been. Unfortunately, Rommel seemed to be an incredible powerful light mage. In that single element she must've been at the archmage level, but they hadn't actively engaged in a discussion regarding their qualifications. Raj in turn was an earth mage, but not some normal – everyday geomancer. The earth at his fingertips alternated between something as hard and sharp as ceramic, or as soft as clay. Call him a clay mage, Tyr didn't know, but he was irritating – what was hard would become soft to slap wetly against his guard before expanding into glassy blades and slicing his flesh.
Tyr's one talent lay in fire magic and everything else was easily batted aside by the most simple of their wards. Raj, using that wet – heat resistant earth of his was a natural counter. And Rommel just kept coming with the light magic to keep the man on his feet, at a speed that would embarrass any priest, healing wounds as fast as Tyr could make them, even a literal decapitation. He'd never seen a battle healer so proficient in his life.
Raj chuckled softly, whipping a storm of razor sharp discs around himself and pummeling Tyr. The boy was panicking, shuddering violently under the assault, no answer for it.
“Raj!” Rommel cried out. “I understand why you're angry, but Cortus said to keep the damage to a minimum!”
“I am not angry.” Raj replied casually, flicking his hands back and forth as Tyr was thrown into a blender of ceramic shards that flayed him alive. “Look at him. Does he look like he hates this? He's not going to stop unless we tire him out, this is the honor and pride of a sworn warrior. A man's justice!”
“Ugh...” Yucca looked sick to her stomach. All of their number were similar to adepts among mages, but not quite so... Mundane? They all had the power to do one unique thing in particular better than anyone else, and that's why they'd been selected and trained thereafter. True adepts, that is, a rarity in this world. For her, it was umbramancy. As the word implied, the control of shadows and ability to use darkness magic as the prime component of metamagic, though she was stuck with just darkness and the barest bits of fire as usable elements. She was currently watching as the chunks of flesh were violently ripped away time and time again just to be returned to the main body. Meat flying away just to come back magnetically, slapping against his frame. It was incredibly disturbing. And to top it all off, what was left of the young primus' face was grinning in ecstasy. As if he liked it... “This is giving me the creeps, just put him in a box or something!”
“This does beg the question.” Rommel mused, approaching the hailing wall of shards and staring at the torn remains of Tyr. Every circulation of them, he seemed to heal even faster than before. In human terms, he'd died a thousand times in just a few minutes – held there in suspension amidst all of the hardened ceramic shards Raj's unique earth magic was capable of forming. Sharp and brittle beyond typical geomancers. He remained seated within that whirling hail, surely he could generate a kinetic combustion necessary to throw them awry... On purpose? “We do not want to hurt you, I can heal you if you agree to come with us quietly, I know that must hurt quite a bit. Please come with us, none of us are enjoying this.”
“I am...” Tyr wheezed. Laughing ecstatically despite the finely blended red mess his body had become.
“...How?” Rommel asked. “And why?”
“B-because...” Tyr shuddered. It was clear that he felt the pain, but his face would twist between a grimace of agony, to a mask of pleasure in an uneven loop. “Every time... You kill me... I become...”
There was a pause, an eerie one, silence punctuated only by the groans of discomfort and harsh wheezing.
“Better.”
Raj was blown backwards, sliding along the ground. Still standing, but his hands were clutching his bloodied face and groaning in pain. Tyr stood in the midst of the scattered shards, skinless and red, a lipless smile facing the others. These Five Fingers. He hadn't realized what a gift he'd really stumbled onto. He'd hit a plateau in his power, and while he didn't feel any stronger necessarily, it was evident that something in him had changed. Refined, become new, his entire body practically forced to reforge itself around his bones. He'd thought long and hard about his durability, and he found an answer, albeit a small one.
“Hit me again!” Tyr roared at Raj, the man overcome by a subconscious lashing via the spira laced shaper magic Tyr was capable of.
“This guy is insane!” It was Yucca's turn next, dark-flame surging to her fingertips. Rommel tried to stop her, but she was too late. This time, Tyr really did howl in pain. He wasn't smiling anymore, this was more than a physical attack. It didn't burn as the 'flame' component implied. It turned his skin and organs to dust until he was little more than a twisting skeleton. Somehow... Still standing. Darkness was a well documented weakness of Tyr's, his adverse element – but the ease at which it sloughed him away was shocking. “What the hell is wrong with you! Surrender, man, we aren't your enemies!”
“Again!” Tyr screamed, his teeth chattering madly, hunched over and wailing. “Again! Again! Again!”
And Yucca was more than happy to do as he asked. Rommel wasn't certain what was happening at this point, this was outside of their expectations. Sure, he was a bit unbalanced given his deeds – Cortus knew that. But Cortus had said that Tyr was one of the few who would understand what was necessary to balance the world. He thought... Cortus, that is – that Tyr was on the right track, just a little in error with his ways. Not quite there yet, but close, the once-primus confident that the boy could be made to see the light.
Rommel, on her part, would disagree. This man was nothing more than psychotic, welcoming the pain and doing nothing to defend himself against it. Cortus knew that too, that the young man had his... Predilections, Rommel supposed. A deeply rooted masochism born of self hate. But the plan had always been to limit the amount of damage done to him, perhaps there was more reason to that than avoiding an infliction of pain. After seeing Raj blown away like that with no obvious sign of mana being used, she understood finally what a necessary attrition it had been to avoid directly attacking him.
Not to save Tyr, necessarily, but the opposite. Cortus wanted to protect them.
“Stop!” Rommel shouted, and Yucca complied. “Shut him down!”
Bergen and Pattoli rushed forward, the former grabbing at the flesh-less skull to force his dream magic on him again. Bergen was one of the most powerful enchanters and illusion mages she'd ever seen. As for Pattoli, he was a true adept in the strictest sense. All human, all of them, but Pattoli was more of a beast than anything else. It wasn't just his strength that he'd been chosen for. And what strength he had, a man stronger than an ogre, grabbing Tyr in a bear hug to stabilize his body and allow Bergen to make contact with his face with greater purchase. All the while, Tyr howled – bringing his skill back into Pattoli's nose and sending the bear of a man sprawling.
Each and every one of the Finger's would give a gold ranked adventurer a run for their money – five against one and they were being mocked and played with.
“Bergen, run!” Rommel began to conjure a ward, but it was too late. Tyr had learned from his first mistake with Raj, thrusting his hand forward and tearing the heart clean out of the mage's chest. Crushing it in his hands beyond anything even her light magic could repair, burning the organ to ash. Bergen hit the ground with a confused groan, face revealing shock at the speed at which it had happened. Pattoli recovered quickly and launched a punch at Tyr.
An air splitting clap as it connected directly with the skeleton's solar plexus and sent him flying across the field. A few of the archers were knocked off the wall by the force of it, Tyr bowling straight through the plaster wall.
Others let loose their arrows belated, one of them burying itself in the hulking Pattoli's chest. With a grunt, he tore it free and slammed his fists together in agitation, snorting like a bull.
After that, things truly began to go downhill for them. A curved blade connected to a spectral chain launched itself from the smoking rubble. Punching through Pattoli's midriff with a laughing Tyr on the other end, using the man's impressive mass to propel himself forward. Flesh and muscle like so many red worms began to reattach themselves and connect all over his body, and to match them the dull clank of his signature armor settling over his rapidly recomposing flesh. Rommel managed to summon a ward this time – a wall of hard light that Tyr nearly managed to shatter before it countered his wild kick and buried him in the ground.
“Yucca!” Rommel cried. “Put him--!”
Already moving again, Tyr left the dark-flame filling the depression in his dust. He crashed into the ground before Pattoli and engaged in a display of fisticuffs with the larger man. Not bothering to draw a sword, letting those chain blades vanish and opting to box him with great gusto.
Pattoli was clearly stronger, but what damage he did to Tyr was recovered near instantaneously. No longer blown away, every time Pattoli stuck the man it felt like he was pounding his dinner-plate sized knuckled into a bag full of water.
“MEAT!”
Raj tried to corral Tyr with his clay magic, but Tyr was aware. He had learned. It was like fighting a beast capable only of adapting to experience, but what mastery he displayed in that simple thing. Pattoli thrust a massive fist forward and Tyr grabbed hold of his outstretched arm, scurrying up it like a spider and kicking off the mans back to send him face first into the hail before Raj could cease the torrent of shards. Slicing the mans head in twain and ending his life in an instant. First Bergen, now Pattoli, the latter being by far their strongest member – platinum rank equivalent and a master blood mage.
“Fuck this!” Yucca cried before sprinting toward the gate, abject fear warping her face. “Fire! Shoot him, help me!”
Arrows whistled through the air, but they were only arrows. Enchanted, poisoned or not, they hadn't been prepared for this kind of psychotic break. Tyr's chains flickered out again, one turning the first rank of bowmen into red mist, the other catching Yucca in the small of the back. All that came from her was a dry groan, replaced by the sound of a whip cracking as she was made paste against the small butte framing the compound.
Everything went wild. Those chains with the blades at the end of them were being thrown with his full force. Unlike the others, Raj was older and wiser – a bit quicker on the uptake. He managed to summon walls of wet earth to defend against the assault but even his power was no match before the screaming chains, cutting clean through those and yet more archers beyond. Blood rained from the walls, soaking their cloaks. Indiscriminate slaughter, not one of them were safe from it.
Raj ran, Rommel hadn't expected that either, the Bengal himself – a one-time member of the Ind royal guard and proud warrior displaying cowardice for the first time. And unlike Yucca, he managed to make it to the gate, looking back sadly even as Rommel cursed him for a craven.
She could not afford to run. Rommel had never failed Cortus, not once. He was a man of great foresight who had ensured she'd always been in another place when something went wrong. Taking an active part in saving her life. She loved him, as had the others – in their own ways. She would not surrender, never, and Tyr didn't seem to be taking prisoners either. Most of the men on the wall were bloody chunks of meat and the rest had begun fleeing as well. All that was left in her vision was Tyr, grisly – with a half shattered helmet leaking a viscous torrent of blood, whistling with every breath.
Cackling again.
“You are a monster!” Rommel howled. Bergen, Pattoli, Yucca. Brothers and sister, her only friends, all dead in an instant – and they were so... so talented. How was this possible?
“No...” Tyr's voice was less joyous as one might expect from the laugh. Deep and full of a melancholic mourning. “I am primus.”
Rommel shuddered. That was true, he was a primus. But Tyr had said he was primus. Not a primus, but primus itself – and she... believed him. Any shred of courage left in her fled in tandem with the urine soaking her padded graves. Running, as far and fast as she could, forcing her light infusion through her legs to heal her muscles even as they pushed beyond the limits and shred themselves.
“Ready or not.” Tyr whispered, and yet his voice carried across the plains like storm winds. “Here I come.”
All the while, Tyr hounded her. Playing some little game, he could've attacked her wards directly at any moment but his blows were aimed – guiding her towards a particular location. That much was obvious, though she wasn't in the right state of mind to consider why.
“Help me!” Rommel cried, tears falling from her eyes and snot from her nose. She didn't want to die, she wanted to see him again! If only to ask him why he'd sent them to be butchered at the hands of such a warped creature. They weren't ready for this... “Somebody! Help me, I don't want to die!”
Two strong hands. Bony, hard, no emotion in the touch. No violence, like running into a wall – they were just there. Immutable. Immovable. She was forced to the ground, looking through that slit in the helmet at two cold blue eyes watching her expression with manic glee. He clutched her ankle, dragging her backwards and giving her leg a clean break with a flick of his wrist as he hauled her body backwards. Tyr had been behind her, but now he seemed everywhere at once.
“You have a nice neck, Lady Rommel.” Tyr said softly, marching across the arid earth as he was stuck with dozens of broad-heads. Soft thumps as they sliced into his flesh, accepting them with no sign of discomfort.
Allowing her some pleasure once turned – at least – in the observation that some of the Baccian's hadn't been complete cowards. But their pitiful arrows could do nothing against this aberration of a man. A rock came up and struck her. Once, twice. Her face was crushed inwards, her sinuses white hot points of agony burrowing into her mind. Caught in a stalemate of what her light infusion was able to heal versus the damage he was inflicting with the blunt object.
Purposeful. He knew her limit and was playing at its maximum capacity to inflict her with as much pain as possible before he finally ended it.
And then it stopped. Mercy? No.
Tyr was blown away by some force and sent crushed and splayed in a cracked bit of masonry along the short wall between buttes. Making for another smoking hole, and between Rommel and the man that was prepared to kill her was a woman.
She was tall. Proportionately, she was curvaceous and athletic in build, with wide shoulders an an impressive stature. Shoulder length silver hair and seafoam green eyes burning as twin points of light in the sunrise. Her body was covered in armor so it was hard to say, but the massive crescent greataxe in her hands betrayed the strength in those limbs. She pointed at Tyr one handed as he dragged himself out of the stone. “Is this what you've been up to, then!? Face me, coward! Come and be judged by Mornstone justice!”
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Tyr managed to pull himself free, freezing in place. Staring back at the silver haired woman who's back faced Rommel.
“Thank you!” Rommel wheezed, trying to drag her broken body across the ground, in the other direction. The woman turned toward her with a look of disgust in her eyes.
“Stay right there or I'll end you myself, wench.” That's what she said, but Rommel knew better. Whoever this woman was, she had empathy and light in her – something which both Tyr and Cortus alike lacked. They could fake it, but the primus' were all monsters, only if she'd realized that before today. Her body began to reconstruct itself, filled with light magic as Sigi faced Tyr. He was frozen in place, breathing heavy and making a noise akin to the clearing of ones throat, only with every breath.
Grunting.
“Please leave... Sigi!” Tyr pleaded, all of a sudden displaying some sort of weakness and familiarity for the strange woman. “I'm too.... I'm too open!”
“Face me!” Sigi roared, leveling her axe at him. Discretely, Rommel rose to her feet – good as new for the time being. This was her chance. She didn't know this woman by appearance, nor reputation, but this 'Sigi' was incredibly able. Unexpectedly so, where had she come from? Her perceivable mana was platinum level as well, even stronger than Raj – people like that didn't just show up out of the blue.
“You don't understand.” Tyr removed his helmet, his face was deathly pale, dark rings surrounded his bloodshot eyes, one hand clutched to the side of his head and expression contorted in pain. Every inch of his skin patterned in black veins spreading by the second. “I know you're mad at me for what I did. For threatening Alex, leaving you all – but you have no idea what you're doing!”
Blood leaked from his lips, he seemed to be struggling with something fearsome inside of him. More madness, as if such a thing were possible.
“Do you think that's what this is about!?” Sigi roared. “You fool of a man, you bastard! I never loved you, not like the others even if they won't admit it, or perhaps they have! I married you because it was a chance... If I could bear the son of a primus...” Her voice softened, a sadness and insecurity in her that he'd never seen before. “The new primus, brought into the world with my blood, of my flesh. That would be the most appropriate way to honor my fathers memory. Allowing me to take back what is mine!”
“Its not that I don't understand.” Tyr stammered, grimacing at the throbbing pain in his skull. “But isn't that unfair to me? I didn't expect you capable of such selfishness. Don't betray me, please don't betray me.”
All they speak are lies.
“Selfishness? You have no idea what I've been through. What I've seen! Everything I do is in memory of my parents and Trafalgar, from the very beginning! I'd even go so far as to love you with all my heart, or at least I'll act like it for as long as I live in exchange. I will serve at your side, as will we all – and accept you in turn.” Sigi screamed passionately. “But I won't let you do this! Whatever this... This butchery is! I've offered you an open window to every part of my body – and you'll take it – or you'll die here! I'll find a way, I swear it, cretin!”
“Sigi...” Tyr began to shake uncontrollably. Again. It was happening again, worse than any time before, the nails scratching against his glass, tapping violently. The eyes. Her hands on his scalp when he'd thought himself rid of them. Running her fingers through his hair and urging him on to places he'd never wanted to go, joined by others. Yet more, so many voices in his head that he could scarcely speak before the screaming started again. “Get out of here. I won't ask again! My eyes are open!”
“Maybe you won't!” She cried. “But I shall have my reckoning! Curse you primus', all of you! I hate you and I always have, Jartor, Ragnar, Octavian, Alexandros! Kneel down and accept your defeat, fiend! I am Sigi Mornstone, daughter of the sea, and you will kneel before me!”
Tyr would have liked to say more. Comment on how ridiculous the words leaving her mouth were, but the time for talk was over. Sigi knew it, and so did he. Her veins came to the surface, a blueish black color and a faint glow to them – rife with violent mana. Stomping the ground, a wave of shattered earth reached out, erupting into a gout of water of such pressure that it lifted Tyr skyward with enough force to remove his arm. A booming clap echoed from overhead and a bolt of lightning connected with his body from above, hammer and anvil. Stunning him and crashing him back down into the earth.
All without a word... A three part compound spell spoken silently, at the bare minimum level 4 magic. Sigi had always been strong, but Tyr was beyond confident she'd never been this able. No human had a right to be.
Rommel could hardly believe it. This was it! Storm magic, calamity magic! Sigi was just like them!
“Don't stop!” Rommel cried, rushing forward. “He'll--”.
Sigi's plated boot whipped up to connect with her face, cracking her nose and silencing her. She had no idea who this woman truly was, but until proven otherwise, a powerful mage was a threat. Sigi didn't intend to kill her, but she wouldn't let her get away until she knew what was going on. Rommel slumped to the ground, woozy from the impact.
Tyr shot up into the air on tails of lightning, the flesh on his face half melted and helmet blown away again. A toothy smile on his lips for some mad reason, sword finally drawn and held in both hands prised for an overhead chop.
“Then die.”
They connected with the force of a thunderclap, blowing away the dust all around them as they weighed their might against one another. Tyr hung in the air, balancing on his bastard sword like a lever while Sigi met the edge with a practiced turn of the haft. His mind flayed by contradictory compulsions flickering through it, freezing, hesitating.
Surprisingly, Tyr's own strength was inferior to hers. Blown away with a quick crossing cut that crunched into his midsection and sent him skipping across the ground like a stone loosed upon a calm lake.
Before he could recover, she was on him. Kicking upwards to connect with his jaw and unleashing a fearsome combo of loping blows from her two handed crescent axe. A weapon he'd crafted with his own hands, never expecting to be the test subject of its keen edge. Everything was all rage with her, though, she'd forgotten her lessons and begun to fight like a berserker. Each sweep broke the earth, freely utilizing the longer body of the weapon like a staff by which to rattle him with kicks.
Tyr whirled, stabilizing himself with tongues of fire erupting from his heels, opting for speed rather than power. Sigi was stronger than he'd realized, but at the end of the day – he couldn't hurt her. His addled mind was still snarling at him to kill the woman who was still attempting to crawl away after recovering from Sigi's surprise assault. But now, all of a sudden, those same voices whispering to him were preventing him from considering harming Sigi herself.
Skating across the ground with kicking gouts of flame, he surrounded her – harrying her with everything he had within reason, but she was the perfect counter. Water, earth, and air magic, a visceral storm held in the palm of her hand.
Not like this, stop! Tyr thought. He couldn't match Sigi in swordplay without the possibility of going too far with her, and even then she'd be his match. Instead, he switched seamlessly to his shamisen, striking a single string and blowing her away this time. Song magic obeyed his will in a way that a sword or other magic would not. More control, at least, but it was far too dangerous to use in the heat of combat. Then again...
“Oi! Why are we fighting – this doesn't even make sense...!” Tyr came to a dawning, and fairly belated realization. He laughed. “Another one of your illusions then, Sigi would never betray me!” He called out, sidestepping her charging knee and rolling around her dexterously. It didn't make any sense for Sigi to charge him like this, what she'd said was even more irrational. Character wise, she wasn't the type to be so dramatic. Sigi would never do something like that.
Or...
Tyr sent flames in every direction but hers, scattering them for dozens of meters around. Trying to figure out why his senses hadn't been able to pick up the fact that things were not as they appeared. All magic had a weakness, all he had to do was figure it out. To finally wake up. “I know you're not real, Sig--!”
Sigi's fist shot our faster than he expected, catching him in the throat. Followed by a sweeping uppercut from the butt of her blade that dislocated his jaw – nearly tearing it from the hinge.
“What the fuck are you talking about? Mocking me at a time like this?” Sigi raged, towering over him. Tyr's response came in the form of a wet groan, a choking chortle, followed by an even more vicious distorting of her face clearly indicating that she believed him to be laughing at her.
Tyr came to understand what his existence must mean to someone who'd tried their best to kill him. All of those paladins who had picked and picked, cut and stabbed. Growing more and more frustrated as he healed. Shackles didn't work, Tyr had no problem at all shattering his own hands or tearing his own limbs off. If he pulled with all his strength, his elbows would hold out but the ligaments in his wrist would not. Tendons would snap and the remains would slide out of any rope or chain they used to bind him. Even a slave collar hadn't worked. He'd purposely activated it and walked around headless for a while. The man he'd grappled to his chest in the process hadn't been so lucky, caught in the explosion and killed.
They could starve him, drown him, burn him, freeze him... Well... There were a lot of ways to kill a man, but Tyr was... Suffice it to say an eternal reminder of the futility of it all, how worthless he must have made them feel. Men and women who had dedicated their life to an art, the art of the kill, and he couldn't be. Giving them the satisfaction of breaking him, but that wore off after a time. If anything, him being so relatively weak of flesh exacerbated their rage at their inability to put him down. To hold him in any way, everything was futile. He was a monument to everything they feared, impotency made manifest.
Sigi seemed to be experiencing that now, but she kept trying, whatever the case. Wroth, her hands grabbing at his breastplate and beating him senseless into dirt and rock with every ounce of power her transmutation gave her. Growing nearly a food, the circumference of her arms and legs doubling to crush his bones to powder. There was so much bottled up emotion in her that Tyr could scarcely believe it, and not an ounce of it was caused by him directly.
She blamed him for absolutely nothing, he could smell it in her. She was stuck in a persistent loop of mourning that she couldn't seem to crawl free of.
Sure, Sigi had always been violent and rash, quick to pummel her opponent, but she was not cruel – or he'd never believed her so at least. Her psychosis was almost profound. But she was a human, after all, and humans would tire – they ran on tanks of energy with a capacity that Tyr did not possess. His mana was not infinite, but his recovery rate was much higher – and his stamina was, if not endless, damn close to it. She panted, spitting onto the ground and staring at the jellied organs rolling along the ground like tumbleweeds to join the greater mass of Tyr's body. The red figure of a fleshy scarecrow becoming more human by the second – it was so fast now.
“You are a disgusting thing.” She spat again, heaving, the fight fleeing her. One hand on her axe and the other clenched into a fist. “Unnatural...”
“Perhaps.” Tyr nodded, half of his face was a writhing mass of muscle tissue again, giving him that itchy feeling as everything... came back together. “I can't imagine it looks very wholesome to the observer.” Unlike her, he was just the smallest bit worn – a little drowsy, but that feeling went away with the breeze touching the skinless parts of his body. The flatlands became frigid at night, before the scorching heat of day came, such a bizarre environment it was. “I'm proud of you.”
“Don't patronize me, you dog!” Sigi snarled, standing again to face him.
“I'm not, you beat them quiet and I thank you for that.” Tyr raised his hands in surrender, one eye never leaving the huddled form of Rommel, busied with hastily healing herself. Quite a lot of his fire had managed to reach her, slowing her intended escape. “You've grown very strong, and your skill with an axe... I'm not going to say you're better than me – but as a whole package it's pretty impressive. Mage and warrior together, I look forward to seeing how far you'll come.”
“Easy for you to look down on me, eh?” She asked. “Better than you? Who are you to rate me like some kind of master at arms when you've such a convenient ability. You lost. Any day of the week, I'll put you down no matter what you've got – and you're still going to answer for what you've done here.”
Tyr grimaced. She was too proud, but then again... So was he, the pair of them tyrannically arrogant in their own ways. But from his perspective, at least he had cause to be, he was invincible. “You keep fighting like that and eventually you're going to run into somebody who has the good sense to stab you in the eye. No helmet? No guard whatsoever. Your wards are what they are, and I could break them if I'd wanted to. You aren't nearly as impressive as you think you are.”
“Neither are you, bastard.”
“That's where you're wrong.” Tyr glared at her. “I have always been more impressive than I thought I was, and now I realize that was all part of the problem. I had no love, so I was weak. My convictions were vague, and even when they were not – they were small and petty. So I, in turn, became small and petty. I am the strongest being on this planet, and if I'm not – which let's be honest...”
He sighed, frowning at her with his hand outstretched, intending to offer aid. “I will be, very soon, Ms. Daughter of the Sea. Let's go, you can have your answers from that woman there and you'll see that I'm not such an evil creature after all. I am yours, Sigi, and I hear your request and swear I'll grant it to you if I can.”
With the other hand, he removed what was left of his regenerating helmet. More of an uneven crown than anything, no point in letting the shards hovering all around his face remain there while it tried to repair itself.
But all that did was incense her even further. Sigi was prideful and defiant, but Tyr in comparison was arrogant beyond anything she'd ever seen – the strongest being on the planet...? What a joke.
She grunted, putting all of her frustration and rage into a blow that cleaved into him from below. Bent as he was, the cut separated his face and sent him flopping backwards. From collarbone to forehead was a red chasm, blood jettisoned from the artery she'd struck in the process. She didn't follow it up, it was just to make a point. In truth, she felt a little bad for it, but at the end of the day he'd be jailed or worse for what he'd done. And in the process, he'd dishonored not only her but also what family she had left. One that he was unfortunately a member of.
Becoming worse and less desirable by the day, if she'd have known back then...
“Get up, bastard, we are not through – I can still continue.” She said. Tyr's body flinched a few times before stilling, choking on his own fluids. Blood seeped into the ground and she kicked him in the ribs. Just dead weight, no reaction at all... “I said get up!” She kicked him again, harder this time, heaving his limp body across the dry ground. “...Tyr?” She called out – but again there was no response. If she didn't know any better, she'd have thought him dead. “Oi! If this is a joke, it is not funny!” Silence was all she heard. Silence... Except for a dragging sound at her rear.
A group of people she was absolutely sure had been killed were groaning, scratching at their skin, two of them vomiting on the ground. One was a woman with a rapidly healing red line on her neck, the other was a man, his jaw popping back into place, spitting clods of dirt from his mouth.
“Good gods, I do not like that feeling in the slightest.” The woman said, her neck cracking uncomfortably loud, joined by a visible movement of her broken joints as they realigned themselves. “It feels so wrong. Imagine having to experience that sensation every time you get injured? I... I almost pity him.”
“Better than being dead, Yucca.” Raj replied sadly, chewing on his bottom lip. “But I suppose you're right. I thought we were done for...”
“We were.” Bergen replied, still flat on his back. “Far be it from me to be anything but thankful, Pattoli, but you took your sweet time.”
“It was hard.” Pattoli shivered in fright at the experience they'd just undergone. They'd seen the black, the land of the dead – and all those things that resided there. Trapped for eternity in an endless purgatory of knee-high ebony water. “Harder than I thought it'd be. And we did die, you all saw it.”
They called him 'Count Pattoli' as some kind of joke, but his alias was 'The Black Hand'. Black Hand Pattoli, the 'greatest thief' in the world and eldest son of Hastur's first daughter... Before all that had happened, had.
His strength came from his mastery of anima infusion, and through anima he could 'take' things. Diseases, discomforts, pain, a domain if it was strength related. Could steal the vitality from a man and make it his own, withering the recipient of his touch. Or in this case – with the right amount of effort – even steal the aspect of an adept. Apparently, primus' included. The scientific applications of this were almost terrifying, but the research data he'd gained currently being transmitted through his implants was insane.
Cyclic immortality... They'd live forever, complete cellular regeneration on the most basic level... How was that possible, biologically? All waste energy was rotated and kept in a tremendously dense mass in their bodies, and he could slowly feel his biological processes grinding to a halt. Like an undead, if only to use them as a comparison because this was the complete opposite. An elemental, then? No, he was alive – they all possessed anima yet still unlike an elemental or golem. It didn't make any sense.
The only conclusion Pattoli could make is that Tyr was not human.
“My lady...” Raj rose and bowed toward the silver haired woman staring in horror at the corpse that had once been Tyr. A dead man, now. Probably. Raj certainly hoped not, but in a worst case scenario this was in line with Hastur's command. Rather lose one extra primus than five of his Fingers, it seemed like a poor trade – but Raj wasn't complaining. “Many thanks for your aid, to think that you possessed such skill... We are in your debt.”
Sigi's eyebrows lowered, her head slowly turning to glare at him. “Who the fuck are you?”
“We are but the humble, and world renowned 'Fingers', if it please my lady.”
“Raj!” Bergen shouted. “You're not supposed to say that to strangers!”
“What?” Raj shrugged. “She helped us, she deserves to--”
Sigi's voice cut him off mid sentence.
“Five Fingers.” She grimaced. “Five Fingers of Hastur and the Black Hand.” She spat, there was a nauseating feeling in her stomach, having been played for a fool like that. She'd played herself, Tyr was here for a reason and she'd stomped on his plan and done something terrible... “I guess we should get this over with, then.”