Suzaku felt his hand twisting towards a draconic claw. His whole body seemed to be changing, and it was forcing power to flow into and through him. Power far in excess of what he was used to. But he was a swordsman, a man of discipline every bit as sharp and focused as his katana’s blade, every bit as tempered as the folded steel which formed it.
He felt the sword fall from his grasp, his body extending and stretching, but he kept his movements flowing. He would end this alchemist if it was the last thing he did.
His claw slid through the man’s torso and the Dragon Alchemist fell to the ground, a gaping hole having replaced most of his chest as he was nearly bisected by the blow.
Suzaku relaxed then. He had lost, but he would protect his friends. He might become a dragon, driven mad by the power he could even now feel assailing his brain, but none of the others would be forced to suffer this fate.
He fell to his knees, fighting the chaotic energy inside of him. It was a storm of draconic power raging through his thoughts, and making his body twist and grow to accommodate it. He didn’t try to rise, instead he pushed his will against that power. He couldn’t let it overwhelm him. If he did he might destroy his friends. If nothing else he needed to focus on retaining his mind.
It would take discipline. But Suzaku had always been good at discipline. This wasn’t cold like in his waterfall training, but ultimately it wasn’t too different. Every nerve in his body was screaming out due to the full form assault, yelling at him to move away from the torrent. But he knew he could not back down. His eyes closed and he turned his mind wholly inward.
Natsu was swinging. He’d taken out the first alchemist in a matter of a few punches, but he was still looking for Happy, and not much of the lair was going to be left standing if he didn’t find his friends soon. So-called wings, gouts of fire shooting out to the sides of his body to cut and burn through anything that he passed, burst forth as he ran.
The team that came to stop him was mostly comprised of low ranking members, a mere support team and not one of Silver Demon’s main forces. They barely slowed him.
Arthur didn’t move. His territory formed around the bottles and behind Raimi and the bottles struck against Raimi from behind. Each one shattered, broken glass raining onto the dark alchemist, but it was what was inside that mattered. They held no elixir, or explosive formula, but bottled monsters.
The two creatures expanded explosively, pushing Raimi to the ground. They were humanoid, but not human. One was a hulking brute of a creature, resembling a bear except that it was too upright for one, somewhere between a bear and a man. Fire burned down its back, and wreathed its head in a blazing lion-like mane. Its ursine head pointed towards Arthur and it roared out, before immediately charging.
The other was less direct. It looked more human as well, and female to boot. Her skin was electric blue, her hair a bright, neon yellow which glowed with its own light. It matched her solid-colored eyes and lips. Dark gray masses, looking at a glance like foreboding clouds shaped into wings, spread from her back, and she wore little. She did not charge but she still growled.
Arthur didn’t need to be told they were demons. He could feel it throughout his body, his own demon cells calling to theirs.
The bear-demon’s claw swept towards Arthur, its hand exploding with fire. With his mind overclocking, Arthur could follow it easily. It was not slow compared to an average high class mage; it was faster than Skullion, or most of Diabolos. But compared to Minerva using her dragon slayer magic, Kirin’s attacks, or Suzaku’s sword it was a crawl.
Arthur caught its claw with his own, his right arm turning into a scale, draconic talon. Its companion was faster than it, though, fast enough that even overclocked Arthur failed to notice her approach. He wasn’t sure if she was just that fast, if she teleported, or something else as she struck him from his blindspot, a surge of electricity crackling across his Territory Armor, even as she hit. None of it actually breached his armor, it merely moved the bubble of territory he was surrounded in, forcing him into the bear.
The bear bellowed, and breathed a gout of flame towards him, an encircling inferno that would wrap around him. And Arthur’s mouth opened wide, his armor opening over it so that he could feed.
Georg had started to charge the ancient alchemist only to stop when he found himself somewhere far different. And terribly familiar.
It was a town. Or it had been. Fire burned everywhere around him, buildings charred to the ground. And people. The stench of burning flesh filled his nose.
A shadow hung over him, casting his face into darkness. His head rose to look up towards it. He expected what he saw. He’d seen this scene many times in his nightmares. The moment that had set him on the path to becoming the Dragon Eater. His wife and their young son had been killed. Their home was one of those burning to the ground right now.
It had been this moment that had started him down this road. It’d been so long now that it was only in his nightmares he remembered why. For decades he had dedicated his life to the destruction of dragons, until it had just become what he did, until he hunted dragons to hunt dragons, and ran the guild to be its master. But it had started at this little town. Like many dragon slayers in the guild, Georg had started because a dragon had taken everything from him. He wasn’t like the orphaned children, he had been old enough to really remember it, and to do something.
He hadn’t been there, though. When it had happened he’d been away. He only got back as the red dragon flew away. It was a massive and terrible beast. The Fire Dragon God Ignia. If he’d met that beast then he would have died. But here he was where his old nightmares placed him, in its shadow as it burned down the town for nothing more than the pleasure of destruction.
“Damn you!” Georg howled, pain that he had repressed, successfully, so long he had managed to not remember it for years. He stared at the fire god dragon, its contempt for him in every line and contour of its body. “Damn you to hell!”
Minerva spun, her palm striking the flat of Carpenter’s sword, only for him to disappear and reappear behind her. His fighting style was repetitive and predictable, but it didn’t make it easily beaten. She activated her dragon slayer magic to speed forward a step and dodge, but she couldn’t keep this up forever. If this continued to be a battle of attrition he’d win; alchemists didn’t rely at all on internal power, oh his body might eventually tire, but she expected her magic would wear out first.
She began to mutter in the language of the Yakuma people. She wasn’t summoning one of the Eighteen Battle Gods. She was invoking the wraiths of the dead which she’d never quite expelled from herself. She knew it was hard to control them. But if she couldn’t invoke them in battle, she’d lose to them eventually.
She still had to fight and dodge, even as she tried to focus on channeling the wraiths. Carpenter’s twisted space, swapping the area around her with the area around him, his sword swinging. She barely managed to flick a territory shield into existence for the briefest of moments, too quickly for him to turn it against her.
He pressed the assault, mixing blows of his blade with teleportation, and she couldn’t stay ahead of it long. She felt a flesh wound to one arm, then the other. She was losing by a death of a thousand cuts, as his blade left a gash in her stomach where she dodged back a moment too slow.
Anger and hate were bubbling up black as pitch from the depths of her soul. She could feel the emotions of the wraiths inside of her, whispering and ordering her to kill. A second voice superimposed itself over her own, and then a third, and a fourth. Finally a fifth joined the chorus as she spoke in a voice of legion.
It caused Carpenter to pause momentarily. His killing blow halted as he teleported back, fearing some double-kill spell. “I don’t need to be close to you to kill you,” He said, eying the young woman warily. Her magical energy had darkened and grown more malicious. A death curse. It had to be.
He had said that, but it wouldn’t be easy. He could teleport rubble to fall on her, but she’d not completely stopped moving. She knew he probably had that capability so she wasn’t staying still. Besides if she stopped moving it’d be easy for him to simply teleport her somewhere hazardous.
He should have killed her to begin with. Not brought her here for the duel. But he had wanted to crush her. Besides, the boss had said to bring in as many as possible alive. Immediate death was only authorized for the guildmaster and their ace.
But something about the way her hair had become unkempt and fallen over her face, the way she was moving with odd jerks and sudden spurts of speed, and that voice that sounded like a half dozen people speaking not quite in sync with each other added up to an almost irrational fear in him.
If he ran, the guild master would have his head. But if he didn’t stay and fight what would happen instead? Would he survive it?
She roared, and he teleported, appearing behind her and throwing a pair of daggers. They were struck down. A six-limbed humanoid with blue skin had appeared. He’d felt the ripple in space, but it was over and done too quickly. She had summoned it and now he was fighting 2 to 1. And he had the feeling she wasn’t done tilting the odds in her favor.
Cullen woke up with his head screaming. He wasn’t sure where he was. Everything was dark. He was gagged. And he was tied. And Cullen did what he had done every time he’d woken up since being captured. He tried his magic. It was hard to shape and conjure without words or hand signs, but he felt some sand form. He wasn’t in magic sealing stone.
He wasn’t too surprised about that. He didn’t think they had many cells made of it; maybe only the one. The last thing he remembered was waking up to them taking him from the cell, only to bludgeon him unconscious again. Something big had to be happening, though. He’d already managed to escape from the Magic Sealing Stone cell twice; they’d not have reduced his security if something wasn’t changing.
He formed a blade of sand. It was hard with his hands bound. But he managed, and then he began to saw the rope, hands moving to rub it against the blade and cut through it little by little. He would get free. And he’d figure out what was happening.
Suzaku didn’t dare open his eyes to see the state of his body. The forced dragonification had left its sensations in disarray, and the urge to rise up and cut down those who stood in his way. To spread a scything sweep through his enemies and demonstrate his might hadn’t gone away. He focused on his meditation techniques, on chanting mentally a mantra, as he leveled and steadied his breathing. If he was going to become a dragon who would be eaten by his guild, he wasn’t going to be one who would fight them first. He wouldn’t hurt his family like that.
He forced himself to not think about that. To see his mind and soul as calm. Each repetition of the mantra helping him to get his breathing and heart under control. The words didn’t matter. It was just something to focus on. Like when he used a sword his soul and mind needed to be sharp and focused, crystal clear and unclouded by other things. Only in that void did the ultimate sharpness lay. And he would reclaim that void.
“Natsu, cut that out. You’re gonna bring this place down on our heads.” Gray’s voice sounded out in a rebuke. Natsu spun around, shocked at hearing a friend’s voice at last. The pink haired mage had burned or broke his way through several chambers already, and more members of Silver Demon than he could count.
“Gray!” He called out.
“Natsu!” Happy’s voice sounded, the small cat stepping out from behind the mostly naked ice make mage.
“Seems they didn’t scatter us far,” came Erza’s voice. “From the quality of foes they set before us, they didn’t seem to think that much of us either.”
“Yeah, but they put us on the outside. It’s going to take time to get to the real fight,” Gray said.
“How do you know that?” Natsu asked.
“For one looking out a window. When we first entered we were in a place without them,” Gray said. “Also unlike someone I used my head and asked questions and didn’t just throw punches.”
“I was looking for you guys,” Natsu defended himself, the two beginning to grow heated as they started to snipe at each other with little comments about their respective methods.
Raimi watched with horror. The head of the mage had changed, his skin blackening, his teeth becoming fangs, his eyes shifting into red orbs of malevolence. It was like he was a demon just like those Raimi had released.
And he had eaten them. Biting down onto one and drinking in its soul. And then the other. Raimi had spent years in their construction, finding the perfect storm and starting the perfect forest fire, disasters with enough loss of life and destruction to allow his Life and Death Alchemy to turn it into living weapons.
And this mere mage had destroyed them in a matter of minutes, and left them dissipating into tatters of energy and colored smoke.
Raimi wasn’t a warrior personally. He liked to think of himself as a commander. He didn’t dirty his hands with personal combat; he had pawns for that. Two were usually more than enough.
He wasn’t sure if Diabolos’s ace was a demon disguised as a human, or a human with magic to transform into a demon, but it didn’t matter. Either way he had to bring everything he had to bear on the situation. He pulled his robes wide and began grasping at the containers strapped to the inside of it, throwing them one after another towards Arthur. Even if he could eat 2 demons, Raimi was certain he couldn’t deal with all of them at once. It was a veritable army, his personal Pandemonium.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Georg stared up towards the most powerful fire dragon in all of Earthland. Maybe anywhere. The Fire God Dragon. It was a creature that surpassed his reason and understanding. It was power made manifest in the flesh. And it was prey. Every year of training, every dragon he had eaten, every battle he had endured was to consume it. And yet he found every fiber of his being screaming to run. To turn tail and not face it. For it would destroy him.
There was the nagging feeling he had been somewhere else. That he had been doing something else. That it had been important. But it was hard to remember. Everything around him seemed so real, and yet subtly wrong. Like he was in a particularly vivid nightmare.
But he knew he had to either run or fight. But his body wouldn’t move to do either. Georg bit down onto his tongue, letting the pain jolt him to his senses, or at least somewhere closer to them, and he roared. He would eat a dragon god.
Carpenter didn’t want to run. The Guild Master was ‘displeased’ with his failure already. He was supposed to have brought back one of the Dark Dragon Knights. Instead he had brought back 2 children and a ghost. It wasn’t quite a failure. But it was not quite a success either. And the elites of Silver Demon were expected to succeed. And if they failed they risked having one of the master’s dolls use their nightmare alchemy to transport them into a world born of their own worst nightmares. And if you died in your nightmare there, you died for real.
And if he had to run from a child, Carpenter would have failed. His Space Alchemy was useful enough he might escape alive, but that was far from certain, and the punishment would still be harsh.
But the little girl and her summoned battle god was pushing him hard. He could handle the six-armed battle god, fast and deadly as its swords were. He could indefinitely avoid the slower spearman she had summoned, even with the fact that when he had struck it it had duplicated. With her speed flagging from wounds or fatigue the girl would be easy enough to deal with. But trying to fight all three was difficult, especially when shadows seemed to lash from her body to strike at his very soul - passing through him with a deathly chill that left his mind reeling - when he got close to her.
“I’ll swallow your soul,” the girl said, her eyes hidden by her unruly hair, and then she pounced like a tiger on its prey.
Carpenter teleported, dodging to the side. She’d already struck him, he’d been forced to teleport too recently by the six-armed swordsman, but this would prevent follow up attacks. But a spearman stabbed down, skewering his leg, and he howled out with pain.
“Die!” The girl screamed, teleporting over him and thrusting her hand down like a spear towards his throat.
She stopped, her hand inches from his neck, the windpipe crushing blow halted. She seemed to be struggling with some inner turmoil.
And Carpenter realized if the guild’s children were this strong he didn’t need to fear punishment from failure. The master would fail himself, and he would finally be free after all these years.
He swapped his location with a safe room he had prepared ahead of time, a chair appearing where he had been inside of the lair, a member of Silver Demon no longer.
Once his hands were freed it was easy enough to free himself. But even with the hood off of his head he was in total darkness. And in a small room. He’d been slumped partially upright and he understood why. He seemed to be locked in a closet.
One sand lockpick later, he stumbled out into the hallway, and began looking around. He’d been hearing sounds since he woke up, things like explosions and battles. He felt his knees shake a bi. He could try and run while his captors were distracted. But if there was a battle it was probably his guild coming to rescue him and he wasn’t going to run and leave them to fight alone. He made his sand into a suit of armor, and began to walk towards the sounds of violence.
“Suzaku, are you alright?”
Suzaku was shocked to feel a hand on his shoulder. His eyes slowly opened. Pax was there, standing over him. He hadn’t even realized he was sitting up in proper seiza style.
He looked towards the dead alchemist. The transmutation must have ended with the man’s life, and without that impetus his own focus must have beat it down. He’d never used the dragon force before, not like some members of the guild. He never wanted to again.
“I’m fine, where are the others?”
“I got separated from Kirin,” Pax said. He’d been accompanying the dark dragon slayer knights’ leader in their quest to cause havoc. “And then I found you just sitting like you were zoning out and well thought maybe you were cursed or something.”
“I’ll be fine,” Suzaku said, grabbing his sword and wiping it clean. “Stay close till we find the others.”
Arthur had begun to lose track of the beings he had killed. At first he had thought them all demons, but they weren’t. He’d released his dragon takeover to fully embrace his demon takeover in the form of the Chaos Soul, that demonic soul-drinker of the Black Blade he carried ready to be requipped on demand. None of the demons in what the black robed alchemist was calling his “Infinite Pandemonium” were up to snuff for using as a takeover form, but they could mix and meld as Arthur sacrificed their uniqueness to stuff together into a chimeric form.
His talons raked across a demon who melted like soft clay under his assault. Its soul was different though. The taste was off. The power he received was there, but it wasn’t an etherious. There was nothing he could add from it to his Takeover.
It was human.
He missed a beat, and blows rained down onto his Territory Armor. He was leaking power, though, and the entire horde put together lacked the strength necessary to overcome it with brute force at that moment.
He cut through another demon and another and another, and then it wasn’t a demon. It was a human. But it wasn’t flesh and blood. It was clay and fear. It was like when he had drunk the souls from inside of Minerva.
“You bastard,” He said, looking at Raimi.
Raimi snarled. “Me? Do you know how many of my demons you’ve killed? I’m going to enjoy seeing you torn apart.”
Arthur raised his hands, and formed his Territory, a wall of solidified space formed in front of him and then the wall split in two, pushing to the sides and parting the force of demons. “You bound human souls to your will.”
“And you ate them,” Raimi said, reaching down to his hip.
Arthur was upon him in an instant, a hand grasping his undershirt and lifting the necromantic alchemist by it. “Not on purpose.” No. He’d just fed ones to his sword by intent. But that was a guilt which still weighed on Arthur. A guilt which ate and nagged at his mind, and kept him awake at night.
It was a guilt that even now slowed his reactions and made him drop his guard. A vial shattered against his armor, and what emerged looked like one of the human-souled, and so horribly unlike one as well. The two he had slain looked almost like clay. Half-finished, not all the way. This one too looked like such clay, but it was shaped like a dragon instead of a man, its size massive as it emerged from the containing vial, pushing Arthur away from Raimi.
“Will you eat the soul of your guild mate, though?” Raimi asked. “It was quite the exciting experiment. I’d never had the chance to deal with a fully realized ghost before. It was a shame his death had left him human despite being a dragon slayer. It seems that part of the soul does not stay attached. I wonder why. Still… he is mine now, and I will show you a dragon’s roar. Dragon, destroy him!”
It already was trying, its claws and fangs striking towards Arthur. Like the others it lacked the physical force to take him out, but Arthur knew better than to trust his territory armor against it. The necromancer had implied it was Wraith, and Wraith’s magic could force his soul from his body. His territory armor could stop it; it wasn’t entirely wrong to say that the inside of it was a different dimension than the outside, one with a one-way portal. But it wasn’t a perfect defense; he had to allow some 2 way traffic; to breathe if nothing else.
Wraith was the one mage in the guild who he lost to one on one at this point. But this Wraith-dragon lacked what made Wraith unstoppable. It had a body.
Only Arthur didn’t know if it could be knocked out, or if damaging it would do something to damage Wraith. The dragon’s mouth opened and Arthur teleported, avoiding the roar. Wraith at full power could pop his soul from his body. He didn’t know how this false dragon’s roar would measure up.
He struck towards Raimi, and his sword plunged into a woman’s stomach. Raimi had rolled forward, dodging the blow, as one of his soulbound creations threw itself at his blade.
He pulled his sword free and the woman threw herself at him, the living clay wrapping around him. Wraith’s head rose, the dragon-like, ghost-animated clay opening its mouth.
Arthur teleported again, escaping the woman’s grasp.
“So you won’t consume human souls,” Raimi said with a leer, hands grasping and dropping more vials to let the clay golem-like ghost vessels rise up half solid and half slime. “I guess it’s not worth wasting demons on you then. But don’t worry. I’ve got plenty of damned souls to release.”
Raimi was growing calmer. Diabolos’s ace saw himself as a good guy. He wasn’t going to blow up the base when his allies were fighting above. He wasn’t going to consume the souls of the damned. And as long as his guild mate was pressing the attack he couldn’t win.
And just as he was thinking this a bronze pegasus charged him from the sidelines, a hoove striking his head from behind and then another. Enif had been watching and waiting, and the moment Arthur was confident that the necromancer had well and truly forgotten him, and that the battlefield was clear enough for him to have an opening the celestial spirit charged in.
“Protect me! Save me!” Raimi cried out as the barrage of comet fast hooves beat and battered him. The soul-vessels turned, even the dragon which was - presumably - Wraith. Enif flew back and up, but in the underground chamber there wasn’t room to dodge. The dragon simulacrum’s tail struck Enif and the pegasus fell. “Full power, destroy it!” Raimi howled.
The dragon roared and the beam of its attack shot towards Enif. Only it was Raimi, not Enif, who took the attack. The power to transpose two targets, and a mental speed high enough to time it properly was a hell of a combination.
Raimi’s soul was pushed from his body, and Arthur’s mouth opened breathing deep with a dragon slayer’s lungs and the soul hunger of a black sword.
“You weren’t innocent, you…” Arthur began only to watch the soul constructs drop to the ground and begin to melt away.
“Brother? Brother!” The shapeshifter, Ashley, began to scream, tears forming in her eyes.
Arthur winced a little. She’d tried to chainsaw him in the gut, but she was cute, and crying because of him. The idea of killing her crossed his mind. It’d remove her as a potential threat. But she’d surrendered. And she hadn’t been much of a threat to begin with.
He turned towards her, a sword in his hand. It wasn’t his sword, the black sword, but it was still a lethal weapon.
“Do it,” She said. “I’m going to melt too anyway. It’s just a matter of time now that my brother is dead.”
Georg’s emotions only boiled higher and higher as he fought the red dragon. It battered him. It beat him. His right arm hung limp, blood running down from his limb. But he was fighting. He had managed to pull it into his blue dimension, to strike it hard and fast while it could not move, and drain its life from it with every blow, using its own vital energy to empower his blows.
The dragon force was tantalizingly close. But if he lost control… why not. Why not delve into it. It’d let him kill the monster he had hated for decades. It was only his pride that held him back. He would defeat it as a human. He would slay the dragon gods while retaining his humanity.
And he was succeeding. Each rage fueled blow coming down harder and faster. Even as its tail hit him and shattered his ribs, sending him smashing through what had once been his cousin’s house. The flaming building collapsed around him and he used his magic, moving fast enough to seem to teleport, before striking the dragon in the gut, draining life from it.
And this time he pierced through it, tearing through the dragon’s body. And all around him the world began to crumble.
“I see our guest has returned. It took longer than usual, still very nice, my children,” Silver Demon’s aged master said, a hint of pleasure in his voice as he looked at the bloody heap which had been Diabolos’s master.
Craven stepped forward, his arm moving out between Silver Demon’s master and Georg. “He slew his nightmare and broke free.”
Georg pushed himself to his feet. Blood speckled his lips. It ran from his arm. It dripped from his head and ran freely from a large, claw wound that dominated his chest.
The guild master frowned. “Kill him,” the aged guild master said.
Nancy shot forward, a shockwave in her wake. Georg’s magic washed over them both. He’d fought in her dimension, and now she would fight in his. It was the magic of the azure dragon, one of the four beasts whose magic had joined together within his four beasts style.
It was similar to Misaki’s magic; she wielded that of the azure dragon after all. It pulled the alchemist into a blue dimension, in which only Georg himself could move. But Georg’s had merged with his other magic, the life draining magic of the vermillion phoenix dragon beginning to rip away at her life as he shot forward within it, his hand striking her before he shot past, and then he reversed his direction. He beat on her for a full minute, before the blue dimension faded, and its final effect came into play, magnifying the sensations to the equivalent of hours and hitting her all at once.
Nancy screamed and fell as pain surged through her body.
“Monster,” Craven growled, his fingers starting to stretch out into knife-like blades. “I will cut you to pieces.”
“Try it, boy,” Georg said. He was struggling to stand. The Nancy girl, and he suspected Craven too, wasn’t human. Her life force had been toxic, and human life energy wasn’t a poison like that. He felt drunk, and dizzy, as his sense of balance grew increasingly unsteady.
Georg managed to knock the alchemist back, sending Craven flying with a roundhouse kick, but Georg fell to the ground as well. Craven rolled to his feet, hopping up, even as Nancy rose.
“You lose,” Silver Demon’s master said, his papyrus-like skin making a small sound as he beamed with sadistic pleasure. “Your arrogance to think you could possibly win against us.”
Even as he spoke a cylinder of sand shot out towards him. It was only a moment before Craven had interposed himself, taking the blast of sand to the chest instead.
Cullen stood shaking with fright. If Georg was losing this fight, this was a fight way above his pay grade. He was smart enough to know it. But he couldn’t find the ability to run away. He had stepped into the fight. And he knew he would be here till its end.
“Nancy, end the brat first,” the dark guild’s master said almost contemptuously. “Let the Dragon Eater watch as we eat his little hatchling.”
“You think I’ll allow that?” Georg said and then fell to one knee.
“You can’t stop it. Your guild is doomed because you had the audacity to stand against us. And why? Because we used one of your little teams in an experiment? Was it worth it?”
An explosion rocked the room, dust and small pieces of the ceiling falling down. A red haired woman stood in the new entrance that had been made in the wall, clad in bulky armor. Natsu and Gray stood only a little ways behind Erza Scarlet, and with them Skullion, Madmole, and Kiria.
The guild master of Silver Demon began to rise to his feet, only for explosions to suddenly surround him. And again, and again.
Craven and Nancy looked about in surprise and terror, looking for the threat to their creator.
Nancy saw Minerva first, but she only got halfway to the girl before Kiria had severed her arm and knocked her from her leap. Craven hammered into Madmole, the armored dragon slayer taking his powerful blow unharmed.
And Minerva formed more of the explosive spheres of her territory and detonated them around the aged alchemist. “Stand down, or I see if he can survive my full intensity,” She said.
Craven looked at his maker, and the homunculus’s head lowered. “We surrender.”
Carpenter trembled with naked terror. He wasn’t sure what the woman in front of him really was. Only that she held so much more magical power than the girl who had kicked his ass. And she had appeared via spatial magic which had been too powerful for him to twist even when it had made itself known ahead of time.
“You want revenge, right?” She asked. “I’ll give you the chance.”
“And what do you want in return?” Carpenter asked.
“Oh nothing at all. I just want to see what sort of distortion you’ll create,” Selene smiled, leaning forward, and reaching out to touch him. “And don’t think about saying no. The people you’ll be helping wouldn’t like that, and I do not take no as an answer. Do you understand?”
Carpenter nodded. He wasn’t free yet.