“Don’t just stand there! Attack! Attack!”

Jelvun’s panicked screams bolster his forces up the wall. Simak and Kimpe alike climb after each other as Lavinia races after the fleeing Prime, eyes locked onto his ugly second face. It sneers back at her, lips moving in an odd, chewing fashion.

Lavinia skids to a stop just as Jelvun’s second face spits a condensed bullet of saliva, blood and other wastes. She reaches down and helps a clambering Kimpe up to take the hit for her, it groans, having its back pierced and ribs shattered suddenly. She tosses the broken Kimpe aside and moves to continue her pursuit only to find her ankles grasped by more of its ignoble kind.

Essence flares at her feet as she yanks it free, tearing the damned demon’s fingers as she stomps down on another’s head. It protects itself with Essence but Lavinia is past livid and a little more pressure is all she needs to squash it.

“Use your weapons you fools! Shoot her down!” Jelvun cries as she weaves through and vaults over useless fiends. His attention is heavily divided between her and Ulx beyond the walls, the energy he summoned earlier continues to grow and swirl until its plainly visible to any one with a good pair of eyes.

A volley of arrows whistles at her, she glances at them and then at her target, “Crimson Blink!”

Shuttered forward Lavinia keeps up her pace as Jelvun continues to flee along Corym’s walls, walls she remembers reluctantly watching over with goblins and team Seraph. She spares a quick glance into the city, finding ruin after ruin left of the metal structures many demons, Caldri, Trirax and even Kimpe used to call home. Ulx’s tower seems perpetually on fire and tilts towards the city wall with its several of its top layers bursted open from fiery destruction.

Promethus. She hasn’t laid eyes on any human since invading the city, in fact, based on Jelvun’s and Ulx’s reaction it seems her invasion wasn’t accounted for on both sides. To his credit, Ulx’s remained calm and collected since she proved it possible.

A trio of two armoured Simak and a muscle-bound Kimpe rise out of the walls rampart. The first Simak leaps at her with zero hesitation, levying a gleaming axe down at her neck. She slides under it, cursing as Jelvun continues to speedily get away. The Kimpe smashes the ground but she rolls back into the first Simak to avoid its yellow flamed fist and curly tail.

The second Simak twirls and feints a long spear at her head, poking and jabbing annoyingly in sync with its fellow’s wide axe swings behind her. Avoid each strike is childs play with her boots sifting her about but they’re stalling, exactly what Jelvun wants them to do.

She steals a glance behind her and sure enough, there’s more demons coming after her. Lavinia glares down the three before her and decides to stop hoarding her Essence, “Inspect…Reais Smite!”

Swiftly identifying the weakest of all of them as the spear wielding Simak, Lavinia ducks under another one of its jabs, kicks its axe wielding partner off its feet and dashes past its guard with her hand drowning in Essence. Her fist ploughs through its chest with ease but she doesn’t stop there.

“Blood Art: Kinesis!” Utilizing the excess from her smite, Lavinia pulls out its Soul Crystal and seizes its blood to form a blade for both her arms. She smashes the Soul Crystal, quickly absorbing its Essence just as the flaming Kimpe comes pummelling down at her.

Her gauntlets of blood form a make shift shield while she commands the rest of the flowing blood to skewer the foolish ape from behind. It grunts at the stabs but floods itself with Essence to resist. Sensing the axe wielder swinging at her, Lavinia adapts with a quick, “Crimson Blink” and appears behind the Simak.

The skewered Kimpe roars, covering itself in a surge of yellow flames as it huffs and puffs, burning away the blood sticking out its back. Not one to leave things unfinished, Lavinia commands the shards stuck in its back to splinter, stretch and spread as she stabs the unsuspecting axe wielder with her blood blades. Thanks to [Inspect] providing the precise location of its Soul Crystals, it dies at once.

More Kimpe and Simak begin to flood after her and she hisses, glancing at them all with their Soul Crystals known to her, Lavinia refocuses her efforts on the Kimpe now doubled over and gasping. She touches its head and infuses Essence into her active Blood Kinesis, giving it the strength it needs to co-opt the Kimpe’s blood to her command. With that she has the Kimpe split in half and all its fluid pour out.

Forging the blood of all three into one giant ball of sinister crimson, Lavinia begins her sprint again. [Inspect] lights her eyes and the Pathways of her enemies as she leaves them behind for the orb of blood and at her command shards rain down from it, skewering and stabbing through each demon unfortunate to be in her line of sight.

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Their Pathways begin dying out like dead DazzleFlies and she grins, pleased at her Perk’s lethality. The demons begin reinforcing themselves with Essence and her shards dig through their skin but not deep enough to poke out or disrupt their Soul Crystals. A Kimpe at the back, beyond her line of sight roars at his kin dying to the orb of blood and before Lavinia can think of a reaction the damned demon blasts a giant fireball at her orb.

Cursing as much of the blood diffuses to red steam, Lavinia quickly retrieves the little of the orb that survived as she searches the wall for Jelvun. With their cowardly Prime nowhere in sight and Lavinia now on the other side of Ulx’s invasive force, she decides to satisfy herself with the enemies in front of her.

Blood sludges unto her vambrace, solidifying to sturdy, razor sharp crystal Blood Blades. Letting out a steady breath, Lavinia lurches back into the fray of Simak and Kimpe as the red steam begins to fade.

The Simak to her understanding are not fighting demons, they may wield weapons and lunge at her but they’re as much fodder as the goblins, except they carry great skill with their weapons since many created them themselves. Still, the Kimpe’s notoriously thick skin, hypnosis and fire manipulation put them above the Simak on Lavinia ladder of concerns.

A raging Kimpe and three Simak flanking it are the first to spot Lavinia incoming. She grins at them and past them at the corpses of their fallen still riddled with shards of blood as many of the living are. Two Simak step out, one hurls a chain-linked mace at her and the other rapid fires a crossbow.

Lavinia’s Blood Blade sinks into an armoured coat over her entire arm as she parries the chained mace and snatches her arm around the chain. Her second Blood Blade erupts from her arm as a makeshift shield in front of her, its crystal like surface shatters inward as arrows seeped in mana pierce through but lodge half way.

With a tug Lavinia rips the Simak towards her with its own weapon. The foolish darkling of a demon soars without consent and lands in her vice grip and right before an audience of Kimpe and Simak she bares her fangs down at the unfortunate’s neck, draining to fiend of blood in seconds even as it struggles to protect itself with Essence.

The Kimpe roars in outrage and charges head first. Lavinia groans, still draining the last vestiges of life from the Simak and so with a thought she commands three BloodShards to lift from their victims and find a new one in the pesky Kimpe.

The large fiend stumbles but with a surge of Essence burns away at her hardened blood. More arrows plague her from the other Simak and she senses new opponents creeping around the walls to flank her. Rather than dodge or weave through any of the attacks, Lavinia commands her broken blood shield forward, sending it toward the crossbow Simak at speed while reshaping its surface to bear spikes.

The Kimpe smashes where she stands, exuding a blasts of fire as it does. To her amazement and pleasure, even as she sidesteps the attack its fumes barely register as hot as a candle thanks to her cloak. Reforging her Blood Blade, she stabs the Kimpe’s fist, hoping to pin it to the wall but it doesn’t travel so deep.

The fiend roars outrage and continues boiling away her harden blood shards, even lifting her with her Blood Blade sticking out of it. It rears a fist charged with yellow fire but before it can strike Lavinia turns its entire leftside into a misshapen art piece of boiling blood shards and broken bone.

“Aiirree!”

At the same time as the Kimpe screeches in horrendous agony, the Simak and the lot behind it struggle against Lavinia’s Blood Spikewall. With the Kimpe distracted by its disfigured hand, Lavinia kicks out its knee, snatches its throat and rips it out for the Soul Crystal hanging in its trachea.

Absorbing the Crystal and commanding all of the blood in its body out into another orb, Lavinia allows the Blood Spikewall to shatter, letting the crossbow Simak and other stumble forward to their immediate executions.

A Blood shard skewers the crossbow wielder’s skull instantly and not sparing a moment Lavinia commands all the blood out of its corpse as well as its Soul Crystal into her orb. The following Simak begin to hesitate at the sight, the darkling fools grip their weapons with indecision but Lavinia doesn’t suffer the same.

With a snap a second rain of Blood Shards begins. The fragile Simak push back against the suicidal Kimpe to escape but its all for nought— as long as [Inspect] remains active alongside her Blood Kinesis, each of them in her line of sight is as good as dead already.

To ensure that result, Lavinia charges Essence in her hand, forcing a spiral ball of energy to life as her orb continues to rain down on the unfortunates. Condescing it further as more Simak retreat to give way to angry Kimpe, Lavinia narrows her sights on the crowd, idly wary that a section of them has split to form behind her. Letting out a strained breath she releases the spiralling orb of Essence, “Wave Shot!”

She spins on her heels to face the creepers looking to sneak attack and begins charging another when an explosion rocks the wall. Nearly losing her footing, Lavinia searches for the cause only to find Ulx has finally made it in on the other side.

She smirks at her opponents, eager to move into the Soul Crystal collection part of her one-sided massacre, “Wave Shot!” Releasing another condescend orb of Essence at the demons Lavinia hops off the wall, commanding all her successful one-hit-kill shards to return to her with the Soul Crystals they dislodged.

Blood and Soul Crystals surge after her as she descends, calling out to Ulx and the invading Caldri-goblin forces, “I lost Jelvun!”

Ulx, broken into his city takes to the sky. A quick blast of his ocular beams decimates several Kimpe and Simak still crowded on Lavinia’s side of the wall. She lands with Essence cushioning her fall and yells out to Ulx again, “Promethus is nowhere! I need my—”

Before she can complete her sentence or Ulx can acknowledge her yells, another explosion erupts in the city as an inferno of black and blue flames take up the walls and the Kimpe tower is engulfed in an eerie yellow flame.

“Fools!”

Lavinia struggles to spot the demon but by its four-armed shape and the glittering earrings she guesses its Jelvun. He stands atop his burning tower, his hands pressed into strange handsigns as Essence and mana erupt from his form. The same energy charging the wall of black and blue flames enveloping the city.

“It’s time to die!”