Drenched in a river of blood, Davey felt an intoxicating surge of power pulse through him, renewing his strength with every beat. His once relentless headache had burst like a wave crashing through a frail seawall, retreating in a shuddering ebb.
Before him loomed some of those grotesque abominations—a disturbing fusion of sprite essence and raw, pulsating flesh. Too few to sate his ravenous thirst for destruction, they stood as mere appetizers for his bloodlust.
“Rip and tear!” Davey roared, his voice a guttural snarl that echoed through the chamber. His lips, now stretched into a cruel rictus, revealed fangs that seemed more fitting for a predator than a man. Somewhere in the dark recesses of his mind, the last flicker of humanity recoiled at the sight of these monstrous teeth. But the conscious Davey was beyond such concerns. There was more prey to hunt, more carnage to be savored, wherever these creatures had emerged from.
He twisted and clawed his way through the horde, leaving a grisly trail in his wake. On the far side of the meat-strewn battlefield, he paused, momentarily catching his breath. The primal urge to turn back, to dive back into the melee, nearly overwhelmed him. Yet the call of the hunt, a siren’s song of brutal glory, tugged him relentlessly towards the staircase. Without a second glance at his old allies, the creature once known as Davey surged up the stairs, a force of untamed destruction.
The Warlock had no time to fully comprehend the transformation he had just witnessed. In mere heartbeats, Lieutenant Davey had shifted from a man into a grotesque beast of carnage, ripping through a wave of twenty or so of the aberrant monstrosities with frenzied savagery. Thirty of the abominations remained, their hollow eyes fixed on Warren with insatiable hunger. Their skinless forms moved with the same unsettling, jerky motions of the creatures he had encountered at Brixton Station. The crude fusion of animal parts into vaguely humanoid shapes still churned his stomach, but it was the steady, pulsing drizzle of bloody mist from the grotesque sprinklers above that truly unsettled him. His fire spells, once his safeguard, had been quelled by the tower’s malevolent influence.
With the bloody rain dampening his fire spells, the Warlock turned to a spell of light and heat.
"Shut your eyes!" the Warlock yelled to the party behind him. Stretching his hand forward, he summoned the spell.
"Incendium Lux!"
Searing light burst forth, illuminating even the darkest spaces. For the briefest moment, the heat evaporated the red mist. The nearest creatures were flash-cooked, collapsing as baked husks. The burning light did not harm or blind Warren, being one of his spells. But it was powerful, consuming thirty-five percent of his mana.
The spell he had cast offered a fleeting reprieve, enough to skewer three more beasts before he was forced to contemplate a new strategy. The oppressive atmosphere and the relentless assault left him with little room for error, and his mind raced to adapt to the ever-shifting peril.
The Hollow Knight glided into the opening Warren had carved through the carnage. Her rapier, wreathed in a relentless flame of darkness, blazed with a deadly resolve. She moved with the fluid grace of a specter, her strikes precise and merciless, each thrust finding its mark with chilling accuracy. Warren mirrored her deadly ballet, his spear slicing through the air in a brutal rhythm that narrowly avoided the Hollow Knight’s lithe form.
She pirouetted through the chaos. He twisted and spun. Her blade lunged with lethal intent. His spear darted in tandem, both of them locked in a grim choreography they had perfected long ago under a deceitful moon in Canterbury.
“We do make a splendid pair, don’t we?” The Hollow Knight’s voice was flat, almost playful in its eeriness, as if attempting to inject a semblance of seduction into the moment.
Warren sidestepped a barbed sword thrust with a wry smile. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you’re rather enjoying this.”
The Hollow Knight seized the opportunity, her rapier flashing as she severed another foe’s head. “Teaching the Carnage Weaver’s creations the true meaning of fear is an exquisite pleasure for my kind. Observe. See how they falter before us? Can you taste the fear seeping from them? It is truly a delight.”
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“They can feel things?” Warren’s curiosity was piqued, but he sidestepped her query.
“Indeed,” she replied, her tone as unyielding as her blade. “They are amalgams of flesh and sprite, with emotions—though limited. Their distress sustains this wretched place.”
“You must feel something for me, then,” Warren jested as he dispatched the last of their enemies. “You keep coming to my aid.”
He turned to find the Hollow Knight near him, her presence a chilling contrast to the surrounding heat of battle. The aetherial cold emanating from her was palpable, a bitter frost against his sweat-soaked skin. He gazed into the fathomless depths of her eyes, searching for some flicker of life behind the mask of her eternal cold.
“When the time comes for your flame to flicker and die, I will be the one to escort your soul to Nyxathalaya’s court,” she said, her voice icy and final. “I will not allow any of my lesser kin to claim that honor, Warlock.”
Warren’s lips curled into a wry smile. “Is it strange that I wouldn’t mind that? When all is said and done.”
“Thank you for acknowledging the truth of your own heart, Warlock,” she responded, her tone as cold and unwavering as her blade.
Warren felt a flush of embarrassment spread across his gore-splattered face. “And thank you for agreeing to keep me alive, no matter what reckless stunts I pull.”
The incessant drumming of red rain ceased abruptly as the sprinklers sputtered and died. Warren glanced over his shoulder, noting Cypher hunched over a grotesque computer terminal, while Captain Marshall stood vigilant, guarding the Runelord from any interruptions.
Sensing that the evident closeness between him and the Hollow Knight would demand more explanation than he was prepared to give, Warren pretended to stumble, leaning heavily on the Hollow Knight for support. Her frigid presence was a stark, unpleasant contrast, sending a bone-chilling cold seeping into his core.
As Warren limped towards Cypher, he caught the tail end of Sid’s exasperated muttering.
“Thanks for turning off the sprinklers,” Warren said, eyeing the drenching remnants of the room. “But how is the computer still functioning?”
“It isn’t. Not in the conventional sense,” Sid grumbled, his voice thick with irritation. “This tower has rewritten the rules of reality. What used to be a computer is now more like a living brain nodule or some such. It’s a biological entity now, so it was unaffected by the water.”
Cypher was plugged into the aberrant device with his MetaTEC, absorbed in deciphering the labyrinthine code.
“The fucking monster,” Sid spat, his frustration evident. Hearing Sid curse was enough to make Warren flinch, and the Hollow Knight took the extra weight in stride. “Whoever that Cable character is, talking to us over the tannoy, he’s seriously deranged.”
“Why, what has he done?” Captain Marshall inquired, her tone edged with concern.
“Played God, by the looks of it,” Sid replied, his eyes dark with anger. “He’s taken my research on runic patterns and twisted it to splice Sprites into human DNA. This is beyond anything I anticipated.”
“Is that what caused Davey to transform into... whatever that wolf-like abomination was?” Marshall pressed.
“Partly,” the Hollow Knight answered, her voice unwavering. “The Lieutenant has embraced the storm of the Carnage Weaver. He is in the process of ascending.”
Captain Marshall’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “Are you suggesting Lieutenant Davey has betrayed humanity?”
“I’m suggesting,” The Hollow Knight said said carefully, “that the Lieutenant did not choose this fate. He must have encountered a Herald at some point, marking him for ascension long before this.”
Cypher and Captain Marshall exchanged a grim look, the weight of the Hollow Knight’s words settling heavily over them.
“What does that mean?” Warren asked, his voice betraying a tremor of unease. A creeping dread gnawed at him, a gnawing suspicion that he had just witnessed a dark reflection of his own future—a fate similarly marked by a Herald of Nyxathalaya.
“He is crossing the threshold between our realms, evolving into something far beyond the constraints of human existence,” the Hollow Knight explained, her voice steady. “The mortal wound he sustained days ago must have shaken his formidable resolve. Even I did not foresee that he was afflicted by anything beyond his injuries. This Blood Tower, it amplifies the storm of the Carnage Weaver. For him to emerge from this place unchanged would be nothing short of miraculous.”
The Runelord, exuding an air of unyielding resolve, spoke with the finality of a judge passing sentence. “That settles it. You three handle the Homunculus. I will take on the Blood Mage.”