Andreas was sent flying back, but so was the Unbounded.
He dug his feet into the dead earth, not allowing himself the luxury to fall. His Boundless Mark, his fusion achieved when ascending to Vanguard so long ago, had never been put under so much pressure. Supporting his own body was draining as all hell, but Andreas would grit his teeth and suffer anything, if it meant the destruction of this demon.
He leaped forward, a litany of tools appearing at his side. Saws dipped in so much Infinity they were verging on full Supreme Steel, clashed against the fiend. Most clattered off, though, remarkably, a few managed to stab into the fissures the Old One had already established. Remotely, Andreas sent the tools sawing away, as if controlled by invisible hands.
The Supreme Being roared. Infinity splashed off the Unbounded in another of his killer waves, hitting Andreas like a brick wall. He gritted his teeth, withstood the pressure, the pain, and recalled the faces of his family. That lightened any burden.
He streaked forward in a blur of Infinity. Fists pummelling against the fiend’s chest, shrapnel snapping off his deadly body. Wisps of Rot spread off, diffusing into the atmosphere. Andreas ignored it, assaulting the fiend with more intensity. Saws joined the others, hammers hacked away at the metallic body like he was chiselling a statue, and all the while the poison entered his body.
A metallic fist hammered into his chest. Andreas convulsed, too slow to put his arms up to block two subsequent blows.
The third knocked him astray. Blasted back metres, Andreas fell to his knees. His vision danced, the world span around him, and the nausea became overwhelming. He spat out blood. As he leaped back to his feet, Andreas didn’t mistake the teeth swimming in the golden puddle. He didn’t waste the energy needed to heal them.
Andreas turned back to the fiend. His eyes flew upwards, following the trailing shadow to where, dominating the sky in one dark mass, the being descended from the arc of his jump.
Shoving down the instinct to dive away, Andreas transformed his arms into twin machetes. Infinity turned his legs into pistons with how much power they exerted.
He met the Unbounded mid-air, sliced an X in a flashing flourish, and pressed his weight against the fiend. It rasped, tried to get on top of him, but Andreas stabbed into two winding ravines in his torso.
The fiend was toppled, collapsing to the ground in a blast of Rot-filled Infinity, and scattered dust. Andreas summoned a dozen carving knives at the sole of his foot, trampling on the Unbounded in vicious attacks.
More and more Rot sifted off the Unbounded. Andreas made no attempt to protect himself from the lethal fluid, feeling it respond to the mass already making a quaint home out of his flesh and blood.
The pain. The Rot invaded through every exposed pore of his skin, driving his body into a panicked frenzy. Fight or flight didn’t cut it. His muscles braced so much they contorted against his ruined skin. The energy needed to move his body became more and more. An excess that could burn through his reserves so easily if he let it.
Seeing the opportunity, the Supreme Fiend didn’t hesitate. He twisted at an angle, snapping the machete blades still in his body in two. Both arms locked onto Andreas’ sides, threatening to crush his ribs with how tight they were.
Andreas was helpless as his body was rolled underneath. He blinked, took a rapid intake of breath, all in time to see the fiend’s fists poised to crush his skull.
----------------------------------------
Remus was running towards his grandfather before his mind even registered what he was doing. Aziel and Tanguy called out, to try and stop him. But there was no stopping him.
He could cover a lot of land very quickly when flying. The blue sparks blasted out of his palms, defying not only gravity in his rampage, but the wind trying to knock him back, and all sense of reason in this world.
Yet the distance was stark. Only the vantage point being as auspicious as it had been, allowed Remus to see his great grandfather easily. And once his eyes had locked onto the man, nothing would tear them away from him.
I’m coming! His mind was screaming. Just hold on, I’m coming!
----------------------------------------
Dazed.
The first impact left Andreas with a roaring headache. The second didn’t land.
A plank of wood materialised over Andreas’ face, absorbing the impact of the blow. Out of every corner of his skin, razors stabbed out. Razors meant to craft a beautiful art piece out of oak, but for this one instance, they served a whole different purpose.
He grasped the Old One with both hands in a bear-hug, ready to drag the fiend to death with him.
The Rot around his arms was intense now. He had lost all feeling in both limbs, and Andreas wondered if any Ichor flowed through them at this point. All that bound the two limbs to Andreas was his own Infinity, the power of Arcus, and the sheer grit to hold on.
The Supreme Fiend shook wildly in his grip. The razors chafed against his metal flesh, grinding entire flakes of the stuff off.
Andreas breathed deep of the excess of Infinity. The fiend’s head slammed into his shoulder. Again and again, flesh rendered white from Rot was purpled.
Finally, when he knew holding on any longer would only quicken his own end, Andreas dived away. He breathed in deeply, looked back at the Unbounded with spiteful eyes, and saw a thing of ruin.
Infinity and Rot alike drifted off the mass, like water flooding out of cracks in an aquarium. If the landscape enveloping them prior had been bad, this was something else all together. One touch of the Rot infested earth, and someone not accustomed with the disease would drop dead in a second.
Andreas’ body was adjusted to the illness by now. They practically co-rented his form. Yet even he had his limits.
Quickly. He coughed into his forearm. Get this over with quickly.
The fiend hunched downwards, grasped a batch of earth, and threw it forward. Andreas knocked it aside effortlessly, half-wondering if this was some last desperate plea for life. Then the second boulder came. And the fourth. And the third.
He was slowing him down. Switching up his strategy to the defensive; waiting for Andreas to keel over and die himself?
Andreas couldn’t allow that. With one blast of Infinity, he leaped upwards, high, then higher, until his ravaged skin brushed clouds. The moisture splashed against him, and with the apex of his flight reached, Andreas fell back down.
He was clearing the difference in a matter of seconds. A few boulders were hurled his way, but Andreas either blocked their course with a plank at the last second, or simply avoided them all together.
Near the ground, something seemed to become lodged in his throat. That hacking cough refused to leave him. He harrumped into his fist, not surprised at the sight of Ichor that he found there.
The Rot would be crushing Andreas’ internal organs by now. Only careful living, Saige’s excellent treatment, and a good amount of luck had stopped its advance. Now, with the amount of Rot vying to kill him off doubled, his remaining lifespan would be counted in minutes.
Andreas landed unceremoniously, a pang of pain stabbing into his knee. A thousand lights suddenly swam before his eyes, dazzling as much as they were obtrusive. He looked to the ground, only to see the same patch of earth stained with his own vomit, a few seconds later.
He buckled down to one knee. The Supreme Fiend was so close, and here he was, verging on death.
Andreas squinted his eyes to push away the pain. But there was no escaping the agony. He was lost in it, and it was going to consume him.
His body was so heavy. Dead flesh weighing down a feeble skeleton, each inch of movement demanding so much energy it would kill him.
Eyes closed, heart hardly beating, everything within Andreas knew he would die in failure.
Each step crystal clear, the Right-bearer approached. If the Unbounded simply sprinted to Andreas, victory for the metallic titan was as good as assured. So why the slow gait? Then it hit Andreas — the Unbounded was gloating.
Andreas doubted if such a creature was even capable of laughter, but he knew with solemn certainty that if the Unbounded could, it would be cackling. The earth and skies alike would tremble in the face of such overwhelming mirth.
The thought was like a spark, his anger akin to an oil rig. The resulting reaction was like a gallon of pure adrenaline shot into Andreas’ bloodstream.
The pain faded, as if it had never been there in the first place. His body was weightless, numbed, ravaged by disease and losing its spark of life by the minute. But Andreas could still feel that explosive energy rush through him.
Life force. It had blazed through him from the earliest memories of his childhood, empowering his boisterous antics with feral amounts of energy. Even now, even to his deathbed, Andreas was tethered to that impossible zeal. It became so obvious, in that instance of clarity, of what was really the gods’ greatest gift to humanity. Not Marks, Banks, or even something so overlooked as a single drop of Ichor.
Life. Ever fickle life.
Andreas clashed with the fiend head-on. Their limbs collided, metal glinted, and reality expanded. The bizarre mess of life, for this brief window where Andreas danced on the edge of death, on existence itself, untangled. Questions that had pestered the Warlord all his life ceased to matter.
He had no regrets. Andreas grasped the Supreme Fiend’s head with two hands, and squeezed.
Hollow eyes, more like absences in the Unbounded’s face than actual organs, stared up at Andreas. The Warlord suddenly became acutely aware of his own heartbeat. It thudded against his eardrums, like the Music Clan had set up a gig on the edge of his earlobe.
Metal sifted to flakes in his grip. Then to grains. Andreas had never seen an Unbounded’s face in so much detail — typically, they were dead and soaking the ground at his feet long before the opportunity arose.
This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
But poised as he was, like he was ready to plant a kiss on the Unbounded’s lips, Andreas saw the full magnitude of the monster before him.
Its jaw clamped open and close, like mechanical parts malfunctioning. Andreas was starting to suspect the Unbounded had truly lost it, when steel lips parted.
“Strong.”
Andreas stared blankly at the Unbounded. His crushing fingers were beginning to slip, but he couldn’t move them much either, as if rigor mortis was kicking in early.
After a pause, Andreas boomed aloud. Not in anger, or in fear, or even out of spite. Andreas laughed louder than he ever had, in all his century and some, walking on this earth. Strong.
Power recognised power. Even when that power was stuffed into a hideous, towering chunk of metal, Andreas supposed that held true.
“You’re a tough nut yourself.” He muttered through gritted teeth. “Though nevertheless,” Andreas felt two monstrous hands claw uselessly at his face. “I don’t crack easily either.”
----------------------------------------
Remus managed to fly so far before he had to pause. Otherwise, the tide of vomit rising in his throat was ready to make a spontaneous appearance.
Don’t die. He thought, eyes locked onto his grandfather still. Despite the inescapable reality before him, despite the certainty of what was to come, Remus couldn’t bear to think past the reality of this fight.
Seeing Andreas coated silver with illness was bad enough. Seeing his corpse painted a darker shade would ruin any shred of sanity he had left.
Too many lives had been lost already. So why was Andreas throwing away his so readily?
Remus flew too close to the ground, scrambled to his feet after choking on a mouthful of smoke, and rose into a shambling run. Blasts of fire propelled him further and further onwards.
He didn’t even notice when he crossed the barrier into hell. Into the Rot infested wasteland his great grandfather must have been a king to survive.
Remus felt it chafing against his flesh, prickling his pores as the disease searched for any route to seep in through. In response, Remus’ own Infinity splurged outwards. Besides, after so long in the Silver Cavities, Remus could survive a little Rot.
If the same could be said once he pressed further into the battlefield was yet to be seen. Regardless, his own welfare was of little concern to Remus at that moment. A man as great as Andreas deserved to live far more than him. If Remus could only save his great grandfather one extra day, he would gladly pay the cost. Even if that meant throwing away any number of days of his own.
Andreas and the Supreme Fiend were closer than ever. Remus saw them struggle to no end, any sort of civilised combat abandoned for a tussling wrestle. Despite the declining condition of Andreas, Remus took one look at the Unbounded, and his heart leaped. It was like the Right-bearer had been turned into sand.
His body, the highest quality source of Supreme Steel in the world, save for perhaps the Steel Thone that Maris sat upon now, was breaking apart. There had been one too many fissures, one too many strikes in unlikely locations. Even if fighting were to cease immediately, any chance of a full recovery would be miraculous at best.
But the giant wasn’t the only one breaking apart.
Every inch of Andrea’s flesh was a sickening silver. In a way that churned Remus’ stomach to think of it, he and the Unbounded he faced were one and the same. Two grey titans drowning in so much Infinity clashing fists, the disease that had defined the pair of them finally taking its toll.
The density of the Infinity tightened around Remus like he was in a chokehold. No amount of time in the SIlver Cavities could have prepared him for the full magnitude of this. His muscles squirmed, his skin itched all over, as abused as a door that Rot was barging on over and over. So much Infinity flew through his internals, any amount of the resource laced with lethal illness.
Remus activated Flaming Gold, pouring white hot flames through himself.
He could see the tubes of his Mould so clearly now, even if only in mind. They layered over Remus’ circulatory system — residing in the same area as the azure fires.
Effectively, Remus was burning away any trace of the Rot.
You will not succumb.
Remus ran faster than he ever had before. He cared not at all for the levels of disease in the air, the vast worlds of power between him and the two titans. The subtle aches and pains as a result of Flaming Gold’s use didn’t even daunt him. Besides, with the advent of his Full Body Blood Infusion Mould, one especially designed for this exact issue, the agony of the ability’s use was a far cry from what it had once been.
Besides, he couldn't see how things could get any more painful than they already were.
The powers of a Warlord and God-Graced equivalent shook the earth. This close up, Remus couldn’t decide if it was harder to push through the excess Infinity, or the maelstrom that Andreas and the fiend formed the eye of.
His body was working hard enough as it was. Just not to be crushed by the Infinity all around, Remus’ Bank had to intake as much essence as possible, as fast as possible. That meant exerting mountain-loads of the power at the same time.
Here, at the heart of the battlefield, Remus came face-to-face with levels of Rot that dismayed the Old One and scared away God-Graced. To survive, his flames blasted out of his body in equal degrees to the raging, internal power of Flaming Gold. Inside and out, he was a shining beacon of power; fully draped by the immersing robe of his fire.
The Infinity he was distributing was the finishing touch to complete the image. A miniature storm of his own blasted out of him, eliciting terrible sounds when they mingled with the wind.
If anyone saw Remus at that moment, all they would have seen was a blight of white fire, bleeding out through a hurricane that followed his every step. Gone was the carpenter who bled at the touch of a saw.
The Rot was utterly shredded by either his eternal flames, or otherwise discarded by the furious blast of criss-crossing wind. As if the air was strewn with tiny blades of Infinity, slicing at any disease that dared stray too close to Remus.
The illness that entered through the Infinity he inhaled or otherwise, met a similar fate: incinerated by the furious touch of Flaming Gold.
Remus was steps away from the Supreme Fiend, finally getting into the flow of things, when it all became too much.
Andreas took one final stride towards the Supreme Fiend, positively dripping with Ichor from head to toe. Only a shadow of the Unbounded was all that remained — a third of the size of the golem it had once been. Battered down, like one statue shattering to reveal another smaller sculpture underneath.
Empty eyes stared out into the Unbounded. The bottom of Remus’ stomach fell away. The man was done; empty. Not many people who had walked the shores of Descent had given so much to this world as he: the gift of joy, the gift of a laugh in the most trying of times.
Now there was nothing left to give.
Remus fought the urge to cry out, clutching onto the chains at his waist. It was a testament to the quality of their Supreme Steel that they hadn’t melted away. In one swift motion, underlaid by a sound like the snapping of a whip, he drew them both.
With them, Remus would beat the Supreme Fiend senseless. Despite the tears flooding out of his eyes, his terribly runny nose, and the tightness of his stomach, there was no time to grieve. Not until this world was cleansed of vermin like the Unbounded before him.
Remus was about to leap into heedless action, when it happened.
In the corner of his eye, Andreas began to topple over. His feet fell back, as if Rot had taken away even the strength to stand. But what they couldn’t take away, what they could never . . . Andreas smiled.
The sound of his body hitting the floor was the worst thing Remus could recall hearing. Worse than the screams of all the people he had seen dying. Worse still than the sobs of the truly helpless — noises he would hear whenever forced to traverse through the lowest slums in all of Labour District. Worse than hearing Damosh cackle in delight after something was going particularly well.
What happened next, Remus couldn’t recall. Only after consulting a second-hand account of the scene, was he able to see past the blur of emotion.
Flames spread down his chains, lighting up each link until they all shared the same blinding light.
He inhaled through his nose sharply. It was the most visceral act of his life; one second of picture perfect clarity in a sea of chaos. And then, like some dark servant, Remus fell upon the Supreme Fiend.
His chains were like pythons, with flames in the shape of slithering snakes amassing over each. They attacked with all the patience of a thirsting man pleading for water. Andreas had served the Unbounded’s life to Remus on a silver platter, and, as if he was engorging himself on the finest meal, Remus would savour every last crumb.
His chains pounded against the Unbounded over and over, like a war drum being beat repeatedly. The metal was of a strong make, but still, fragments of the links were already flying off into the distance.
Remus' body screamed. He screamed, as the Infinity inside his tubes flew dangerously fast. The pain of Flaming Gold’s use was weaker than ever, more of a pressure now than anything, but it pressed against him nevertheless. His Ichor was more fire than blood, his eyes were shining beacons of blue, and his physical strength was close to tapped.
Momentum, grit, and undying fury were his three allies, the forces working behind his every motion.
He identified the cracks in the Supreme Fiend’s body — the chinks in his armour, if you will — that Andreas had left behind in him. All of those bruises from training with Violet suddenly became worth it, the fissures easier to smash to pieces than any stone or pebble tossed at him.
The Right-bearer screeched out in pain, rage, or whatever nonsensical emotion took place in that deluded brain of his. Remus didn’t care. Even as his chains destroyed themselves against his metallic flesh, he housed no pity in his heart for the creature.
The Rot became harder and harder to push away. It spread through his chains, approaching his fingers. He could sense its advance, like some parasite doing everything in its power to trespass into the domain of his body. His fingernails as their preferred mode of entry.
Remus’ arms ached from the stress of the attack, fatigued muscles bulging. One last riotous shot of the arms, and what little reminded of his great chains snapped apart; their last links flying in all directions.
The Supreme Fiend’s death was at hand. He could almost taste the bitterness of his ashes, feel the final blast of Infinity that would surely burst out of the dying creature. Regardless, Remus could already sense the consequences of his negligence settling in. He shouldn’t have let so much Rot invade into his fingers.
He couldn’t afford to worry about any long term effects just yet. Remus bounced up and ahead, ready to put the riotous levels of Infinity pulsing through his Bank to good use.
Bundles of Eruptive Will developed into the tips of each of his fingers. He could hear a tiny, breeze-like sound elicited from each concentrated ball of energy. It was more than he had ever risked packing into one technique. It rattled the bones in his hands, causing the entirety of both limbs to tremor.
The Supreme Fiend was dissipating faster than ever. Remus didn’t see a titan of power any longer. Ahead of him, all that Remus saw was a bog-standard Unbounded, and not even a particularly threatening one at that. It was pathetic, really.
But looks could deceive. The Rot was as deadly as ever. Even as Remus beat down at the Unbounded with blast after blast of eruptive will.
Each impact damaged Remus just as much as the fiend. His fingers were crooked, purple bundles. They twisted at unnatural angles, the bones within them fried to mush. The pain would have been enough to paralyse, but a system overflowing with Ambition could more than numb the pain.
It took Remus a second to realise one strange fact: his bruised, broken digits had returned. Pink, tender skin, like that of a newborn baby covered his hands, which had been born anew in the span of a second. His index finger was still missing — being lost so early on into his advancement, that would never heal — but the rest? Perfectly fine.
Or, they would have been, if Remus didn’t insist on smashing them onto the Unbounded over and over again. Implosion after implosion abused everything past his elbows, even his forearms bruised and battered. Yet, again and again, for perhaps the third time or more, a new, fresh pair of hands sprouted.
He was oh-so terribly tired. Something in the back of his mind that wasn't totally alight with idiotic rage recognised that growing new hands was a Foot-Soldier ability. About the maximum extent of their healing factor at that Rank.
Remus felt nothing more than a surge of energy at the advancement. Emotionally, he was already too preoccupied to make way for fickle things like ‘excitement’ or ‘joy’.
Some relief was involved. He was able to breathe a little easier, the possibility of the Rot being beaten out of his system very much a positive one.
Alas, as Remus had just found out, growing new limbs on the fly was quite the exhausting process. On the verge of dropping to the ground in the same fashion as his late grandfather, Remus swung one final punch to the Unbounded’s face.
The impact sent dust scattering, winds hurling outwards, and the second Right-bearer to finally, inexorably, topple over.
He lay opposite to where Andreas fell, and to where Remus collapsed to his knees in between.
For about five seconds, it was all Remus could do to breathe desperately. His hold on every technique had long since slipped, with pain and fatigue popping up in their place.
Everything either hurt, was numb, or was stuck in some weird middle-ground that riddled his body with painful, prickling sensations. Whatever the case, the Supreme Fiend would disperse any second now, leaving behind a maelstrom of Infinity and Rot that would surely shred Remus to pieces.
It was then that some blurring object grasped him, pulling him out of the fray before things got any messier than they already were. Remus was quite content, disoriented as he was, to cease thinking all together.
Remus rested his head against a strong shoulder, allowing unconsciousness to pull him under.