Richie entered the hallway, heading down to the elevator room. He came to a choice of two lifts. The one on the left opened first, and within, he saw a group of hoodlums he recognized from the pit down below. Their eyes widened, and Richie’s dragons sniffed in response. He could tell what they were thinking - “that punk won a shit ton of money down there, but he’s worn out and injured now, let’s fucking mug him!”
Their flexing fingers and not-so-subtle grasping for concealed melee weapons, probably switch blades or knuckle dusters, concluded it for Richie. Much as he would love to blow off some steam and vent his rage, his weary body was probably spoken for. They had decent odds, now more than ever, he supposed. So, doing his best to ignore them as they conspicuously avoided stepping out into their supposed intended spot, Richie turned to the elevator at his right. Waiting for it to open instead.
It did, and Richie recognized the female bartender, and a flock of the other women who had flirted with him from across the booth. Their eyes widened too, and they adopted coy little grins, fluttering their eyelashes.
“Hi there sweetie! There’s room for one more!” one of them waved.
What is this, a fucking choose your own adventure? Richie growled inwardly.
It couldn’t be helped. He took the left, cheeks burning. “Scoot.” he gruffly told the waiting thugs as he pushed in.
The elevator full of cougars collectively clicked. “Oh poo. Evasive little wallflower.” one of them puffed out her cheeks, crossing her arms.
The doors closed on Richie.
At the bottom, in the lobby, they opened again, and Richie stepped out over the bruised and bleeding unconscious bodies of his would-be muggers. He clutched his dented stomach, hissing. That stupid Seal really left a mark.
…
Cuppy watched his leftover hot dog turn in the suite’s microwave, big owl eyes reflecting back at him in the glass. The electric hum was soothing.
“Why’s Richie grumpy?” he asked Freyja.
“You’ve met Richie, right?” Freyja asked.
“Uh huh.” Cuppy nodded.
“No one likes getting their ass kicked. Hit him right in the pride.” Freyja said.
“I thought he got hit in the stomach?” Cuppy tilted his head.
“You’re hitting me in the patience.” Freyja sighed. She looked at the computer screen, and its roster of Dragon’s Dominion veterans.
Cuppy retrieved his warmed hot dog and waddled over to Freyja looking over her shoulder at the article. “Still looking at that?”
“Yep.” Freyja nodded. “In a lot of ways, this lineup is a good representation of Richie’s own idealized self-image, if his reaction to last night’s duel is any indication. The best fighters in the world converged on that island to put their warrior’s pride on the line and shed blood and sweat for the chance of claiming a huge cash prize. More though, I think it’s the bragging rights that held true sway for a chunk of them. Generally, you make a living as a bruiser for one of two reasons - you’re dumb muscle who isn’t good for much else - or you see romance in it. It’s primal, throwing yourself into a fight for its own sake. In a way, I can relate. I mean, I’m the most animalistic person here, after all. When the hellhound instincts take over, I see red, and the present moment is all that matters. The thrill, and the flow of battle. I imagine it’s not too different for them. For Richie.”
Cuppy hummed, mulling it over.
“He grew up idolizing guys like that, and just when he’s able to make a name for himself in their mold, it’s taken away from him. No one likes to feel helpless, or swatted aside.” Freyja said.
“He did pretty good.” Cuppy shrugged.
“Doesn’t matter. He’s too hard on himself. All that surpassing the heavens crap is a lot of self-imposed pressure. But I bet it goes deeper than just that.” Freyja’s ears folded. They never talked about it much, but she knew Richie’s basic background, and how he had his mother and childhood taken away from him. “Being tossed around probably brought him right back to the lowest point in his life.” she looked at Cuppy, munching on his hot dog.
Freyja smiled softly, tutting as she saw a bit of mustard on the corner of Cuppy’s mouth. “Hold still.” she said, licking her thumb and wiping it away.
“Freyja!” Cuppy complained, wiggling away.
“Get back here.” Freyja snagged him by the hood and began washing his face.
“Stop grooming me!” Cuppy whined.
“No.” Freyja said. Her eyes went to the window, where the sunrise split a watercolor crevice across the city floor and skyline. “I can’t believe I’m up at the crack of ass like this.”
“Why didn’t you sleep like always?” Cuppy asked.
“Watch it.” Freyja said. “Restless, I guess.”
Cuppy nodded. “You’re worried about Richie!” he put together.
“Well, yeah.” Freyja averted her eyes.
“You’re a nice girl.” Cuppy chirped.
“The hell I am.” Freyja scoffed. A few moments passed in silence, then she regarded Cuppy. “Do you guys talk about it much?”
“Talk about what? Bringing pets into the house?” Cuppy ventured.
“Uh, no.” Freyja said. “His past, I mean. I gather he’s pretty sensitive about it.”
“A bit. He’s after the trenchcoat jerk and such. But you were there for the convo.” Cuppy said.
“He hasn’t said anything more to you? Don’t you guys talk?” Freyja asked.
“What do you mean?” Cuppy tilted his head.
“You’re his best friend, pretty much, aren’t you?” Freyja asked.
“You are too.” Cuppy smiled. “Ask him yourself. You teamed up in the past once already, right? That counts for something.”
Freyja smiled faintly. “It was nice… having a ‘big brother’...”
…
Richie walked along an empty sidewalk cast in the gloom of the lofty towers, cutting him off from the newborn light of the rising sun. The gutters were pooled with rainwater, and the air itself seemed damp and chilled somehow. An overhead light flickered, and Richie crossed the street with a sudden sense of urgency in his gait. His shoes splashed through a puddle, rippling the reflection of another street lamp. In the moments before the whole of the reflection in the water’s surface broke, Richie saw something moving above.
“Huh?” he turned, hearing a cat-like tapping as something landed further down the road across from him.
Richie! his dragons screamed.
The form was upon him, splitting the standing puddles into wakes of spraying mist. A glimmer of silver flashed forward, and Richie saw his own reflection, in an interim of slowed time, split across four long, curved blades swiping across toward his face. His arms moved on their own, tugged by the will of his runes, and encased themselves in Level 3 dragon scale armor. Sparks spurted as the blades clashed with Richie’s armored forearms, and the tremendous blow just kept on going, splitting the air as well, a frightening swish following in the aftermath of Richie being sent tumbling backward. His back and the backs of his head and neck struck the ground painfully, puddle water soaking his jacket and the seat of his pants, as he sprawled, flipping over into a crouch. His drenched hair fell over his eyes as sticky bangs clotted with silt, and his pupils turned reptilian and feral to stare down his sudden foe.
Standing splayed like a gangly, mechanical spider on two legs, Luchesi held his pose from having swat at Richie, his long arm crossing his body, four long claws pointed into an alleyway, his face ducked into his shoulder. Bells jingled as the split ends of his conical cap bobbed, and Luchesi raised his head, baleful eyes looking onto Richie. His form was seemingly bent in uncanny, contortionist angles that seemed subtly off, much too rigid and sharply contrasted to be natural. His poofy black and white costume now bore a diamond pattern in place of its checkers and stripes, and his shoes were no longer clogs, but shoes whose toes curled backward in a spiral shape like the elf helpers one saw accompanying mall Santas at Christmas time. The creases and folds of his shirt seemed to bulge and distort in the vicinity of his chest, giving the impression of being melded with some kind of straightjacket that bound his limbs to either shoulder, while creepily long, tube-like appendages dangled in their place from the opened holes at either shoulder. Their long waxy fingers seamlessly melded into those long metallic claws, a set of four on each hand. There were no mechanical gauntlets this time around as far as Richie could tell.
The jester raised his head, and Richie saw the end of a third branch of his conical hat that he hadn’t noticed before sway at the jester’s back. The plaster theater mask Luchesi wore this time around was cast in the mold of the Tragedy face, but it seemed to shift for a few seconds into a lunatic crescent moon smile of razor-sharp fangs. Those monstrous eyes glowed wildly in the dark recesses of the theater mask’s eye sockets, silently cackling with glee well before a sound left the harlequin’s lips.
Richie’s arms were groaning, and he shook them out, the scales dissipating like blue embers flickering out in the wind, crumbling from the tips down the way a fallen autumn leaf might crumble in someone’s grip. Long slash-like bruises were left dented into Richie’s outer forearm beneath where his armor had blocked the brunt of the swipe.
“Luchesi.” he grunted, stomach tied in knots and blood frozen in his veins.
“Did you forget our arrangement?” Luchesi said softly.
Evidently he grew tired of waiting for Richie to seek him out in the Backyards.
“Got ants in your pants?” Richie said, not sounding as brave and confrontational as he meant to.
“You’ve got cement in your shoes, keeping a poor honest menace like me waiting. Such a cad, a blessing that you’ll never have the chance to let down any would-be girlfriends. But that’s alright, you belong to me only.” Luchesi licked his lips. “My claws cry out to taste you, in depth. I must oblige them.”
The clown rushed down Richie, a pinwill on four axises as he spun and swung a whirlwind of silver blades like chopping helicopter rotors. Richie recalled the ‘singularity’ trick he had seen back in Tide Town when Leon rapidly rotated his rose whip, giving the impression of an impeding cyclone of roses. At the time, he had relied on Level 2 speed boosts to zoom straight through the eye of the storm, and had it not been for his cracked ribs in his last fight, he would have landed a solid bow. Instead, Leon had broken those ribs further with a rigid elbow, and then suplexed him into unconsciousness for good measure. The circumstances had been similar - Richie, both then and now, had just been put through the ringer in a previous grueling battle. The only question now was - was he faster than he was in the sewer, and had he learned to roll with the punches more since then?
Luchesi didn’t give him time to ponder, zooming forward, taloned arms crisscrossing each other like flashing, rotating silver crosses of edged death. Richie rushed forward, crouching and hunkering down, encasing himself in dragon scale armor and trying to overtake the whirlwind blades. They gouged deep trenches and scrapes into the azure scales, ripping some individual scales off wholesale, and the upper and lower layers of skin in those places with them, leaving Richie patchy and raw beneath. A grazing swipe of a single blade drew a thin line of blood across his cheek, frightfully close to taking out an eye, and he fell back. The sudden collapse of his Level 3 armament caused him to stumble, his muscles giving out at once, and he took to a knee.
“Oh crap!” he cried as Luchesi dropped from above, seeming to stretch toward the sky with both arms held high, ready to slam down and press Richie like a boiled egg dicer. Instead, the jester twisted on his axis, dropping to a knee, and swept-kicked Richie’s legs out from under him, spilling the boy onto his side. Richie’s face banged gravel, cold flecks of dirt and stone pebbles stuck to his lip, as he threw his head back to see the jester towering over him. A taloned hand pistoned down toward Richie, and he backdashed just in time to evade the four pistoning blades burying themselves with a crushing sound into the asphalt. In another flash of the blades, as those long curved swords caught the glint of the moonlight, Richie lost sight of his attacked, and frantically looked back and forth. Even his dragons seemed to be having a hard time getting a lock on to their rival’s location. A shadow fell over Richie, and he looked above to see the jester skybombing toward him in an Olympic high dive gymnast’s swan dive. Richie stood and armored his right hand to intercept the coming clawstroke, but the blades parted scale and flesh alike. Four crimson slashes traced themselves down Richie’s forearm, and he screamed, stumbling backward and clutching his gashed limb.
Luchesi crouched and sprang again, swinging both arms to Richie’s side. The boy moved to grab the offending arm and stalemate the swing, but Luchesi twisted up and over him, vaulting and twisting his arm free of Richie’s grip. The jester fell behind Richie, bringing a swift claw stroke down with him. Cold steel talons cleaved through Richie’s jacket, and the skin of his back from between the shoulder blades to just above the tailbone. Blood sprayed from his split back flesh, and he screamed in agony, arching his back and clutching at the gaping wounds in his back, he stumbled forward a few feet, whirled, and threw a hook punch at Luchesi. The jester ducked, and raked another quartet of deep gashes open across Richie’s inner right thigh. More blood sprayed into the night, some of the drops landing onto Luchesi’s loathsome tongue, darting out from the hole of his opera mask to taste his handiwork firsthand.
Richie grit one eye closed, panting and already feeling faint, then dropped low and began attacking Luchesi’s lower section, planting a diving soccer kick in the front of Luchesi’s ankle, above his clownish-shoed foot. Luchesi’s heel dug a tire track burn in the ground, scattering wet pebbles as his center of gravity was sent askew, and Richie pressed the low-target assault, spinning wholesale into a committed sweep kick. Luchesi crouched low like a black and white tiger, and sprang high into the sky, well above Richie’s sweep. The ginger-haired boy looked up, shocked and mortified, as the jester hovered above him, limbs splayed out wildly like some kind of spidery crab, hellcat amalgamation of angles and hooked limbs. His conical hat branches and their attached bells swayed wildly in the wind like locks of flowing hair, and his grin intensified. He raised a long arm, pale, bony, and covered in sickly pressure sores and oozing pustules of black rain and yellow mucus, high overhead, the two foot long metallic claws gleaming and reflecting the moonlight again.
The jester’s head inclined down, and he issued a bloodcurdling jaguar shriek of predatory rage and wrath as he descended. His shadow enlarged over Richie’s form, the boy crouched, bleeding from his already numerous deep lacerations.
“Die Richie!” Luchesi cried, then hooked his hand downward toward Richie like a falling praying mantis, or a chambering mantis shrimp. Richie’s eyes tracked those four blades in the lead. In a brief burst of Level 2 speed, Richie darted to the side, evading Luchesi’s touchdown as those four claws sank themselves into the ground.
Richie slid back, shoes leaving skidmarks in the street.
Now! he realized, and sprang.
Before he had even wrenched his claws free, Luchesi’s head twisted around on his shoulders to look at Richie, eyes half-lidding in a disturbing amalgamation of cold hatred, bloodlust, generic lust, and an abominable sense of actually being the victim himself, cast aside by Richie after the jester had gone out of his way to offer a hand in friendship.
“You have no right to give me puppy dog eyes!” Richie roared, charging Luchesi while his claw was embedded. Still, the way the jester’s head had swiveled gave the impression his neck should have broken clean from the sudden, impossible torque. Following the head and neck’s lead, the rest of Luchesi’s body tore itself free of his claws entrapment in the street, and he twisted, planting a heel in Richie’s stomach that doubled him over and threw him back twelve feet. Richie growled, reliving the pain of Thratta’s knee strike to his gut, but then grunted as he saw Luchesi attempting another death from above maneuver. He rolled out of the way as the flats of those ridiculous shoes stomped in the area where Richie’s head had just been, cracking the sidewalk. Richie rushed again, head and shoulder leading the charge like an enraged quarterback, but he shrank back as he heard a springloaded butcher knife expel itself out from Luchesi’s elbow, grazing his cheek. Had he been off even slightly, he would have driven that elbow blade straight through his own face. Luchesi whirled and jammed his right arm, fist clenched, into Richie’s stomach.
Just a punch? Richie wondered, then realized in a shock of cold horror that he hadn’t seen the extent of all of Luchesi’s knife modes. When they were first reunited for their fated duel, Richie thought nothing of the long sword claws serving as Luchesi’s fingernails. He had forgotten that, prior to whatever freaky integration had occurred between Luchesi’s organic form and his little toys, that their default mode had been a pair of four blades affixed above the back of the palm, like gauntlets held by the fingers, but not incorporating each digit into the swords themselves. He could shift between blade style then, couldn’t he?
Richie heard a familiar click, followed by the ripping open of slits of flesh along Luchesi’s knuckles.
“Oh shit!” he braced himself, armoring his torso over with Level 3 dragon scale as hard as he could. The sudden expulsion of the knuckle blades, a proud two feet in length each and fired off with great speed, struck Richie like a point blank shotgun blast against kevlar. He was knocked breathless as he was thrown backward, doubled over and clutching his bruising stomach. A few welling ribbons of blood began to flow from two points where the blade tips had breached the scales altogether. Not giving an inch, Luchesi rolled toward Richie, slipping behind him and his clumsy, desperate hook punch, shouldering him, and turning his once-again bare knuckles face up into the crevice of Richie’s underarms, knuckles pressed into the pits.
This was how Luchesi had mortally wounded one of those coppers back at the station, according to Cuppy, Right? Just impaled him, four and four, through the armpits? What a way to go, jesus.
Richie channeled his dragon scale armor into his armpits, doubling, no, tripling the thickness and standing rigid, his all focused on protecting the unlikely vital spots. He could concentrate more defensive power here than when spread as a carapace over his entire front body, and greater swathes of his anatomy. Still, the sudden rocket launch of those four blades lifting him by the underarms hurt like a son of a bitch, and almost brought tears to his eyes. Taking a page from Leon’s book, the lithe jester practically folded his spine backward, dropping Richie onto the crown of his skull in a modified suplex that sent him tumbling, stars exploding into his vision. Richie put a hand to his bleeding head, syrupy crimson blood leaking between his fingers and obscuring one eye. The other saw Luchesi, already standing and assuming a football kick position, a double-edged knife sticking out the front of his curled shoes. Richie grunted and dove out of the way as that toe-pointed kick slammed itself into a stone wall behind Richie. The blade sank into the hilt, leaving nary a few cracks around the point of impact, before, a moment later, a three-by-three radius cratered into the stone around the epicenter of the bladed front kick.
Not wasting a beat, Luchesi scraped his arm, which seemed to be screwed on backward, across the slate, kicking a curling wave of sparks in Richie’s direction. They blinded his eyes and singed his skin, causing him to stumble backward, waving his arms, in a panic. In his stunned state, he heard a sound like more helicopter rotors coming together and spinning about like a bladed tornado. Forcing one bloodshot eye open, Richie saw that Luchesi was spinning around like a human top, all eight blades extended, zigzagging into a crash course for Richie himself.
I’ll be chopped to bits if he gets a direct hit in! Richie panicked.
He backpedaled rapidly out of the way as whirling blades swung toward him, scattering bangs of red hair to the wind as they drew far too close. Richie’s eyes hyperfocused, and he began to see the individual rotations, like when one stares at an overhead ceiling fan for long enough and can begin to see the individual petals in between the blur. Richie realized in that moment that Luchesi had shifted from using his knuckle blades to the talons at the ends of his long fingers. There had to be a cost and benefit to either mode, right? If they were protruding from the back of his hands, they were fixed and solid, but too rigid to move independently as in the case of a blade tipping each finger. The finger blade configuration afforded Luchesi greater versatility and striking range options, at the cost of lower defenses.
Richie stepped forward, encasing the interior of his palms with dragon scales, and grabbed one of Luchesi’s paws, binding a pair of blade fingers between each knuckle. He wrenched up and back, cracking out Luchesi’s knuckles and sending a spiderweb of hairline fractures through the unsupported, overweighted digits. Luchesi threw his head back and howled in pain as Richie sprained his fingers. Richie took advantage and invaded his enemy’s personal space, up close and personal, kicking in the side of Luchesi’s dominant knee, forcing the jester to a crouch. He turned and planted his elbow in the masked man’s face, cracking the plaster and pancaking a section of the mask into the soft flesh beneath, gouging it and spraying blood between the cracks.
Not finished, he took a jump off of Luchesi, using his trick knee and lowered shoulder as stairs, grabbed him behind the shoulder, and twirled his body, spinning in a vortex of wind generated by a flash of Level 2 speed. His arm chambered across his chest, knuckles cocked, and then unfurled, sledging the back of his fist into the base of Luchesi’s skull, stumbling him forward and causing stars to explode across his vision. The wind broke, screaming like a shattered tempest.
“Whirlwind Brick Fist!” Richie announced.
Luchesi lilted forward, jaw hanging open, eyes rolled over white. He caught his footing, a curled shoe planting itself in the ground like an anchor point, his upper body practically jiggling like a shifted pile of gelatin. The man resisted passing out, and whirled on Richie, swinging a sword-fingered swat at Richie. Richie saw this coming, and leapt backward, clear out of the way of the backhanded slash.
“Hah! How do you like that?” Richie cheered.
He got faint, and began to wobble about. His body was growing colder, his nerves acting up and his muscles going tight. He was cramping in his stomach, and felt the first hiss of welling nausea spreading chaos and discord in his till-then tranquil sea of digestive juices.
Luchesi snickered, licking blood from the back of his head with his unnaturally long, noisome tongue. “What’s wrong, feeling a little woozy? While I’m sure my cuts hurt quite a bit, the danger isn’t over when my blades pull away from your rendered flesh. In case you didn’t learn this with your ABCs, you’ll want to hang onto your blood wherever possible. In other words, you’re on a time limit, mongrel!”
Luchesi stumbled forward, one of his pupils enlarging in grotesque contrast to the other.
“So are you. May not have bled much, but I don’t think a blow to the back of the head like that is something you can just shake off. How’s the concussion?” Richie spat back.
Luchesi crouched like a cat again, planting his blades in the ground, head bowed, theater mask face warping into a broad, serrated scowl of anger. “Don’t get cute with me!”
Richie fired double airballs from his Level 1 dragon-head fists, and watched the compressed spheres of wind fly toward Luchesi at great speed. They shattered the street below the jester’s feet to flecks of black rubble and dust, the jester himself vanishing clear from view.
He was already fast before he got tossed into the sea of Black Rain, Richie wasn’t sure he wanted to know what kind of bullshit meters per second he was looking at now. Now might have been a great time to bust out his own super speed via Level 2, but he was under the impression that such exertion was only going to make his heart pump like a humming bird’s, spurting freeflowing blood from his wounds all the sooner.
He could talk tough, but the jester was right, Richie was in a race against time. He had a bunch of cuts already, some of them potentially serious. The one he was really worried about was the quartet of gashes across his thigh. If those blades nicked his femoral artery, he was in deep shit. There was no time to dick around.
He felt the wind change at his back, and his dragons startle.
Richie hunkered down, encasing himself in full-body azure dragon scale. A broad stroke of claws ripped through his shoulder and side, sending torn-loose scales sailing off into the air. Cutting a right angle at the end of his last blinding dash, Luchesi zoomed across Richie’s front, slashing his stomach. Richie grunted, putting everything he had into withstanding the cuts. As long as he was armored up like this, he couldn’t move or counterattack though. He had to gauge when to release Level 3 and go on the counterattack. If he was wrong, he’d get ripped wide open.
He heard rapid tap tap taps! all around the crosswalk and the entire city block. A flickering light overhead shattered to flecks of raining glass. Behind him, a pothole filled with residual rainwater erupted like a geyser, sending murky spray and chunks of asphalt flying. A random stone corner was deeply gashed, and telltale sparks flew ahead of the sudden trenches in the wall.
Can he even tell what he’s cutting? Richie wondered.
His eyes focused, crossing a moment, and he saw a white blur barrelling toward him like one of those phantom pains strapped to a rocket booster.
Disengage! he thought, and his armor crumbled away as he dashed to the side. Shallow cuts opened along his right hip, and he grit his teeth.
I can see you! he thought, feeling the whoosh of the wind in the wake of Luchesi’s swipe-by. He heard the jingling of his conical bells. Level 4 engaged, and the azure dragon on his right arm spiraled forward, jaws closing around Luchesi’s ankle.
“Gotcha!” Richie yanked back, pulling Luchesi’s leg out from under him, and the jester toppled over, skidding inelegantly across the floor on his head. Richie was instantly upon the jester, swinging a swift roundhouse kick into the harlequin’s unguarded side, nailing his floating ribs and kicking him over, facedown in the street.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“You’re mine!” Richie charged, raising his foot and getting ready to stomp down on Luchesi’s prone stomach.
Those baleful blue eyes opened, the clownish creature flipped over onto all fours, and the four steel claws expelled from his knuckles converged into a single saber-like fencing blade, splitting the top of Richie’s shoulder. The dragon boy stumbled aside, heard a click, and braced himself. The conjoined sword was about to spring apart back into its four-prong formation, likely with similar force to how the claws had erupted out of Luchesi’s knuckles earlier. Richie remembered how it had felt like getting blasted with a shotgun at point blank range, armor and all. Richie tried to brace himself but was too slow, and the singular blade sprang apart, the outermost prong striking the side of Richie’s neck and tossing him into a wall. It was a good thing the side of the blade was blunt, or it might have taken Richie’s head off wholesale. As things were, the blow felt like it almost cracked a vertebrae. Richie grit his teeth, blood gushing from his gums.
His temple struck a stone wall, and his ear blossomed into intense pain. He tried to pinball his way back and pressure Luchesi, only to blink as he saw that, on either end of those imposing, double-jointed limbs that cut freakish angles to the torn slits of the seeming straight jacket, were now not a pair of four long claws, or a pair of conjoined sabers. Instead, either hand had become a giant pair of bolt-cutter grade sheers, and both opened, engulfing Richie’s right arm and left leg in their bite radius at the shoulder and knee.
Richie squeaked and jumped back right as those monstrous traps slammed their narrow jaws closed, and he was certain they would have easily severed his limbs in one go. Luchesi crossed his arms, and the shears, rippling like water, reconfigured into a pair of four fixed blades on each hand, protruding from the knuckles. Richie ducked and rolled as Luchesi instantly uncrossed his arms, all eight blades intersecting and carving deep trenches in the stone wall. Dust exploded to either side of the new trenches, swept away by the force of the blow.
Richie fell onto his back knee, panting.
Richie, we’re losing way too much blood. 25% blood volume has already drained away.
He didn’t need his bois to tell him. He could see the blood running down his legs and pooling around his feet, darkly, frighteningly red.
No choice then. I’ve got to use Level 2. No risk, no reward. Richie resolved, clutching a fist and finding it difficult - his nerves and muscles weren’t cooperating perfectly.
Luchesi turned to look at Richie.
“Got something to say?” Richie asked.
“All that swagger and empty promises to wrench my sanctuary away from me, and this is the sum of your might? I feel empty, such is the disappointment you turned out to be.” Luchesi growled.
Richie forced himself to stand, dusting himself off. He scanned his body, seeing the slashes across his forearm, shoulder, back, hip, and the single cut across his cheek.
“Maybe you’re right.” he said solemnly. “Well, what are you waiting for?”
“Hmm?” Luchesi raised an eyebrow.
“Go on. Finish me.” Richie shrugged.
He could practically hear Luchesi’s eyes crack like glass. “Is that a joke? All this buildup and you’re just giving up now? Just like that?” he trembled, his straightjacket-like jester vest trembling and rumbling as though his true limbs were trying to break free, cracking and dislocating their joints and ligaments to rearrange their bones into a point of leverage that could tear through the restraining silk and cloth. His visible claws, shifting again into their finger formation, twitched and scraped against each other.
“You’re willing to die on my claws now after all that talk, but you scoffed at my offer? Is this your answer, Seiryu?!” Luchesi unleashed a wave of dark, writhing shadow.
Richie through his arms wide. “Yep. Rage quit. Stick me.”
“Consider it done!” Luchesi sprinted toward Richie, right arm leading forward like a charging lance.
At the last moment, Richie smirked, even as the arm plunged straight through Richie’s chest up to the base of the fingers - and then just kept going. Palm, wrist, forearm, elbow, all the way up to the shoulder.
The mirage vacated the premises - a Level 2 afterimage.
Richie’s elbow dropped on the back of Luchesi’s neck, stumbling him. The jester struggled to cling to consciousness.
“How’s that?” Richie growled, crouched low and chambering a knee.
He slammed it into Luchesi’s face, rocking the jester’s head back.
Richie chambered his right arm at his side, fingers pressed together and thumb tucked, readying a ridgehand strike. He took a deep stance, lead leg bent sharply at the knee, his muscles bulging. He was prepared to give Luchesi a well-deserved taste of his own medicine. Eyes widening through the delirium, Luchesi saw something strange and horrific, as Richie was enveloped in the mirage of - himself! Richie seemed to become none other than Luchesi, his cocked hand enveloped in a quartet of gleaming steel claws.
“Dead Bolt!” Richie announced, his fingers melding together into a flipper of Level 3 dragon scale armor. The mirage of Luchesi adorning Richie’s body expelled its blades, and both buried their fingers in the real Luchesi’s stomach.
Luchesi doubled over, wind knocked out of him, thick ropey filaments of saliva spewing forth from his slack-jawed maw. For a moment, it seemed those copycat blades were plunged straight through his core. Rather, Richie’s enhanced fingers were buried deep in Luchesi’s stomach, but had not broken skin. Nonetheless, a deadly nausea had kicked up inside of Luchesi, and he felt as though his nerves had been cleanly severed. Richie’s memory was hazy, but this was the same as he had pulled off in Tide Town, cloaking himself in the ethereal visage of the likes of Leon and Kokumo as he emulated and incorporated their attacks into his own arsenal.
“I’m not finished!” Richie growled, and threw a vertical upkick under Luchesi’s jaw, rocking the jester’s head back again.
Whiplash plagued the newborn demon as his senses were thrown in disarray, his foul brain rattling in its skull. Richie gave no quarter, and plunged a reverse elbow strike deep in Luchesi’s gut. Once again, the jester was folded over Richie, mouth spewing spittle and flecks of upchucked bile. Unfinished, Richie pivoted to plant a reverse side kick in Luchesi’s prone face.
Luchesi caught his composure, and his wounded pride exploded into an inferno of rage and hatred. He rushed Richie in turn, claws splayed, and the rune-branded boy amended his assault, entrapping Luchesi in a bear hug to keep those pesky bladed limbs pinned at his sides. Richie engaged Level 3 and began squeezing like a vice, and Luchesi felt his ribs groan.
“It’s over, I’ve got you now!” Richie growled, gritting his teeth, and squeezed harder even as blood spurt from his handfuls of lacerations.
Luchesi could tell that he was going to black out if he didn’t counterattack. Then, he surprised Richie. The straight jacket-like bulge at his front shifted, rearranging itself internally, and a quartet of blades burst forth from his abdomen, framing either side of Richie. The blades carved shallow cuts in Richie’s sides, then closed like a snare of their own, entrapping Richie. Richie grunted as his bear hug was reversed, and he realized that the gangly limbs dangling from the slits at Luchesi’s overpuffed shoulders were indeed an extra set of arms - the jester’s true and primary arms had been concealed beneath the creases of diamond-patterned fabric at his front. His elongated extra limbs yanked themselves free from Richie’s grip in the sudden shock, and pistoned downward, planting their four long blades on either hand deep into the meat of Richie’s shoulders. Richie howled in pain, and Luchesi rocked forward, throwing Richie across the open road. The boy’s body skidded across the pavement and splashed through the standing water, leaving tire-track-like smears of blood from where his back lacerations touched the road.
Luchesi slid a dagger from his sleeve, held it like a dart, and tossed the throwing knife toward Richie. The boy gasped and sprang out of the way as the knife whizzed past, then he began sprinting toward Luchesi again, biceps engorging with muscle, scales coating his arms and flickering with wisps of blue-white airy fire.
Twenty feet, fifteen, ten, five -!
He stumbled, vision graying, head light, body numbing up. He swayed, struggling to steady himself. He lost too much blood, he couldn’t keep going like this. The harder he attacked, the harder he forced blood to squirt from his many open wounds. He forced his heavy eyes open and saw that Luchesi was gone. He felt the tip of the jester’s conical hat brush the back of his head, and heard the tinkle of the bells. Luchesi whispered in his ear.
"Naughty boy, feinting like that." he licked Richie's earlobe.
Richie growled and threw an elbow, but Luchesi easily ducked, his four blades sliding together into one again. That conjoined blade slashed out Richie's achilles heel. The boy screamed shrilly as a wave of blood splashed from the back of his gaping heel, and he wobbled on his legs, losing balance and control. His right foot was disabled, he knew without needing to be told.
Luchesi flipped in front of Richie, smirking, and lewdly licked the long gauntlet sword clean of Richie's blood. Richie shifted his weight onto his left leg, struggling not to buckle. His upper body sagged, his breathing quickening. Luchesi's grin grew wider as he gleefully surveyed all of the beautiful crimson streaks he had carved into the canvas of Richie's splendid body. Both shoulders were deeply stabbed from the top down, a grazing swipe was cut across his cheek, his sides were cut above either hip, his thigh was slashed, his back was slashed, his forearm was slashed, and two stabs had punctured his dragon armor and left their mark on his torso. Luchesi's nose wiggled, sniffing the air, tinged with the delicious metallic aroma of freshly-spilled blood. God, Richie looked so adorable, gashed and sheeted in red, the fiery light in his eyes dimming with each labored breath.
Luchesi could just eat him up.
The jester's claws flashed upward.
"Level 3!" Richie crossed his arms, hunkering down, and encased his torso and neck in glinting blue azure scales. He faltered, his right foot giving out for its slashed heel, and slipping on a blood slick of Richie's own making. Even if he hadn't slipped, Richie couldn't keep up the pace with so little stamina left. His dragons warned him that their power was failing, and he wasn't going to last. It was already a struggle to keep his eyes open, and his body felt frigid, warmed only by the sticky rivers of blood covering his skin. His scales were brittle, anchored poorly, their blue-white flames dim.
The upturned talons flashed up Richie’s torso, their curved tips catching the light and glinting again, trailing bits of the blue-white flames they had passed through. For a split second, everything seemed still, the outcome uncertain. Then, Richie’s pupils widened, trembling in their irises. Richie’s scale armor was blown apart, scattered to the wind, with a fountain of blood splashing in their wake. Four long cuts were raked up Richie’s chest, spraying away his life’s blood like elongated geysers. Richie’s body was lifted up by the force of the stroke, and he was falling back in midair, eyes turned up toward the sky. Already, those eyes seemed so glassy. He watched the droplets of his blood hang in the air, like crimson rain held static. The scattered embers of his shattered Level 3 scales danced along with the gray dots swimming across his vision.
Luchesi’s smile broadened like the crescent moon, his tongue licking his lips full-circle, and he gave a phlegmy giggle, the inundation of black rain within his lungs finally making itself known as spurts of it flew from his nostrils like the hot breath of an enraged bull. The swells of flesh that were evidently his original arms, bound and constricted beneath the straight jacket of his jester top, bulged and shuddered, as if under the spastic thrall of restrained epilepsy. His exposed striking arm, unnaturally long and gangly like the Faceless Man’s own, was still held aloft, edges turned toward the sky and pulling the ribbons of Richie’s spilt blood before they fell to the ground as so many red little dots.
Richie felt himself fall back in slow motion, his body growing numb.
I’m… very cold… Richie realized solemnly.
His back struck the ground, but he didn’t feel it. He lay there, sprawled, his own blood rapidly pooling beneath him and spreading, just as the police had found that vagrant what felt like an eternity ago. Four long cuts, straight up the body, opening quaint little windows into the anatomy of a till-then living specimen. A vivisection, in essence, albeit a small one. The thought bounced around in Richie’s head, reminding him of the dvd logo ricocheting around the corners of the TV back home.
Home. He really had started to think of that little apartment they restored as home, hadn’t he? And Cuppy and Freyja - they had been something like family. The only family he ever had, since his mother was stolen from him. Would he see her again, finally? A soft smile touched Richie’s pallid lips.
Luchesi’s body shuddered up and down, giggling in low tones, black rain leaking down the corners of his mouth. He raised his claw and licked it clean of Richie’s blood, savoring the sweet, iron-like taste. Such a spirited boy, all his gun-ho vigor and hidden hope imparting its fragrant notes into his blood like a fine wine. What a wonderful vintage it was!
From a high tower, Crocus watched, arms folded.
“If he dies, that was as far as he was meant to go, and I’ll be forced to admit error in my judgment. If this was as far as your progeny could go, then your ancestry must weep, Seiryu.” the cloaked figure muttered darkly. “All the same, I’ll claim his soul without hesitation.”
A few raindrops fell from overhead, as if the last remnants of a lone cloud rung out to a passing band of mist high in the atmosphere. They carried musical notes, and touched Richie’s palm. His fingers twitched, his half-lidded eyes flashing open.
What am I doing on my back? Richie thought, writhing on the ground, trying to find his strength. I’m being selfish again. I can’t afford to die now. He won’t stop at me. He’s already attacked Cuppy and Freyja before, and he’ll keep killing until no one is left. The black rain is boiling under the city, shitting out shades. The ferals, the Institute… oh jesus what a mess, I don’t know where to start. What was the plan again? Everything is all blurry, my thoughts want to fall apart like clumps of sand. I’ve been to this place before, where time seems to slow. This is the threshold of death. Well, that’s alright…
Luchesi glared as Richie seemed to smirk, even lying in his own blood as he was.
It wouldn’t be the first time I clawed my way back from the brink. I’m such an idiot. I talked a big game about surpassing the heavens, but I got my shit wrecked in that pit, and now, here I am, getting my shit wrecked again. I thought I was done taking crap from life? I resolved then, didn’t I, to take whatever the universe threw at me and keep on trucking? But what is it that I’m fighting for? What’s beyond the survival that was my only reason for so long? No, even before I met Cuppy, I swore to this sick bastard that I’d take him down at any cost. Me, who kicked a beaten man while he was down, me who robbed naive pollyannas who left their doors unlocked and their wallets in loose pockets, me who was… such a prick to the people trying to help me, to understand me. I told that jester off for being so callous, thinking he had the right to cut down people for not being real, for being mere characters in a story centered only on him. But I didn’t have that right. I had that same delusion, I guess, the center of my own world. Guilt was easy to evade the moment I made off with a wallet. Out of sight, out of mind. Survival always took precedence. I don’t regret that, not exactly. But, there’s so much more I could have been if I knew I had a fire waiting to be stoked inside me back then. So much more I can still be. And I have people who see that fire, and are willing to cast their kindling into it. Sharing hopes and fears, sticking together to raise a flag in rebellion against a cold, uncaring fate. I guess… was that what friendship amounted to this whole time? God, Richie, why couldn’t you see it sooner? Cuppy… Freyja… Thank you guys. Thank you for caring about me. For believing in me.
Luchesi stood, vexed. I can still feel his heart beating. Why isn’t it slowing?
I won’t let your faith go to waste. I can still be a better me. A stronger person than I was yesterday. These little cuts, they’re nothing! Just scratches. They don’t even itch!
A blood-slicked hand planted itself in the ground as Richie turned himself over, kneeling in a crouch. His head hung, his hair dangling in front of his face, dripping sweat. He panted raggedly, his fists clenching and gathering little bits of wet silt and pebbles. He hooked one arm under his right thigh and pulled his leg out in front of him, manually setting the sole of his foot on the ground. With his back leg, he lifted himself, straining, shaking, supported by both hands now as he moved like a car jack, standing, standing, rising -
He put weight on his right foot, and blood spurted freshly from the gash of his achiles heel. The moment he tried to distribute his weight evenly, he became acutely aware of how detached his foot felt from the rest of his body, connected to his control only by muscle now that the greater connective tissue was destroyed. His heel screamed in pain, and Richie cast his head skyward, echoing that scream. He crouched in a deep stance, both knees pistoning as he stayed resolutely on both feet, slashed heel be damned. His ears could hear blood spurt from his heel every other second, joining the pool that had formed under Richie’s prone body before he rose again.
Luchesi gulped, a cold sweat breaking out over his pale flesh. I know I severed the tendon, yet still he stands. And all the blood he lost… why does this man not keel over and die already?
Richie’s dragons lidded their eyes, their azure glow fading as they began to curl up, retreating further into his body, huddling near the chest, as if to hibernate, or perhaps in reflection of the way blood retreats to the core of the body, diverting from the limbs during massive blood loss in order to keep vital organs and body functions going, sacrificing all non-essentials. The utilities of Dragon Sign were fading with the twin minds of Richie’s animate tattoos.
“No.” Richie said resolutely. “You belong to me. You obey ME!”
Richie’s eyes turned to reptilian slits, matching those of his dragons as their lids curled back, snapping open like camera shutters on flashforward. Ribbons of cyan began encircling the dragons, deepening into that familiar azure blue as they spread out again from his chest and encircled his arms. Their whiskers elongated and trailed, their horns curling and seeming to crackle with blue lightning and storm clouds.
A manual override?
The blue glow engulfed Richie, undulating like the living tendrils of an ethereal air current made flesh. The shafts of light intertwined and became a single funnel in the shape of a tornado. The tornado spun, azure glow hitting a peak of shining light, and all at once the vortex emanating from Richie’s body flew up to the sky, bridging the heavens and the earth. The clouds immediately above Richie were stained azure in a halo-like radius. The glow would have been visible from all across Station Bay. It had been created once before this, a few years ago, when Richie, in the throes of despair within the child kennel, awakened his runic power and unleashed its light.
Richie’s cry reverberated, becoming a layered, echoey wave of thunder.
A dragon head engulfed Richie's fist, and he took aim at Luchesi.
The jester clicked dismissively, folding his arms and letting his claws dangle.
"Stopping to aim? Vision bleary? Just standing up must be quite the task. Why don't you take a long rest?" Luchesi flashed out of sight.
Richie's draconic eyes tracked Luchesi.
"Airball!" Richie thrust a punch forward, sending it through the air. The compressed ball of oxygen struck Luchesi straight in the face, bursting and releasing its shockwave and slamming the back of the jester's head into a window display. The glass cracked and shattered under the force. As the wind scattered, so too did bits of Luchesi's mask. A circle of plaster spanning Luchesi's eye and cheek broke off wholesale. Beneath was moist, wrinkled quivering flesh that reminded Richie unnervingly of a grub unearthed from under a piece of rotting tree bark, or of a caterpillar revealed from a hatched cocoon. The exposed stretch of Luchesi's face pulsed, and tears of black rain ran down his cheek, streaming from a bloodshot eye.
"Gross." Richie shuddered.
Luchesi lifted himself from the shattered window display, bits of broken glass stuck to his jester suit, and began walking toward Richie, head bowed down. Richie saw Luchesi's body bulge and squirm under his shirt, like layered tangles of anacondas writhing and slithering within. The jester retracted his claws and crossed his arms, burying his hands in either sleeve cuff.
"Nothing up my sleeves." Luchesi said, then flung his arms outward, throwing a spreading fan of throwing knives that flew at Richie.
Instinctively, Richie moved to dodge. The moment he put weight on his right foot, he almost buckled again. Instead, he crossed his arms, giving himself a light coating of dragon scale, and tried to sway like a leaf between the flight paths of the blades. However, at the same moment the knives were upon him, so was Luchesi, both orangutan arms lifted high overhead, claws flashing.
"Ah hell!" Richie screeched as the blades came down.
There was an explosion of dust and the sound of shattering street. From the cloud, Richie flew backward, both hands covered over by Level 1 dragon heads, his wounded right leg flopping in front of him. He landed, crane-like, on top of a street light, balancing precariously. The remnants of gale force winds flowed over the snouts of his dragon heads, Richie having blasted twin airballs beneath his feet to propel himself backward.
Luchesi flew up at Richie, out of the dust cloud, both claws conjoined into saber form to maximize his aerodynamic form.
Richie fired two more airballs, and the jester chopped through either of them with a single stroke each. Richie could see the distortion of the compressed air dispelling into the rest of the atmosphere around it.
But that was fine, Luchesi's arms were flung to his sides as he rose toward Richie, his guard broken.
Still standing like a crane, Richie channeled Level 4. One of his dragon heads receded from his fist and slithered down his right leg instead. Its jaws closed around Richie's gashed heel, holding the flesh and muscle together.
He threw his leg forward, planting the ball of his foot in Luchesi's face. He felt the satisfying crunch, and heard the mask shatter to bits under the tread of his kick. Luchesi fell back to the street, landing with a wince-inducing thud.
Richie clutched his leg, the force of his own kick sending shooting pain through it.
His eyes focused next, and he saw the jester lying sprawled on his back. Something was wrong with his face. It moved and wriggled unnaturally, looked sickly and moist beyond the mere cosmetic damage of streaking blood. The problematic visage became clarified as Luchesi sat himself up without even using his arms, as though a marionette jerked upright by invisible strings. Luchesi’s face was gaunt and waxy, with sunken eye sockets and a mouth that was stretched far too wide and long, not unlike the mouth of the mask he had worn. Also like that mask, it was lined with vicious fangs. The nose seemed necrotic and deformed, like a pig snout melded into the upper lip, with scabby, flaring red nostrils. A patch of flesh came away from the skull, revealing discolored cheese-like bone beneath. Horrible as this decaying face was, it somehow gave Richie the sensation of being yet another mask, and that should that face slide off, it would take the front of the skull with it and reveal another face, a true face beneath.
That gaping mouth full of razor-sharp teeth twisted into a leering grin, and Richie felt a swell of murderous intent balloon outward from Luchesi, hitting him like a wave of ice water. Richie grimaced.
“You dumbass, you did it, didn’t you?” Richie asked as black fluid poured from Luchesi’s every orifice. “You drank the black rain. Why? Look what it’s doing to you. Was the power worth it?”
Luchesi shook his head, bells jingling. “Fuck no. But it’s much too late for regret.” he said with a hint of sadness.
“You must realize it on some level, don’t you? That there’s no point to this. You’re just the Faceless Man’s puppet, being strung along his stage. That demigod and divine restitution bullshit he sold you is just a pack of lies. All this has been is you lashing out like a child burning ants to feel powerful. What makes you think the spook will keep you around any longer than the moment you stop being useful? You sold your soul and have nothing to show for it. I pity you.” Richie gave a mirthless laugh.
Luchesi’s face became a drama theater mask again, the face of tragedy, wrinkling over and distorting into a tumorous swell of twisting flesh, bulging blue and red veins, and sickly yellow and blue splotches.
"Pity? Who are you to pity me?!" Luchesi growled, body enveloped by swirling black mist that twisted itself into the shapes of agonized souls, crying and screaming for release.
Richie's dragons smelled cannibalism on the harlequin, though perhaps that was a misnomer by now - whatever Luchesi was at this point, it could no longer be called human. Just a vessel to project the wrath of the Void.
How many? How many people… Richie's dragons wondered, horrified.
"Listen to yourself. You're pathetic." Richie spat back.
Luchesi looked up and saw that Richie's back was to the rising sun, framing the boy like an archetypical hero at its front, encircled by a halo of solar red. Shredded to ribbons though his body was, Richie stood radiant atop the light pole, standing above Luchesi, upstaging him, looking down on him!
"When did you get so high and mighty?! Get down here!" Luchesi conjoined his claws on either hand into saber mode, and slashed together with them, both swords striking the base of the street lamp in tandem. There was a hideous sparking sound as the blades went straight through the steel, cleanly cutting it and leaving the edges of the now-bisected pole glowing red hot from the friction.
Like an axed tree, the pole wobbled and fell, dropping Richie backward. Before he lost balance completely, he concentrated all of his strength into his good leg and sprang, throwing an airball under him for a propulsion boost. His body tumbled across the roof of the nearest building. He sprawled, panting, still fighting back massive shock.
As the pole fell, Luchesi sprinted up its length and crashed through a window of the building Richie landed on.
Richie heard a click below him, and rolled out of the way as a saber stabbed up through the underside of the roof, and sprung apart into four claws again, tearing open a hole to emerge from.
Richie used another airball to launch himself higher, then another, and another-!
Richie stood at the edge of a skyscraper's roof, his slashed back to open sky.
There's nowhere left to run. Richie's dragons said.
"Then I'll just have to beat him." Richie said.
But he was at his limit. He wobbled and shook, almost passing out again. He was woozy to say the least. His skin was cool and clammy. Sweat gathered heavily on his forehead, and felt like drops of ice water. He could hear his heart pounding in his chest, and his breaths grew quicker and quicker. He couldn't get enough oxygen, that was a given. His cells groaned in starvation, and his organs trembled on the verge of shutting down.
Richie, we've lost 30% of our total blood volume. If we don't stop the bleeding and get immediate medical treatment, we are going to die. Whatever you do, do it quickly. his dragons cautioned. Then, themselves lethargic and deprived of energy, they fell asleep on Richie's skin.
Luchesi vaulted up onto the roof, and spread his claws wide.
Richie crouched, arms at his sides.
"Going to psych me out with your little illusion trick again?" Luchesi asked.
"I won't… dodge." Richie said.
"Good." Luchesi crossed his arms, fanning out his blades. "Don't move a muscle!" - he began sprinting at Richie.
Richie measured the moments in heartbeats, each thud in his chest seeming in tune with Luchesi's long strides.
He'll target my chest. Richie knew, and guarded his body language. Luchesi didn't need to know Richie knew.
The claws flashed, there was a wet puncturing noise, and blood splattered.
Luchesi's wild excitement turned to shock.
"What?!" he snapped.
Richie's arms were up and to the side of his chest. Each set of Luchesi's claws had impaled Richie's forearms through their underside, going between the ulna and radius bones. They were buried up to the hilt in the meat of Richie’s arms, and every subtle shift made itself known, severing muscle fibers and veins. Richie grit his teeth, growling.
"FUCK!!!" he screamed.
But then - he smirked at Luchesi.
"Gotcha." Richie said.
He activated Level 3, coating his arms over in dragon scales. They interlocked like iron teeth around the wounds in Richie's arms, clamping down on Richie's embedded claws and trapping them as his flesh and muscle hardened.
Luchesi gasped and tried to pull back, but his claws didn't budge. They were trapped, locked into Richie's arms.
No matter.
Luchesi's second pair of arms burst forth from the straightjacket folds of his suit, unfurling and snapping their bound, contorted ligaments and joints back into place. Their claws sprouted forward.
Richie's scale-coated hands caught and closed like vices around Luchesi's second pair of claws, forcibly twisting and wrenching to do so, twisting Luchesi's embedded claw arms by extension, painfully comforting the jester's elbows and shoulder joints. Richie planted his feet on top of Luchesi's, sealing the rest of his movements and bringing them face to face. Grinning like a madman, Richie reared his head back.
"Wait!" Luchesi panicked.
Richie slammed his head into Luchesi's face. The jester's regenerated mask shattered again, his nose crunched in, and his lip split, fangs knocked loose. He swallowed a couple of them. The jester was dazed, head lolling. The flexing of his claws slackened and he leaned backward, but could not escape. Richie held him in place and twisted his arms further. He was rewarded with a satisfying popping noise that made Luchesi grunt in more pain.
Richie reared his head back and slammed it into Luchesi's face again and again, headbutt-gatling him six times in a row. On the seventh, he swung his head back as far as it could go, and coated his forehead over in iron-hard dragon scales.
At impact, Luchesi's facial bones fractured, his orbital sockets caving in, splintered cracks spreading across his skull. His head rocked back, putting tremendous torque on his neck and giving him whiplash.
Richie felt himself fading. He knew the moment Luchesi's claws came out of his forearms, blood was going to come gushing forth from the wounds. He wasn't sure he'd be able to maintain it, but his only shot at surviving this was to seal off the wounds with dragon scale the exact moment Luchesi's claws came loose, and hope to high fuck the blood pressure drop didn't make him lose consciousness before he could.
Luchesi was groaning, face split open and bleeding heavily, sheeted in sickly black blood, giving the impression that a bucket of stygian paint had been dropped over his head. Richie took some satisfaction in that.
Whoever passed out first lost. Right now it seemed neck and neck.
One more hit! Richie thought, and began to rear back.
Luchesi’s eyes rolled out of their sockets and narrowed their pupils to enraged pinpricks, targeting Richie. He lunged forward, slamming the crown of his head into Richie’s nose and mouth. Stars exploded into Richie’s vision, and he swayed. Luchesi freed his right foot from under Richie’s tread, expelled the double-edged knife from its toes, and sank the blade into Richie’s stomach with a vicious kick.
Richie gasped sharply, drawing in air and grunting like a mortally wounded animal. A rose blossom of blood unfurled its petals around his shirt and jacket, with Luchesi’s foot at its center, still planted deeply. Grunting, Luchesi pushed his foot harder, and Richie began to hyperventilate.
Luchesi leaned in close to Richie’s face, eyes glittering with mixed glee and rage, his mouth curled into an obscene smile.
“Crocus was wrong.” Luchesi said.
His noisome tongue unfurled, and licked the fresh tears spilling from Richie’s eyes.
“Does it hurt, dragon boy?” Luchesi drawled.
Richie couldn’t talk, his body spasming with irregular, agonal breaths. The scales coating his arms flaked off and faded away, his muscles going slack.
“Your climb up the waterfall has ended in failure. Just before the top, you fall back into the rapids below. You are no dragon. Just a carp. A filleted carp. Flop and die, Richie.” Luchesi drew his tongue up Richie’s face from chin to forehead, wetting the fringes of his red hair as if in the aftermath of a lion cub groomed by its mother. Then, he wrenched his knife foot out of Richie’s stomach, and flung him from his claws, off the edge of the tower, plummeting to the alleyway below, trailed by his own spilling blood.
Luchesi licked his claws clean, retracted his lower set of arms, and stalked away, grumbling to himself.