Chapter 58 - Divine Verdict

Kaela stood before Atbara, her angelic sword gleaming as it emitted a deadly golden aura, an aura that screamed wrath and thirst for blood. Her green eyes, burning with divine hatred, seemed to threaten the very essence of Atbara's soul, demanding his death in that instant.

(Damn it. I really picked a dangerous opponent this time,), thought Atbara, his hand reaching for the rapier at his waist.

But before he even realized it, his right arm had already been sliced clean in half.

"WHAT!? HAAH!?" Atbara gasped, his eyes widening just as Kaela's foot struck his face with impossible speed. The kick sent him hurtling backward, smashing through everything in his path. Each collision brought down the towering celestial structures behind him like a chain of falling dominoes.

Finally, he managed to stop himself by conjuring a tree root from one of the distant palace walls, grabbing onto it with his remaining arm. The vampire noticed the blood dripping from his twisted nose, but only for a heartbeat. He suddenly felt the killing wind Kaela carried with her as she appeared before him, faster than his senses could comprehend.

"Damn it!" he muttered, forming a massive wooden barrier against the palace wall he clung to.

Kaela extended her arm, ready to strike a fatal blow. Atbara barely managed to maneuver his body into the wooden mass before her blade sliced horizontally through the air, cutting through dozens of buildings as if they were made of paper. The mere force of the swing created a violent gale, tearing through a large portion of the kingdom. The upper halves of the ruined towers rained down like divine debris, each crash echoing like thunder through the holy city.

Using the wooden mass, Atbara teleported to the location of his severed arm, but to his dismay, he found Kaela already there, her right foot pinning his lost limb to the ground.

"Tch! Magical Crafts: Second Act — Ecstasy of Osteris!" Atbara invoked, pressing his left hand against the earth of the kingdom. Dozens of massive, bright-green roots erupted from the ground, weaving together into an enormous dome meant to imprison Kaela within.

From the same wooden mass he had created earlier, Atbara managed to retrieve his severed arm and reattach it to his body. He flexed it up and down, testing the rhythm of his body, trying to reconnect to the flow of his own nervous system.

But his relief was short-lived. The colossal dome of roots shattered completely, fragments exploding outward in every direction. At the center stood Kaela, unharmed, unshaken, and radiating divine fury.

"Looks like this will be an easy battle for Kaela," said Tarnael, unfolding his radiant wings. "I suppose I should play my part then."

Dozens of massive portals opened along his wings, from which an unimaginable number of angelic soldiers poured forth, armies from other celestial kingdoms of the Angelic Nation, swarming like furious bees toward Igorus. Their mission was clear: kill the General of the Dominions.

Meanwhile, Atbara conjured a thick root beside him, into which he inserted his rapier. In the same instant, another root burst from the ground behind Kaela, and from its tip, the blade of his rapier emerged, aiming to catch her completely off guard.

Without even looking, Kaela tilted her head to the left, dodging the sudden strike with flawless precision. Atbara redirected his rapier for another attempt, but Kaela shifted her head to the right, again evading the blow effortlessly. Frustrated, Atbara summoned dozens more roots around him, each serving as a conduit for his weapon. The rapier flickered between them, stabbing from every possible direction. His sword danced like a hummingbird's wings, hundreds of movements within a single second.

Kaela was surrounded by countless thrusts, yet she dodged them all with an eerie calmness, her movements as fluid as light itself.

"Impossible," Atbara muttered through clenched teeth, frustration gnawing at him. "Only a Visionary could move that fast..."

Every strike he made, hundreds each second, was avoided with effortless grace. Then, in a fleeting instant, it seemed his rapier had finally caught Kaela off guard. But no, she merely shifted her body slightly to the left and caught the tip of the rapier in her right hand.

Atbara tried desperately to pull the weapon back, but her grip was unyielding, ironclad. With sheer physical power, Kaela pulled the entire rapier toward her, dragging Atbara himself through the dimensional roots he used for teleportation.

"W-What!?" Atbara gasped as his body was yanked forward, emerging from the root to find himself face-to-face with Kaela's deathly green eyes. They glared down at him with contempt and divine fury, the gaze of a goddess looking upon the pitiful struggle of a mortal.

Kaela spun once, and with a single, blindingly fast kick to his stomach, sent Atbara hurtling skyward, thousands of meters into the air. The impact was so immense that his ascent left a shockwave across the clouds.

In mere seconds, Kaela was already there, four thousand meters high, hovering effortlessly at that impossible altitude. Atbara struggled to focus; the ground below was a distant blur, shrinking beneath him as he soared into the heavens.

"I didn't think she'd be this strong... Kaela Frizina. And that fast..." he murmured, before noticing something strange. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of the faint silhouettes of the moons visible in daylight, yet only the blue moon appeared full that day.

The souls of the Dominions and the angels, once they die, are said to ascend into the moons that rise over the skies of Ladnoria. The three moons: Farishta, the yellow moon; Pulega, the blue moon; and Diaboros, the red moon, are the celestial bodies that illuminate this world. The spirits of divine beings travel through them like free electrons, for in this realm, the concepts of Heaven and Hell do not exist. There is only a purgatory, one that gives the illusion of experiencing all three dimensions at once. This is the nature of their world, divided among beings of myth and shadow.

Kaela closed in on Atbara, only a few meters away, ready to seal his fate.

"Evektra Diamur!"

Kaela's pupils widened in shock as she witnessed Atbara's body morphing before her eyes. She drove her blade forward, but Atbara managed to seize the sword's hilt with his right hand, the steel piercing straight through his palm. It was the same transformation he had used against the Lich in the forests of Guhojre, but this time, his eyes glowed blue instead of red.

The color of a vampire's eyes depends entirely on which moon is full at that moment, regardless of whether it is day or night. During his battle with the Lich, the red moon Diaboros had been full. Now, it was the blue moon Pulega that shone in its place.

Evektra Diamur, the ability of vampires to transform into monstrous, bat-like abominations, can normally only be used under a full Diaboros. However, Akrasan vampires, like Atbara, can invoke it under any of the three moons. The moons are never full at the same time, and how their alignment correlates with this transformation will be revealed later in the tale.

Kaela sneered, her expression cold and disdainful as she looked up at the monstrous silhouette blotting out the sun above her.

"So now you've made yourself even more revolting. Do you truly believe that this abomination will change your fate?"

Atbara spread his massive vampiric wings and, with a burst of fury, dove downward, dragging Kaela with him, still bound by the blade embedded through his hand. Within seconds, they crashed into the kingdom below, unleashing devastation on a colossal scale. The ground split apart, buildings collapsed into dust, and a massive crater opened where they had fallen.

Kaela, completely unshaken, stood before the monstrous form of Atbara. In an instant, he appeared in front of her, moving with a speed far beyond anything he had shown before. He swung his enormous left fist, but Kaela met it effortlessly with her right palm.

The collision produced a violent shockwave, a vortex of wind that hurled everything behind her into the distance.

With her left hand, Kaela gripped her angelic sword, its blade glowing with a golden, radiant aura, divine electricity crackling and arcing around her arm. She tightened her grip, her strength overwhelming Atbara's monstrous force. The tendons in his arm snapped and tore, the bones beginning to crack beneath the sheer might that Kaela exerted through her divine hand.

"Lapis Arts: One Wing — The Resolve of Merseus."

Kaela's blade overflowed with divine energy, forming the silhouette of an enormous sword, dozens of times greater than its physical form. She swung it toward Atbara, her motion imperceptible to any being tainted by evil, as though a god herself were delivering judgment upon a mortal drowned in sin.

Atbara could do nothing but stare upward at the radiant blade suspended above him, its holy brilliance searing his monstrous eyes.

"You have fought well... for a mortal," Kaela said coldly, just as she brought the divine weapon down upon him.

A storm of golden and black energy surged through the kingdom, clashing and roaring like a divine tempest. The sword descended, closer, closer, until it began cleaving through Atbara's head.

"AAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHKKKKHHGAAAAAA!!!"

Atbara screamed in agony as his monstrous form was purified by the celestial light of Kaela's blade. Waves of divine energy cascaded through the city, disintegrating everything they touched, cleansing the corruption that lingered in every shadow. The sword continued its relentless arc, slicing through his neck, chest, and abdomen, until the entire abomination that was Atbara had been purged beyond recognition.

At last, his true body, pale-skinned, his dark, childlike hair falling over his face, collapsed lifelessly to the ground. The radiant aura that had surrounded Kaela's blade, magnifying its power and size to unimaginable heights, began to fade into countless dark motes that drifted gently through the air like moths seeking the light they had lost...