Shadows in the underground

I’m surprised, you play the role of a madman very well.

Pax kept running through the forest despite the taunting.

You don’t want to talk? Well, go fuck yourself!

“Were you this chatty with Raya too? Somehow I can’t believe that I wouldn’t notice something like that.”

As I said before, your mental defenses are so weak that you couldn’t stop me even if you tried. With Raya, she could shut me up whenever she wanted, so I only talked to her when it was important.

“...Well that’s just wonderful. And you’re sure that Kael Drogo is in this direction?”

Yeah, why do you ask?

“Because I’m looking at an enemy camp with about 500 soldiers.”

Yeah, did you think that you could get to the guy without having to go past a single enemy?

“...”

It was obvious that Ryuzu was just trying to get him killed, but Pax didn’t really care. He needed the training anyways.

So he walked straight towards the camp.

- - - - - - -

Vincent leaned back in his wooden chair and stared back up at the ceiling. Though the commander had given him a rest day, he felt himself unable to sit around and relax –There was simply too much to think about.

During the assault on the spire and the port surrounding it, several sea monsters had appeared. Pax had luckily been there when the first one appeared, but there were two others that had appeared. Both of them had been taken out by Captain Blackbeard, a mercenary that the Artenian Royalty had paid unfathomable amounts of money to secure. And even then, the mercenary had refused to step foot on the New Artenian mainland, instead staying on his ship and fighting naval battles under the Old Artenian flag. Vincent had never personally met Captain Blackbeard, but he had seen how quickly the two giant monsters had been taken out.

Those monsters had wrecked dozens of ships in a matter of seconds, but had simply exploded into chunks of meat before the might of Captain Blackbeard.

“But how had those monsters appeared there in the first place?”

It was a question with an obvious answer– Lagrimas had put them there. That was the worrisome part. Since when had Lagrimas been able to control monsters like that?

He hadn’t ridden on them into battle like the demons of fairy tales, but if he could put monsters of that caliber in specific places then the battles ahead could get bloody.

“Losing Pax and Eris like that will make things that much harder,” he sighed, massaging his temples with his left hand.

Vincent began to doze off when he heard a commotion outside of his tent. He rushed out, only to see black ink seeping from the ground beneath his feet and a veiled shadow looming in the distance.

- - - - - - -

The soldier saw a figure slowly walking towards them in the distance. It had eight white appendages sticking out of its back like spider legs. The figure also seemed to be wearing a bone mask. The soldier looked to his friend standing next to him, but saw a look of pure fear on the man’s face.

“S-S-Sound the alarm… It’s the-the fucking Bloodweeping Spider!”

When Pax heard a bugle sound coming from the fort, he kept walking forward with indifference. It was only when a few spells had been fired at him that he began running.

He leapt over the wooden guardwall, decapitating the guards standing on it with a single flick of his wrist. He ran through the camp, killing all those he saw. Keeping himself low to the ground, his eight bone appendages sliced through flesh and armor the moment he saw movement. He dodged the storm of lightning, flame, water, wind, and earth that chased him wherever he went, making his own storm of blood and flesh as he did so.

He quickly lost count of how many he had killed, but he felt like the numbers surrounding him were only increasing. From behind his mask, he quickly counted the number standing all around him, then dispatched them with lasers of blood from his spider legs. He spun in place like a ballerina from hell, shredding anything within a fifty-foot radius.

From the distance, two ribbons of blood could be seen slowly stretching up into the sky. From the top of their arcs to the ground was about 500 feet, and they kept slowly unfurling like the wings of a dragon ready to lift off.

Pax held a grown man by the skull with a single hand. He watched as the man kicked and screamed when he slowly put more strength in his hand.

Blood and brain matter splattered over his bone-white mask.

“I think that’s enough,” he declared as he looked down upon the carnage he created.

On his call, the great ribbons of blood snaked their way through the camp, shredding hundreds of tents per second. Just standing near one as it passed by would create enough wind to throw a grown man off his feet far enough to break his neck. The ribbons crossed over one another dozens of times, curling into one another to thoroughly level everything in sight.

When they converged on Pax, who was standing in the middle of the camp, he touched them lightly with the palm of his hand and absorbed them back into his body.

Pax sighed as he took off his mask. He looked at the mud, blood, and rubble that now remained of the enemy camp.

It was then that someone sliced through his neck.

- - - - - - -

Vincent commanded everyone to stay away from the veiled shadow and approached her by himself. Though the shadow was about ten feet tall and very imposing, Vincent knew that it didn’t have to be an enemy. She wasn’t trying to kill anyone, just destroying random supplies and boxes set around her out of her childish anger. Behind the shadow though, Vincent could see the corpse of what looked like a New Artenian assassin.

“Hey there, Lily, was it?” he said, trying to hide his fear behind a warm smile.

He had only seen Sakura’s alter ego twice before, and each time she had nearly scared the piss out of him. This time, though, Lily seemed to have gotten a bit taller than before, likely due to Sakura getting a bit stronger.

“Where is she?” asked the inky shadow. Vincent could barely make out Sakura’s face behind the veil.

“She’s in your arms, and she’s perfectly fine now. I can see that you took care of that guy who attacked her.”

The shadow twisted its head towards where the corpse lay, then slowly turned its head back towards Vincent. Sadly, there was nothing Vincent could do about how long it took Lily to do anything.

“Last time, you said you would protect my sister from this kind of thing… Is that war truly still ongoing?”

“...ah, well… no… you see, this is a different war… on a different continent…”

The shadow leaned its head in until its face was mere inches from Vincent’s.

“...At least you didn’t lie this time. But you seem to have drawn my sister into yet another senseless conflict.”

“Well, she’s her own person. I can’t control her, you know? Independence and the like… She’ll get herself into danger sometimes, but as long as we are here to protect her, things should turn out fine, right?” Vincent nervously responded, squinting his eye and smiling in an attempt to sound more convincing. He had never felt more like a snake-oil salesman than he had at this moment.

“...You,” muttered the shadow angrily. “You would twist my sister’s goodwill for your own benefit? You know as well as I that her wishes have never been anything other than to help others find happiness, and yet you bring her to war… And a second time at that.”

“Aha… yes, war is a bloody thing. Here she has the opportunity to save the most people, so it would make sense for her to be here, wouldn’t it? Speaking of Sakura, could you be so kind as to return her to us? Everyone here loves and misses her, after all.”

“...Shameless, utterly shameless!” She shouted as she picked up another crate and smashed it in her fist. “I won’t let you have her! She’s mine! My sister! Mine!”

“Okay-okay-okay-okay, I get it, Lily. But if you’re going to be staying here, you need to stop destroying stuff,” said Vincent carefully as he looked around to the other soldiers. He signaled to them that things were still under control, then continued talking to Lily. “How about we go outside the camp and discuss this?”

“Out… Outside?”

“Yes, outside. If you want to stay here instead of Sakura, you’ll need to help us in her place. Sakura would’ve wanted that, so we should discuss what you’ll be doing moving forward. Yes, I know a nearby field of flowers we can visit as we talk. How does that sound?”

“Can I have some sweets too!? Sakura is safe because of me after all, so I think I should get a reward for being a good girl!”

…and just like that, a new member had joined the Misericorde Strike Team, though nobody actually called it that.

- - - - - - -

“How much longer?” He asked the shadows of the underground tunnel.

Water dripped and echoed in the distance.

“You’ll get it. Be patient.”

“We are running out of time. If you don’t at least give me a few more mutants, they’ll be on our doorstep in just a few weeks!”

“...” The shadow didn’t respond, though it stirred slightly in anger.

“If I go down, you go down with me. Remember that.”

“No,” growled the shadow lowly. “You misunderstand our contract. WE do not need you. You are just a figurehead, and a replaceable one at that. Yes, without you, our plans may be delayed a decade or two, but that is of little significance. You, however, are completely reliant on our resources to fund your little empire.”

“Hah, you shadows are always so pompous. Don’t assume that because things have gone well for your kind for the last hundred years you are somehow invincible,” sneered the man in the darkness. “Need I remind you of the humiliation you suffered at the hands of my ancestors? You’re right that I need your help to win this war, but you forget that I could decapitate your kind with a single word. And then your plans may be delayed another century or two rather than just a decade.”

“BASTARD!” shouted the shadow. “You’ll get your damn mutants, but nothing more...”

“Yes, that’s all I’ll ask for.”

With that, the man began to walk out of the tunnel the way he came in from. His steps echoed through the darkness as the shadow watched him leave.

“Oh, but make sure to watch out for knives in your back.”

The man stopped for a moment. He turned his head back to the shadow and smiled a sinister smile. He said nothing with his mouth, but his eyes seemed to tell the shadow, “Try it. Try it and see what happens.”