It was somewhat amusing to see three individuals arc overtop the wall as if they’d just jumped on a trampoline. One was an evoy with an unily humanoid build, wearing a suit, the other was that pure-white Inax from earlier, while the third was a Mamon Knight of the iile variety with a pair of cleavers as his ons.
“Barzai. Kill.”
Less like a living thing and more like an autonomous missile, the crow whizzed down into the alleyway a upon the evoy, turning him into a maelstrom of whirling ghostly mantis-bdes, snapping jaws, and swarming is. Krahe wasn’t sure whether this anic response, a legitimate attempt to strike down the crow, or both.
While the True Eidolon distracted one of her foes, Krahe wasted not a moment more to raise both her hands - her left pointing palm-first at her foe, her right aiming the muzzle of her gun at her bicep. The a, admittedly strange as it was, fused them for just long enough to let her form the necessary struct-shell, her left arm being cwed, rocky, and monstrous. Cleavers already moved, and the Croupier already set forth a withering shower of wicked daggers to punch holes into Krahe’s wards, but she had time enough; her wards would hold for the moment, doubly so against kiic attacks, and no more than half of the Croupier’s deluge actually hit head-on to begin with. Of the hits, a third were grazing, causing them to be cerative instead, and thus iual in more ways than one. Krahe felt sympathy for the inax woman; she, too, had felt the disappoi of a withering barrage leaving its target very much alive, mere seds earlier.
No matter. Cleavers would tear her to shreds if she let him get close. A pull of the trigger apanied an intation in an alien, eldritch tongue.
“Wandrei…”
Click. Boom. No bullet came out; its dregshot form burned up, in an instant, into formless thaumiergy, a stream that empowered the theurgic talisman rolled up ihe shell g, and, in the same moment, carried it out the barrel of the gun. It was much like aremely forceful application of a talisman, the sigils burning with a hateful glow as it adhered to her arm.
“Faust!”
A surge of power, burning, seething, a slithering presence surging through her arm, implig itself within the struct. The talisman burned up in an instant. With the bursting of a liquid akin to boiling blood, the hollow forearm tore free a careening forwards. There were two alternate modes in which the Wandrei Faust could be set loose; Chasedown, and Standoff. Chasedown would try to grab the target arain them, requiring a manual detonation and. In Standoff, the arm would iry to get within optimal range of its target before firing its payload - the range was around three meters at present. Despite its speed surpassing that of a Red Reaper, Cleavers side-stepped its approach; he would have already struck her, had Krahe not been prepared, had she not skimmed to a spot in his 4 o’clock blind spot. He quickly spun around and reacquired his target, but a diagonally-rising pilr of stone smashed into his groin and threw him backwards. He was unharmed, but dispced and forced to reorient himself once more.
Meanwhile, as her Wandrei Faust ged targets to the evoy, Krahe fusion-formed a burster in her hand. Anunshot carried it, the Six Trees Killer flying right at Croupier’s face. She stopped it with her barrier, but the grenade’s impact - and the kiipo of its bst - smashed her off her feet a moment ter.
She skimmed in the Croupier’s dire and raised a wall of cover, already turning to face Cleavers and f another cwed arm-shell. Another shot. Aalisman. Another missile.
Just as it left her arm, she saw the first one passing tht. It held the evoy by his torso with its fingers digging through his wards and into his chitin, dragging him against the wall so forcefully that it tore the fag off. Cleavers had righted himself a at her, ae unfurling his armor’s wings, he couldn’t dodge. The bck-cwed fist struck him and mercilessly dug its fingers into his armor, carrying him away.
At near-enough the same moment, both flying forearms smashed their respective victims into the bck jade wall by which Cassius was entrapped. With a spark of i, both arms fshed with reddish-e light, with streaks of golden-yellow mixed in. It was apanied by a sound akin to a high-pitched scream, as opposed to the ominous buzz of her own anathemic power ripping the air. The pulse sted perhaps ohird of a sed, and from the seams of both the evoy’s and Cleavers’ pting, light and boiling fluid burst forth in equal measure. They bathed Cassius’ horrified face, both light and fluid in equal measure.
GRUDGE-FILLED GRASP
DEATH BORNE UPON CLAWS OF HATE
BLACK HAND OF DESOLATION: WANDREI FAUST
Before she could say or do ahing, the Croupier dashed past her wall. Krahe had heard her footsteps, and had already prepared a smoke eruption. Before long she had the Inax in a rear hold, though she had torn an impressive k out of her wards, and Krahe was fairly certain she wouldn’t have been able to restrain her without using several tar-tendrils and an unsable amount of entropy.
“I still leave only three corpses in my wake. Do you want to tihis?”
She had no reason to take mer the Croupier in particur; it was a simple gut feeling. As for killing Cassius, though not something she posed to, would cause more of a stir than she wanted.
After not receiving a response from the Croupier, she choked her out and iurned her attention to Cassius.
“Well? Do you want to fire another fre? Call more to their deaths? Or do I just empty your pockets and walk out of here? Either works for me.”
“...Alright,” he sighed, defting in his stone shackles. “I’ll make sure you get to leave my territory without anyone on your tail, but that’s all I do. For all the money on your head, you’re fifty times the trouble it’s worth.”
Akaso
