Panopticon; the Heart of the Great Domain
Chaos reigned.
The Crimson Emir's ships were issuing forth like a cloud of black flies, swarming Holy Mercury like a bloated and fresh-rotting corpse. From countless dropships, there were disgorged thousands of hungry-eyed killers, some Se-dai and some Death Knell and some merely the Emir's red-painted footsoldiers. All occurred in just a few scant minutes — one moment, Mercury was secure, the center and seat of power for a vast inter-universal empire. The next, it had been utterly blitzed.
As the aftereffects of Ceres' catastrophic arrival had all but eradicated any functioning technology on Mercury — save for the Panopticon, protected by an invisible Güzman-field — thus had the entire world fallen wholly silent, and thus it would be hours before in-system fleets would take notice and leap to the capitol's defense. What warships had been orbiting Mercury were swiftly obliterated by Ceres' strange and devastating artillery; a fusillade of iridescent energy beams that fractured reality itself, harnessing the un-space of the void to rend even the mightiest of vessels to little more than molten slag that flickered, agonizingly, in and out of physical reality.
Inside the Panopticon, then, the forces of the Jade Emperor were scattered and disoriented. Yet still they fought with implacable determination, with many groups of Centurions forming dug-in pockets of resistance that proved all but impossible to dislodge. The Panopticon was the size of several cities, after all, and a labyrinth nigh-impossible to navigate — much less efficiently conquer. It was only via the schematics and information provided by Hiela Volsif that the Emir's forces were able to maneuver consciously, working in concord to isolate the Emperor's throne room and closing in, slowly but surely, like a noose around his most-holy neck.
All the while, the Se-dai of either side were conspicuously absent.
For them, after all, there were far more important matters at hand.
It was in the grand foyer, a wildly ostentatious and truly gargantuan chamber with a ceiling that stretched hundreds of feet into the air, that the warriors of the Sovereign made their horrifying debut. They came as a great, singular army; the unfortunate Centurions present found themselves faced with no less than four-hundred Loyalist Se-dai, their armor all daubed in their master's regal amethyst. And at their helm marched sneering Loki, scarlet ponytail trailing behind her like a baleful omen of death. The true avatar of the wretched Sovereign in mind, body, and soul, and a woman with malice enough to eclipse the sun itself. In her wake, there was left only shadow.
The Centurions fought valiantly, laying down overlapping skeins of fire and letting loose both JAGGANOTH-II missiles and experimental gravity weapons that folded space violently in two — but they were but mere humans in the face of a vast, encroaching storm, and so it was in a matter of mere seconds that all were swept away. The Loyalists advanced now over the mound of corpses like a unified wall of living death, wiping their wrist-blades clean with rote and singleminded purpose.
They made it halfway across the chamber when, at the base of the far wall, a pair of heavy double-doors began to croak ponderously open. And visible there, in the shadows, were two-hundred pairs of glowing eyes.
Loki held up a fist. The Loyalists came to an abrupt halt.
Her eyes narrowed to slits.
It was Anansi who emerged first — black-cloaked Anansi, her face a mask of hard determination and cold fury, who came to a stop some thousand-or-so feet away. She reached up and unclasped the mantle, allowing her cloak to float with a surreal sort of grace to the ground as the sisters of Le Sang Neuf came forth.
They were all there, every one of them: Nergal and Freyja, the tight-knit duo upon whom Anansi had increasingly come to rely. Ammit, the implacable titan who struck with the strength of a dozen Se-dai. The highest-ranking Se-dai of Le Sang Neuf stood at Anansi's side — Dionysus, Juno, Apollo, Set, Hathor, and Ra; all masters of their respective disciplines. All executioners, assassins, and above all else warriors without peer.
Loki took a step forward, then, and cast an armored hand forth — her eyes never leaving Anansi, not even for a moment. The air was thick with their shared enmity, even with such distance between them. Every Se-dai in that room felt themselves subsumed by the rancor of their chosen leaders; felt, then, as though they were little more than extensions of a rivalry two decades in the making.
"[Traitors!]" Loki bellowed. Her voice blazed with fire and oozed with venom. "[You have forsaken your master! Your father!]"
"[You have forsaken yourselves!]" Anansi shot back, her own voice controlled and tight. All cold anger, all frigid malice. "[And you have forsaken your own sisters in the name of that vile creature. You condemn your own flesh and blood to damnation, and debase yourselves in service to the one who tormented you so!]"
"[Weak,]" Loki spat. Her lip curled. "[You were always weak.]"
"[It took strength beyond measure to turn against our father,]" Anansi replied. She reached back, then, and in one smooth motion she unsheathed a pair of angular, jet-black shortswords. "[Strength that we of The New Blood will demonstrate to you now. Prepare yourselves.]"
On that cue, every Ker-sot came out at once: Nergal's cruel-spiked mace, Freyja's twin-pointed spear, swords and axes and daggers and bludgeons and, of course, Ammit's two-meter-long hammer, the end of which impacted against that regal floor with a colossal thud that shook the entire room. Across the way, the Loyalists were doing the same — all save for Loki, who merely extended her wrist-blades in response. Anansi knew well that Loki kept her Ker-sot a closely guarded secret, and that not a soul alive knew the true nature of the weapon whose mastery she had perfected.
What followed, then, was straight from the pages of ancient ritual. Anansi and twelve of her finest dropped to low crouches in unison as, opposite their line, Loki and her elite did the same. They all felt, in that moment, just as Sekhmet had in her fight against Gaun — the sensation of that old, almighty engine, slowly but surely grinding to a halt. The heat within them compressing down to a pinprick of blinding light. Every muscle, biological and mechanical both, tensing up all at once as their bodies became but vessals for an unlimited well of potential energy.
It was sweltering hot in the grand foyer. The combined heat of six-hundred Se-dai had raised the temperature by a dozen degrees. The air itself was rippling with a distorted haze, and every eye was glowing blindingly-bright.
A pin drop, in that room, would have been a thundercrash.
One second passed.
Two.
Three.
And then everyone moved at once, all at once.
Incipitor-Princess Hiela Volsif
Hiela strode amidst the carnage with not a care in the world.
Around her, the Death Knell formed a living vanguard of hungry blades and augmented muscle, slaughtering a path through any and all who might dare impede her progress. In contrast to the silent professionalism of the Se-dai, the Emir's cyborgs were loud in their love of the fight, and many were laughing uproariously as they butchered the forces of the Jade Emperor — or even as they themselves were felled by flesh-melting disruptor-fire.
Hiela, for her part, was simply amused by the grisly spectacle of it all. She was a goddess, after all; a higher being utterly untouchable, and she walked with neither fear or reticence even as desperate men tried in endless droves to end her High-born life.
And then, after what felt like no time at all, she and her gore-drenched bodyguards were aboard a boxy little dropship, and from there Hiela was able to get a clear view of the devastation below.
And it was devastation, indeed. The megastructure-rings of Holy Mercury had been entirely shattered, their disparate pieces drifting like flash-frozen corpses this way and that as, below, the great planet-city had been quite literally flattened into the dirt. The Panopticon, untouched despite it all, stood now as a lone obelisk amidst a vast desert of molten glass. Trillions of lives had been snuffed out in terrifyingly rapid fashion by the bizarre and esoteric weapons of the almighty Sovereign.
Hiela looked upon it all with vague disinterest. There was, after all, only one individual on that planet with whom she was truly concerned.
They landed upon Ceres and were met, outside a cathedral overgrown by veiny biomass, by a dozen purple-uniformed men armed with weapons that were equal parts metal and bone. A quartet of lanky, gurgling creatures stalked at the edges of the procession, and at their helm was a man in deep purple robes bearing a mask with five eyes and no mouth to be seen.
The Bishop folded his hands and bowed, as Hiela approached, and the moment her heel touched the platform it was as though the entire atmosphere had shifted. The light itself seemed to refract around and towards the Incipitor-Princess, and Hiela Volsif was at once the indisputable center of all attention — the center of the universe itself, perhaps. All save for the Bishop knelt at once, out of raw instinct and nothing more, for to them, she was ethereal — impossible.
"Well?" she demanded, the word dripping with blatant irritation. She cast an unimpressed gaze over those assembled, looking now upon that holy sanctum as one might regard a mere patch of empty dirt.
"Le Tout-Puissant qui est partout et nulle part vous attend, Incipitrice-Princesse Hiela Tel-Ban Volsif," the Bishop intoned, raising his head to speak. His voice was a deep, gravelly register, one thick with the weight of centuries past.
"Speak plainly!" Hiela snapped, and three of the guards visibly flinched. Ordinarily, her words were like gentle and trickling water — now, they were a knife in the gut, stark and searing and viscerally unpleasant. "I neither know nor care for your archaic language."
"My...apologies," came the Bishop's slow, measured reply — the old man forced to sound out the words, one by one. He cast a pale, skeletal hand behind him. "My Master...awaits, Lady Volsif..."
"Good," Hiela said simply, striding forward at once. "It's about damn time." The Death Knell flowed with her in unison, nothing like the perfect synchronicity of a Se-dai but still keeping keenly in time with the movements of their protectorate. Though the bloodthirsty temperament of the cyborg-knights was in no way suited to the work of bodyguards, they had all been given their orders by the Crimson Emir himself. Thus would devote every ounce of their beings to seeing Hiela Volsif kept alive, hunger for battle be damned. They were loyal servants through and through.
The Bishop led Hiela through winding passageways that were equal parts gilded enclave and what felt like the inside of a living stomach, with the air frequently punctuated by faint screams and a smell that made the earlier reek of gore seem almost pleasant. Hiela wrinkled her nose at the simple ugliness of it all, though she felt within her not even the barest spark of moral compunction. Nor was she in any way even remotely unsettled as they descended deeper and deeper into that warped, biological hell.
Finally, they came before twin doors that stretched over a hundred feet into the air. The Bishop said some words, none of which Hiela paid any attention, and the lanky black-suited things gurgled in wordless rapture as the doors swung open and the vile totality of the Sovereign was unveiled.
Hiela looked upon him — upon that vast, writhing mass of machinery and flesh, at the six-hundred spindly arms that hung like myriad cilia and at the throbbing of his vessel that could be felt in the very floor beneath her feet — and made clear, via her expression, that she was found it all profoundly unimpressive. The Incipitor-Princess strode forwards now, heels clicking loudly against the tiled floor, and came to a halt at the center of an intricately carved dias. Around her, the Death Knell took up a semi-circle position, whilst ahead a dozen purple-armored Se-dai did the same. Thirty-odd of the long-limbed gurgling creatures were circling slowly now, like vultures in some synchronous ritual, whilst the lone Bishop merely dropped to his knees and pressed forehead to floor in prostration.
Hiela looked the Sovereign right in his haunted facsimile of a 'face' — and arched a perfectly-sculped eyebrow. "How gauche," she remarked, dryly. "The presentation, the atmosphere, the self-importance, all of it. I pity the poor souls who actually live on this filthy, overwrought little moon. And your form—repulsive! The sound, sight, the very odor of you! Was your dignity entirely subsumed, then, in the formation of your gestalt? By the void." She shook her head. "We could have had this conversation over comms, you know."
The Sovereign shuddered, then, shaking and trembling, and there issued forth a bizarre, bassy series of clicks that reverberated throughout the very bones of the chamber itself. It took Hiela a long moment to realize that the gestalt was laughing.
"I wanted you to see my face," the Sovereign boomed, in his ten-thousand rumbling voices. The great serpent shifted, undulating forwards until the trio of vacant faces hovered mere inches from Hiela's own. "I wanted to see your face, Hiela Volsif." One of his countless spindly metal arms extended forth, and from that joint there came two pointed fingers that reached out, stroking with surprising delicacy against the side of Hiela's cheek. "It is true, what they say — you are a radiant beauty, beyond all compare."
"You have three seconds," Hiela told him, ice-cold even as she regarded the hand with visible revulsion. "Retract your hand, or the Death Knell will rip you down from that blasted ceiling."
Everyone moved at once — the Se-dai unsheathing their wrist-blades in unison as the Death Knell all started forward, glaives leveled dead-ahead. The Striders were circling faster, their gurgling growing louder, and amidst it all the Bishop was begging for peace, for contrition, for anything other than the bloodbath that was sure to follow.
Despite it all, then, the Sovereign did indeed withdraw his hand, and the aging monarch emitted a strange series of rising and falling clicks as he regarded the Incipitor-Princess with ten thousand ancient eyes.
"You remind me a great deal of your half-brother," the Sovereign remarked, somewhat snidely, after a long moment. "Is it entirely certain that the two of you are unrelated by blood?"
"He merely takes after my own affectations," Hiela scoffed, allowing to conversation to pivot towards their shared enemy. "Doss was but a orphaned little mongrel when first we met, after all. He looked up to his older sister with all the awe and wonder in the world." She let out a cruel, pointed laugh. "And to think, that they actually worship him like a God! I was the one who taught him to behave like royalty in the first place!"
"I, too, was disappointed when first we met," the Sovereign rumbled. "Long had I heard tell of an otherworldly figure, of an all-powerful primarch utterly without compare. The Jade Emperor! Imagine my chagrin, then, to find little more than a young, arrogant, and particularly delusional young man standing before me!"
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"Tell me, then," Hiela cut in sharply, "if Doss Ken Volsif has dispirited you so — where is he?"
The Sovereign trembled with irritation and discontent. "He is being hunted," the patriarch answered
"Of course he's being hunted!" Hiela shouted, and in that moment her ire finally bubbled over. Her calm gave way to lifelong choler as she jabbed a finger straight down and told the Sovereign, in no uncertain terms: "I want him found, damnit!"
"My warriors-"
"The Crimson Emir promised me one thing, and one thing only," Hiela snarled, interrupting — without hesitation — the physical embodiment of an entire moon. "Doss Ken Volsif, the so-called Jade Emperor, on his knees before me!" She swept a hand across the room. "None of this would have been possible without me! I orchestrated this plot! I fed you both every scrap of information you could ever need! I was the thorn in his side, day after day after day! I rotted in that contemptible excuse for a palace for years, waiting for you to execute my plan, and now still I am forced to wait! Still, I must place my brilliant design into the hands of your malign incompetence!"
"You know not-" the Sovereign began.
"I don't give a fuck!" Hiela screamed, jabbing a finger right in the abomination's leering face. "Just do your fucking job!"
Anansi
The battle commenced in the literal blink of an eye, with twenty-six Se-dai all performing the Seventh Vile Art — L'art de la Mort Instantanée — all in perfect unison. The absolute pinnacle of mastery, and an exceptionally dangerous technique, executed flawlessly now as little more than an opening move.
Via cerebral augmentation and a cocktail of drugs that would have killed an ordinary human twice-over, Anansi perceived the world in slow-motion even as she shot forth like a living disruptor-bolt. She ducked her head, narrowly avoiding the blade that would have ended her life, then opened a pair of encroaching throats — two of Loki's elite, so slow by comparison as to appear frozen in place — and jumped forward, rocketing straight into the heart of the Loyalist forces.
Time resumed; what followed, then, was an overwhelming eruption of movement and sound and death as dozens of Se-dai were simply obliterated in that opening salvo. And then, instantly, the gap between the two armies had closed, and six-hundred cybernetically augmented warriors were fighting tooth and nail, their motion so fast and chaotic as to be nigh-unfollowable.
Eight Se-dai fell upon the Sha-sur at once, roaring threats and declarations and oaths to the almighty Sovereign. Anansi, of course, didn't utter a word — she just flipped her swords to back-handed grips, in one smooth motion, then stepped forward and started killing. The Sha-sur fought in total silence, her twin swords twin blurs as she carved a bloody path through the Loyalist forces. There was only one Se-dai she wanted, after all; everyone else was just distraction. Just irritations, and they were all in her fucking way.
They came at her in droves, nevertheless, for her crimson armor stood in stark contrast to the black and purple hues around her. Every warrior, be they rank three or rank three-hundred, was eager to seize that chance, eager to slay the dreaded Sha-sur and emerge, themselves, as greatest amongst the Se-dai.
Anansi, of course, had faced countless such contenders over the course of her life. She met them now as she had been for nearly a decade — with a raw, smouldering sort of fury that fueled her every action. Because Anansi's infamously icy countenance belied just that, a woman who was always angry, a woman for whom rage was but an old friend, a voice who spoke in her darkest hours of injustice, of infringement, of malfeasance and of violation.
Most Se-dai loved the fight — it was in their blood, after all. Anansi loathed it, and she loathed her opponents even more.
Thus did she butcher her sisters — some of whom were but mere half-bloods, pushed into early service at the order of the wretched Sovereign — with not an ounce of hesitation. She killed and killed and killed and felt only rank irritation at the fact that she had not yet killed them all. Irritation at the fact she had not yet killed her. Anansi snarled and disemboweled her nearest opponent, then whirled about and jammed one of her swords straight through another's eye. A third made a foolish leap; Anansi severed the woman's arm in three places, then crushed her skull with a spinning roundhouse-kick to the face.
And then her augmented hearing picked it up, picked it apart amidst the colossal din. A familiar voice, crying out in raw agony: "Freyja!"
Anansi turned, caught a glimpse of scarlet hair. Knew at once that it was her. Saw Freyja drop to her knees, too, her body going one way and her head going another. Saw, indeed, Loki standing there, wrist-blades drenched in teal gore a wicked smile twisting her narrow face. And she saw Nergal, too, fifth-ranked amongst all Se-dai, rushing towards Loki with mace in hand and a vengeful howl upon her lips.
Anansi knew it was too late to save her.
Loki just laughed and sidestepped, seizing upon the briefest microsecond of opportunity to sever Nergal's arm at the elbow and send the Ker-sot flying away. Nergal just snarled, pivoted, caught the arm with her free hand, and brought it crashing down like a three-hundred-pound cudgel — but Loki was already slipping around and behind her. Before Nergal could react, Loki's blades were rising, and she diced the Se-dai's skull into five distinct pieces in the blink of an eye.
Nergal's head simply exploded into a mass of discolored brain matter and sparking machinery; her lifeless body fell without sound, and as it did so Loki's head turned — and thus did she and Anansi lock eyes. Thus did Anansi find herself staring into a perfect mirror. Into her own grievous hatred, reflected back with exactly equal intensity.
Loki's smile vanished. Her expression twisted, her lips pulled back into a ferocious snarl. With a shunk, both her wrist-blades retracted, and all present — consciously or otherwise — were giving the two warriors a wide berth, now, an invisible barrier forming around them as they stared one another down with blazing eyes.
"[Finally,]" Loki growled. Anansi didn't say a word. She just coiled inwards, like a snake, crossing her arms across her chest and waiting to see what Loki would do. And she watched, now, as Loki reached back for her mythical Ker-sot and withdrew a small mithril-forged rectangle, a curious device two feet in length with a curved tooth jutting from either end.
For a moment, Anansi was puzzled. Then, with a metallic shring, the weapon sprung to life, unfolding to become a flat, circular disc, the edge of which was lined with dozens of wicked teeth. And then it really sprung to life, spinning faster and faster and faster until it was but a blur, a whirling avatar of death and destruction right there on Loki's wrist.
Anansi braced herself. She was ready. Unorthodox though this weapon was, she already understood how to fight it. She could see at once the limitations, the flaws, and angles of attack by which-
Loki reached over with her free hand and pressed an unseen button. The buzzsaw detached, then, dropping straight down — and dangling, now, on the edge of a thick steel cord.
Anansi's eyes went wide.
She had but a fraction of a second to react, to move — and then the buzzsaw had leapt a full fifty feet forward, and was carving a horizontal swath of death that split three Se-dai messily in two. Anansi leapt back, narrowly avoiding a similar fate, and was immediately forced upon the defensive, parrying and defending at frenetic pace whilst Loki's Ker-sot reached out like a long and baleful tentacle, stretching across the way to strike again and again and again. Loki puppeteered the weapon like a true artist, jerking the cord this way and that and seizing upon the weapon's momentum, controlling it as though it were but an extension of her own arm. Whilst Anansi was an undisputed master of the fundamentals — of every fundamental, of every Se-dai fighting style and Vile Art — Loki was infamous for her wild and unorthodox manner of fighting. She caught her opponents off guard with bizarre, bewildering stratagems, and she was known to fight almost entirely on the back of genius moment-to-moment improvisation. Loki was, loathe as Anansi was to admit it, the definition of a true prodigy.
Knowing this, Anansi took this bizarre weapon and these bizarre circumstances in stride, choosing to simply hold her ground as the buzzsaw leapt forth time and time again, its teething humming insistently all the while. Anansi took the anger within her and bade it hesitate, bade it to stay its hand until the critical moment arrived. For nearly a full minute, Anansi just waited and watched. And then, finally, her discipline and her patience paid off — in the form of the barest, narrowest sliver of opportunity.
It was all Anansi ever needed. Without hesitation, she let the anger explode within her and she moved, powerful legs firing off and sending her straight upwards as the buzzsaw slammed down, gouging a half-foot furrow into the onyx below. Anansi's feet touched down and then she was sprinting forwards, a one-ton warrior darting weightless across that steel cord like an acrobat on a narrow tightrope. What clearer path was there to her opponent, after all, than the one affixed to her very arm?
Loki reacted at once, whipping the cord and flinging Anansi up into the air, then jerking it back and bidding the saw to tear right into Anansi's back. But the Sha-sur had anticipated; when the buzzsaw came close, she tucked her legs — let it pass clean under her — then kicked off the surface of the disc, shooting herself all the way up to that vaunted ceiling. She twisted, felt her heels impact against solid onyx, and for one infinitesimal moment she was standing perfectly upside-down — and then she kicked off, sending a spray of rubble in all directions as she rocketed towards her hated opponent.
Loki leapt back — Anansi hit the ground with an explosion of debris and dust — and then, with not a moment's pause, Anansi shot out from the smoke, launching into a flying kick that caught Loki square in the chest and put her through no less than four walls of the mighty Panopticon.
Like a hungry predator, Anansi darted in pursuit of her prey, passing through chamber after chamber and finally coming to a halt amidst a musty, dark-lit enclosure, one littered with hundreds of stone-hewn statues in various forms of triumph and repose. This was the Hall of the Ancients, an ancient monument to the original four-hundred conquerors whom had founded the first iteration of the Great Domain. It was abandoned, now, a relic from a past long discarded, and every statue was draped in a thick layer of dust. It was a wonder that Volsif hadn't seen the place torn down, and it was clear it had not been visited in at least a decade's time.
Anansi forced herself down to a low, seething sort of calm as she stalked amidst this garden of stone-carved flesh. There were so many human-shaped silhouettes, so many angles and shadows that tickled at the edge of her warrior's instincts. Yet the Sha-sur was far too disciplined to be jumping at shadows. She just waited and waited, her silver eyes constantly darting back and forth, and her ears open all the while. Even through the soles of her feet, she was feeling out for the faintest of vibrations. Any full-blooded Se-dai could conceal herself completely, of course — could vanish with not the barest trace, entirely on a whim. But still, Anansi knew, there were signs. There were always signs.
The tiniest shifting of shadow pricked at the edge of Anansi's vision, and she spun just in time to block, with both swords, as Loki fell upon her. The buzzsaw screamed to life and whirled madly; the teeth biting hungry and insistent against Anansi's blades as they cried out for more, for blood. Sparks flew in every direction, and Loki's leering face was illuminated amidst a sea of deep orange.
"[You're going to die here,]" Loki hissed, leaning in close. Anansi's heels dug deep into the concrete floor; she was beginning to lose ground. The smell of burning mithril was growing stronger. The whine of the buzzsaw was going louder. "[You were never at my level, Anansi. You were never even close.]"
Anansi's response, then, was to release her grip on both swords — let the buzzsaw drop straight down, grazing across her navel before digging straight into the floor — then snatch her weapons up and launch into a vicious double-overhead strike. And anyone, anyone other than Loki would have been dead in that moment. But Loki, too fast and too clever, simply jerked the cord and brought the saw right back into her hands, then swatted both swords away — and then the two warriors launched into a blistering, simultaneous flurry of blows, each a hair's breadth from death time and time again as they tore through the Hall of Ancients, the arcs of their weapons sending countless statues crashing down in mutilated pieces. To even be in the same room as the two combatants was to invite certain death, for the floor now was scoured with a hundred different gouges and slashes as they fought and fought and fought.
Anansi ducked a swing, rolled between the legs of a statue — a man in full power armor, hoisting a triumphant banner over his head — and kicked, shattering the soldier's knees and sending a thousand pounds of stone hurling straight forwards. Loki split the effigy neatly in two and continued unabated, battering Anansi back with a trio of broad slashes.
And then, just as Anansi was beginning to adapt, was beginning to see the unconscious patterns in Loki's attacks — the buzzsaw ground to an abrupt halt, then folded in on itself, and suddenly there was a great shifting and shuffling of mithril. The weapon was transforming!
Without hesitation, Anansi dropped to a low crouch, then shot forward in flawless execution of the Seventh Vile Art. She had to slaughter Loki long before this new weapon emerged, had to carve that sneer from her face-
A long, narrow spear jutted forth; Anansi dodged too slow, fixated as she was on her hatred of the enemy, and thus the point of the weapon pierced clean through her elbow. Her muscles seized, her fingers spasmed, and one of her swords clattered to the floor as Loki jerked the weapon free, then launched into a flurry of rapid-fire stabs that Anansi could only barely parry in time. Loki's avenue of attack had changed completely; she had gone from broad, sweeping blows to short, sharp strikes, that barbed spear leaping forward like a striking viper to pierce at Anansi's flesh, to bleed her time and time again. Six, seven, eight, nine times did Loki's weapon find purchase, and everywhere Anansi went there accompanied her now a trickle of steaming teal blood.
Loki smelled it, she knew, and like a hungry shark she was pressing in closer and closer. Faster and faster. This was turning from a duel of equals to a matter of mere survival, to a terrible and agonizing test of endurance. Loki's spear carved a long, bloody gouge in the side of Anansi's cheek — and abruptly, then, the anger within her erupted like a volcano, and Anansi leapt forward with a full-throated scream of rage and pain and frustration.
"[Enough!]" Anansi roared, and Loki was more than happy to meet her in return. The spear came in from below, angled right for Anansi's chin, and sparks flew wildly as it locked against Anansi's remaining blade.
It was time, then, for a familiar trick.
Anansi tossed her sword up into the air, let the spear's momentum carry it away, then reached up to snatch her weapon right back.
But Loki would never fall for the same trick twice.
She dropped her own spear and surged forwards, snatching each of Anansi's wrists and wrenching her arms to either side.
Anansi could only watch, helpless, as the sword arced gracefully through the air between them. It descended in slow motion, end over end, jet-black mithril absorbing all light.
For a moment, the Sha-sur was entirely still.
Just long enough to let Loki believe she had won.
And then, with a furious snarl, Anansi lunged forwards — caught the hilt of the sword between her teeth — and etched an arc of sheer death across the space before her.
Fast as lightning, Loki leapt back, skidding to a ragged halt and bracing with one hand against the nearest statue. Her eyes were wide; she was breathing heavily, now, for a deep gouge had been carved diagonally across her chest. Already, her torso was drenched in steaming teal. She looked like an animal caught in a trap, like a onetime predator now desperate for something or someone to lash out at. Desperate for someone to hurt.
Just a few feet away, Anansi stood tall and imposing, her shoulders rising and falling with every pained breath. Wisps of steam curdled from her nostrils; her eyes were drawn into tight, furious slits. Without a word, she opened her mouth and let the sword drop back into her hand, then kicked the other one up with the tip of her boot and snatched it out from the air.
Loki, her face twisted with rancor beyond belief, kicked and caught her own spear up in similar fashion. Again, the weapon shuffled and reassembled — and now she was holding a long, curved sword, one that she extended forwards and braced against her opposite arm.
"[Every day of my life, I've wanted the Sovereign dead,]" Anansi told her, then, not moving even the barest muscle as she spoke. Loki just glared and said nothing. "[Most Se-dai wake up scared, terrified, confused. Not me. I didn't know what was going on, didn't understand what I was hearing or seeing — but I knew that I was angry, and as soon as I saw him I understood that everything was his fault. And with time, of course, there came knowledge, and understanding, and context. But never did my rage diminish. Not for one day, not for one hour, not for one single second. I hate him, Loki. I hate him with every atom of my being. When the sun swallows the skies, when the Great Domain is dead and gone, and when humanity is but a meager echo — still, my hatred will remain. And now, you dare appear before me draped in his vile panoply.]" She turned her head and spat out a white-hot glob of phlegm and blood. "[You are not my sister. You are not my blood. You are a disgrace.]"
Loki was silent, for a moment. And then what issued from deep within her was a low chuckle — a rising, churning, baleful thing that never reached her eyes. Her lips curled back into a hateful sneer once more, exposing twin rows of teal-stained teeth. The would-be Sha-sur reached back, then, undoing her ponytail, and scarlet hair fell about her face like a wild, bloodied crown.
"[You fool,]" Loki spat, her eyes blazing between strands of loose hair. "[A living weapon, whining and crying at the thought that someone might actually see fit to use her. You really believe yourself to be human, don't you? You truly believe that you deserve something better.]" She scoffed. "[A sad, narcissistic delusion.]"
"[We all deserve better,]" Anansi shot back.
"[And what of your false Emperor, hypocrite?]" Loki demanded, drawing now to her full height. "[You spurn the Sovereign, then turn yourself so readily to the hands of yet another master!]"
"[I will take any path to liberation,]" Anansi growled, drawing her left foot back. Her muscles tensed, her body prepared to move. "[There is no door I will not open. No road I will not travel. I will give everything I am to see my sisters free, and to see my father dead.]"
"[So noble,]" Loki mocked, eyes narrowing as she, too, prepared to strike.
The sounds of conflict and death faded to a mere background hum. The light above seemed to grow harsher, more intense. The shadows deepened. Time slowed, stagnated. The universe held its breath. For both warriors there was nothing, then, save for that which they were going to do next.
They were in their own world, their own cast-off slice of reality.
Neither moved a muscle.
"[There's nothing noble about it,]" Anansi told her, then, right when the silence had reached its peak. "[Weren't you listening? Rage, Loki — that's all that I am. That's the only reason I do anything at all.]"
And then the floor erupted, and the statues were strewn about, and the lights flickered madly as Anansi and Loki leapt forward, each roaring with the might of a terrible, all-consuming storm. Their voices blended together, fusing into a deafening, utterly singular tone of enmity without end — a tone that was joined, then, by the high-pitched retort of mithril clashing against mithril once more.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ipPvRQtjdQ&pp=ygUHYXJlYSBwZA%3D%3D
