All the Dust that Falls

Chapter 333: RIP

I was alone in the courtyard except for the Lieutenant in front of me—the demonic Death Knight. It stood with its shield planted firmly in the ground between us, deflecting my laser. Despite that, the sheer power of my Sanitation Lamp was slowly eating away at the shield. Still, by my estimations, it would take another 20 to 30 minutes before I could actually break through. Even focusing on one spot was unacceptably slow. Still, I kept it up anyway. The beam of energy used very little power. As I had it set to the absolute minimum, I wasn't exactly wasting energy.

The Lieutenant couldn't know that, though. From his point of view, the little beam of bluish-purple energy was still a threat, so he had to block it anyway. It worked as a great distraction as I set my real trap.

Things moved behind the Lieutenant without his notice. Without warning, rubble slammed into his knees, sending him staggering and the shield out of position. Coming in low, I spun my Divine Sword, taking advantage of the momentary lapse in its defenses. As the sheet of black metal pulled away from the ground and the demon reeled backward, it gave me about eight inches of clearance to work with at my opponent's feet.

The sword stretched out from my body, biting deeply into the front of its ankles, and my opponent lost its footing. As it fell to the ground, I sprayed the small holes in its closed helm of black metal with acid, attempting to impair its sensors. As it rolled sideways, attempting to get up and shaking its head to clear its vision, I concentrated. A black bubble of sheer nothingness roared into being before me and touched the helmet.

I could feel the power of the thing saturating my void. I pushed forward before it stood the rest of the way, and I ripped, trying to pull the demon into my limitless dustbin so that I could finally be rid of it. I felt something begin to enter, but not the whole thing. Not even close. It was clearly resisting.

As I focused on finishing off this one opponent, my sensors had a chance to really take in what it looked like. Behind that helm, I saw the glowing eyes of an otherwise blank face. No mouth, eyebrows, eye sockets, nose, ears, or hair. Just a head-shaped lump. Where the helm adjoined the shoulders, it was nothing but jagged tears of metal.

The blank face was strangely disconcerting. I already knew it wasn't human, but there was something about its features being just shy of "normal" that felt uncanny. It made my processors fritz slightly with discomfort.

We stared at each other for 0.23 seconds before I pressed my attack. The shield kept getting in the way of my sword, resulting in me cutting nicks into it rather than my opponent. The acid hadn't seemed to do much, either. At one point, I even touched its head with my mop, attempting to rip all the moisture out of it, but it had no effect. So, I simply continued my tricks with Air Manipulation and sealant, attempting to force it into a position to pin it down.

Occasionally, I would attempt to manipulate its soul. Still, the weird protection it had on it right now prevented any major disruption. And if I concentrated too hard on any one thing, it would take advantage of my distraction to strike back. That wasn't to say we were evenly matched, of course. No attack it made even came close to touching me, and I was whittling away at the defenses quite nicely. But this was a being so specialized in defense that I was very much struggling to finish it off in any reasonable manner.

I hadn't planned to take nearly this long. It made me reevaluate the situation. Would it be better to simply leave and help elsewhere? Leaving an enemy like this unattended seemed like a terrible idea. But when I checked up on the Lieutenants and Beatrice deeper in the fortress, I felt my lubricant run cold. Well, Beatrice had a good idea. "What if I borrowed that?"

—

Bee heard the Nighty Knights shout something to each other as they worked on stopping the ritual, but she had no time to listen. As her broom blurred, whirring in a circle, the bristled end batted away more feathers before they could hit her. She could feel her healing skills pushing out the projectiles that got through and purifying the venom they were attempting to inject into her.

Without stopping her defense, Bee ran forward. She leaped and kicked off the chest of the Lich as she sprung back towards the projectiles, shattering the skeletal figure into the wall with her force. As she rocketed across the room, she slammed the point of her broom through the still-intact wing of the fallen angel, pinning it to the floor to stop the projectiles. As she wrenched the blade to the side and stood up, using the momentum to fling the angel away from her, she took a quick glance at what the Nighty Knights were shouting about.

Stolen novel; please report.

She saw that the channel they had tried to carve across the ritual to disrupt the flow of blood was being ignored. The blood still moved in the patterns and grooves that were there before despite no longer physically containing the liquid. Bee muttered a prayer to Void as she continued her attack, taking a moment to send another blast at the shield the witch doctor had up. This time, it deflected at an angle and shattered into the wall rather than being stopped entirely.

The shield did seem to be weakening. That was good news. But how quickly was something she didn't have time to figure out? The mass of bones bore down upon her, a glowing red, rusty nimbus surrounding it from the outstretched hand of the fallen angel. Bee attempted to block the incoming strike with her broom. Unfortunately, she was sent hurtling back as if the floor had no traction and was suddenly as slippery as ice. A flare of heat singed her hair from behind, and she dove away from both the ritual and whatever the Nighty Knights were doing to counterattack.

She attempted to leap over the mass of bones to escape its reach but to no avail. Its arm extended, clicking unnaturally as several bones rearranged to extend its reach, and it caught her ankle in midair. Thinking quickly, she hurled her broom like a spear, pinning the arm of the angels to the wall and interrupting her goal. Even as she was slammed into the ground, she managed to get her hands up to protect the back of her head from hitting the marble stones below. The impact wrenched her free from the Lieutenant's grip, and she forced herself out of the pile of shattered bone and rubble, wincing as she rolled backward. Several of her vertebrae felt like they had cracked, but her repair skills were already working on bringing them back intact.

A blast of intensified Holy Aura kept the undead monstrosity off of her as she clambered to her feet and scoured the bones with handfuls of sand and strikes. Even as the smokescreen she'd put up with particles in the sky blocked her vision, the All-Seeing Eye let her know that an attack was coming from the left side. With a quick twist, she managed to roll off and towards where she knew the broom was located. Her passive skill gave her the perfect route to dive beneath a wall of feathers and a bone scythe whirling away from the side of the Lich.

She spun as she got up to her feet, popping up into a standing position in time to knock aside a barrage of bone shards. As soon as there was an opening, she attempted to stab the broom into the force field behind her, but again the strike was deflected.

Suddenly, the Nighty Knights let out a cheer of triumph, and Bee found herself distracted for a split second as she looked to see the source of their celebration. There, in the middle of the room, hung a glowing sun. The light was blinding and heat drying her skin even across the room, starting to boil the blood in the ritual. Slowly the levels in the channels were declining. If they could keep this up, they might be able to remove the ritual from working.

The witch doctor chanted faster. She gasped in pain as a spear of bone found her guts in her moment of distraction. She managed to twist aside just enough that it missed her spine, but she struggled to get free as it sunk into the wall behind her. Slowly, she pushed her way up and batted aside the Lich with a combination of broom strikes and scouring blows. Another Scouring Strike broke the haft of the spear as she pulled herself off of it, just in time to be tackled by the fallen angel.

The pair rolled across the floor, and Bee pressed the handle of her broom up against the angel's throat, forcing its fangs away from her face as she came up on top. Freeing one of her hands, she let go long enough to drop an elbow through the thing's face, temporarily disabling it as she rolled off forward. The move was just in time to narrowly avoid a follow-up strike from the bone monstrosity.

The sun continued to boil away the blood, but the strike that she expected never came. The Lich had turned and charged at the Nighty Knights from behind. Evidently, she hadn't been the only one that saw their success. It gave her a chance to deal more grievous blows to the fallen angel she had pinned helplessly beneath her, its head still regenerating. But Bee launched herself after the Lich, knowing she was too late.

Its charge scattered the Nighty Knights, bowling them over unexpectedly even as Bee slammed it into the mini-sun. It absorbed the hit on its chest as the intense heat began to melt the bone itself. But it had done its job. The room suddenly went colder as the sun went out, and the ritual began to glow again.

Bee watched as the energy of the Lich flitted off into the distance and out of the room. She watched where it was going, hoping to be able to track it back to its phylactery. But she only had a second to spare for that as the witch doctor's chanting reached a crescendo. The ritual glowed with a dangerous new intensity.

Fearing the worst, Bee sent strike after strike to clean away the blood and break the circle, hoping against hope that she could stop it at the last minute. Suddenly, the entire thing went dark. Her heart soared with hope. Maybe she'd done it?

A shark crack dashed her hopes. The room echoed with the ripping sound of space tearing as a rift formed above the portal.

Bee's hope died in her chest as she sagged. She had failed. She hadn't kept the Nighty Knights safe long enough to finish their plan. Just then, Tony's voice spoke in her head. She listened to his instructions and then looked over at the healer before groaning in disgust.

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