At that exact moment, inside the Frost on Silk, time was rapidly running out.
The transformed servant glowed so intensely that boiling, pulsating energy was visibly venting through the jagged fissures in his body.
He was exactly like a grenade with the pin pulled.
The Matron sat completely unmoved behind the barrier, but even the paladin’s holy shield was beginning to fracture beneath the sheer, crushing waves of heat, cracking exactly like a sheet of thin ice under an iron-shod boot.
“He’s about to detonate!” Lengos roared, bracing his boots against the floorboards.
Sweat poured down his face, instantly flashing into steam.
Bregg did not retreat a single inch.
He knew no fear.
He knew no pain.
He knew only orders.
When Duria vaulted backward after her failed strike to the heart, the colossal undead simply shifted his grip.
His armored gauntlets; hands fully capable of crushing solid granite to dust; clamped down hard on the glowing, porcelain skull of the “boy.”
“Squeeze,” Yerga whispered in boredom, casually sipping her tea as if watching a dreadfully tedious theater performance.
He closed his fist.
The resulting sound was exactly like someone stomping on a thousand fine porcelain teacups all at once.
The sickening crunch of shattering ceramic was deafening, rattling right down to the roots of their teeth.
The blinding light within the skull flickered frantically, and then abruptly died, brutally snuffed out by overwhelming physical force.
The servant’s head caved in on itself, instantly reduced to a fine powder mixed with liquid silver and a bizarre, gray sludge strongly resembling brain matter.
The torso jerked once, twice, and then went completely slack in the giant’s iron grip, reduced to nothing more than a ruined pile of broken pottery.
The silence that crashed down over the ruined hall was almost physically painful.
The only sounds were Lengos’s ragged panting as he lowered his battered shield, and the wet, rhythmic dripping of the servant’s ruined “head” onto the straw mats.
Duria strolled closer, smoothly sheathing her wakizashi, and leaned over the destroyed mechanism, casually nudging a shard of steaming porcelain with her fingertip.
“Ahhhh…” she nodded with genuine comprehension.
A radiant, almost childish smile illuminated her pale face, contrasting with the surrounding slaughter.”So that’s how it works!
You have to shatter the vessel of the will, not the heart!
It only harbors fire in its chest, but the actual orders are locked in the head.
Sugoi!
(Amazing!)”
The Matron exhaled a long drag from her pipe.
The thick gray cloud perfectly formed the shape of a shattered heart in the air, which, a moment later, dissolved entirely into nothingness.
“He was my child,” she said quietly, yet devoid of grief, speaking as if discussing a favored but ultimately broken vase.”This Yūrei (ghost) of yours is significantly more effective than my exorcisms.”
The solemn atmosphere did not last long.
The entrance doors banged open with a deafening crash, nearly tearing clean off their wooden tracks.
Figlin tumbled inside, frantically sliding across the polished floorboards on his bare, soaking wet feet, dragging a blinding flurry of snow and freezing air in with him.
He skidded wildly, waving his pistol and brass trumpet around exactly like a deranged orchestra conductor.
“Man the cannons, you mangy curs!” he shrieked, desperately trying to brake on his heels.”Haul the lines!
Hoist the sails!
Reef the bowsprit, ’cause we’re going down!
We’ve got a bloody kraken on the stern!” He only managed to stop by slamming hard against Lengos’s armored leg, panting and pointing the smoking barrel of his pistol toward the open doors, where the very first grasping, human hands belonging to the beast were already creeping out of the dark.
“I mean…
a spider!
A bloody spider!” he corrected himself, gasping for air.”And I’m pretty sure I just brought her in for dinner!”
While the dwarf was sowing chaos indoors, all hell had broken loose outside.
“Death from above!” Zedora roared, hurling herself bodily off the edge of the roof.
She dropped onto the monster like a falling boulder, fully weaponizing her own momentum and weight.
She gripped a axe in each fist, spinning them into a lethal, blurring meat grinder.
Both blades struck simultaneously, aiming with brutal precision right at the fleshy junction connecting the bloated human head to the grotesque abdomen forged of arms.
A sickening crack echoed through the freezing air, sounding exactly like a bundle of dry branches being snapped in half.
The chitinous shell buckled entirely.
Zedora’s axes, fueled by pure, unadulterated fury, punched straight through the heavy armor plating, burying themselves deep into the soft, pulsating meat beneath.
The beast unleashed an inhuman howl as thick, putrid black gore erupted in all directions, thoroughly drenching the barbarian.
“Got you, you filthy hag!” she snarled, planting her boots directly onto the monster’s thrashing back, wrenching the wooden hafts of her axes to aggressively widen the gaping wounds.”You might be tough, but I am significantly tougher!”
Perval opted for an entirely different trajectory.
Vaulting off the shattered rain gutter, he intentionally went completely limp in mid-air, surrendering to the fall exactly like a discarded ragdoll.
He aimed his colossal bulk precisely for an abandoned cart sitting against the alley wall that had somehow miraculously survived the carnage.
He landed with a muffled thud in a pile of old, damp hay.
“Destiny…” he muttered, clumsily dragging himself out of the straw and casually plucking a stalk from his ear.
“Destiny always knows exactly where to place the pillow.
Though it really could afford to smell of spring violets, rather than stale horse piss.”
As he pulled himself to his feet, his hand blindly snagged on a thick wooden handle.
He gave a violent yank and extracted an old, iron-shod agricultural flail from the hay.
He carefully weighed it in his palm, lazily twirling the striking head, which whistled sharply through the freezing air.
“Oh, look at that.
A proper tool of the trade,” he beamed with a dangerously wide smile.”Since it’s harvest time, someone clearly has to do the threshing.”
The monster, furious and profusely bleeding, thrashed from side to side in a desperate bid to shake Zedora off.
That was when two temple guards abruptly emerged from around the corner of the building.
They moved with a booming rhythm that easily drowned out the howling gale.
They wore armor structurally akin to Duria’s; lacquered, green lamellar plating adorned with intricate traditional motifs; but vastly heavier, significantly bulkier, and offering nearly total coverage.
Their faces were completely concealed behind grim, iron menpo masks twisted into terrifying scowls of wrath.
What drew the eye most, however, were the long strips of long parchment affixed directly to their pauldrons and breastplates with seals of crimson wax.
These ribbons, densely inscribed with columns of holy characters, whipped furiously in the wind, actively glowing with a soft, azure light in direct response to the abomination’s profane presence.
In their hands, they wielded strange, brutally pragmatic weapons.
They were two-handed spears tipped with incredibly broad steel heads.
Mounted directly beneath the handguard was a thick, bulbous iron cylinder intimately connected to a trigger mechanism set into the wooden haft.
These did not look like elegant weapons designed for elaborate fencing.
They looked exactly like weapons designed to be thrust deep into meat, right before pulling the trigger.
“Profanity upon holy ground,” boomed a voice from beneath the male guard’s iron mask, as deep and resonant as a cave-in inside a mine.
“Eradicate,” the female guard added, her tone as frigid and unyielding as polished steel.
They both advanced on the thrashing beast with the terrifying precision of well-oiled siege engines, smoothly lowering the tips of their bizarre spears.
“Get a hold of yourself, Smarsson!” Lengos bellowed.
His voice, saturated with commanding authority, pierced clean through the dwarf’s blind panic vastly more effectively than a bucket of ice water.”We are not on the deck of your bloody ship!”
Duria tilted her head, listening intently.
From outside, cutting cleanly through the howling gale, came the deafening, wet crack of shattered armor, immediately followed by Zedora’s furious, triumphant roar.
“For dinner?” the vampire repeated smoothly, her pale hand dropping to rest gracefully on the hilt of her katana.
She smiled brightly, proudly bearing her fangs.”Well then, let us go.
It would be dreadfully rude to keep our guest waiting.
Besides…” she nodded toward the shattered doors”…it sounds as though she’s already been served an appetizer.”
Without waiting for the rest of the crew, she strode toward the exit, moving with the terrifying, fluid grace of an apex predator.
Lengos immediately fell in behind her, adjusting his firm grip on his battered shield, flanked by Neira, whose abyssal eyes currently blazed with the blinding pink light of pure lust magic.
Yerga, however, paused at the threshold.
She cast a brief glance over her shoulder at her undead servant.
“Bregg, stay,” she commanded coldly, sharply jutting her chin toward the elderly owner of the establishment.
“Watch over the elderly lady.” She shot the Matron a venomous, entirely arrogant look, her emerald gaze sweeping distastefully over the shattered remains of the porcelain marionette.”Considering the grotesque attractions you willingly serve on the main menu, darling, I shudder to think what other horrors you might be hiding in the back room.”
With those parting words, she stepped gracefully out into the freezing night, the dark hems of her gown billowing dramatically in the howling wind.
Figlin was left last in the ruined vestibule.
By sheer luck, strictly adhering to the annoying local custom of removing footwear before entering, his leather boots were sitting politely in the cubby exactly where he had abandoned them.
They were bone-dry, wonderfully warm, and completely safe.
“Hah!
At least there’s one sliver of good news in this bloody madhouse!” he panted with relief, sliding his freezing feet into the tall leather shafts without any struggle whatsoever.”Fit like a damn glove!” He stomped hard twice just to be certain, snatched up his pistol, and bolted outside, shrieking at the top of his lungs:
“Leave a piece of the bloated cow for me!
I’ve got perfectly dry boots for kicking arse!”
As the chaotic din of battle spilled completely out into the snowy street, a silence settled over the ruined hall.
Bregg stood as motionless as a mountain of black obsidian towering over the petite old woman seated amidst the carnage.
The Matron, still calmly puffing her pipe, lifted her hooded gaze to the Death Knight’s visor.
There was no fear in her eyes, only a strange, aesthetic appreciation for the sheer, murderous perfection of the entity standing before her.
They exchanged a long, silent look; one forged of ancient, impossibly wise pitch-black, the other blazing with necrotic, sickly green.
“Kireina obake (Beautiful monster),” she whispered with genuine reverence, exhaling a thick plume of gray smoke.
The twin points of green light burning within the helm’s visor flared briefly, as if in silent acknowledgment.
A fraction of a second later, the sharp edges of Bregg’s armor began to blur.
The colossal giant actively dissolved back into the shadows, smoothly returning to the dark, necrotic domain from whence he had been summoned, leaving the Matron sitting completely alone amidst the shattered ruins of the inn.
Atop the monster’s thrashing back, Zedora, completely intoxicated by her own brutal success, hoisted her twin axes high for yet another murderous strike.
However, pride always goeth before a fall, and in this specific instance; before a violent slip.
The Jorōgumo, shrieking in agony, tensed the muscles of its bloated back, abruptly expelling a thick, incredibly oily secretion mixed with tangled clumps of black hair.
The soles of the barbarian’s boots instantly lost all traction against the suddenly slick chitin.
“Oh, fu; !” she shrieked, windmilling her muscular arms frantically.
Gravity ruthlessly claimed its due.
The fierce warrior slid wildly down the beast’s incredibly slimy abdomen exactly like a greased chute, and with a muffled, wet smack, landed face-first directly into a massive snowdrift, burying herself head-down all the way up to her waist.
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