Salvation

by voroshilov

Blood has blood

“Damn it,” Penumbra swore, with what little air she could spare, “damn it and damn it again.”

A single good hit had been all she’d needed, as it turned out. The Leader lay, sprawled, battered and bloodied cloak half covering him like a duvet in the early morning.

She shambled - or maybe fell with a semblance of control would be the right term - towards the slumped body - conscious of the fact her knees held by nothing more than luck - eyes constantly darting across it. His scythe was buried into a rock behind her, thrown by the blast that had thrown him the other direction, but who knew what other tricks he was hiding.

One good hit, she thought, one good hit, can I get another one off?

She hoped it wouldn’t be needed. But, if necessary, she thought with an aerial slash of her sword, she’d be ready. Faint flashes filled her vision and her body felt like it weighed nothing.

She stopped herself and went to a standard guard as a grey out took hold. Blinking slowly and breathing strongly, she tried to reach out with her magic, to check if anything was nearby - but that only intensified her feeling of the entire world swaying beneath her.

“Fuck,” she muttered, “I’m going to feel that tomorrow.”

With her vision mostly returned she continued her slow stagger forwards, all too aware of the potential danger she was in - though such danger had long since become commonplace as to have eroded her sense of it.

The Leader was, upon inspection of a metre away, certainly injured. He, surprisingly, wasn’t lying in ambush - at least not that Penumbra could see.

“Alright,” she said, though her speech volume was little higher than a murmur, “now for some questions.”

She sat with a thud.

“Now,” she murmured once again, “why are you doing this? Because there better be a good reason why I can’t hear out of my right ear and I feel like someone’s pulling my legs out from under me.”

The Leader exhaled roughly.

“That’s not a good answer,” Penumbra said, though she didn’t have the energy to extract a better one.

“You have not seen,” he growled, though it was clearly out of injury, not malice, “you have not seen what is to come, what came before. You have not seen the majesty of the Abyss.”

Penumbra tried to bring her sword to bear. “Also not a good answer.”

The Leader chuckled. “Indeed, of course you would believe that. For, you have not seen what I have seen, what we have seen. I spoke to it, to the Abyss, I saw reality as what it is.”

“And what might that be?”

“Chaos. Such is what there was first and what there shall be last. You have not seen that which has come from the Darkness, from the first and final Chaos.”

“I was made by the Darkness,” she said, “you may know the one: Emperor Nicholas, perhaps that rings a bell.”

The Leader barked out a pained laugh, with a shower of black and grey spittle. “A half-blood, barely even a usurper. Unfit to wield the mantle of the Dark. He was powerful, but, compared to the Chaos to come, he was nothing. I have taken rather a liking to you, your power and indeed tenacity reminds me of someone I once knew. Heed this warning: flee.”

“Flee from what?” Penumbra asked, casting a slow, sweeping glance around her, “your forces are scattered, you are nearly dead and my friends have this place secured.”

The Leader chuckled, out of what seemed to be genuine humour. “Indeed they have. I spent millennia searching for what I knew I would need for the final stage of my masters’ plan. Indeed, I had almost given up. I did curse reality. Until, that is, I communed with the Void, and realised what it would take.”

“Just skip to the end, please.”

Another chuckle. “My own blood, that was what was needed. My soul, to be released from my body into death. My life force, spilled onto this ancient altar. And now, Sunless-Halo-of-Penumbra, my masters awaken.”

What parts of his skin were visible flashed, before his body slumped back.

“Fucking hell.” Penumbra slumped back too, but not in death - not that she believed at least. “Why can’t things just be easy.”