Varkos finally moved forward, and the third Gravehound tried to stop him.
The Master's axe cut just once, and the hound came apart from neck to ribs, sliding across the floor in two pieces.
Eirwen watched the move, soaking everything in with his Aspect like a sponge.
Then a corpse stabbed him below the ribs, right where his liver was supposed to be.
He had not even noticed it.
The broken sword punched through his side and came out near his back, ignoring Steel Shroud's defenses once again. Eirwen looked down, his eyes twitching and burning with anger. The puppet holding the weapon had no lower jaw and a pale thread running through one eye socket.
He grabbed the corpse by the face and split it in half with [Hydra's Choice], driving the blade in sideways.
The broken sword remained inside him for a moment before he pulled it out with a wet scrape and let the wound close.
More Essence disappeared, his reserves quickly vanishing.
'The Nightmare Creature with the threads is the real issue here,' he thought as his two teammates dealt with whatever tried to reach them.
The Gravehounds were dangerous, but they were still more or less mindless and easy to kill. The Nightmare Creature on the ceiling made the battlefield worse every second it lived, using corpses and the wounded as weapons. It was also smart enough to stay on the ceiling, far away from everyone.
So because Eirwen could not fly, he decided to do something else.
His fingers tightened around the hilt of [Hydra's Choice]. He pulled his shoulder back, shifted his weight onto his newly formed leg, and twisted his entire body. The sword left his hand like a silver streak, cutting through the red torchlight as Essence surged through the Memory and turned the throw into something far faster and sharper than it should have been.
The Nightmare Creature shifted aside, limbs moving quickly like those of a centipede, but Seraphiel's chain snapped up at the same time. His short sword cut through several threads near its left hand, ruining its movement for less than a second.
And that time was more than enough.
[Hydra's Choice] took one of its arms off at the elbow.
The creature screamed thinly, like a wire being pulled too tight, and every puppet in the tunnel jerked at once. Two of them came for Eirwen.
One still wore the face of a young man, while the other had the body of a woman with healer's cloth wrapped around her arm. Their eyes were empty, mouths slack, threads buried through their skin.
Eirwen killed them both without slowing down.
The first lost his head, and the second was split open from collarbone to stomach, her body collapsing like a sack of meat.
Once the puppets were gone, the Nightmare Creature switched tactics and shot its threads down at Eirwen like bullets.
Eirwen cut forward without backing down, severing several, but two slipped past the blade. One pierced his shoulder and the other stabbed through his left wrist. The wrist immediately twitched against his will, fingers bending away from the sword.
'You little crawling piece of absolute—'
He was forced to cut his left hand off before it could take control of him. Whether that was possible or not, he did not know, but he was not trying to find out.
The severed hand dropped with the thread still buried through it, twitching uselessly on the floor. His stump began regrowing at once, but Eirwen did not wait for it to finish.
He jumped onto a broken barricade, pushed off with his newly formed and bare leg, and launched himself upward.
The Nightmare Creature tried to retreat across the ceiling, but something flew past Eirwen before it could escape. It wasVarkos's axe!
Eirwen had not even seen the Master throw it. The dull grey weapon smashed into the ceiling near the Nightmare Creature and shattered the stone it clung to.
Finally, it fell. Before it could even hit the ground, the blond Sleeper attacked it midair, striking it across the torso.
It did not cut through completely, though. The damn creature was tougher than it looked.
Eirwen landed with it, both of them crashing into the gore-covered floor. Threads poured from its mouth toward his face. He punched his regrowing left arm into the mass before the hand had fully formed and the threads stabbed into raw flesh, inducing agonizing pain.
Eirwen bared his teeth and drove Hydra's Choice through the wound already opened in the creature's body. The blade scraped against something hard, but he pushed harder.
The Nightmare Creature shrieked and clawed at his face, tearing open his cheek, cutting across his throat, and digging into the side of his jaw. Blood spilled over his mouth, but Eirwen kept pushing.
The sword moved another inch, then another, until something inside the creature gave way and Hydra's Choice finally tore through its body.
The Nightmare Creature went limp.
[You have slain an Awakened Devil: Hollow Marionette.]
[You have consumed a Soul!]
[Devour the Flesh for more!]
Eirwen's eyes were wide with wrath as his face and body healed, eating through his Essence. Something inside him forced his body to keep moving, fueled by anger more than thought.
His mouth stretched open, cheeks tearing in wet lines as the hunger and wrath inside him intensified.
The dead Devil folded toward him, grey flesh and long bones twisting into the impossible darkness inside his body. It vanished into him without trouble.
[You have Devoured an Awakened Devil: Hollow Marionette.]
[You grow stronger!]
Alien Essence flooded his Cores, and with it came something else. Through his newest Attribute, [Echoes of the Drowned], Eirwen could feel a faint echo of the creature's power settling somewhere deep within him.
The puppets collapsed all around the tunnel when the Devil died. Soldiers staggered back from bodies that had been their comrades a moment ago. Some looked horrified, some looked sick, and one man dropped to his knees beside a corpse Eirwen had cut apart, staring at him with wide eyes.
But Eirwen ignored him.
That guy had been an enemy when Eirwen mutilated him. Whose friend he had been before that was none of his concern.
Then the sealed gate groaned.
The old black plates at the far end of the tunnel bent inward another few inches, the sound low and heavy enough to crawl through the bones. Something large pushed from the other side, making the metal scream as it warped. Cracks ran across the reinforced stone, spreading like lightning through ice. The air pressure changed so suddenly that several soldiers stumbled back, some landing straight on their asses.
A rotten smell entered the tunnel, and with it came snow.
At least, Eirwen thought it was snow at first. But when the pale flakes drifted closer and settled on the blood-covered floor, he saw that it was ash.
White ash.
Leviathan's presence stirred in Eirwen's Soul Sea once more.
'That one is a Fallen Devil, kid,' the ancient serpent said, a myriad of voices accompanying every word. 'Ashen Gatekeeper.'
Varkos lifted his axe with both hands before the creature was fully visible.
A breath later, the gate split.
A long black hand reached through the opening and gripped the edge of the broken stone. Its fingers were long, each one ending in a blunt claw of dark bone. Then a head crowned with horns lowered into view.
Its face resembled that of a human, if a human face had been burned into charcoal and then frozen in the middle of a scream. Its eyes were two deep pits filled with dull orange light that flickered like dying fire, and cracked regions of blackened hide covered its neck and shoulders.
Eirwen tightened his grip around [Hydra's Choice], and Varkos stepped forward.
Suddenly, the Spell spoke.
[New Deal!]
Eirwen's eyes widened as soon as he heard the Spell's voice.
The sharp, ugly excitement that bloomed in his chest was almost instant. He opened his Runes before the thought had fully formed, golden eyes scanning the words as they appeared.
[Deal the finishing blow to the Ashen Gatekeeper, and He will reward you with a new Memory of your choice. Fail, and every Memory you own will be destroyed.]
[Accept the deal?]
[Yes] [No]
Eirwen's lips slowly curled into a grin, his sharp fangs exposed to the world.
"Accept," he whispered, not caring about the consequences of failure, because he already had a plan.