Chương 70: CHAPTER 69 - Seizing Shadows

The tower's wall was torn open by a limb of pure darkness. Immediately, the shadows sealed the hole, forming a dense canopy that not even light could pierce. Inside, Lance bounced around the room, trying to draw closer to that shapeless mass.

"Why do you push yourself so hard? Would it not be more useful if you stopped here?" The floor fractured the moment Lance's fist crushed against it. Angel's face emerged from the mire, tears in his eyes. A kick struck him full in the face, sending him against the wall and letting that substance slip from his arms.

"Why are you all here, and for whom?" Lance murmured, seizing a heavy boulder that had fallen from the ceiling. Angel did not answer, simply cloaking himself in the shadows without a word. With force, the chunk of concrete and iron left Lance's hands, shattering against Angel's face. The fragments fell at his feet, vanishing into the mire beneath him. In silence, he made his hand disappear into his own chest. A moment later, a bullet fell at his feet.

Lance had launched himself into the air, gripping the bullet between his fingers. In total silence, he snapped his wrist, driving the bullet directly into Angel's face. Before he could even set foot back on the ground, a tendril coiled around his ankle, slamming him to the floor.

"You know, that hurts…" Angel murmured, slowly pulling the fused iron fragment from his shadowy flesh. He dropped the piece at his feet as he took another step toward Lance, still pinned to the floor.

"I ask you, please, to calm down and stop this violence. Can you not see you are only hurting yourself?" Angel bent down to look at him more closely, but Lance kept his eyes lowered, fixed on the floor.

"You… You truly do not know what a fight is." The vine of shadow snapped, allowing Lance to seize hold of Angel. With all his strength, Lance gripped his hands around Angel's throat, lifting him off the ground and slamming him down. In that moment, Angel found himself pressed steadily further into the floor, feeling the concrete fracture beneath his back.

"Does all this violence satisfy you? Or perhaps it is not you who commands your own arms?" The barrel of Supplicium grazed his forehead as Lance panted, tightening his grip further still.

"Disappear…" The iron stock clicked, chambering the bullet into the iron passage. Angel did not move, letting out a sigh as his eyes filled with tears.

"You do not want to kill, or rather, part of you does not want to. You are trapped between an assassin and a boy. You are sad, and alone." The flame left the revolver's mouth, engulfing the entire room in a violent glow. The remains of the walls poured outward in an avalanche of molten iron and glass. Lance rose from the ground, staring in silence at the smoking barrel and his own arm, trembling.

"Did I kill him?" The moment that thought crossed his mind, an abundant wave of vomit spilled at his feet. Immediately, he felt his own flesh burning, as though pure electricity were passing through it. He knelt, putting away the weapon, as Lachesi emitted an unsettling violet gleam. A glacial gust of wind struck him, extinguishing the lights generated by the flames." Ah… What joy, to feel life slip away right before my very eyes…" Lance gripped his own head, squeezing it with all the strength remaining to him.

Saliva began running from his lips, as though animated by an insatiable hunger.

"No… No. This is not me. These thoughts are not mine." He fell to his knees, weeping in the darkness, with only the breeze and the gunshots to wash away his sobs.

"Get a hold of yourself… You must help the others!" With force he pulled himself back onto his legs, staggering through the dark in search of an exit. Through the windows he caught sight of another tower, smaller, with rectangular panes of glass arranged irregularly. The roof was open and full of metal boxes and crates, left there for the staff.

"Perhaps I can make it back to the main tower from there." Lance stopped at the edge of the hole created by the explosion, his clothes and hair stirred by the wind. He turned back, watching the rubble and the few remaining flames slide down from the upper floors, vanishing into the shadow.

"This place is far too vast… Between me and the ground, I believe there are at least twelve floors." Lance leaned out, turning his head toward the enormous tower wrapped in flames and shaken by continuous cries from outside. He moved his foot to leap, and suddenly felt something stir within him.

"What…" A tendril of shadow pierced his stomach, thrashing in an attempt to shake off the blood. Lance seized it with both hands, trying to tear it out, with little success. In a surge of fury, the tendril stretched out further, seizing his leg and hurling him out of the window.

"Damn it!" Launched away, Lance was thrown down two floors, finding himself bleeding in a larger room, full of transparent conduits charged with a faint reddish light, almost incapable of illuminating the space.

"Stop resisting. You are only making things far too complicated…" Before him, from the shadow, Angel materialised. His face was deformed, consumed by the mire. Slowly, his blond hair and the rest of his mouth reappeared. Lance could not see him clearly in the centre of that faint light, and yet he knew that wherever he set his foot, he would find himself within his opponent's ability.

"Your resolve is false and fragile… A fire of hatred and sorrow, disguised as jovial altruism." Lance stretched out his arms, preparing to strike, and yet he could not stop trembling.

"Look at yourself… You are like me, lost, searching for someone to guide you." Angel's face finally regained its normal appearance, now that he stood only a few paces from him.

"Your instincts are begging you to kill me, while you already wish to go help the next person. You are torn apart, devoured by this martyr's mask you wear." A tear fell at his feet, followed by another still"You are such a tragic creature, Lance Klint." His eyes darkened, becoming like abyssal mirrors. The light, faint as it was, could not brighten that shadowed face.

"You… Out of all people... are calling me tragic? Did you mistake me for a mirror?" He smiled, but the levity on his face vanished quickly the moment he noticed Angel had remained the same as before.

"You mask yourself with that smile, and yet you are trembling, and your eyes are still wrapped in that unsettling light." Angel took another step, weeping more and more copiously.

"Tell me, Lance Klint… How many times do you think this face has ever formed a smile?" In the blink of an eye, Lance found himself lifted into the air. His throat gripped by his hands and his tendrils. His face streaked with mire and tears.

"Not a single time… I abandoned that mask the moment I opened my eyes in this world." Angel tightened his grip further, lifting him higher toward the ceiling, now sustained only by his tendrils.

"Happiness is a mask for those unwilling to accept the truth that, however hard they try, they will never manage to understand one another. Forgers, incapable of bearing the orders handed down by their own true reality." With force, the tendrils slammed Lance against the wall, trapping him within a cocoon of dense shadow.

"You and I are terribly alike. You are a martyr who masks his own instincts and fears with altruism, while I am a free marionette." A blade emerged from the shadows, driving into Lance's shoulder. The rivulet of blood vanished into the black, spilling out from one of the many patches on Angel's face.

"Have you ever thought… About how depressing a life like yours must be?" Lance seized the tendrils with his right arm, fracturing them as though they were clay, while other iron blades cut into his flesh. Angel stared at him blankly, not moving a single step from the shadow. If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

"I know I am flawed, but at least I do not leave my life in the hands of some madman!" The shadows shattered, with a great crash, scattering fragments across the entire floor. His flesh was still torn by the blades, and yet he managed to lunge toward him.

"No. You do not know." Angel answered before being kicked into the darkness. Lance tore the iron from his flesh, turning constantly toward the wall veiled with footsteps.

"It shows in your poor curiosity toward yourself and the things you wield… Do you never wonder why Master Malcolm left that time? Or what that weapon on your arm truly is?" His voice echoed through the darkness, without origin, without tone.

"Then why do you not tell me?" His voice vanished into the dark, wrapped in a silence broken only by the roars from outside. A tendril tried to make its way toward him, immediately crushed.

"Why should I? I have no order to do so. I am simply engaging in this conversation to keep you at bay. Besides, if you yourself do not seek out the truth, why would you accept it when spoken by someone you wish to kill?" A gunshot crossed the air, striking Lance's shoulder squarely. The shadows were lit by a flash of lead and smoke.

"He can store them and transfer them into any of his shadows…" He turned sharply, seizing another piece of scorching-hot metal with his hands. Another series of discharges lit the room, illuminating Angel's figure at the centre of the dozens of muzzles suspended within the shadow.

"Every corner of this room can attack me!" He lunged to the side, avoiding a blade of earth that emerged from the floor. Every moment something new grazed his skin, and not everything managed to bounce off the hardened patches of blood. Every so often a bullet chipped away at them, and in that fog of lead, Lance could not recover his armour quickly enough.

"You could stop resisting…" The weapons tripled, continuing to fire round after round. The bullets began ricocheting left and right, colliding with the mire on the walls and ceiling. Within moments, every piece of furniture, blinds included, had been shredded entirely. In the darkness, only the fused, glowing shell casings gave off any light at all.

"Are you truly this stubborn?" Angel asked, fixing the only remaining light in the confrontation. Before him, gasping and covered in bloody crusts, Lance Klint." Vergehen, Mauer…" His skin had turned scaled, almost as though coated in a layer of rock. The remnants of lead slid to the ground the moment that strange membrane dissolved, allowing him to move again.

"A commendable trick. I thought Miss Laure was the only one capable of using her own body with such prowess." He murmured, fixing Lance as he regenerated the gashes on his leg and shoulder.

"I learned how to make use of my own blood before our meeting at the Institute. Over time I discovered how to make more use of my own body…" Lance smiled, drawing Supplicium out again, which sprang into shape in his hand like a spring.

"Do you intend to shoot again? The outcome will not differ much." A blade emerged from Angel's own shoulder, sliding into the palm of his hand as though carried along by a gentle current.

"You know…" He took a step forward, stroking the trigger with his finger. With one step, he kicked away the remains of a shattered lamp, silently picked up a shard from the ground, and pointed it toward the few reddish sparks above his head.

"My eyes see more than one might expect. Do you know how all the equipment in this tower is powered?" He turned his gaze toward Angel, cleaning his glasses with a smile.

"Taumite mostly." Angel answered, taking a step toward him. One last spark slid off the wreckage, vanishing along the edge of his blade. Lance nodded, pointing behind himself.

"What do you think would happen if I set off the entire generator behind me?" For the first time, Angel's eyes shifted with a flicker of surprise as his hand gripped the blade even tighter. Lance turned sharply, and Angel followed, levelling the steel and the shadow-blades at the boy's chest. The trigger finally clicked, releasing a blaze bright enough to weaken the darkness for an instant. The recoil sent Lance flying toward him, while a second flash, this one reddish, set the room ablaze.

The shadows withdrew at the touch of the light, losing their shape and volume. Angel shielded himself from the sudden light with his blade, paying no attention to the figure in the air beside him. Lance drew his blade, letting it fall upon him. Despite his guard, Angel saw his own blade shatter before his eyes and Lance's iron sink into his shoulder." Chiaroscuro, testuggine…" A blanket of dark lances erupted from the ground, pushing Lance and his blade away.

The boy sheathed his sword, cleaning it with a violent shake. The moment he tucked it back into his pocket, a jet of shadow grazed his face. The flames were beginning to spread, and yet the light was not strong enough to prevent the mire from reforming.

"Now it is a race against time…" Lance's bolts began flowing once more along his arms and legs, coiling into a spiral. Angel's face emerged from the mass of mire, this time with black tears cutting across his face.

"I cannot overuse Vergehen, and I must stop him from putting out the fire. Supplicium has few rounds left, and the sword is nearly entirely useless." The two of them stared at one another intently as the flames spread constantly onward. In the distance, in the main tower, explosions and tongues of fire consumed the air. A snap of the fingers, and an entire walkway was torn open by a blade born of the air itself.

"Damn it! You just tore my coat!" The man pushed his little spectacles up onto his forehead, sitting on the iron bars, on the verge of falling into the enormous forest of shelves and display cases below.

"Do you think I care about that? I was aiming for your leg…" Maliard adjusted the gauntlet on his forearm, rotating its smoking cylinder. Annoyed, the scientist struck his hands against the remains of the walkway, throwing himself onto the iron scaffolding laden with metals and crates.

"I would have imagined someone who calls himself ' the Raven' might be rather grim… But this is a bit much, you know!" An explosion hurled him away from a second blade, which had split the entire structure in two.

"You are Ascan Sober, am I correct?" Maliard pointed his finger at him as a sphere of flame began forming at its tip. The scientist bowed briefly, landing back on the ground.

"Field researcher for Changeant … That would be me indeed." He answered in a jovial tone, wiping his hands clean of a strange greyish dust. Maliard kept the flame trained on him as he drew closer.

"So do you have anything to say for all the abominations you have created?" He smiled, while Ascan simply crumpled his handkerchief slowly, with a bored expression. He huffed, scratching the back of his neck with his free hand.

"I truly do not care for the way you refer to my inventions…" Maliard stopped, fixing him directly in the face. The fire wrapped around his finger, slowly sliding down along his arm.

"If those are inventions, then I would rather go back a few centuries in the past." A red flash lit up the room, burning the wooden crates and heating the air. The dirty handkerchief left Ascan's hands, unfolding a few fingers' distance from the flame. The moment a spark made contact with the grime on the paper, a golden blaze with a red halo engulfed the hall, hurling scaffolding and charred crates in every direction. The smoke filled the room with an acrid, sharp smell, mixed with sweetish notes.

The rock Maliard had raised collapsed, revealing him without so much as a scratch.

"I imagined his ability might be something along these lines…" Maliard murmured, pushing the heavy slab of rock and concrete to the ground, shattering it on impact with the floor.

"Perceptive! You truly do use your head…" From beyond the curtain of smoke emerged Ascan, entirely unharmed, only the hem of his coat blackened. The two of them studied one another in that sweet, oppressive air. Maliard smiled, rotating the cylinder on his gauntlet. A column of vapour rose quickly, and his eyes began glowing with a green light.

"If you have understood that I use my head, then you will also understand that I have no time to waste on trash like you." He struck the floor with his right hand, immediately setting it trembling. The floor turned liquid for an instant, before erupting into a column of flame and rock.