Chương 48: CHAPTER 47 – The Arm Clad in Black

The air in the underground plaza filled with dark threads. The thuds resounded through the galleries, spreading all the way to the surface. The sparks produced by the two metals gleamed for brief instants before collapsing. Jeanne seized yet another of Roman's shadows, hurling it into the air. Behind her, his blade began launching itself at her back. A thick slab of iron made Roman's sword shudder, which hissed through the air. In a sudden lunge, Jeanne managed to close the distance against him.

Before her appeared a series of spectral effigies interlaced with bones and tendrils of mire and shadow. Her blow passed completely through the constructions, impacting directly on Roman's face. The impact twisted his neck, wrenching his vertebrae and lacerating his skin. In a spray of blood, his entire body rotated. Jeanne's hammer struck his chest with force, hurling him to the opposite side.

"I did not think anything could hurt more than that train…" He smiled, correcting his neck with his intact hand after the impact. His blade slid across the ground, pulled by the dark filaments that had emerged from the plant bodies.

"He is still regenerating?!" Jeanne launched herself at him, only to find herself blocked by skeletons that had hooked themselves around her ankles. With force, she lifted the hammer above her head.

"Damn it." The golden metal struck the ground, snapping the lances and reducing the shadows to a viscous mass on the verge of evaporating. She turned toward her target, only to find her cheek sliced by his blade. The blood that emerged immediately began to boil and ignite.

"Why won't you die!?" Jeanne dispersed the smoke between them, allowing their faces to meet again. Roman stroked his beard, brushing off the remnants of earth and debris. He rested the blade on the ground and smiled.

"These shadows and bodies are my souls…" A series of tendrils rose from the ground, reinforcing his armour and sealing his wounds. His blade thickened further still, growing in both size and length.

"Their strength and effectiveness depend on the vital force I absorb, which is precisely why this plaza exists." He extended his hand, drawing the girl's attention toward the tendrils and mosses anchored to the damp walls of their arena. Jeanne crushed a few underfoot, almost instinctively.

"I imagine you cannot do the same with me." She answered flatly, slamming the hammer to the ground with force. Her delicate face relaxed into a kind of exhaustion, pale and lit by the grim reddish gleam of her eyes.

"A fine mind, but the same holds for any non-human I touch." He smiled, raising the enormous lance above his head. Its surface seemed almost to vibrate and pulse with every faint movement of the surrounding air. The shadow on his shoulders began to coil around him, becoming an axe in his free hand.

"Why are you telling me this…" Jeanne murmured, reclaiming her weapon from the ground along with the fragments of earth.

"What do you mean by that?" He answered, confused, resting the blade against his shoulders. Jeanne fixed him with half-closed eyes, the rest of her face unchanged.

"The moment this vegetation stops living, you will begin to overload. Or you will die in the attempt to draw on all the surroundings to sustain yourself…" She answered, raising the maul and using it to point toward the same walls he had indicated, to her right.

"Ah... That? It is quite simple, actually…" Jeanne remained still and watched, curving her back in anticipation. Her arms trembled faintly from the force of her grip. Roman pointed the axe at her.

"When a beautiful woman asks, it is a gentleman's duty to answer with sincerity. That is how I was raised, and by those rules I have lived." Jeanne stared at him in bewilderment, clicking her tongue.

"Disgusting…" She whispered, gripping the hammer still harder and loading all her weight onto her legs. Roman raised his eyebrows, slowly letting the smile fade from his lips.

"The only compliments I accept are his…" The enormous golden block collided with Roman's lance, driving his ankles into the ground. Twisting her body, she struck him this time directly in the stomach. In the few seconds following the impact, the blade of black tendrils managed to cut across her sides. Jeanne leapt backward, only to find her vision blocked by Roman's heavy axe. A thin ribbon of paint spun through the air, locking the blade in ice.

"Now I understand what you truly are…" He seized the axe from the block of frost, splitting it in two. Jeanne gasped, pressing her trembling fingers against her shoulder. The man took another step, sending up dust with every sole that struck the ground.

"You are weak because you are afraid." He smiled, pointing the head of the axe at her. Jeanne released her grip and straightened herself before him.

"What do you think you know about me…" She growled between one burst of coughing and the next.

"I remember our first confrontation. You were holding back out of fear." He continued, tearing the remnants of the armour Jeanne had destroyed from his body. She loosened her grip for an instant, losing her balance.

"You are a monster... Even among those like us. I imagine your companions have noticed." He lowered his weapons, fixing her with a faint smile and a grim gleam in his eyes.

"You are obsessed with that boy. Perhaps because he is the only one who has ever treated you as a normal person? Perhaps he is the one toward whom your heart directs its gratitude? In any case, what you feel is not affection or any other emotion worthy of expression…" Jeanne swallowed, beginning to breathe in short, laboured bursts. A rivulet of blood, mixed with saliva and paint, ran from her lips.

"What you carry is only perversion. No gentleness or tenderness hides behind it. You are squalid, filthy inside, hopelessly stained. For you, he is only a detergent, with no real emotion behind your…" In a single instant, his teeth shattered inside his mouth. His eyes crossed the crimson gleam flooding her face.

"SHUT UP!" His skull was driven into the ground. His body began sinking deeper and deeper, pushed down by the woman's blows. One of the tendrils pierced her leg, allowing Roman to rise again. The bones in his arm shattered the moment he tried to strike Jeanne. His arm was torn away, sending him falling backward.

"Did I pull the wrong cords?" Roman extended his sword, expanding a series of limbs from its tip that aggregated into a circular mass. Her blow passed clean through it, driving into his chest." She has destroyed the same shield that stopped those two?!" He had not even found a way to control the impact when a second blow struck his face. Two more followed quickly, tearing open his skin. Roman tried to reach out his arm to stop her, but found himself caught by a thin white thread.

The substance was yanked, pulling him closer to her. His stomach expanded at yet another impact, bending him double." This is brutal…" Jeanne's kick brought him back upright, lashing a noose around his neck. The cord wound around her wrist, drawing Roman toward her. This time, the pain was almost double, enough for him to lose consciousness for a single instant. His eyes settled on the metallic gleam on the girl's knuckles." She is using blood to create a coating of iron?!"

Having reached that conclusion, Roman tore away the noose, seized her face, and struck it directly with his forehead. Jeanne's blood stained Roman's face, but his smile extinguished moments later. She seized his face, digging her nails into the back of his neck and launching herself against him. Roman's head fractured at the impact, sending him flying. The iron on her forehead flowed to the ground, reverting to blood.

"Quiet." She crushed the cord to the floor, expanding it and binding it to her arm again. With inhuman speed, she hurled it against Roman's body, hooking into his shoulder. Roman gripped the cord so as not to tear his flesh away, though he could not prevent himself from being dragged toward her. Her fist met his face again, this time removing his remaining teeth. Before he could collapse to the ground, Jeanne seized his throat and dragged him against the wall.

"YOU ARE DISGUSTING ME NOW!" Roman snapped the cord, knotting the tendrils around her body and squeezing her slowly. Jeanne's face began to colour red, her lips trembling at the desperate need for air. Long, thin skeletal hands began to emerge from the vines, intent on pinning her face and her pupils.

"I cannot abide something that evades proper measure." His teeth reappeared in his smile as his wounds reconstituted themselves. His eye fell on the cord Jeanne had tied to his wrist, kept constantly taut.

"I snapped it just now, so what is she…" The wall beside him collapsed, destroyed by a great rotating mass. Jeanne's maul fell between them, destroying the tendrils.

"She can still wield it?!" He extended his hand to close the vines and bodies around her, but that same arm was carried away by her hammer strike. Roman stared at the blood pouring from his hand in silence. The next instant, the maul grazed his abdomen. A wave of blood emerged from his lacerated skin, staining the ground and the woman's suit. Roman pressed his wounds shut, but Jeanne was faster. A second hammer strike sent him and his shadows crashing into the ruins, causing a collapse.

Jeanne smiled faintly before bowing her head and expelling from her mouth a dense cascade of foamy blood in grim, greyish tones. She used the hammer to stagger to one of the galleries buried by the rubble, leaving drops falling from her chin across her path.

"I can reach them…" She murmured, striking the rock with force. Chips and sparks rose from the cloud of dust, thinned by a second impact. A gap had opened toward the gallery, sending a swift, cold, and briny current through the room. Jeanne shifted the last stones from her path and moved toward the opening. She reached her hand through the threshold, when everything suddenly shut with black bones. A wall of skeletons, femurs, and skulls blocked her passage, repelling her attempts to return to the surface.

"Allow me to point out…" Tendrils erupted from the wall, attempting to seize her, finding themselves severed the moment they grazed her skin.

"That it is poor manners to leave during the second dance." Roman emerged, his abdomen covered in bone plates and dark filaments resembling worms. His entire body was clad in skeletons and bones. The blade between his hands was broken, but held together by vines mixed with phalanges. Jeanne lifted the hammer above her head, gripping the shaft and taking hold of the head. In a few instants, the weapon had become an enormous golden and white scythe, with blades at the crown.

"This time, I will see to ending your life for good." The silver reflection of the blade met the greenish gleam of his armour. From his dirty beard, Roman smiled, laughing faintly.

"You think you can kill me by masking your nature? Do you know what makes something fall within the norm?" He asked, raising the blade and walking toward her.

"It is contraries… Good manners exist because rudeness does. A correct calculation exists because errors do. And so on. You are something that oscillates between wrong and right without ever stopping, without ever pausing." Jeanne set the blade rotating, resting it on her shoulders.

"However strongly a conviction may normalise even the things that are wrong…" Roman vanished from her sight, reappearing before her almost instantly.

"Everyone will reject a paradox." Their blades crossed, sending up sparks and setting the iron chips in the air aflame. Their bodies moved in unison, sliding the threads of their weapons against one another. Jeanne's scythe ignited for an instant, severing the lashings that held his foil together.

"You are weaker now…" Roman caught the broken blade in the air, driving it rapidly into Jeanne's abdomen. A jet of blood stained his face as she slid to the ground. A faint burning sensation spread along her skin before Jeanne smiled. She snapped upright, striking his face. Suddenly, all the paint ignited in a series of electric sparks. Roman's face was crossed by an electric discharge, burning away his armour of bone and mire. Jeanne slid away from the impact, tearing the blade from her own stomach.

A sharp pain wrapped her body, but she kept pulling until it fell to the ground.

"I see you are approaching your limit…" He smiled, rising as the burns on his face began to fade. Jeanne slid her fingers across her stomach, collecting the blood.

"My limit is mine to decide…" Her palm froze, leaving a trail of thin ice wedges across the ground as she ran. Roman's blade froze and fell to the floor. His blow sank into her chest, throwing her down. In that instant, Jeanne's finger grazed his arm. All the blood and sweat on his skin condensed in a moment, fracturing his arm in several places.

"YOU STILL HAVE TRICKS?!" He smiled, striking her again in the stomach. His other arm fractured too, snapping shortly after. With what strength remained, Jeanne rose into the air, folding back on herself. Like a spring, her legs drove into Roman's chest, hurling him against the rock wall. Her vision grew steadily weaker, slowly dimming as thick, greyish rivulets of tears crossed her face." I'm... Close to dying now..." She seized her scythe, feeling a sudden pain in her side.

A finger bone had just passed through her flesh. The second was immediately identified by her blade, which split it along with the air.

"The night is long!" Roman rose, casting his gaze across his wounds. The shadow anchored to his back loaded another series of bones and human remains drawn from the surrounding air into its crossbow. His body lurched backward, releasing the swarm of projectiles.

"Troublesome…" Jeanne struck the ground with force, lifting a slab of earth. She pressed her body against the shield she had raised, absorbing each blow in turn. Some pierced through her skin, but she kept pressing, biting her lip.

"Still holding?" Roman's weapon discharged, and in that single moment of quiet, Jeanne pushed the stone slab with everything she had. Roman shattered it but immediately found himself struck by a thick, vaguely reddish patch of liquid. A series of golden sparks expanded from the boiling liquid. If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

"The same trick?" He smiled, letting his face be flooded by the lights of the detonation. An enormous explosion enveloped the hall, sending the floor plunging into the depths of the earth and sweeping away the rubble. Jeanne rose from the ruins, her watch at her wrist shattered.

"I managed it… Two colours in the same patch." Her right eye was closed and covered by a dense rivulet of blood. Her suit was torn across the abdomen and sides. She began staring at her hand, gripping it weakly around the scythe." Both were red, yet one was Taumite... It's a miracle it worked." The explosion had been the mark of success. All the air was made heavy by smoke and a smell reminiscent of burning rubber.

"That was a new one. Sacrificing the arm voluntarily was not in the plan…" Roman slid from the wall, pressing a hand to the mass of tendrils and bones holding the remains of his limb in place. His face was covered in blood, with numerous wounds and holes across his skin and armour. Jeanne stared at him in bewilderment, smiling faintly.

"He created a defence using himself as the base?" Her breathing grew heavier and more condensed, as though her mouth were filling with moisture. The air around them began to colour with a faint orange hue.

"I imagine that with this, you have exhausted everything? A pity you gave your all, it would have been something less sorrowful to recount to me…" His right arm, still intact, accumulated from itself a dense network of mire and bones, forming a small, thin blade.

"With this, it ends…" His breathing was altered, and his vision was blurred. His throat began to sting, as though he had just swallowed a large mouthful of spirits. The pain intensified, followed by Jeanne's smile, trembling, her hands at her throat.

"That smell… This is bromine?!" He pressed his throat still harder, drawing the energy around himself to continuously regenerate his lungs. Jeanne nodded, gripping the scythe weakly.

"The smoke that permeated this room contains traces of my paint…" She took a step forward, drawing slowly closer to him." Thank you, Lucas…" The memory of that scientist's figure began slipping through her mind as she took the second step.

"I didn't know why you were so scared of that substance... It was so colorful! But now I feel like you were right to be scared." Lucas's preoccupied face showed in her memories, all while the paint started to reassemble her organs.

"Thank you for giving me the inspiration!" She smiled, lifting the blade from the ground with a kick. Her eye reopened, reflecting the crimson gleam in the metal.

"Roman…" She extended her hand toward him, inviting him to come closer.

"Let us see which of us lasts longer in this dance!" Their smiles met in the middle of the orange haze. Their final sparks of strength clashed in the epilogue of their confrontation. The moon lit the faces of the two engaged in one last mortal battle. Around them, nothing but cracks and devastation wherever the eye could reach. Grayson was covered in burns, his face sliced open in several places.

Maliard, on the other hand, was completely exhausted, rivulets of blood spraying from the numerous holes across his arms and shoulders. His skin was scored with a golden, luminous colour. The cylinders on his gauntlet began to rotate. He launched himself at him, raising an enormous column of rock. The scientist was hurled into the starry sky as Maliard prepared to charge an enormous bolt from the earth. The scientist crashed back to the ground, pointing his hand at Maliard's abdomen." Schafft: Blitzschlag!"

The bolt consumed the earth, expanding and pulverising the ground between them in a tremendously violent eruption of discharges and thundering branches. Grayson's skin was enveloped in smoke and flames. Maliard immediately pressed his iron-clad hand against his chest, emanating a dark halo. A single cloud obscured the moonlight, leaving a faint spark to illuminate the scene." At this moment, my power of destruction is the broadest offensive capacity I possess…" The halo expanded, covering his chest." Stornieren!!"

A dark flash crossed Grayson, withering his skin and carrying away his arm. The moon resumed shining in the night, accompanying the sea of black sparks that danced behind Maliard. Grayson began to fall to the ground, followed by a second blow. Part of his skin was already beginning to regenerate despite the depth of the injuries.

"Damn it!!" The sparks accumulated again in the gauntlet, grazing the scientist's skin a second time. Along his fingers began to run that same black bolt, poised to sink and erase his organs.

"Farewell, Grayson…" Maliard whispered, pointing his finger toward him. The mass of sparks was moments away from touching him.

"Farewell…" His eyes opened an instant before Maliard could whisper those words. Maliard's blow missed, as though he were metres and metres away, but this lasted only for a few moments. He tried to strike again, but this time Grayson vanished entirely. What Maliard struck was a heavy slab of rock, scorched by their confrontation." Entanglement." Behind him, Grayson was already on the verge of striking his side.

Maliard tried to turn, but the scientist's blow drove itself into his side, hurling him away at extraordinary speed." Can he truly alter the numbers in such a way?!" His flight through the air stopped abruptly, then immediately plunged downward with violence. He opened his eyes to find dozens upon dozens of enormous boulders above his head. He clicked his tongue before everything came down on top of him.

"Die…" The scientist smiled, seizing a rock in his hands and hurling it like a dart. In its flight, it became pure light and energy, exploding along with the landslide of boulders. His breathing grew calmer and more relaxed.

"If you want to rest, make sure your objective is dead first…" A jet of water pierced his throat, followed by what appeared to be a heavy disc of sharpened metal. Grayson grabbed it, trying to pull it loose, but Maliard was there to strike him in the side with another black bolt." Entanglement…" Maliard's blow missed again, shattering a sign buried in the debris. He turned this time more quickly, kicking Grayson squarely in the face.

He rolled across the ground, pressing his hand to his throat, drenched in blood and grime. He launched himself against him, still on his knees.

"Got you!" Grayson rose sharply, and Maliard suddenly found himself missing, swapped with a single rock. The gravity intensified terribly, making him collapse along with the ground. He stomped on him again, cracking everything around them. Grayson seized him by the throat, hurling him away once more.

"Go and die!" From Maliard's hand erupted a series of bursts of flame and lightning, aimed at Grayson's figure. Everything around him was enveloped by the explosion and incinerated, except the scientist, whose horns gleamed with even greater vigour in the night." Subtract." Grayson appeared before him for a single instant, long enough to strike him directly full on with a negative mass. A spray of blood and vomit left Maliard's lips, and he was driven hard into the earth.

"If I had not reinforced my bones, my core would have been…" He rose with great difficulty, only to find the scientist directly in his face, staring at him with a smile.

"Why do you keep on living? Is the difference between you and me not obvious?" Maliard smiled, looking at him through the red film covering his eyes.

"For as long as you breathe…" Grayson's abdomen suddenly split open, pouring a dense flow of violet ichor and dark blood. His face lost its composure, draining of colour. Before him, the smile of that man with the dark gauntlet." That was not a blade…" He understood, pressing his hand to the wound in an attempt to keep his organs inside. His skin was already closing, but Maliard was faster.

"For as long as you breathe, my work is not done!" His entire palm was clad in metal and electricity, impacting against Grayson's chest with devastating force. A bluish discharge passed through his body, making him tremble violently. The blood on his body was on the verge of boiling from the bolt." I can use Stornieren one single time…" He began charging the dark halo in his gauntlet, slowly tearing apart the very fabric of the air around him. Grayson seized his throat, squeezing with all the strength in his body."

Entanglement Origin!" A few paces from them, buried beneath tonnes of ancient rock and iron, a single stone began to glow. That single discharge of pure Frequency freed itself from underground, emerging in a burning blaze. Grayson released his grip, letting Maliard's body slide. He fell to the ground, spilling litres of blood and burned flesh." Shift…" With a sigh, the dying body of Maliard Turner crashed against the ruins accumulated on the coastline that the scientist had created.

He tried to rise, and managed only to lean his back against the heavy slab of rock behind him. His gaze fell on his scorched and lacerated side. He passed his hand through it, feeling the blood immediately soil his fingers.

"He merely grazed me, and this is the damage?" He whispered, slowly illuminating the wound with a clear light. His tissues and organs began to reconstitute themselves, little by little.

"Do you know what distinguishes an error from an imperfection?" Grayson appeared on the ruins just ahead of him, elevated on a mountain of iron and rock. His hair drifted in the breeze, while his horns and eyes glinted with a violet gleam.

"An error leads to the total failure of the equation, but an imperfection does not. It makes the equation unique for every person who attempts to develop it according to a different method." Around him, two white spheres began orbiting at high speed, hissing through the air with every orbit.

"A doubt is rising in me, however…" He fixed the gleam of the nocturnal sea, losing himself in the blue reflections of the moon.

"Is this world wrong, or merely imperfect? What is the cause of this failed perfection?" He raised his gaze toward the sky, spreading his arms as though to let the wind pass through him across the desolate plain.

"And so I arrived at a certain conclusion…" He resumed speaking to Maliard, who had slowly managed to rise. Their gazes crossed in that endless waiting.

"It is emotions that make this world imperfect. A new form of error that grants human beings the capacity to shine brighter than stars, or to fall lower than the abyss." He smiled, sitting on his pedestal of fractured rock. Maliard listened to him in a silence that was faint and at intervals broken by his cylinders and the sound of rubble still falling.

"No human being should possess this uniqueness in this world. If every number cannot relate to another, there is no uniformity, and with uniqueness alone, order cannot be achieved." The spheres began orbiting ever closer to his finger.

"You want to strip human beings of their uniqueness to improve them?" Maliard laughed, stamping the ground at his feet with force. Grayson kept his face fixed on him: that extinguished, pale smile unchanged.

"That is the greatest idiocy I have heard in the last decade!" He struck the wall behind him, shattering it with force. Grayson tilted his head, studying him with curiosity. Maliard caught his breath, rising with difficulty.

"Do not misunderstand me… The plan is sound. But how can you carry it out if you do not even believe in it yourself?" Maliard pointed his finger directly at him, aimed squarely at his face.

"You are crying, and you have not noticed." Only at that moment did the scientist touch his own face, dampening his fingers with tears and grime. Grayson smiled, allowing a faint laugh to escape him.

"You are right… I, too, am an error of this world." The two spheres collided on his finger, emanating a bluish gleam powerful enough to illuminate the horizon." I am sorry, Lucas and Monica… I will have to activate it!" All the cylinders began to rotate. Slowly, a white vapour began flowing around him, joined by black and golden sparks. The gleam in his eyes grew more intense as black capillaries extended from his abdomen up along his neck.

"Am I a number, or an error?" The vapours condensed into a violent, dark, and incandescent column. His exhausted smile met Grayson's melancholy one.

"Redo the calculation, you moron! I will show you exactly how much my person is truly worth!" His suit began falling away, unable to contain the energy beginning to erupt from his gauntlet. The fifth cylinder was on the verge of dropping to the ground.

"Thank you, Maliard Turner… Thank you for letting me hear my own voice one last time." The gleam vanished, condensing entirely onto his fingernail in a minuscule bluish sphere." Compulsion … Authorisation for NOIR protocol." The cylinder opened just before falling, showing Maliard a single silver button inside. He reached to press it, keeping his eye on his opponent.

"Ray…" Then, without warning, a beam of black and violet light severed his hand. Grayson stared in bewilderment at his arm falling to the ground and vanishing. Another second, and a figure emerged from the sea, striking him squarely in the stomach. White sparks illuminated the zone, hurling Grayson into the air. The column of water and foam collapsed, shaking the coast. Maliard stared at the figure in amazement. His bare, muscular side was wrapped in dense black and violet beams.

His body was enveloped in deep, old scars, covered by the remains of his black suit. The most distinctive detail was the enormous black armour encasing his right arm: three gigantic rings connected by heavy chains of black iron to sharpened, grooved iron, like a grotesque assembly of scales and wreckage, fused to his arm.

"I guess I need your help explaining this to Monica..." The figure rose from the column, looking at Maliard. The golden gleam in his eyes and his raven hair made Maliard smile, and he slid to the ground once more.

"Of course… Now let me rest!" Lance smiled, turning toward Grayson, who was drifting through the air a few metres above him.

"What a joy that you survived. How about we talk now?" The scientist smiled, but it was extinguished the moment it met the grim tone of his gaze.

"Right now, I only want to talk to you about one thing…" Lance extended the black arm toward him, smiling faintly.

"You said you were a god, did you not?" The moon poured its full light onto that boy who had emerged from the abyss. Grayson fixed him with despair and fury.

"If you truly are a god, then I am quite fortunate…" The gleam in his eye lit up his face.

"Finally, I can have all the debts you owe me settled!" The pillar beneath him collapsed. Grayson found himself struck again, this time squarely in the face, and was sent crashing to the ground.

"So come then… Let us see which of us collapses before dawn. Even if it costs me burying you, I will make myself heard!" In that moment, his words echoed across the night and the sea, raising the curtain on the confrontation between the Architect of the Heavens and the most pathetic of human beings.