B4 Chapter 448: Imperium Mortum, pt. 8

Kaius widened his eyes, slamming his blade home once more into the ragged hole he’d left in its chest as he unleashed a Bound Maelstrom. He didn’t know what was coming, but whatever it was had to be dangerous. The mana within the automaton was peaking, growing aggressively turbulent and unstable.

Yet rather than weaken, the Centurion only pulled him in tighter with its spiked lower limbs, drawing its shield in close behind him to seal him in a deadly coffin.

“Fuck!” Porkchop screamed, abandoning his current target to hammer the Centurion that held Kaius, attempting to rip open its shield and free him from its grasp.

“Get back!” Kaius screamed as the mana within the construct warbled uncontrollably and a high-pitched whine filled the air.

Whatever was coming, Porkchop couldn’t save him. He was the one with resistance skills and defensive spells — far better that his brother defended them from the still-active Centurion.

“Fine! You better not die!” Porkchop replied as understanding crossed their bond in an instant.

Kaius barely heard the crash as his brother re-engaged the other Centurion — too focused on his current predicament. He slammed his blade home into the construct’s wounded core. Perhaps if he was lucky, he could interrupt whatever was coming.

As the sword slammed home, the barely controlled energy unleashed. Somehow the Centurion channeled it — a final, defiant death rattle as it vented the arcane energy through its lower limbs and into Kaius, making its suicidal contempt known.

Kaius gasped as violent mana scorched him from within. It was a touch he knew well from Mystic’s Rend and the destabilisation of his own glyphs during his practice. Unconstrained and raw, this transfusion was not explosive, but it was no less deadly for it. Razor shards slid through his mana conduits and veins, tearing at him from the inside out with burning contagion.

He gritted his teeth, choking out a scream as every muscle in his body seized. He couldn’t — wouldn’t — allow himself to be consumed in such a fashion. Not him. Not here.

Reacting on instinct, he reached for Spellblade’s Harmonic Control, the skill that granted him absolute authority over the mana within his body. This was raw expulsion, uncontrolled and uncontested by the now-dead Centurion that had killed itself with its final move. Without a master, he could command it. Rapid Adaptation would be no help here, consumed as it was in sampling the new affinity. If he waited for a resistance to come, it would already be too late. He needed to act.

Hauling on his budding Authority and every scrap of control he had, Kaius warred against the mana. Iron pooled on his tongue and oozed from his pores. The mana within him burned. It fought him like a wild beast, as if he was trying to corral a typhoon or bend the ocean’s tides to his whim.

Still he fought. Arcane was his; he had shaped and wielded it from the very first moment he had cast his first spell. It would not kill him — his will and Authority were sovereign, and his body was his domain.

Relying on experience, he guided the current away from his internals — up the edges of his ribs, down his arm, and into his blade. With its connection to him, it was the only thing easy enough for him to transfer the power into — and the only thing tough enough that he was sure it would survive.

The crystalline edge of A Father’s Gift glowed, uncontrolled sparks of cobalt blue leaping from its edge as the blade itself shifted from grey, to a deep indigo to the brightest of bluish-whites.

Kaius could hear the frantic screams of his friends and furious roars of frustrated torment as his brother’s concern flooded their bond.

He pushed the distraction away, focused utterly on guiding the mana. If he let it reach his heart or brain or his delicate organs… The cost to his health would be too much. Hells, it might just kill him outright.

Gritting his teeth, Kaius battered the arcane wave into submission. Yet his body decomposed around him — the path that the arcane took through his flesh sloughing and blackening. Health flooded free, fighting against the damage. It recovered him as best it could, but it couldn’t stop the necrotic black lines that arced from where the Centurion had grabbed him, up his ribs and across his shoulders, down into his hands.

Blackness closed in.

He roared.

The centurion’s core gave out at the last moment. A warrior of steel and violent conviction collapsed to the ground with a loud clang — dragging the still glowing length of A Father’s Gift from its core.

The sudden yank of the greatshield that was pressed to his back forced him to the ground. Preoccupied with venting the remnants of the mana still within him, Kaius fell alongside prone on the centurion, gasping as his flesh bubbled and bled.

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A Father’s Gift brightened a final time — mana vented until only dregs remained.

Kaius lifted his arms, feeling his weakness as he laughed, manic fury flooding free.

“Can’t kill me, you bastard!”

“Kaius!”

A moment later, the crushing weight of the great shield that pinned him to the Centurion’s torso was flung free as Porkchop ripped it open.

He was gone again a moment later, diving away to contend with the second Centurion.

A dozen rents had been torn in Porkchop’s heavy plate, flesh and bone writhing as wounds sealed tight to choke off the streams of blood that flowed free — evidence of the crushing power of the automaton. Yet for all the damage incurred, Porkchop fought like a demon. Orichalcum fangs surrounded his fully plated face as he ravaged armoured limbs and smashed the automaton back.