Chapter 81: Dance with the Rotwitch

Danced with the Rotwitch.

• Climber idiom for ‘died horribly’

 

Will’s stats were very good…for a level twenty-four.

His Acuity was particularly excellent, so he was able to perceive about half the things that happened in the next fraction of a second.

Taking advantage of the heartbeat Will had bought, the Baron encased his son and grandson in living shield and shot them through the wall, the two younger Akuls disappearing in the blink of an eye.

An explosion and a screeching noise, as though someone had run their fingernails down the fabric of space, sounded to Will’s left-rear, but his head couldn’t turn that fast.

Baron Akul gave Will a sheepish shrug before Frederick Wyrd’s jaw flexed and the Baron exploded.

Rotwitch lunged forward, aiming to touch the Wyrd patriarch.

While she was still frozen in midair, the Marksman motioned as though he were drawing a bow, then released, sending an arrow of pure energy past Frederick Wyrd’s face.

Will thought he’d missed until a blast of air battered at him as the air formed a tunnel in the wake of his shot, nearly drawing Will into its influence like so much of the furniture that sailed through the roof of the building and into the distance.

Frederick Wyrd resisted the pull and turned to face the other Lords, dancing out of the way of the Rotwitch, his gaze landing on Marksman.

Marksman slapped a hand to his chest and blinked out of existence, a necklace with a dull broken gem in the center clattering to the ground in his place.

Will reached out with Phantom Hand and attempted to use Dimensional Storage on the rod.

It went about as well as he could expect. The resistance to stealing a Relic had always been a test of their relative power, and as his opponents had grown stronger it had become harder and harder to easily steal Relics. Especially if he had some way to prevent the theft.

Trying to sever the connection between Frederick Wyrd and the keystone of his Build was like cutting braided steel with a pair of rusty bronze shears.

Damn!

Frederick’s gaze turned toward Will until a sickly bolt of green energy spattered against the patriarch’s back.

Ghoul exploded, leaving behind a translucent copy of himself, holding his hand out to unleash the attack.

The Lord’s spirit form glanced down at his non-corporeal body and gave Wyrd a hate-filled scowl as his scattered bits began crawling back towards him, reassembling his form from the ankle up.

“Hold. STILL!” Rotwitch growled, trying to touch Frederick, the air around her becoming toxic and catching in Will’s throat.

I need to leave, Will thought, glancing at tables below them. I could make that jump, easy.

“No you don’t,” Wyrd said, his hand clamping down around Will’s left wrist. “You’re not wriggling out of this one again-“

“Ah HAH!” Rotwitch swung at Wyrd, forcing him to let go of Will and push the two of them apart in order to avoid either of them dying.

“Use your little explosion trick on me, Freddy, I DARE YOU!” Rotwitch said, chasing the Thorns Build around their little box, which would’ve been comical if the observation box wasn’t beginning to sag from the corrosive fumes rolling off of Rotwitch.

The Swordsman Lord and the Marksman Lord was gone, Ghoul was reconstituting, Akul was…everywhere, Luis and Nephir were gone, leaving…

A hand clamped down around Will’s shoulder.

Ah yes.

“Terribly sorry about this,” Mark Wyrd said, bringing his fist down, prompting Will to slide out of the way of a blow aimed at knocking him out.

“No, I get it.” Will said with a shrug as he outmaneuvered the slower Thorns Build. In public they had their roles to play. Mark didn’t like Will, sure, but he also didn’t want to obey his father. The deciding factor was that he didn’t want to turn Frederick Wyrd against him before it was time, which took precedence, leading to him attacking Will on his father’s orders.

Politics is complicated.

“Boy!” Frederick Wyrd said, pointing at Will.

“Behave yourself, or I’ll remove your legs until you learn your place. I prefer my property undamaged.”

Will had no doubt that the man had the power to do it.

His eyes narrowed as he glanced at Rotwitch and back to Frederick.

Why wasn’t Freddy using his explosive ability on Rotwitch?

Rotwitch corroded anything she came into contact with.

Abilities, too, maybe?

If The System made a connection between the two of them in the form of that damage loop, then her corrosive influence could infect Freddy and possibly kill him.

And Freddy wasn’t sure he would win that exchange.

“You know what?” Will said, dodging another attack by Mark before drawing his replacement sword out of the Phantom Hand and pointing it at Frederick. “I don’t like your tone, Freddy.”

The Wyrd Patriarch’s jaw tensed.

“Very well,” Frederick Wyrd said, activating his Voodoo Ability to connect him and Will, stooping to tap his own feet with the rod.

Will dropped the sword and ripped off his gauntlet, jabbing the Rotwitch in the side with his regrowing nub of a wrist.

“EEK!” Rotwitch squeaked at the sudden fleshy contact while Wyrd swung his rod down towards his foot, frowning at Will’s sudden change.

His eyes widened.

I hardly knew you, new hand, Will thought, his regrowing wrist beginning to sizzle as his Phantom Hand raced the Rod of the pacifist Healer.

Either this kills me or Freddy gets some much-needed payback on behalf of Baker Girls everywhere.

Flick!

The Phantom Hand flicked Frederick Wyrd’s left middle finger with bone-breaking force an instant before he managed to hit himself with the rod.

BOOM!

The damage loop triggered, damaging Will in the closest place to Frederick Wyrd’s left middle finger.

His stump of a wrist.

His stump of a wrist…currently afflicted with the Rotwitch’s curse, which was pressed into her side.

“AAAH!”

Frederick Wyrd’s left middle finger half melted, half exploded as the infectious curse spread to his finger and prevented his lifesteal from healing it, allowing the looped damage to accumulate.

The Wyrd Patriarch’s side also began to smoulder where Will had touched the Rotwitch, implying his rod had decided the tiny amount of damage that had been done to her from Will’s wrist exploding was Frederick’s fault.

Bonus.

Will stalked forward through the sudden silence, approaching the wide-eyed Lord. Like a child that had never experienced pain.

“You thought I won that tournament through LUCK!?” Will demanded. “I fight even BETTER without rules! I’m going to find you on the Seventh Floor, BOY…hunt you down and-URK!“

A band of spidersilk snapped around his waist and catapulted him backwards, yanking him violently over the bannister and out above the auction-house seating.

Will hit the ground in a tangle of limbs and shards of wooden furniture.

“He was about to kill you,” Loth said apologetically.

“No he…” Will thought about Frederick’s trembling fingers disappearing into his pocket, doing gods-knew-what. He’d been too mad to be paying attention. Too wrapped up in getting revenge for the suffering of Brianna and all the grief the Lord had caused Will and others… “….Yeah, he was about to kill me.”

“His voodoo Ability has to have a range limit.” Mason said, peering up at the collapsing VIP box. “Let the Lords handle the rest of the fight.”

“Alright you guys, go, go, go!” June said, motioning Reggie and Travis, each of them loaded with rare and valuable auction items, to sprint through the hole in the wall Mason had ‘engineered’.

“Awesome,” Will chuckled. “…Can one of you cut off my arm?”

He raised his left arm, which was sizzling and decaying at a rapid pace. In a matter of minutes the corruption would reach his torso, and that would be a problem.

The author’s narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

“I’ve been working on something,” Mason said, stepping forward.

“No, no,” Will stopped him. “It can infect Abilities. Use something disposal.”

Loth motioned to a rare and valuable sword Reggie was currently pilfering for them.

Her insects stole the sword and brought it to her.

“I can see how far it’s spread, let me,” Alicia whispered, taking the scimitar out of Loth’s hand and bringing it down on Will’s upper arm with all her might…which was significant.

Despite the searing pain, it actually felt better than when the Rotwitch’s curse had been tearing through it. less…unstoppable, life-draining curse, and more…unspeakable pain. A marked improvement.

Alicia hissed and stumbled back, dropping the scimitar and bleeding from her eyes.

“Alicia are you-“ Loth began.

“I’m fine,” She whispered, raising a hand and looking back at Loth with bloodshot eyes, red tears streaming down her cheeks.

“They aren’t infected, so they’ll heal. Rotwitch’s curse is not pleasant to look at though.”

“Let’s go you three!” June said, tossing Will a healing potion.

Will uncorked it with his teeth and slammed it back, rolling away from his chunk of arm melting through the floor before he stood. It wouldn’t do to re-introduce Rotwitch’s curse to his flesh.

That’s gonna take months to grow back, Will thought sourly before shrugging it off. On the other hand, we had the winning bid on…everything. That brought a smile to his face.

…Fair trade, Will thought, glancing back up at the VIP box before he joined the stream of panicked civilians fleeing through the hole in the wall.

What kind of man sacrifices the advantage to protect his children? Will had bought Baron Akul a heartbeat of time to act as he saw fit. The man surely had powerful Abilities that could’ve secured his life or put Wyrd at a disadvantage.

But would they have ensured his sons didn’t get caught in the crossfire?

…The best kind of man, I suppose.

“Remind me never to have children.” Will said as they ran.

Loth sent him a sideways glance and shrugged.

BOOM!

The six of them came to a screeching halt in the middle of the street. Normally this would’ve caused a problem with the press of people around them, but in this instance everyone came to a screeching halt.

In the distance, a building crumbled as a kaiju emerged from beneath it, groggily climbing to it’s feet.

It was a lizard-like thing with too many legs, and a sharp tongue that looked as though it could extend outward, spearing or slashing as needed.

Rumbling continued as another building collapsed, revealing a kaiju. Then another, and another.

The Baron had FOUR kaiju buried under the city? SERIOUSLY!? I take back every nice I thought about him. He was an idiot.

The screams of panic turned to screams of pain as dozens of men and women on the street began to writhe, limbs bursting out of their bodies as they became Tangled, immediately attacking anything and anyone near them.

“Travis,” June said, holding out her arms.

Travis dumped his loot in June’s hands before putting his fingers in his mouth and unleashing an ear-piercing whistle, garnering the attention of everything on the street.

“Hey all you Tangled sons-a-bitches!” Travis shouted, his Ability permeating his voice.

The one thing the Kaiju and the Tangled shared was a low resistance to mental attacks. They immediately began chasing him, as if tugged along on strings.

“Follow me!” Travis shouted and immediately began sprinting toward the first of Loth’s traps.

“This way,” Loth said, taking the lead now that June’s hands were full, breaking their path away from Travis and the steam of Tangled following him.

But the Tangled weren’t just those they’d seen on the street. They were practically everywhere, spilling out of apartment buildings, shops, boiling out of the sewers in a flood of angry, nigh-indestructible meat.