Faith Never Dies

A great pressure and weight crushes down upon you.

Your eyes flicker open, only to snap shut as dust irritates them, and the quaking pain of something hard and heavy presses on your whole body.

There is only darkness, but you can feel the slowly fading warmth of two bodies—Diana’s and Vicky’s—beneath you.

“Is this ****?” you wonder in a momentary daze—before the memory of a blinding flash and your captured comrades collapses down on you like a waterfall.

Jolting suddenly into action, the tight coil of your muscles begins to pull harder on your bones as you push against the weight. “OVER… EUGHOUGHHHH—” dust and rubble fly from your airway.

Grunting, raging against the crushing pain, you **** the words through your debris-blocked larynx. “OVER… OVERDRIVE!!”

The crackle of supernatural bolts sparks against your skin as your muscles bulge with colossal strength. In a wrenching motion, you wrap both arms around the bodies below you and kick against the dense mound that entraps you.

Your form erupts like a zombie from the grave in an explosion of crimson sparks, sending you careening out onto the ground.

A cloud of ash and rubble falls like snowflakes as your bare flesh skids across the desolated earth, clutching both girls in your arms.

When you come to a halt, the pain is staggering as shards of rock, plasterboard, and broken furniture splinter into your back like shards of glass.

Fighting against the agony with the unfettered flow of Overdrive, you lay the two bodies gently at your side and scramble to your knees. The sight that haunts your blurry vision is far more painful than the cracked ribs or the road rash on your back.

Black-Drake Mansion—your childhood home, only just forged anew—now stands as a shattered, flaming ruin. The very foundations are scorched and blasted; some walls are cracked, others stripped bare, barely risen and crumbling like smashed knuckle bones.

The rafters, once holding strong above, now lie either in splinters at your feet or jut out like enormous stakes, burning white-hot as skirmishing flames devour their oaken flesh.

Your eyes follow the black smoke as it permeates the space like raven wings, wavering through the massive breach in the ceiling and slithering up the jagged maw of each floor, rising toward the twilit sky as if to lap at the glowing orb of the full moon with its inky tongue.

“Rudy… damn fool,” is all you can rasp before planting your head against the ground and forcing yourself to focus. “Come on… Anchor…” you whisper, allowing Overdrive to fizzle out, your energy carefully conserved for whatever inevitable chaos is yet to come.

“M-Master!”

You watch as a shambling shade emerges from the dust and rubble, shaking debris from herself like a black Labrador. Rubbing her eyes and cringing in disorientation, Belle stumbles over, nearly falling into your arms as she blinks her senses back into place.

“Woah—easy, easy. You alright?” you ask.

Belle looks around. “N… no, I’m not alright! This lingerie was seven-hundred dollars. What the hell was that goddamn wendigo thinking!? She better be dead, otherwise I’ll gut her my-goddamn-self!” Belle growls, trying in vain to wipe ash from her lace-infused bra.

“We’d have silver blades for vocal cords if she didn’t do what she did. For fuck’s sake… Pops is gonna pop a blood vessel when he sees this.”

The mansion—your ancestral home—is little more than a blasted ruin.

Belle drops beside Diana, stroking the slowly regenerating crater in her face. “That’s it, Diana. You keep cooking,” she mutters.

“She’s gonna take her time regenerating here. No way to stimulate it, and… yeah. Whatever those fanatics loaded into their guns is cutting her powers short.”

“Didi will be alright. We just need to buy her time,” you say. “Vicky, on the other hand… we need to get her somewhere safe. If she starts Breaking here—”

Belle casts you a grim look. “Yeah. I can tell you first-hand how totally not fabulous that is.”

“Where are the others?” you ask—though you already feel the answer beneath your bare feet before Belle can reply.

Like moles breaching dirt, the Nox crawl out from beneath the collapsed foundations. They rise like the living dead from shallow graves, clawed fingers grasping earth as pale bodies haul themselves into the smoke-sodden air.

“That… really… hurt,” Naomi groans, lying flat on her back. She flashes you and Belle a thumbs-up before clutching her chest, likely riddled with internal injuries.

The intricately engraved double doors to the lounge suddenly lurch free, spinning and crashing into a severed load-bearing wall. Huginn emerges from beneath them, hauling Muninn to her feet.

Only—something is very wrong.

You see the bloody fronts of her knees, the bruised ruin of her chest… and the back of her blonde head resting on a grotesquely twisted neck.

“OW—OW—OW—OW—CUNT-CUNT-CUNT!” Moonie roars.

“HEY! Language,” Hughie snaps. “Your neck’s just a little cricked. Stay still. Nothing we haven’t done before. On three.”

He grips the sides of Moonie’s head.

“HUGHIE DON’T YOU D—EEEIIIUGH!”

With a wet, horrific crack of bone and sinew, Huginn snaps her sister’s neck back into place, massaging her shoulders as flesh and vertebrae begin to wind themselves back together.

“See? Not so bad. You did good. After this, I might even get you a lollipop.”

Moonie glares at him, then sighs. “…Fucking better.”

More and more of the Nox pull themselves free—wounded, but not destroyed. Some injuries regenerate instantly; others linger, hunger slowing the repair.

You move among them, quickly assessing damage as everyone converges around Vicky and Diana.

“Is everyone out?” Cleo asks, nursing a slowly closing gash on her head.

“Everyone but Vulcan,” Rudolph says. “The other Bone-Heads are digging for her as we speak, Master.”

“Good. Don’t stop until you find her,” you say. “Belle, take your Harkins and establish a defensive perimeter. Cleo, see to those whose wounds aren’t closing. Send our fastest to gather whatever blood we have. Everyone else— with me. Anyone who gets through this without Crusader blood on their hands hunts for the clan for the rest of the year.”

“Yes, Master!”

The Nox obey instantly. You feel the bond tighten—iron cord pulled taut—stronger and more absolute than ever.

“Uhhh, Charlie…” Moonie mutters, squinting through the smoke.

Huginn steps forward, crimson eyes gleaming with joyful malice. “Would you look at that. Little squishies writhing in the wreck.”

He’s right.

More bodies rise from the rubble, clad in stained white cloaks. Dented silver armor hangs from shattered limbs as they shimmer upright—agonized, wrong.

Human.

Or so you thought.

You don’t speak. You simply extend your hand—four pale fingers curling inward with the grim cadence of an executioner’s fist.

Bring me their heads.

And the Nox answer.

Rudolph roars, his stocky body rippling with dense muscle as he erupts from the earth like a geyser of brutality. Two Bone-Heads surge beside him.

Together they tear through ash and smoke, crashing down on three shambling Crusaders. Flesh bursts beneath their weight.

Fingers plunge through bone like butter. Silver burns them, but they do not slow. One throat is ripped open, another chest collapsed inward—

Rudolph’s hands slam into the collarbone of Lacrimosa herself.

You watch silver, leather, chainmail, skin, muscle, and sinew stretch and tear as he rips her apart. Blood fountains into the grass below. Her wide-brimmed hat spins away, landing at Rudolph’s feet.

“FIRST BLOOD IS MINE—GLORY TO THE BONE-HEADS—**** TO THE ZEA—”

He chokes.

A hidden Crusader rises behind him.

Silver flashes.

His mouth flew agape, eyes broad with surprise for only a moment. From between his bearded lips, slithered out slowly, a newly cut silver tongue, it's gleaming blade slicing open the corners of his maw as it pushed further through his face, eyes rolling back and dripping with black blood.

You jolted as if one of your rib bones were snatched out, eyes welling in silent agony as you watched Rudolph’s head thud into the blood-soaked grass beside Lacrimosa’s hat.

A silver-gauntleted hand grips the brim.

Lacrimosa rises—shaking, wounded—her severed arm clutched against her shoulder like a grotesque puzzle piece. Flesh writhes, bramble-like, knitting itself whole again. The restored arm places her hat squarely back on her head.

“Dayum! that hurts like a bitch!” she whines.

The other Crusaders rise with her.

Rudolph's battle-companions fall apart beneath silver blades, their deaths echoing through you like thunder through deep water. Their names were Strife and Pharos, You had exchanged maybe little more than a dozen words between the two... but as they died, you felt their pain, resonated with their fear, and it was as if you had watched two brothers slain before your very eyes.

Rudolph’s half-head stares skyward, terror frozen in his eyes as the glow animating his flesh gutters out. And the curse, along with his unlife slips away forever.