Miles Away From Freedom

[MM = https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdJ_SGof2GI]

Miles’ **** had become hyper-focused, so the only bodies that fell to her hands formed, from overhead, the corpse-dotted line from the point she spotted the Purifier to the point she was taking bounding steps on the highest roof near the First Station. The red of the world faded to a blue and white mixture, and her hair returned to its prismatic nature, but everything still glowed almost neon as her bloodlust ran cool.

The Lawmen posted at the guard towers at every corner of the First Station had not remained; their enemies were beyond the range of their runecasting cannons, after all, and watching their fellows be slaughtered a short flight away was neither an order nor desirable. So Miles faced no resistance as she leapt onto the building, her body casting a brief shadow over the reliefs carved into its face. It took precious seconds—seconds she couldn’t bear—before she was finally greeted by one of the opening hatches. The Brave who so graciously opened it exchanged a brief glare with Miles.

Very brief indeed. Miles slammed her forearms into the joints of his arms, kicked his knee in, and continued bludgeoning and breaking the Dorani inside the armor until he and she crashed back through the portal he had just opened. With a stomp of her bare foot on his chin, his neck snapped inside the armor. The front of his helm was pinched between her foot and the ground and remained so even after she stomped off.

Miles still had most of her health, and it had ticked up past most of the damage she had received; she was ready for this fight and, she felt, very near reaching EX Level 3. Miles didn’t quite understand her “system” or powers, but she knew it was there to help her… and the **** it promoted had proven, time and again, more reasonable than anything else in this gods-forsaken existence. Whoever she was before, “Miles” was “born” on the Plate, and it was this system, its announcer, and its peculiarities that kept her from dying on the same.

At least, that was her hope.

She raised a guard as a second Brave entered and immediately charged her with his entire body; he was already looking for an enemy, though he barely registered who he was charging by the time he was committed. The shoulder tackle bounced against the blue counter-**** of Miles’ guard; she was shoved back, but undamaged. The same couldn’t be said for the Brave in the last twelve seconds of his existence.

Deeper below, the Purifier cursed his lack of familiarity with the headquarters of the Warden. It took him too long to find the central hub of her office, now corpse-laden but Warden-missing, and too long again to find a living Lawman to advise him. The black-armored elite grabbed hold of the false pelos-plated arm of the Hammer that saluted him so nervously... and only then did he realize that he was grabbing auxiliary arms, the only two this Dorsin was permitted to show… no doubt two of four. Dorsin Lawmen. Daedro almost flinched away from touching so degenerate a display. “The Warden! Where is she?!”

“P-Purifier, sir! We do not know; we saw her on this floor briefly, but just seconds ago on the first as well! There is an intruder-“

Daedro nearly threw the Hammer to the ground with the **** of his discontent. Worthless. But if they were on the ground floor, it meant one of two things: extraction through one of the checkpoints or an attack on the basement stores. But how would they have even learned of the stores? No... the Warden was likely dead, and now they wanted a trophy to display, a sign of their victory, perhaps. Daedro slowed his steps as he revisited this theory, leaving him to stand at the threshold of the elevation room… and thought back to the basement. The Peak’s sudden order to transfer the metals, and the keep-away order for me and my Shapers… did the Peak foresee this attack? Did she not want the Bitter Nines to notice…?

The spy. Zalla’s nervous expression flashed in Daedro’s mind, drawing a gleaming grin on his face.

Of course. Zalla had warned the Peak of the attack, and the Peak, in her wisdom, saved the metals while also providing a fortified target upon which the Bitter Nines could be broken. Brilliance… save for needing me here to find this blasted assassin. But if even I was not meant to be briefed on-

Daedro had been approaching the elevation room--that single chamber that joined every floor without stairs or lifts--when the shriek of a dying Dorani echoed from the floor above. Daedro thought he must have misheard its direction; if there was any fighting to still be going, it must have been below—

Two bare feet swung out from above and smashed into the shields hovering just before Daedro’s mutilated face, surprising him with the sudden **** and absurdity of the human feet that filled his vision. Despite the buffering of his defenses, Daedro was shoved back and nearly toppled over; he leaned on his back leg as he raised his halberd, and now he was faced with an unexpected wrinkle, one who was almost certainly not the assassin he was looking for…

… indeed, he was now faced with a ghost. “Miles,” he all but cursed. He had annihilated her… so how?! How had she survived?! There had been nothing left! Nothing. But how did she escape a blizzard of sharpened ice? “You should be dead.”

Miles, meanwhile, stood looking as healthy as ever. Her pale, bared skin was unmarred and her hair bloomed until it painted the ceiling. In her blue and white world of dire music, meeting her target here in this confined space was exhilarating… and the music took excited tones as she replied, “I get that a lot.”

Daedro shook his head. She taunts me? A fool, then. “Do you understand who you face?”

“Some dead asshole.”

Her fists smashed, once and then thrice, into the shaft of the unprotected halberd in the shielded warrior’s grip, surprising him with her suicidal ferocity. He attempted to make up ground by stabbing forward with its glowing blade... except it no longer existed. With her bare knuckles, she had bent the path of enchanting runes badly enough to vanish the energy of his weapon, rendering it a slightly bent staff of zeebok. Daedro abandoned his ruined weapon and struggled to make room in the corridor. The narrow hallways were not made for flight, and the elevation chamber was behind his enemy; more, Miles was unbowed in her efforts to keep up with him, using leaps towards him to proffer rapid kicks at his head as she hung in the air. The shield flickered around him as she did so; his metal eyes struggled to focus on her as he attempted to chant, “Coupé de l'hiver, né mort et-“

“Et vet mort nort et vet!” Miles shouted in her best impression of his gibberish, doing her best to trip him up as she brought her fists down in a hammer blow upon his skull.

Although his barrier held, his incantation did not. “Wretched little imposter-!” Daedro threw his forearms up and blasted them into hers before bringing his own, gauntleted fists down on either end of her collar bone, rocking her insides with the impact.

Miles almost backed away as she felt her life chip down hard from the sudden counter-attack. She struck back with knuckles at his gauntlets, except the barrier had suddenly sprung back up to keep her from rending the metal or bones therein. His barrier vanishes when he wants to hit me… so what does it do, predict my attacks? Predict his? Miles continued to press her attack, offering a low and wrenching knee into Daedro’s groin.

The shield covered him… but the two still looked down in a brief exchange before looking back up.

“Such insolence.” Daedro swung his elbow, barely grazing Miles’ cheek as she leapt back.

“I hear you don’t even have anything down there anymore.” She kicked his abandoned weapon up to her hands and swung it like a long club at his head. She cursed as he caught it in a reflexive grab… and held on.

“I heard you have too much.” Daedro bashed his other hand into the staff, slamming the Bitter Nine at the other end of the tug-of-war into the wall. Wit from the Purifier had helped to stun poor Miles, and that was enough time for Daedro to calmly add, “Gelé deux fois.” Two runes briefly flashed from lower plates on the front of his armor, and Miles was regretting her lack of clothing: cold winds blasted her back as the vapor in the air turned to pelting bullets of ice. Tiny chips of the inner-walls of the First Station came loose as the blast of hail struck twice: first as a shotgun blast from Daedro’s core and then again from the ice growing on every surface between him and Miles. Red blood and strips of flesh flew from Miles as her health bar was reduced to a third; her raised guard came too late for the majority of the attack, but it stayed up as he repeated, “Gelé deux fois!”

“Shit,” was all she managed as blue flickers denoted her guard’s attempt to minimize the painful ****.

EX Level 3!

Daedro paused his attack as he tried to understand this defense system his enemy now displayed. Did she have a similar shielding system to his own? Her hoarse chuckling sounded like victory to the Purifier; this was a familiar, delirious laugh, one of a powerful foe who realizes they’re on the verge of their (perhaps) first, and (surely) final, defeat. He focused on her body as he chanted, “Gelé deux fois-”

“Fucking shut up already,” Miles shot back as she let go.

Using these “EX moves” was as bizarre as fighting itself; Miles couldn’t tell anyone what her fighting even was, much less how she knew it, but it came as naturally as breathing… as long as one forgot to think about it. She needed only to desire a result, and her body moved as naturally as if she had willed her exact act. There was no disconnect there, between desire and muscle… it just worked differently for her. The same went for the moves that burned her “meter,” but those were always set effects or techniques, ones she had grown accustomed to and knew how to use… except this mysterious one. So she let go, and did what came naturally… and what came natural right now was to look at Daedro… to see that damned tongue of his wag to activate his insane runic weapons or powers at her… and to silence it.

Her right eye flashed blue.

Daedro’s view of Miles had turned black. From Miles’ view, it was as if a dome of ebon had fallen atop the Purifier’s head… but in truth, that was what had become of Daedro’s mouth and neck liquidating and exploding against the inside of his defensive shielding.

Confusion was all that remained as Daedro’s systems numbed him to the pain he should have now felt. His face, from the nose down to the front of his throat, had burst apart as if eviscerated with a ragged axe, but his sudden lack of a tongue was not what disturbed him. Even with all the mechanics his mother had installed, even with the depths of unnatural life his body now exemplified… his blood was blue. It had to still be blue. But whatever Miles had done had not only bypassed his defenses and ruined his visage, but also blackened the puree of his meats and vitae, made them stink of sulfur or tar, and made Daedro gurgle his screams in a panic. The emergency systems in his body kicked in as he was slowly stitched together again by healing runes, but thin flesh was slow to grow over the corrupted bits of him.

Miles was far less impressed, given what she could do with two levels of EX… but it was satisfying to actually shut Daedro up. She ran forward, the ice of his previous attacks crunching under determined steps, until he held his hands up and silently clapped them together violently.

As her fists came to bear down on those **** digits, she hadn’t expected him to detonate false fingers filled with explosives. The flash of light was all her eyes registered before the roar of igniting air and, swiftly, a final darkness.

Daedro wins!