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.

“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.

They took a quick duck into a side-alley, the sound of buildings being stepped on turning into a constant background noise.

Dozens of Tangled poured in the end of the alley before they reached it, and still more came in from the road behind him.

“We’re going up!” Loth said, and a moment later, the five of them were buoyed up by her insects, floating toward the roof of the building.

Will smacked a leaping Tangled out of the air with Phantom Hand moments before it could grab hold of June. The creature tumbled backwards before its fingers dug into the building’s stone wall, joining the other grotesque limb-monsters chasing them.

They reached the roof of the building, able to see where a nearby kaiju was beginning to lay waste to the surroundings. This one was tall and slimy-skinned, with emaciated limbs that seemed to cut through buildings like butter.

And it was only two buildings away.

“Yes. Here is good.” Loth said as she scanned the rooftop. “Hold them off, Mason.”

Mason rolled up his sleeves and the explosions began to echo across the roof, hot and heavy.

The kaiju’s attention turned towards the staccato blasts, and it began lumbering towards them, it’s claws sinking into the building across the street.

The creature was so huge that it leaned over the entire street to peer at them, the building underneath it crumbling under its weight.

Loth’s trap went off.

Silk ropes whipped out of the crumbling building and slammed into the kaiju at high speeds, depositing a crimson powder across the creature’s chest that seemed to sink into its skin instantly.

In the back of his mind, Will felt a faint, insidious urge to abandon everything he was doing and attack the offending monster. Naturally this was outweighed by his understanding that that was a stupid idea.

Not so with the surrounding Tangled, who immediately began to swarm towards the kaiju, streaming past them by the hundreds.

The gigantic monster reared back as Tangled began to swarm up it, ripping and tearing to the best of their abilities.

“The Handlers?” Will asked. if they couldn’t deal with the Charm-based classes directing the Tangled, then this little distraction would be countered in a matter of minutes. Maybe less.

“I’ll spot them,” Alica said, unslinging her bow and scanning the surroundings.

June handed her a glowing arrow, which she nocked without looking.

“…there.”

Alicia snapped her bow up, drew back to her cheek and released in one fluid motion. The arrow flew out and pierced the stone wall of a nearby apartment building.

A moment later, the Tangled began ripping into the kaiju with renewed energy, that little voice in their head telling them to stop going quiet.

As they tore into the panicking kaiju, they began bleeding themselves as tiny bite marks appeared all over their bodies.

Do the kaiju have thorns on them? That’s insidious.

It seemed as though through some unknown process, Wyrd had buffed the kaiju with a fraction of his thorns, to make it significantly harder for the defenders of the city to get control of them.

But since the Tangled were the ones doing the damage…this actually worked just fine for Will.

The crazed Tangled only attacked harder as they were wounded, lashing out violently at the nearest thing…the kaiju and each other.

Across the city, Will saw the lizard-like kaiju get slapped with the Tangled bait, followed by the other two kaiju.

A moment later, all four kaiju were crawling with Tangled.

Using one problem to solve another.

“There’s another handler.” Alicia said, shooting high in the air, her arrow arcing across half the city before coming down on its hapless victim.

“I’m proud of you,” Will said, patting Loth’s head.

“It was your idea,” Loth said, peering up at him.

“Ah, but the execution…” Will clicked his tongue. “I couldn’t’ve.”

Across the city, Frederick Wyrd blinked into existence atop the highest tower in the city, burning an incredibly expensive consumable to escape from the Rotwitch.

It doesn’t matter if the rest of the Akul survived. I killed the Baron, and his successors are weak shadows of his power. Once the city is hollowed out, they’ll vacate if they wish to continue breathing.

In a matter of hours, the city would be deserted, crushed between his Tangled and Stephan’s hubris, every living soul within its walls dead or fled, leaving this prime territory his for the taking…

Wait, what are they doing?

In front of his eyes, the Tangled swarmed the kaiju like ants, whittling away at their flesh. Killing themselves in the process.

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING!?” Frederick bellowed at his Handlers placed throughout the city. This was explicitly what he didn’t want to happen.

Then he spotted a blue streak of an arrow fly from the top of a distant building and bury itself inside a far-flung location. A familiar location. Where they’d hidden one of the Handler/Tangled pairs.

A deep fury began to well up inside him. That arrow belonged to Alicia Zodiac. Alicia Zodiac belonged to William Oh.

William Oh had read his plan and ruined it.

“My lord,” One of his men appeared beside him, shoving a greater healing potion under his nose, but Frederick barely noticed it.

“Please, take the anti-curse before it takes root,” The man said.

That got his attention.

Frederick glanced down and began knocking back priceless medicines one after the other to flush his system and make sure no lingering effects stuck with him.

His fist clenched tight as he considered going down there and putting William Oh out of Frederick’s misery, but…

He glanced down at his missing finger.

Part of his Kit was missing. His Build was cracked. He needed to retreat.

Bakton and Marksman had the speed to take advantage of catching him out in the open without his whole kit. If they were hanging around…

I have to leave.

I HAVE TO LEAVE!?

Frederick’s eye twitched at the indignity of a whelp who wasn’t even halfway to his first class evolution forcing him to retreat.

William Oh is beyond control. He’s a…competitor.

Well. This has been a tremendous waste of time and resources, Frederick thought, straightening and taking a deep breath.

“Send word to gather up our acquisitions, we’re leaving.” He said, swallowing the rage.

Experimenting with Tangled required rare ingredients in bulk. Small improvements were being made every year, and Frederick was excited to see what could be done with Dimensional Oyster. Everything else at the auction was just icing on the cake.

“Umm…” The servant wrung his hands together nervously, drawing Frederick’s attention to him.

Frederick cocked a brow.

“It seems the auction items were stolen the moment the fighting broke out? Several of our operatives in the vault room and behind the stage were killed or wounded by…traps.”

BOOM!

The building cracked beneath him as he drove his fist into the worked stone.

Back at the Auction House, Mark Wyrd’s back was to the wall, his hands up in surrender.

The Rotwitch’s hand hovered a hair’s breadth from making contact with his neck.

“You little shit,” She said, her beautiful features twisted in anger. “Give me one good reason not to end you right here.”

Mark couldn’t think of one. Not a good one anyway.

“He’s Stephan’s son-in-law.” Ghoul said, approaching from behind the Rotwitch, his hand extended, but not quite going so far as to touch her.

“So? This little punk helped kill a Lord. Stephan, specifically.”

“If his son dies, Frederick doesn’t have any reason left to keep Stephan’s daughter alive. Stephan knew that,” Ghoul said gently. “He wouldn’t want you to kill Mark.”

The Rotwitch growled and pulled her hand back. “Fine.”

The emaciated undead watched Rotwitch stalk away, her posture radiating anger and frustration.

Once she was out of earshot, he turned back to Mark and spoke.

“Stephan wanted me to give you something. It was supposed to be after the auction, but I feel as though now would be a better time.”

Ghoul produced a wicked-looking dagger and offered it to Mark.

“He bade me to ask you to protect Amanda with it.”

Mark reached down and wrapped his fingers around the wound leather handle.

Dagger of Sublime Retribution

+10 Resistance

+7 Focus

+5 Strength

+30% Thorns Potency

+10% Lifesteal

When the wielder is dealt damage, all affixes are quadrupled for 3 seconds.

“He said you’d know what to do with it.” Ghoul said.

“I certainly do,” Mark said.

“Get outta here before your father wonders why it took you so long.”  Ghoul said, pointing over his shoulder.

Mark nodded and left, jumping from roof to roof to navigate the chaos.

The kaiju were dying not one building from where they had emerged, taking the Tangled with them, making the rest easy work for the city guard. The city itself was largely unharmed.

He found his father at the backup rally point outside the city, sitting in the center of a bustling camp, peeling his gloves off and removing the false rings from his maimed hand.

Still missing.

Void and Arms stood beside Frederick Wyrd, guarding the patriarch during this vulnerable moment.

Mark glanced at Void.

Void studiously looked away.

He glanced at Arms.

Arms did the same.

“Son,” Frederick said ominously, having missed the exchange, focused as he was on his hand. He began winding into one of his infamous punishment speeches as Mark approached. “I don’t suppose you know how William Oh knew which-“

Mark Wyrd lunged forward and buried the Dagger of Sublime Retribution deep in his father’s lungs.

His father’s eyes widened an instant before he exploded into viscera.

The weakness of the Rod of the Pacifist Healer was that…against another Thorns user, the damage reflected back to the user in each cycle would always be far higher than 100%. Nearly impossible to outpace. Especially not against the dagger and missing a vital piece of Kit.

“Baron Akul says ‘hi’.” Mark said as the entire camp stopped to stare at the pile of blood that used to be their Lord.

“Oh no, my Lord has been slain. What a godsdamned tragedy.” Void said in monotone.