Chapter 3142.2: Gutted Prey (Part 2)
3142 Gutted Prey (Part 2)
"Not a clue, sorry." The Chronicler bent down and picked up Ragnarök, appreciating its perfect balance. "Marvellous. My master was right. When Verhen remade War into Ragnarök, he removed the self-destruction protocol."
"It would have been weird otherwise." The Zouwu shrugged. "Verhen was about to have a baby and probably wanted his spawn to inherit the blade. I'll take it as well."
"Don't push your luck, Zouwu!" V'horr used his mana to imprint the angry blade. "Verhen may have been a monster, but he was also a great Forgemaster and received Salaark's teachings.
"I'm taking his equipment with me. My master needs it to crack the secrets of Creation Magic."
In response to the imprint, metal spikes erupted from the hilt, piercing the Chronicler's skin and drawing his blood.
"Right! The blood imprint. The rumors were true!" He said in excitement as the power of the blade flowed inside his body. "What do you think you are doing?"
Strider had unsheathed his blades again and a flash of light marked the activation of his prided bloodline ability.
"Whatever you think you are doing, stop it." The Zouwu said, casting his best spells as fast as he could. "I don't want to fight you."
"What do you mean?" It was what V'horr tried to say.
"Uat u 'uh min?" Was what actually came out of his bloated lips and swollen throat.
The elf's entire body looked like an overinflated balloon and it kept expanding.
"Speak for yourself!" Ragnarök replied, its voice flat yet filled with unbridled fury as V'horr exploded like a gory firework.
"More loot for me." Strider circled around the angry blade, being careful to avoid the corpses. "You're not much without Verhen and I can afford the time to find a way to tame y-"
A clawed hand pierced through his back and came out of his chest, holding the Zouwu's still-beating heart.
["Hey, pal. One question. Who the fuck is Verhen?"] (AN: the words between square brackets are in English.)
In their success, V'horr and Strider had failed to notice how the black blood formed a bridge between the neck and the severed head instead of just spreading out. The Zouwu had missed how the blood on his blades had fallen toward the Abomination's corpse, not vertically.
[My name is Derek.] Abominations can't die simply because they are already dead.
Drilling more holes than Swiss cheese in their bodies or severing their limbs was pointless. They were made of energy and to kill one, that energy had to be neutralized.
"What? How?" Strider gurgled blood, but he was an Awakened.
All he needed to recover was one breath.
It was the reason Ragnarök exploited his distraction to pierce his right lung. Now the Zouwu and the Abomination were pinned together, but while the angry blade wouldn't hurt its master, Ragnarök hated Strider.
["Answering a question with another is rude and I'm too hungry to give a fuck, kitten."] The Abomination's maw opened, revealing two rows of pristine white fangs that found the Zouwu's jugular with ease.
Derek drank the blood along with the life force until only ashes were left of Strider's body.
Ragnarök flew into his hand with joy, emitting a shrill sound of excitement as it felt his master's mana purge the elf's. The angry blade took care to store the Ears inside one of Lith's dimensional amulets.
Ragnarök remembered Lith and Solus often talking about the artifact and the blade knew how important it was to them. Everything else, Ragnarök left it behind in the hope it would serve as clues to find its master.
The semi-consciousness of the blade wasn't enough to understand the situation but Ragnarök could feel in their blood bond that something was wrong with Lith.
["What the fuck is this? Where the fuck am I?"] Now that the hunger had subsided, Derek had finally the focus to look around.
The last thing he remembered was blowing his own brains out in an empty warehouse, yet instead of waking up in a hospital, he found himself on the site of what looked like a meteor impact.
["Nothing to the north, east, west, and south."] Ragnarök purred in reply, drawing his gaze.
It was then that Derek noticed the armor, the spell-holding rings, and his own reflection on the blade's surface. The face he knew was gone, replaced by a black slate twisted in a grimace of hatred.
["Well, Toto, I'm afraid this isn't Kansas."]
***
Distar Reason, Lutia County, Verhen Mansion, less than ten minutes later.
The members of the Hand of Fate had several protocols in place in case something happened to one of them. For example, the moment a rune disappeared from one of their amulets, it triggered an alarm.
If the rune belonged to a fellow member of the Hand of Fate, it triggered a red alert. Ryka the Titania wasn't on any case at the moment. Strider had simply lied to explain her absence.
As soon as his rune faded into nothingness, she checked his records, discovering that the Zouwu had talked several times with Lith and that they had spoken earlier that same morning.
"Why didn't that fucker tell me anything?" She wanted to cry, but the thirst for revenge overpowered her.
Ryka tried to call Lith, but his amulet was unavailable and so was Solus'.
Not knowing what to do, she went to the Verhen Mansion to demand an explanation.
"What do you mean, Strider is dead and Lith is unreachable?" Kamila's shock was so pure that the Titania didn't doubt her honesty for one second.
Yet it left all of Ryka's questions open and posed a few more.
"Exactly what I just said." The Titania replied. "Strider wasn't working on any case. I already went to his house and there's no corpse there. He must have been lured in an ambush, but how did they predict his movements?"
"Okay, now I'm sure you're full of it!" Kamila was getting angrier by the second and the fact that Lith's and Solus' amulets were always offline only added fuel to the fire. "Strider did work on a case! The Menadion's grimoire case!
"And he didn't talk with Lith about the weather, but about a lead. I was there. I heard it with my own ears!"
"What?" Ryka double checked the Council database, finding no trace of updates on the case. "Are you sure? We were supposed to investigate it together for Lith but the last time I spoke with Strider, he told me it was a dead end."
"A dead end?" Kamila called and failed again. Both amulets were inside the pocket dimension and with the bond broken, even if Lith was in a sane state of mind he wouldn't have access to it.
"Varon, no Vidun Phorr." As a Royal Constable, Kamila was used to memorize the most important details of every case. "Rogue awakened about thirty years old, village of Xant. Does this sound like a dead end to you?"
"Where did you hear that?" Ryka imputed the name in the database, obtaining an instant hit.
"Do you have moss in your ears?" Kamila bright yellow aura burst out with greenish streaks as her fury reached its peak. "Strider spoke with Lith about this guy. I was there. Do you understand?"