Godslayer Lysette: Chapter 204

Chapter 204: Lysette's Wrath

Julianna sprinted at Lysette in a blinding flash, using the radiance of her sword to obscure her movements.  She was wise enough not to directly charge her, instead employing visual illusions to obfuscate her approach.  Lysette played along, sidestepping the phantasms and their spectral attacks before they dissipated back into nothingness.

When Julianna got within ten feet, she switched tactics, creating three more duplicates which approached Lysette from different sides.  All four readied different attacks— a thrust, a pair of horizontal slashes, and a downward-slanted stroke from the real body.  Lysette ignored the specters, instead blocking Julianna’s attack with her own blade before countering with her flail whip.

Julianna backflipped to avoid Lysette’s attack before manifesting a second greatsword equal in size to the first.  She charged once more, even faster this time, and without any illusions to obfuscate her approach this time.  Lysette loosed her vine whips toward Julianna, and was surprised when her blades managed to slice them to ribbons.

“Don’t underestimate me!” Julianna shouted.

She swung her sword once more, firing a bright crescent of light at Lysette.  Lysette raised her own blade to block the attack, shattering the crescent into myriad shards of light that ricocheted in every direction.  One nicked her cheek, drawing a pinprick of blood before healing.

Lysette refocused herself as Julianna once again closed the gap between the two, bathing both swords in the same blue-white light as before.  Wave after wave of glowing crescents of light flew toward Lysette even faster than before.  And for a couple of seconds, Lysette was once again eager to play along, slashing and shredding away at the attacks just as quickly as they appeared.

But when Julianna again closed the gap and attacked with twin slashes from either direction, Lysette twisted space and time, appearing just behind where she had landed.  She placed a hand on Julianna’s shoulder and activated her Essence Siphon, pulling a tiny fraction of the swordswoman’s Essence from out of her Spark.

Julianna was unfazed by the assault and ordered her subordinates to attack.  The clanging of metal armor ratcheted up as thirty soldiers broke out of formation and took flanking positions, encircling Lysette.  With her left eye and aurasight alike, Lysette took inventory of each soldier and assessed their Essence coefficients, targeting the easiest escape route.

She found it a moment later, at five o’clock to Julianna’s twelve, and dashed through the soldiers at top speed, knocking out the three in her path with a punch that bent their steel cuirasses.  A moment later, she warped upward, watching and buying whatever time she could for the other students to solidify the town’s defenses.

High above, her avatar continued to survey the landscape for any signs of assault from another force.  She saw none, but another, more insidious happening caught her attention.  The pale moon high overhead glowed with fiery crimson rays that pulsed down from the sky.

Lysette clenched the Periapt of Stability around her neck and streamed a tiny bit of Essence through it, negating the power-sapping effects of Asterion’s Blood Moon.  As she stared at Julianna with both bodies, she remembered the attack on Osstia.  She remembered soldiers attacking her village, slaughtering her people.  The mocking scowl from Lacos and his minions as they watched her powerlessly struggle against the inevitable.  And all the death, the decay, the senseless theft of human life.

Rage filled her entire being as Julianna took to the skies and again charged at her, firing beams which now glowed a sickly vermilion.  As Lysette watched her prey fly toward her, her demonic instincts screamed at her, urging her to kill.  Her Reciprocity burned brightly, telling her to protect the people of Ciricu, that she owed them her protection after everything that had transpired in recent weeks.  But even after everything, some inviolable part of her will overpowered both, but only just.

“All of you, get out of here!  Now!” Lysette screamed.  Not just an anguished plea, but a raw, primal bellow.

Julianna pressed her attack, but as her sword dug into the left side of Lysette’s torso, Lysette stood motionless, gripping it with her right hand, drawing the Essence out of it bit by bit until it shrank down to its original size.  She crunched the metal into pieces and threw the broken hilt toward the ground with all the force she could muster, generating a sonic boom in its wake.

“I–  I can’t hold myself back much longer!” Lysette screamed, tears flowing down her eyes.  “If you don’t get out of here now, I am going to kill every one of you!  Please don’t make me!  Grr!  Oww!”

Julianna paused and flew back, almost by instinct.

Lysette’s breathing was both heavy and loud as her wound stitched itself shut.  “All of you, what are you doing?  Run!  Now!”

“I’m sorry, Lyse.  But my orders are absolute.  I cannot back down now.  It would be treason.”

Lysette gritted her teeth.  “Then all of you can just die!”

She teleported just behind Julianna and pierced her through the stomach with her ice blade, letting the crystalline weapon glow in the crimson moonlight as it thrust into the air.  Though Julianna tried to heal her wounds, Lysette watched with demonic glee as blood spurted toward the ground, staining the snowy white in the same scarlet as the sky overhead.

Lysette slashed her blade, flinging Julianna’s body to the ground with a thud as she eyed the combatants, searching for the second-strongest among them.  She found her target a moment later, another woman, short in hair and stature alike.  One quick teleport, one blow to the back, followed by a pair of quick slices to sever the tendons in her ankles.

Jump, slice, punch, kick.  Jump, slice, punch, kick.  Debilitate a victim, leave them to rot.  Leave them to suffer and freeze on the battleground.  Ensure that they never know the mercy of a quick death.  Repay the suffering that the people of Osstia had faced three moons ago.

One by one, in their foolish stubbornness, soldiers fell.  They tried so hard to resist, but each and every one who did fell screaming or whimpering or groaning into the dirt.  As the twelfth victim fell,  Lysette raised her blood-soaked sword into the air, letting the blood moon’s crimson rays refract through manifold faces of ice.

To show the foolish Archduke of Terea what fate befell him if he continued down this path.  To show certain so-called All-Seeing-Eye the consequences of his actions for again assisting in actions against her with his loathsome blood moon.  And last, but not least, to show a certain Lady of the Darkness what fate would befall any who threatened her new home, despite whatever past they might have once shared.

The remaining soldiers, all of whom had before looked smug now shuddered at Lysette.  She licked her lips as she walked toward her next morsel.  Her target, a middle-aged mustached man, quivered as she approached.  When she reached within five yards, he turned around and sprinted back toward the north at a mad dash.  Lysette shook her head.

“Too late.”  She flew across the surface, delivering a backhand that sent the man flying into a nearby tree.  And with a mental command, a branch of that tree slammed him into the snowy ground near its trunk.

She had been keeping an eye on the detachment of soldiers throughout the town.  Of the thirty-nine who participated in the attack, four were killed and seven more wounded by Mirae’s initial assault.  Another twelve fell by Lysette’s hand and were hanging on death’s doorstep.  Those nineteen would live should they survive their injuries, depowered to ensure they would never again threaten the people Lysette loved.

Twelve more had the decency to finally run, routed in despair, and for that tiny bit of intelligence, would be allowed to escape with their lives and Sparks intact.  But four damned fools still dared to carry out their mission even now.  And for their crimes, not even that tiny bit of restraint Lysette’s better side could still muster would save their lives.

“Mirae!”

“Yes, Lyse?”

“There are nineteen soldiers here, wounded, but still alive.  Stabilize them.  I will drain them as I did Captain Potani and leave them as ordinary humans.”

“Y– Yes.  As you will, Lyse.”

“Serrena?”

“I hear you.  And good work with those assholes.”

“I’m going to need your help collecting the bodies when I’m done here.”

“Do you need any help?”

“No.  These bastards are my prey.”

Lysette twitched her sword and flew toward the advancing soldiers.  Ten seconds later, Lysette slew the first soldier and extracted its Spark, leaving its bloody body to rest in its own piss.  She smiled as she felt a surge of new energy enter her.  And she embraced the demonic glee of taking a worthless life that had been so generously and vociferously sacrificed to her cause.

The second two came no slower than the first.  A petty resistance.  A few small clumps of stone from the first, each batted away like paper by a pair of hardened vines.  A pair of fireballs from the other, quenched into steam by iceballs of equal size.  They ran in opposite directions, each hoping in vain that perhaps the other might survive.

Lysette could only smirk.  A quick teleport thirty yards to the west.  One clean stroke of her blade.  Head and body separated, Spark extracted.  Another teleport, seventy-five yards just south of due east.  Lysette looked into the eyes of a middle-aged woman, not much different in appearance from her own late mother.  Yet more rage built up within her, the blood moon and the woman’s face a painful reminder of exactly what this worthless war had cost her personally.

“M– Mercy…”

Lysette scowled.  “Why do you beg for mercy now?  Why didn’t you accept my mercy when I offered it to you?  Not once, not twice, but thrice?  And you didn’t even have the honor or decency to fight me like the others.  For their honor, for the decency of actually facing me in combat as opposed to going after civilians, each of them will survive the night.  But you, a coward who ran from your fight so you could go commit some war crimes?  The only mercy you get is death.”

A vine around the neck, crushing windpipe, carotid, and spine in a single fluid motion, and her now Spark-less body fell lifeless at her feet.  Lysette shed no tears, nor did she mourn the life of a woman who chose the path of killing, who refused the offer of surrender multiple times.  Who, even after her commander and lieutenant were beaten, chose to continue fighting.  Chose to threaten the lives of innocent men, women, and children who never asked to be part of such fighting.

One wretched soul remained.  One final teleport.  One clean thrust through the back, piercing the chest of the man who dared come so close to Osstia’s border with hostility in his heart and steel in his hand.

Lysette looked around one final time with her avatar’s body.  No sign of further assault in any direction.  For a minute she remained fixed, focusing her attention on sweeping the area one final time for any signs of ambush.  Only once she was certain that nothing else was approaching did she finally retract her blade and rejoin Mirae.

She wrapped her arms around her love’s waist and held them close, mixing her aura with theirs and helping to stabilize the wounded soldiers.  Soon after they hugged, the blood moon dissipated into pale moonlight.  Earlier than normal, but perhaps it was just Asterion cutting his losses and conserving his strength for future assaults.

“Thank you, love,” Lysette said.  “Once we finish stabilizing everyone, I’ve asked Serrena to help gather the bodies.  Come morning, I’ll need everyone’s help to put together some makeshift prison cells for everyone.  But first, our companions and the people of Ciricu need sleep, and I need to get to work disempowering everyone before they wake.”

Chapter 203: https://www.patreon.com/posts/112051718

Table of Contents: https://www.patreon.com/posts/101896170

Chapter 205: https://www.patreon.com/posts/112051728