Chapter 9-266: True Names and Faces (1/2)

WHAT NOW?, he asked calmly, eying the three sprawled females with approval for just how brutally they’d been taken down.

I pointed. “Tell me if that dais is part of the floor or laying on it. It doesn’t look like the same type of stone.”

He trotted across the fifty-foot distance to the center of the circle, and crouched down to touch the seam. FUSED, BUT SEPARATE, he confirmed.

I nodded. “And it’s too heavy for you to move.”

He pushed it slightly, and nodded confirmation.

I took a deep breath, frowning. “Are you willing to make that sacrifice, in order to free that angel?”

He looked at the tortured, screaming angel, tormented for who knew how many years to keep Hong Kong free of Cultivators. He knew the silver and emerald being was powerful just by its size and wing count, and would not have been at all surprised to learn that it was the Angelos’ direct superior.

This being would be an almighty help, and was a peerless champion of Good. The sacrifices and efforts it had made over the eons past, and those yet to come, were going to be exceptional, at the least.

YES, he nodded, rising to his feet.

I reached down, tore the oily metal helm off the erinyes there, her forward-jutting crimson horns gleaming against her dark red hair as I sent a pulse of healing through her skull, and she half-jolted awake.

My Hand began to sizzle with a lot of power. Her instinctive snatch at my hand paused in mid-move with unnatural stillness.

I turned her head to where the malebranche was screaming and writhing in a torrent of dark, dark hellfire, and she gasped despite herself as she stared at his impaled body, not having paid much attention to that fight.

“He’s going to burn, and eventually burn up, after suffering all the true torment that hellfire can unleash upon him. I have exactly one use for you. It requires that I know your True Name. I am not interested in your knowledge, your connections, your service, your advice, or your fealty in the slightest. I am only interested in your True Name.”

I was speaking in Mabrohoring, the diabolic tongue. My inflection was pretty good, and I was damn sure I was getting a hefty circumstance bonus on the Intimidation check, made only nicer by Master Fred striding through the hellfire surges, his skin burning away slightly, his injuries flaring in sympathy, and then being restored instantly, not enough to really do anything to him.

“If you do not give me your True Name in thirty seconds, I am going to impale you on a stela there, and watch you burn along with that angel.” Without effort, I lifted her off the floor, facing the planetar writhing in agony where he was impaled on that forsaken Altar. “You know nobody is going to rescue you if it means taking down their precious Ward. Make your choice.”

I probably could just rip it out of her mind, but it was more fun to feel her shudder as she realized all the truth in what I was saying.

At twenty-five seconds she opened her lips and uttered a distinctly unpleasant set of syllables that somehow sounded both seductive and sharp at the same time.

“Shirt,” I told Master Fred, who shrugged off his jacket and rolled up his t-shirt. The burning scars traced over his chest and side, lash wounds from a diabolic Whip that had never been allowed to truly heal, gleamed in anticipation of the pain they were dealing him with every motion.

He turned around, and revealed the Sealing Pentagram on his back.

I hissed out her True Name with some magical help, really hurt the back of the throat pronouncing that, adding, “You are Bound and Sealed!”

She sort of cried out as I shoved her face into that pentagram, which flared with the light of a Binder and sucked her in as she discorporated. The lines of light bent and reshaped, and when they dimmed, a perfect Tat of the armored erinyes was glaring at me from on his back.

“Idiot. Fiendslayer configuration, please.” I reached out my hand, and Master Fred passed his Sword back to me.

I felt the long line of things that he had killed in approval, not for the first time, and the overly Heavy Weapon rose easily enough in my hand, humming with a configuration designed to kill Evilborn forever.

I was perfectly aware that Master Fred did not actually have the power to Bind and Seal an erinyes that strong. His Binder ability was at Six, and even using his Warlock power to deter her, it wasn’t going to last long.

Then again, it didn’t have to, as I drove Idiot through the face of that Tat, into his heart, and out through the front of his chest.

Idiot was Bloodbound, and would phase right through him, totally untouchable by him if he didn’t use his ki when grasping it. The erinyes, although Bound to him in a spiritual state, was not so fortunate, and was impaled on a quasi-flaming Fiendslaying Weapon burning cheerfully with 5d6+8 or so of bonus damage, right into his Pactspace and the Pacts burning there.

His Pacts woke up at this intrusion... and as she writhed and tried to break out of the Tat, their collective Wrath reached up, dragged her back in multi-colored fires, and proceeded to Consume her.

His Hellpact was blazing hotly as the erinyes was Power-Consumed, feeding all that power cheerfully down into Master Fred. His bronzed skin went milky pale, almost as white as a Cultivator, but with a crimson edge to it. Two red horns erupted from his forehead, exactly identical to the ones that had burned away on the erinyes, and the fires that were swallowing her and eradicating her billowed up into great black raven’s wings... edged in silver.

He’d reached Ten, and taken his Human/4, the Atlantean Human template. Fully actualized, taking other Racial Levels was now a total possibility, and his Hungry Kiss Pact made that easy to do if he ran into a Pact Grantor from Hell. He could kill them, and ‘take their place’.