The Prince in Question Is Not Stable

Chapter 66: Duplicity

[Townsquare, Cescendra. A few moments ago.]

"I am a Warrior. And a mortal who fights from within the shadows has no right to defame me," Marbas growled.

Ymir jumped off his Katana’s hilt, which was pierced by black spikes that protruded from the ground, and landed breaths away from Marbas.

"Warrior? You call yourself a warrior?" He said and pointed at Marbas. The katana stabbed into the spike, which disappeared and manifested in his hand.

"Warriors never complain," he said.

"Warriors fight with honour, and I’m going to rip you to fucking shreds," Marbas growled, gripping his blood sword even tighter.

"Yeah, you seem to be doing a pretty good job at that." Ymir scoffed and disappeared the moment Marbas launched himself towards him.

*Shiing!*

Marbas parried the attack from his right, but still got a deep cut on his arm.

"Face me!" He growled.

*Shiing!*

"Already am," Ymir replied, appearing in front of him.

Raum didn’t have the time to roar again; his stance lowered, weight shifted subtly across the fractured ground.

He looked in front of him, and Ymir was just...standing there casually.

Raum was being outmatched in speed, one of the specialities of the Marbas’s bloodline. He was furious.

"Rahh," he roared in frustration, and moved.

This time, the ground didn’t just explode beneath him, but a massive crater was formed on the ground. It was so fast that even the air didn’t react, and he moved even faster than before.

His blade came in low, angled to sever Ymir, then rose into a diagonal cut.

Ymir’s body shifted slightly as the blade followed its path in front of him and made a horizontal slash.

Marbas kicked the ground off mid swing, and ducked back.

Neither of their blades made contact with the other.

From the edge of the dome, Janus exhaled sharply.

He had long since stopped trying to follow them visually.

But he had come to notice something. For long, Ymir was following a pattern, a pattern to reduce the options of Marbas one by one.

Earlier, Marbas was near the rift. But as he kept losing, he strayed far from it.

Raum’s powers were being assessed. A calm demon was being turned into a monster that follows instincts rather than his mind.

Ymir wasn’t just defeating Raum; he was probing his limits.

Raum straightened, and he was starting to feel the dread of his situation.

He had no escape; no one within his family knew of his appearance in the mortal realm. It was meant to be a casual hunt for him.

But he was equally matched in power, density, and mostly, outmatched in speed. Not to mention the fact that Janus has stopped intervening for a while now.

His left arm was severed, he’s sustained several deep wounds, and there were no demon corpses around to manipulate anymore.

His bloodline authority was now his liability.

"Let’s take it up a notch," Ymir said, and manifested his other katana.

’Take it up a notch?’ Marbas thought. ’Wasn’t he going all out-’

The space inside the whole dome turned dark. Dark enough to make the red in Ymir’s eyes make them look like the eyes of a predator.

The flames scattered across the ruined ground dimmed; even the flames that draped Raum’s eyes were losing their lives.

Raum’s instincts were screaming at him to move. For the first time, the battle began, and he hesitated.

The space around him was starting to just... feel wrong.

He could see Ymir standing in front of him, but he couldn’t define the distance between them.

"Tricks..." He exhaled slowly.

His stance lowered further. If this were deception, then he would just break through it.

Ymir stood ten paces away, and his blades were catching the light of the sudden gleam in the red of his eyes.

He took one step, and then was standing an inch away from Marbas.

Marbas roared, and the air tore behind him.

His blood sword came in a horizontal arc meant to split him apart.

But he didn’t dodge.

He just stepped within the path of the swing and raised his katana in a lazy, perfect arc.

<<>>

Marbas’s sword met his blade, and just...exploded.

Black shards launched everywhere, digging into the barrier.

Janus stepped aside to avoid the shards and just nodded in looking at them.

Janus smirked and flicked his fingers, manifesting another magic circuit, looking at Raum.

What was left in Marbas’s hands was the hilt of his blood sword.

Marbas tried to run in order to duck, but the moment he thought so, dark chains wrapped around his legs.

Enough to delay him by a second.

"You-" he roared and created a diversion by bringing his blood spikes again, but the moment they protruded from the ground...

<<>>

That shift in reality again, it severed each and every spike.

Before he could even process what was happening, Ymir stabbed him in the throat.

A clean stab.

The blade was made of aura, and it burned the very inside of Marbas.

Janus flicked his fingers again, and the chains disappeared.

Marbas staggered back, clutching his neck. He wasn’t healing.

Black blood poured between his fingers, hot from the heat of the katana in his throat.

He swung what remained of his broken blood sword, a jagged shard of hilt and steel in a wild overhead smash.

Ymir gripped the wrist of Marbas and swung his other blade in a vertical arc, severing his arm off his body.

Marbas’s severed arm had not yet hit the ground when Ymir let go of him.

Ymir observed it closely as scales turned back into pale white skin and threw it away.

The arm struck the fractured ground with a dull, wet sound.

Raum staggered back. He tried to respond, tried to regenerate, or just do anything, or something, but his bloodline was giving away as the katana in his throat corrupted the very being of him.

"It..." Raum roared in grugles of his own blood. "It wouldn’t end good fo-"

Ymir gripped the katana that was stabbed in Raum’s throat and twisted it.

"You’re already dead." He said. "It looks creepy when the dead talk,"

Ymir’s aura flared outward, pressing against Raum’s body.

Raum dropped to his knees. Ymir tilted the hilt of the katana, cranking it up and lifting Raum’s head to meet the red glow in his eyes.

"This...is a view worth fighting for," he smirked, and pulled out his blade.

Then swung it wildly, severing the head of Marbas as it dropped on the ground, and rolled a few times before coming to a halt.

Silence...followed.

Ymir just simply stood there as Janus walked towards him.

Janus stood alongside Ymir, looking at the severed head and then the corpse.

He then turned around to spot one of the arms Ymir threw, and the other at the far centre near the rift.

He then looked back at the corpse.

"Is he dead?" he asked.

"..." Ymir didn’t say anything for a moment.

He looked at a body with no hands and head, and then back at Janus.

"No, he’s sleeping, try waking him up," he then replied.

"..." Janus took out a small black and silver ring that belonged to Ymir from his inner coat pockets, and handed it to him.

Ymir took the ring, but didn’t wear it right then.

At that exact moment, the corpse started moving.

It kept shivering as flames similar to the ones that draped Marbas’s eyes burned the severed head and arms away.

"Oh, he’s really waking up," Janus spoke.

"..." Ymir and Janus kept looking at the corpse, trying to understand what was happening, and it was then that it clicked to him.

The head and the arms burned to ashes as the corpse kept sinking from within, as if being sucked into one single point.

The demonic core was compressing the corpse into it.

The massive body folded in on itself with sickening, audible cracks. Ribs snapped inward, spine collapsed, legs folded and crumpled, bones ground into powder, blood evaporated with the smell of rotten eggs.

The entire corps shrank, smaller and smaller, until it melted into a black dot, no larger than a coin, hovering an inch above the stone.

"Is it a reward for defeating him?" Janus asked.

"That’s one way to put it," Ymir replied. "You’d better reinforce this barrier."

The dot pulsed in black flame once.

Then again.

And then it collapsed into absolute nothingness.

For half a heartbeat, the dome was perfectly still.

<<>>

A column of black and crimson flame erupted upward from the empty space where the dot had been, punched straight through the dome’s ceiling with a deafening crack.

Shards of dark demonic energy seeped into the barrier itself.

Then the whole dome that draped the centre of Crescenda exploded into nothingness.

Waves of fire surged across the Crescendra, swallowing entire cities, streets, rivers, towers, and the castle of the Valante family.

The sky above lit up as if the sun itself had descended.

The whole County of Crescenda...just exploded.