Chapter 1756: Fatality
Chapter 1756: Fatality
One leg crossed over the other.
Pink eyes burning like dying stars from a face shrouded in shadow, and those eyes were looking down at the invader the way one looks at an insect that crawled onto one’s dinner plate.
Nyxara sat on her throne in the deepest reach of the vessel she had claimed long before this piece of scrap metal ever touched his palm, and the killing intent that radiated from her hit the blade’s will before her voice did.
Every tendril of the relic’s hunger froze in place.
"Do you have any idea," her voice rolled through the vessel, low and shaking with a rage so tightly leashed it vibrated, "what you have put me through today?"
The blade’s will tried to recoil. The presence on the throne didn’t let it.
"Your futile little efforts forced MY Ruin to fight for his life!" The words carried the pressure of hours of caged fury. "I watched him bleed. I watched him take hits that would have killed anything on this continent ten times over and I could do nothing. NOTHING!"
The word cracked through the vessel, and the blade’s will shrank deeper into its corner.
"I sat in here and PRAYED. Me. The Primordial Demon of Lust! Praying like some trembling virgin clutching her skirt beneath an altar because MY man was out there breaking himself and I couldn’t lift a single finger to help him!"
The rage behind that admission seared through the space hotter than the spell.
"And now you dare crawl into his palm and think you’ll conquer him from the inside?" Her voice dropped to a whisper that carried from the throne as clearly as the screaming had. "Some piece of scrap metal that’s been feeding on nobodies for a few hundred thousand years thinks it can take what’s mine?"
Her chin rose slowly until she was looking down the line of her nose at the relic’s will with eyes that burned fiercer than Quinlan had ever seen before.
Then, she spoke in a deep, hostile voice.
"Know your place, trash."
The blade’s will broke.
The thing that had terrified wielders for hundreds of thousands of years folded under a gaze that had watched civilizations rot, and what remained tried to flee, tried to curl inward, tried to become small enough to escape notice, but Nyxara’s presence was everywhere and there was nowhere inside Quinlan’s vessel that she hadn’t already claimed.
"Kukuku..."
One demonic thigh uncrossed and recrossed the other way on the throne as she watched the remnants of the relic’s will writhe and claw at nothing.
The sadistic, domineering woman beneath every layer of playful seduction Nyxara wore for Quinlan’s sake surfaced in full.
"Much better."
The fury was still there, but satisfaction had joined it, and the pink eyes tracking the relic’s throes blazed with vicious, savage pleasure.
Within seconds, the last shred of the relic’s will went silent and still.
’I had it, you know,’ Quinlan muttered dryly, and the killing intent vanished from the throne as if someone had blown out a candle.
The chin that had been tilted back in regal contempt dipped. The crossed legs drew together. The pink eyes that had just cowed an ancient entity into silence softened into pure, naked adoration, and the whiplash nearly gave Quinlan vertigo.
Her presence brushed against his existence through the bond, impossibly gentle after the violence that had preceded it, and her voice slipped into his mind.
"I know, my beloved Ruin. I know you had it."
Every edge was gone. What remained was devotion so naked it had no business coming from a woman of her stature. "But I watched you fight all day... watched you bleed and break yourself against terrible odds..."
Her presence curled around his, warm and close and intoxicating, wrapping itself through every corner of him.
"I might be a little biased when I say this..." she whispered into his very soul. "But it was the most magnificent thing I have ever witnessed, and I have lived a very, very long time."
The warmth deepened, thick with adoration and something far more dangerous. "So as your woman... The least I can do is handle the scraps so my adorable Ruin can rest. You’ve earned that, haven’t you? You’ve been so brave today..."
Her voice dropped lower, softer, dripping with a tenderness that had teeth hidden somewhere behind it.
"So reckless..."
A pause. The impression that reached him through the bond carried pink eyes blinking up at him once, slow and measured and devastating.
"You don’t hate me for stepping in, do you?"
Quinlan looked at the silhouette on the distant throne, at the Primordial Demon of Lust who had gone from sadistic executioner to adoring maiden in the space of a single heartbeat, and despite everything his body had been through today, his mouth curved.
’...What am I going to do with you, you impossible woman?’
A joyous, demonic purr answered his question.
"You can start by visiting me in the Soul Realm, alone... I’ll put Mimi to sleep and..."
Outside, the blade went dead in his hand.
The obsidian edge lost its feverish glow, the trembling stopped, and what remained in Quinlan’s grip was an inert piece of metal that weighed nothing more than a sword should.
He held it up and gave it a lazy swing.
Then another, rolling his wrist through a few basic cuts that carved silent arcs through the frost-tinged air, testing the weight and balance of a relic older than most civilizations the way a man tests a blade at a stall.
On the ground, Kaede stared up at him with an expression that suggested she was watching someone juggle lit dynamite.
"He conquered it?!" Myrasyn shouted while frantically shaking Isveth, as if the Shrine Maiden could provide her with the spoilers she so desperately needed for this fantasy tale she was currently witnessing.
The dwarven war chief was grinning ear to ear.
Quinlan flicked through a clean diagonal that would have bisected anything standing in front of him and nodded to himself. ’Not bad. Decent balance for something that old-’
His pocket ring pulsed.
[Soul Reaper] erupted from the ring on its own, pitch-black steel trailing ghostly pale flames as the saber tore free and hung in the air beside him, vibrating with an indignation that was almost audible.
Before Quinlan could so much as blink, the saber mirrored the exact diagonal he’d just swung with the obsidian blade, only faster, sharper, and with a flair that bordered on petty.
’...’
He swung the obsidian blade again, a horizontal slash this time. [Soul Reaper] answered immediately, cutting the same arc a half-second ahead of him with pale flames hissing through the air.
The saber was mimicking every motion he made and doing it better, and the ghostly flames along its edge flared a fraction brighter with each pass as if to make absolutely certain the point was being made.
Then, having apparently decided the demonstration was sufficient, [Soul Reaper] planted itself into his free hand with a firm, decisive slap of hilt against palm.
Quinlan looked down at the pitch-black saber in his grip. It radiated pure, jealous indignation. He glanced at the inert obsidian relic in his other hand, and a low, genuine chuckle broke out of him.
"Did you really think I’d replace you?" He tucked the obsidian blade into his pocket ring and gave [Soul Reaper] a single appreciative spin before sheathing it.
The pale flames guttered once, satisfied, and went dark.
The arena didn’t know what had just happened inside the Primordial Villain.
They only knew what they saw: a man who had grabbed a cursed relic barehanded, tamed it, tested it against his own weapon, and then put it away because his saber threw a tantrum.
Silence held for one breath. Two.
Then the crowd erupted.