“You know you can’t kill me,” Peter said. He flicked the vials in his hands into the air and placed his palms together once more. The vials split apart and a new fluid came into the air. As it approached Laurence the fluid quickly became a large gas cloud that filled the alleyway. Laurence stepped back, but as he did, Peter lobbed another small bag and clapped to split it apart. From the front and above, Laurence was blocked. The only thing he could do was retreat.
Before, when he whipped apart the dust and fluid clouds, he could hold them off with a simple spiral of his hammer. Now he was not so confident. The dust and fluids all seemed lethal to him, and unlike Peter, Laurence could not just come back to life after being a death blow. This did not mean he could not be beaten. Laurence could just not quite work out how to finish it yet. The fog moved forwards and Peter pulled out two more bags of dust. He smirked and threw them into the cloud then clapped and watched as the cloud split into three colours. As the colours rippled through the cloud and reached the ground, they tore apart the dirt and walls either side. One dust necrotized, one dust melted, and one dust decomposed. Either way, there was nothing that could keep standing after the cloud moved Laurence’s way.
“Why are you even bothering? If you cannot kill me, you cannot stop me. I will find her. She’s my little Rose. My...” He paused for a moment. “She’s my songbird. She has such a lovely voice, truly one of a kind. That’s why I want to keep her. Can’t you understand? I just... I just want her to be... all mine”. He trailed off, looking wistful for a moment.
“But she doesn’t want it. That’s the reason why my friends got the information on you. That’s how we set up this trap”. Laurence smiled. It was a twisted grin, one full of rage. “And now you’re going to pay. If I can’t kill you. I’m going to make sure you get back to your family. Your clan can deal with you without any arms or legs. You’re going to pay for breaking my men”. He raised Jormugand and began spinning the hammer around him in a figure eight. The cloud closed in on the older boy, but as the speed of his hammer increased it began to split around him. The wind and dust whipped around Laurence’s form as his hammer got quicker and quicker. Within seconds it was like there were two thick wheels acting as a shield for Laurence from the poisonous cloud that had surrounded him. The more he span, the quicker it dispersed into the walls and the floor, and even back towards Peter. Peter smirked. He had nowhere to run, but Laurence could see that he did not mind wasting a few more souls, especially not if they were connected to Laurence.
Finally, after most of the dust had dispersed, Laurence sprung at Peter. His hammer still spinning and rage building. The boy in front of him was so arrogant, so willfully ignorant. He would not listen to Laurence, so Laurence did the one thing he knew how to. He would crush him under his hammer. As Laurence reached within reasonable range he screamed the word “Gamaliel!” and twisted the hammer high in the air. It ignited as he span the great weapon and slammed it into Peter. The blade slid through Peter’s right shoulder and leg before he had a chance to react, and then smashed into the ground, causing the entire area to tremor. Shards of thoroughly damaged dirt and stone sprung into the air and covered Peter as the flesh around his now severed arm and leg steamed and stank.
Peter screamed and bit his own tongue, blood bubbling out of his mouth as he laughed and choked on it. The fetid dirt covered him and burned at his skin, letting the untouched flesh and muscle bubble up and weep pus. The child of Mephisto was covered in varying hues of sickness, blacks, purples, greens, greys, even browns and reds. There was no hope for him, but that just made Laurence feel angrier. He already knew that the worst thing he could do in the fight was kill the boy, but then he had an idea. Peter was not dead yet, which meant that Laurence could still keep him from harming Rose and his gang again. All he had to do was run to the main outpost of the Mephisto clan and deliver the troublemaker to them. He hoped they would have plans and punishments in place for when a golden child stepped out of line like Peter had.
Wrapping the boy in Inklight, Laurence dragged him out of the alleyway, momentarily stopping to pick up his Inferno Flowers as he left. He leapt up to the roof of a low building and began swinging the golden cocoon that held Peter around like a ball and chain. He could not risk letting the boy near him, even in the state that he was in. Peter was simply too dangerous an individual.
Laurence picked up the pace as his friends came close. “Don’t come near me!” he shouted at Cleo, who came closest to him. “I have Peter captive, but he’s still a threat. I’m taking him to his clan to be punished”.
“Can’t you... just kill him?” Cleo shouted back.
Laurence laughed, “I’m afraid not. Only his family can deal with him at the moment”. He moved off, touching his ring and notifying Jim, Yun and Louisa about the situation with Peter. He knew he had to be quick, but the Mephisto stronghold kilometres away. It was highly likely that Peter would try to make an escape attempt before he arrived, but there was nothing Laurence could do about that other than be prepared. He began dragging mana out of his reservoir and pumping it into his muscles. Streams of energy rippled through his muscles as he sprung from the rooftop he was perched on. The roof tiles cracked and exploded as he shot off towards the home of Peter’s clan.
Each step crushed the roof of a house, but sent Laurence shooting off towards the north of the city. He sprung from rooftop to rooftop with the cocoon that held Peter swinging round him like a satellite, and quickly made work of the massive distance between the alleyway he had cornered Peter in and the Mephisto home. A sense of danger tickled the back of Laurence’s neck as the citadel itself came into sight. His highly trained sense of threat was on overdrive, and it was coming from the cocoon. He growled, he was so close, and yet so far. He needed to hold on for a bit longer, so he began pumping mana into his arms as well as his legs and spinning the cocoon round him quicker. There was a slight cracking sound, but he closed in on the building, before finally slamming into the ground mid swing. He could see Peter trying to desperately push his way out of the cocoon, his arms and legs visible as the young boy stretched the rope beyond the area of the ball he had been wrapped in. Giving the satellite one last swing, he shifted Inklight from its solid form to its pure light form and retracted it back into his hand, letting Peter slam into the high wall of the Mephisto citadel in a cloud of dust and brick. The detritus from the wall spread and obscured Peter from Laurence’s vision, but the sense of danger did not dissipate. He summoned Jormugand into his hand once more and held it horizontally in front of him. “Yesod...” he whispered to himself and stared into the slowly retreating cloud.
As he stared he saw Peter, still alive and much angrier than he had been before. The aura of death was thicker round him now, like his strength had been increased by the times he had been killed by Laurence. “Why do you keep trying to kill me? You can see it’s pointless. I won’t die permanently, and you can’t stop me otherwise”. His teeth were clenched as he pushed out the words he spoke.
“It’s simple. I think you’re bluffing. I think it’s hard to kill you, likely hard enough for it to be impossible for me to complete, but that is not why I’m doing it. I’m letting your family deal with you”. Laurence smirked as Peter looked around himself and his face dropped. This was obviously not somewhere he wanted to be. As Laurence expected, rather than just go in quietly, Peter acted out, and charged towards him once more. Rather than the vials he had been using beforehand, he pulled out a large fan and another bag. The skulls appeared around him once more and he screamed out.
“I refuse to go home!” His bag flew out and burst as the fan opened, scattering another coloured powder into the fray. He pushed two skulls through the dust and began waving the metal edged fan in Laurence’s direction. Thick gusts of wind propelled the cloud in Laurence’s direction, but now they were in a much more open region. Laurence injected mana into his legs and sprung around the cloud, darting towards Peter and away from the skulls.
In response, Peter’s empty left hand made a sweeping motion to the right and the skulls followed, cutting off Laurence’s path. He waved the fan and diverted the cloud, letting it move towards the right rather than straight ahead. Pulling another bag of dust out of thin air, he tossed it to the right of Laurence and clapped against the fan, cutting off Laurence’s right side from escape. There were only two ways that Peter could see of Laurence getting out, the rear and above, both of which he had planned for. However that was when Laurence surprised him.
The skulls moved closer to Laurence and he sprung into motion. He began rotating like a spinning top in a similar way to the way he had moved at the beginning of the fight, but with much more power behind it. The skull closed in and tried to bite down on Laurence’s right hand, but before it could connect the hand was no longer there. Laurence had spun ahead and his hammer was arcing back into the side of the skull. It split into fragments as his spiral path continued. He picked up speed and slammed his hammer into the second skull, which followed the first into dust, but still he did not stop. He span closer to Peter, and his momentum became greater and greater, until he reached the third skull. He crushed the third skull and kept going, the shards of bone flying past his rotating form.
As he reached Peter, the younger boy brandished his fan and swung towards Laurence’s head. As Laurence dipped out of the way, Peter closed his fan and cleft down with all his strength in an attempt to break the momentum that the older boy had built up. The fan slammed against Laurence’s side and there was a crack as one of his bones broke, but still he did not stop. He wrapped around the fan and spun up using Peter’s arm as a guide. Their eyes met as Laurence passed Peter, both boy’s filled with rage as the other refused to let them do what they intended.
Laurence spun past Peter and whipped the handle of the hammer around his opponent, barring him from moving forwards. He leapt and landed straight onto Peters calves and there was a cracking sound as the bones gave way under the force of the older child. Peter tipped forwards and landed on the ground, face down in the dirt screaming.
Laurence pulled out five break talismans from his bag and slapped them on peter to bind him to that spot then waited for someone to come out of the citadel. He was not waiting long. Around five minutes after the fighting stopped, a man in his twenties walked out of the hole that Peter had made in the wall and saw the situation. Without even asking what had happened he ran back into the citadel and brought out an older man, one that Laurence recognised. He was the man who had come and picked up the corpses on the day of the Festival of the Dead.
“Young boy, I recognise you. Why have you and your... opponent decided to destroy the outer wall of my home?” The man had a smile on him that did not quite reach his eyes. It was a face Laurence recognised because it was one he made often. It was one when he felt like he should smile, but did not understand the need. It was a facade, and it put him on edge. The old man was far more dangerous than anyone he had met in recent history.
“You came to pick up a large amount of corpses from my friends last year, but that is not why I am here. The boy that I am currently sitting on is known as the devourer. He’s a wanted criminal, responsible for the Festival of the dead last year and a slew of killings since then”.
The old man cut him off. “That’s a falsehood, and we both know why”.
“No sir, it’s not. He might not have been responsible for the entirety of the festival, but it was when he started his killing spree. He has been sucking out the souls of hundreds of the citizens of Spirit, and I am here to gift him to you”. Laurence wiped his forehead as mud, sweat and blood began irritating his skin. He was filthy and tired. He needed to end this quickly.
“Sucking out the souls you say? Wait, why is he my problem?”
“The boy under me is one Peter Mephisto, golden child of your clan. He seems to be practicing some art that makes it near impossible for me to stop him, let alone kill him. So my only option was to give him to you to deal with. He’s been making your clan look bad, sir, and I assume there are methods for you to deal with that. I just want him to stop killing members of my gang”.
The older man stood still when he heard that the boy on the ground was Peter. He knew who Peter was, but to not only see the boy with such a thick aura of death around him, but also a boy not much older sitting on top of him having bested the child made him extremely surprised. “You say he has been here for a year? By Babel’s eye... Alright, we will take him”. The man lifted Laurence off Peter’s body, and hoisted him over his shoulder. “You are a very interesting... and dangerous child. Dominus clan?”
“No. Though my daddy is someone you’ve probably heard of, Angus Absolution”. The old man’s face paled as he heard the name.
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