Rules For The Bled

"Are we leaving now?" Adeline asked, glancing between Yvain and Celeste, her fingers already tightening around the strap of her satchel.

Yvain shook his head slowly, his expression unreadable. "No," he said. "Sorel waits for us just beyond the city's edge. And she has Mars."

Adeline's breath caught. "She has the bard?"

Celeste tensed beside him. "Can't we sneak away?" she suggested, eyes already scanning the crowd as if gauging potential escape routes. But even as she said it, Yvain was stepping to the curb, raising a hand to hail one of the slender, rune-inscribed carriages that wound through the city like veins through flesh.

A carriage glided to a stop, its construct-beast huffing quietly, eyes like polished emeralds. The trio climbed inside, the door hissing shut behind them.

"We're saving the bard," Yvain said once they were seated, his voice firm, almost casual, like he was discussing the weather rather than walking willingly toward a knight famed for bloodshed.

Adeline stared at him. "And how do you propose we do that? She'll have prepared for you."

Yvain reached into the folds of his vest and drew out a strange device. A handheld astrolabe, delicate as lacework but forged of metals no ordinary smith could shape. Silver and gold swirled together like constellations frozen in motion. It ticked faintly, alive with subtle magic.

Celeste leaned in, her brow furrowing. "You brought that?"

The artifact radiated a cold, subtle pressure. Made from starsteel, shaped by unknown hands in some forgotten age.

He nodded. "It's old," he said. "But it still works. I can seal her."

Celeste's eyes narrowed. "You make it sound easy."

"It's not," Yvain admitted. "We could never hope to beat her."

"Then how—?"

"She underestimates us," he said, looking between them. "That's our advantage."

The carriage rolled to a smooth halt at the city's outer rim, where the paved streets of the Hundred Towers gave way to broken earth and windblown stone. The faint hum of wards faded behind them as they disembarked. Yvain paid the fare without a word, his fingers lingering on the astrolabe tucked within his coat.

They bought horses from a nearby trader whose animals looked half-starved but capable enough. The exchange was hurried, silent save for the jingle of coin and the snort of bridles.

Then they rode, out from the city's crooked skyline into the vast, scorched expanse that stretched toward the Dramedo Sea. The land was dry and brittle, painted in shades of bone and rust, as if the very ground had forgotten the taste of water. Heat shimmered on the horizon. Dust clung to their cloaks.

It wasn't long before they saw her.

Sorel stood in the open like a war statue made flesh, her bronze armor gleaming beneath the unforgiving sun. She did not move. Her blade rested easily at her side, as if it had grown from her arm. Steam hissed faintly from the joints of her pauldrons. Her presence was as stark as the landscape.

Beside her stood Mars.

The bard's flamboyant garb was torn and soiled, but he held himself upright, trying to force a smile. His lute was nowhere in sight. Terror clung to him like sweat, but he tried to mask it with theatrical bravado. He failed.

"What's the plan?" Adeline asked, low and tense, her horse shifting nervously beneath her.

Yvain's eyes narrowed. "Buy time," he said. "You two go ahead. Keep her distracted."

Adeline hesitated only a moment, then nodded. She and Celeste spurred their horses forward, leaving Yvain behind as he dismounted and began preparing the astrolabe behind a ridge.

The two women rode out across the waste, dust rising in their wake.

Sorel spotted them at once. Her head turned smoothly, predatory, the servos in her neck whining softly. As they neared, she drew her sword with a hiss of breath, then raised it to Mars's throat.

"Where is Yvain?" she demanded, voice flat and terrible, like metal grinding on stone.

Celeste didn't even slow. She raised her hand, and extended a single, defiant middle finger.

"I'd say 'fuck you,' but let's be honest: you've never been fucked, have you?" she called, eyes blazing. "Tragic, really."

Sorel's eyes narrowed, her head tilting slightly as if calculating the weight of insult against function. "I won't ask again," she said. The blade pressed deeper. A thin line of red welled up on Mars's pale neck.

"I'm sure," Mars said, voice squeaking, "we can all come to a peaceful and mutually beneficial understa—"

Celeste cut him off with a scoff, her gaze locked on Sorel. "You watched me grow up, Sorel. You think I care if you gut that poor fool? Go ahead. I'll help you bury him."

For a moment, the bronze knight was utterly still. Only the faint churn of internal gears betrayed her inner workings. Then, slowly, with mechanical precision, she nodded.

"You're right," she said.

And without warning, she drew the blade back, and swung.

The air split with the hiss of burning metal.

True to her word, Celeste didn't flinch.

The blade came down in a brilliant arc, but before it could reach Mars's neck, a sudden burst of ghostlight erupted beside them.

Adeline moved.

Specters burst from her like a tidal wave of memory and wrath, phantom limbs, half-seen warriors, old griefs given violent form. They charged at Sorel with shrieking mouths and glimmering claws, warping the air around them as they flew.

The automaton knight halted mid-swing, recalibrating. Her armor hissed and clanked as she shifted stance, dispatching the first wraith with a single slash that shattered its form into trailing mist. The second she crushed with a swift, mechanical heel. The others she dispatched with fluid, brutal precision, each motion like clockwork, merciless and efficient.

But it bought enough time.

Mars collapsed to the ground, gasping. Adeline rushed in, sliding across the dust to reach him. She slashed through the corded bindings with a flick of breath-charged threadwork, hauling him to his feet.

Celeste was already moving.

With a roar, she vaulted from her horse mid-stride, her body igniting with vibrant enchantment. As she hit the earth, her form shimmered, flesh twisting, limbs multiplying.

Her skin darkened to obsidian, her hair fanned out like flame. In seconds, she stood as the Six-Armed Asura, taller than a warhorse, each hand glowing with sigils of fury and grace.

She landed directly before Sorel. The knight turned to face her, sword raised, body rigid.

The impact of their clash cracked the air like thunder.

Dust and heat exploded outward in all directions as Celeste struck, all six arms moving in perfect, whirling harmony. Her fists were like meteors, each one aimed to break, to rend, to overwhelm.

Sorel matched her. She moved with impossible speed for something so heavily armored, her blade becoming a blur. She cleaved through one of Celeste's arms, then another, but each was regrown almost instantly, flowing back into being like molten gold reforming in air.

They were fury against machine. Flame against brass. Flesh against metal. Magic against math.

And still, Sorel held.

Adeline, breathless and furious, pushed Mars up and raised her hands again. Threads of light coiled at her fingertips as she began to cast anew. Mars, shaken but recovering, pulled a dagger from his boot and nodded.

They flanked the knight, circling like wolves.

Now it was three against one.

And yet everyone there knew the truth. Sorel still had the advantage.

The ground trembled beneath them as the clash escalated.

Celeste rained down blows like a divine storm, each of her six arms striking with elemental precision. She changed form mid-combat, twisting her stance, her enchantments flowing, driving fist, elbow, and knee into Sorel's bronze hide. Her eyes blazed with breath. And still, Sorel endured.

The automaton knight did not bleed, did not fatigue. She adjusted, recalibrated, learned. Every swing Celeste made, Sorel read faster. Her sword, long, cruel, and almost fluid in her grip, danced in precise arcs, cutting through enchantment, deflecting punches, turning power against itself.

Celeste's arm was severed a second time. It regrew. A third, then a fourth. Her regeneration was fast, but not instant. Each rebirth was slower. Each regrowth a little less clean. Her breath reserves were dwindling.

Adeline circled from the right, fingers weaving glyphs midair. Threads of illusion unraveled around Sorel's feet, pit traps that weren't real, collapsing towers of fire that flickered between existence and dream. But Sorel's ocular lenses adapted quickly, piercing through mirage and falsehood.

She moved with brutal elegance. A sudden pivot, and she hurled Celeste back with a spinning kick that would have broken a war-beast's spine. The Asura-form hit the earth hard, leaving a smoking crater.

Then Sorel turned, too fast.

Adeline barely had time to blink before the knight was on her.

The blade came down in a silver arc.

Mars, to his credit, moved. He threw himself between them with the dagger raised, eyes wide. His blade humming with musical clarity.

Sorel shifted.

She struck not with her sword, but her armored elbow, catching Mars full in the chest. He flew backward with a strangled cry, landing hard, breath knocked clean from his lungs.

Adeline screamed and loosed a scatterburst of prismatic shards, illusions charged with volatile breath. Sorel raised her arm to shield herself, but the explosion forced her back two steps.

Celeste staggered to her feet, panting, three arms limp, the others flickering with unstable energy.

"She's too fast!" Adeline gasped. "We're not wearing her down!"

Celeste's Asura form shattered in a pulse of light and smoke, her six arms collapsing into flesh once more.

It was pointless.

Her entire arsenal of vitalist spells, designed to rupture organs, unmake arteries, collapse lungs, meant nothing against brass and breath-cored machinery. Sorel had no heartbeat to still, no blood to curdle.

She looked up, sweat and ash streaking her face, and found Adeline bracing herself nearby, shoulders heaving from exertion.

Celeste stood, trembling, and extended her hand.

"Together," she said, voice hoarse but resolute.

Adeline took Celeste's hand, their palms pressing together like the sealing of a pact.

Alone, they were enchanters of enormous capability.

But together, their magic moved beyond illusion. It bled into reality.

The effect was immediate.

The air cracked.

Light twisted.

A shriek, subtle at first, like metal being bent in the distance, filled the sky as the world curled inward around their joined breath.

The battlefield shifted. No longer sun and dust and scorched stone.

Now—

The sun drowned beneath a sea of blood, and its red light diffused like ink through dark water. Shadows grew long and sharp. The sky turned the color of dried bone. A wind rose, and with it came the sound of every scream ever smothered, every plea ever unanswered.

The world wailed.

And from that wail, the chains came.

Thick, rusted links of impossible length, forged from nothing and anchored to nowhere, sprang into being. They burst from the sky, the earth, from between the folds of reality, entangling Sorel mid-stride.

She spun, trying to slash through them, but for once, her blade failed.

The chains bit through armor.

Wrapped her wrists, her neck, her waist, her ankles.

They pulled tight, layer after layer, snaring the automaton knight until she was no longer a warrior, but a massive sphere of chains, suspended above the scorched ground, twitching, creaking, vibrating with resistance.

The sound of straining metal filled the air.

Adeline staggered, nearly falling to her knees, pushing every drop of breath she had into the illusion made real. Blood trickled from her nose. Her fingertips glowed red.

"Is it… over?" she gasped.

Celeste didn't answer immediately. Her eyes remained fixed on the sphere.

Then she spoke, flat and cold. "No."