The red mist shrieked against the seals of her gas mask as she plummeted. She kept her eyes fixed on that flickering orange glow, her face a mask of iron determination.
As the wagon's silhouette finally solidified through the haze, she pivoted in mid-air, leading with the massive, chain-wrapped weight of her rectangular sword.
CRUNCH.
The blade's edge tore through the neck of the first Confessor before his brain could even register the sound of the wind.
Kima slammed onto the cloth roof of the wagon, the impact rattling the entire wooden frame.
The remaining Confessors on top spun around, their dark, hooded cloaks billowing like oil in water as the mists parted around their thick leather armour.
Kima didn't give them a heartbeat to breathe. She didn't even pull her sword from the first corpse. Instead, she gripped the heavy iron chains, flooding them with energy, Mera.
She is using Muter after all. This allows her to transfer Mera from her body into objects which she then converts into kinetic energy, increasing the speed of said object or can set it in motion.
The metal glowed with a dull, thrumming heat as she whipped the chain in a wide, horizontal arc.
Propelled by her kinetic manipulation, the chain became a blurred line of decapitating force.
Snap.
Snap.
Snap.
Three more heads tumbled into the gorge as their bodies slumped off the moving wagon.
Kima finally yanked her sword, Orpheus, free with a sickening squelch. She marched to the front, leaning over the driver's seat. The Tizheruk rider let out a muffled yelp that rattled his gas mas and his eyes wide behind his goggles.
"Don't you dare stop this wagon," Kima growled, the vibration of her voice low and dangerous. "Unless you want to join your friends in the mud."
The driver nodded frantically, his hands shaking on the reins.
Kima dropped through the ripped canopy into the interior. It was a dark, cramped space lit by a single, sputtering torch. The light danced over the hollowed, terrified faces of the prisoners, men and women shivering in rags.
"Who... who are you?" one man stammered, his body quivering as he clutched his gas mask.
Kima ignored the question, her eyes scanning the crowd with clinical precision until they landed on a familiar face.
"Callahan?"
A man with curly black hair and a bushy yet unkempt beard that even Kima was surpiosed he was capable of that, slowly raised his head. His eyes widened, revealing a tiny scar on his lower eyelid.
Callahan…
"K-Kima?"
"You big dolt," she whispered, her voice softening as she rushed to his side, checking him for wounds. "You and Hersch nearly gave me a heart attack."
"What are you doing here?" Callahan wheezed, his energy levels clearly depleted
"Rescuing you," she chuckled, then looked at the others. "Rescuing all of you."
"What of the Confessors?" Callahan asked, his voice trembling.
"Handled," Kima replied confidently. "Didn't you hear the thuds? But don't worry about that. What happened to her eye?" She got closer and gently held his face.
Callahan then withdrew.
But the relief in the wagon was short-lived. The other prisoners started muttering, their voices thick with suspicion.
"Aren't you a Noble?"
"A Noble put us here... why would another one help?"
"Just leave us alone!"
Kima's expression darkened. No matter how many heads she took, her skin was a cage she couldn't break out of.
She looked at Callahan, confused by his silence, but he just shook his head.
"You shouldn't have come, Kima," he whispered. "If you handled them that quickly... it's because they wanted you to." He said.
Before Kima could process the warning, the canopy above them was shredded into confetti. The wind roared in, and with it came the sound of high-pitched, mocking laughter.
"Shit!" Kima barked, planting her feet and raising Orpheus.
High above, silhouetted against the misty walls of the gorge, over a dozen Confessors were swinging through the air.
They moved with unnatural grace, long shadows extending from their bodies like grappling hooks, anchoring them to the rock as they kept pace with the speeding wagon.
"Damn Confessors. Wonder what kind of default life that they make you guys go through that you all would have damned shadow related Greater Wills." Kima grinned behind her gas mask.
"Wow! Pretty efficient and quiet, Rattlesnake!" one shouted from the heights. "Too bad," another chimed in, "you're going to have to pay for our brothers now."
Two Confessors dropped from the sky like stones. Kima sensed the displacement of air and spun, blocking their twin strikes with the flat of her massive blade. The force of the blow vibrated through her arms, but she held her ground.
"Heads down! Get on the floor!" She screamed to the prisoners.
Daggers began to rain down, blackened steel whistling through the wind. Kima became a whirlwind of chains, whipping Orpheus's bindings around to swat the projectiles away.
She channeled Mera into the chains, making them move faster than the eye could follow, ensuring not a single blade touched the cowering people around her.
Suddenly, a new figure landed at the very edge of the wagon. He stood up slowly, stretching his limbs with terrifying nonchalance. He looked down at Kima, a scar visible on the edge of his gas mask.
"Well, well. If it isn't the Bronze Rattlesnake," he chuckled. "What brings a Noble so far into the dirt?"
"You got me," Kima spat, her eyes darting between the leader and the over a dozen killers circling above. "Fooled me into thinking there were only four of you."
"I aim to please," the man said, extending a hand politely. "I am Danos. The Brotherhood put me in charge when Sir Herkos asked for his... merchandise to be protected."
"They aren't merchandise," Kima growled.
"They are whatever the Naroi says they are, Madam Rattlesnake."
Naroi? Oh… the Confessors' Brotherhood bases in Nrigav. Makes sense that the currency they'd use would be Naroi.
"Ditch the 'Madam,'" Kima snapped. "I'm nobody's mother."
The air grew heavy. Danos's eyes crinkled, he was smiling. Without warning, his hands erupted in swirling shadows.
He lunged.
His fist slammed into Kima's gut, the shadows coiling like a pressurized spring. The impact launched Kima straight up into the air, clear of the wagon.
The airborne Confessors immediately closed in, their blades bared.
Think, Kima!
She wouldn't fall.
She used more of the Muter piller, the core of her combat style. She felt the potential energy in her muscles and the kinetic momentum of her flight, and she locked it.
She stored the force in Orpheus, the blade humming with a lethal frequency. She twisted in mid-air, a localized hurricane of steel.
Her kinetic-boosted slashes tore through the midsections of the approaching Confessors before they could even scream.
She then 'fired' a burst of stored energy from the soles of her feet, a kinetic jump that kept her suspended in the mist.
"Oh?" Danos called out from the wagon below, holding a prisoner by the throat as a warning. "The Muter piller. How quaint. And the fact that the parts body and sword aren't blown to bits…"
"Let me guess… You used a Convenant huh?" He completed.
Kima snarled, preparing to dive back down, but a new threat emerged from the mist above.
---The End of Chapter 31---