Pride X Familiar ReVamp (Pride X ReVamp Book 1) (37 page)

Had she levelled up somehow?

Was it her urgency to save Caelum Desanto that had her summon a different armor this time round?

I shelved the questions aside. There would be time for them later.

I needed to give her one more push.

“Save him, Caprice Steiner. Not from Celica Desanto, but from himself. If he kills his sister, you will lose him forever.”

She ran up the stairs so fast her feet barely touched the ground.

I watched her disappear from view, but a marker tracked her progress on another holovid window.

Then another piece of bad news came my way.

“Mr. President,” Dalton Bridges said. “The chamber is opening.”

True indeed, the stone-like door split vertically down the middle and began to slide apart.

It wasn’t long before the two siblings took their fight into the chamber that housed the Vault.

Chapter 18
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(Caelum)

Part of me was aware of everything that was happening.

I was overclocked, and I was fighting with a fury I’d never felt before.

A white, blinding fury directed at the person that had triggered my agonizing despair.

I was a beast, and that beast-mind was in control of my limbs.

Yet it wasn’t fighting wildly. It was fighting with precision and training that I couldn’t possibly have mastered in a week.

Kaleb hadn’t spent enough time with me to develop these combination moves.

Nor could I have developed the ability to recognize Celica’s counter moves and offensive attacks in such a short amount time.

It just wasn’t possible.

Yet, I was most assuredly executing strikes and counters I’d never been exposed to.

How the Hell was that possible?

Somewhere along the line as I began fighting Celica on more even footing, the beast that ruled my body faded away. It left a void behind, a cold, calm I’d never experienced in my almost seventeen years of life.

I no longer wasted energy howling and roaring like mad.

The beast was gone, and I was back in control.

But it wasn’t the ‘me’ I was used to.

I was different. I was cold, and I was merciless.

I knew then and there as I fought Celica into the enormous room that lay beyond the stone doors, that I would kill her with as little regard as she had killed the Enforcers out in the tunnel.

I would do it without any regrets.

And so, wearing this new persona both inside and out, I fought the woman that was once my sister and I saw real concern in her eyes.

The smile she’d worn was gone. There was no hint of delight on her face.

She was facing an opponent she hadn’t expected. She had underestimated her brother, and I was going to make her pay the price for having done so.

She had pushed me over the edge, into the abyss, and what came back at her wasn’t her brother anymore.

Just a cold hearted, merciless killing machine, that suddenly knew how to fight with both shield-blades adorning my arms.

The more I fought, the more I began to accept the obvious truth – my Fragment was compensating for my lack of skill and training.

Somehow it was feeding my mind with the knowledge I needed to face Celica, and I was using that knowledge, combined with my overclocking ability, to good effect. Even if my body lacked the muscle memory to execute the movements with perfect precision, it was enough to give Celica cause for concern.

In addition, my Fragment was allowing me to continue the fight despite my injuries. The agonizing pain in my broken left arm was reduced to a dull throbbing, preventing it from troubling me.

Yet, despite all the help I received from my Gauntlet, the final outcome didn’t change.

I simply couldn’t win against her.

Whether I lacked the training, or the talent, or the equipment to do so, I simply wasn’t up to the task of defeating the woman that I once knew as my sister.

We fought within the entrance to the enormous spherical chamber that lay beyond the stone doors. We fought along the balcony that ran the circumference of the chamber. In my overclocked state there were moments I could look out at the chamber’s interior, and at the giant black sphere that lay in its exact center.

Eventually, we fought each other all the way around the massive room, and arrived back at the open doorway.

It was here that Celica demonstrated the edge she had over me.

It was here her right talon-blade slipped through me defense.

She pierced my effect-field, and then my body.

The blade sliced into me, perforating my abdomen.

It felt like an eternity that my body stood impaled on her Artifact, but in truth it was probably less than a handful of seconds.

My limbs lost their strength, my body slid off the talon and onto the cold, permacrete floor.

I could barely breathe. What remained of my innards burned, but the rest of me was growing cold. I knew then that I was going to die. As a Familiar I could heal faster and recover from some wounds that would kill a Regular. But I lacked the healing abilities of an Aventis.

Even then, without any medical attention, there was little guarantee an Aventis could survive having being punctured like I was.

So in conclusion, I knew I was going to die, and it would happen by Celica’s hand.

I lay on my back, my hands over the gaping hole in my abdomen, and I looked up at her as she stood over me.

A look of relief was spread across her face.

For a long while she simply looked at me, then shook her head and with a shrug of her shoulders she turned away.

I was dying, but I was dying slowly, and as such I was still conscious of my surroundings.

I could still hear her even if she was out of sight.

“Sunaj, I’m almost done here. I’ll have the Artifact in a few moments. What’s it like up there?”

She was walking away. I turned my head with what little strength I had left and saw her walk to the edge of the balcony and stop at the guardrail.

“Tell Capella to withdraw. Tell Rylan to stop playing with that girl and withdraw as well. If he fails to protect you then he’d better not come back. And pass the order along Drake. Tell him we’ll leave him behind if he doesn’t finish up soon.”

She reached an arm toward the black sphere, and its surface directly in front of her rippled then extended like a horizontal waterspout toward her arm.

“Sunaj, it’s here. They weren’t able to move it. It’s right where I left it.”

I watched as the black liquid suddenly enveloped her body. The air had been cold before but now it felt even colder. Then again, I was losing blood and losing temperature in my limbs as my body tried pooling its resourced into my torso and brain.

But I was still seeing things clearly enough, and I saw Celica emerge from the black liquid.

She walked backwards, away from the black sphere, yet she was still connected to it.

It was as though she was dragging, pulling, something out from the depths of the Vault.

Whatever she was retrieving was enormous.

The black sphere distended as something shaped like a coffin, or sarcophagus of immense proportions began to surface free of the Vault.

The black liquid suddenly broke away from Celica, returning with an audible thrum back to the Vault, and the sphere had regained its shape once more.

I stared at the giant Sarcophagus that stood upright on the balcony, dwarfing Celica. It had to be four times her height, and several meters wide. There was something engraved or embossed onto the surface. It looked like some kind of flower.

Suddenly it opened, the front face splitting evenly down the middle.

The black mist I was accustomed too bloomed out and quickly shrouded the Sarcophagus and balcony, hiding Celica from view.

A few seconds later, part of the mist blew away, and I was able to see Celica again.

Even in pain, I couldn’t bear to take my eyes away from the vision before me.

A fantastical, skeletal armor emerged, or fell away, from the open Sarcophagus.

At the same time, Celica’s body levitated into the air, and rotated around such that her back was to the emerging armor.

It enveloped her to a degree, encasing her legs from the thigh down into a larger limb. Its two legs and two arms connected to a short spine via chains that resembled interlocking chevrons. Around its waist a collection of vanes extended outwards and down, giving it the appearance of wearing a skirt. Using Celica as a reference, the skeletal armor looked to be at least fifteen feet in height.

As I watched the integration process complete, I saw her skinsuit change color. The black on black appearance faded away, replaced quickly by a white on blue palette. It was in stark contrast to her earlier appearance, and quite disparate to the collection of black, crimson and grey that adorned the armor she now wore. Saying she wore the armor wasn’t right. It was more accurate to say that she was growing out of the armor.

I thought I was doing pretty well to observe this much. If I survived – which was highly unlikely – I planned to draw the armor and show it to the others. Undoubtedly I would have to write up a full report of the events taking place here, and that included describing how my sister came to be clad in a strange, skeletal armor that exuded power through every inch of its being.

To my surprise, Celica walked over to me, all fifteen feet tall and fantastically dressed in what I believed was an indeed a complete Artifact.

She came to a sudden stop well clear of me.

It was easy to understand why.

In the blink of an eye, I saw Caprice standing over me.

Her arms were stretched wide, and her Valkyrie Legs were planted on either side of my body. As such I had an excellent view of her perfectly toned posterior, clad in her black skinsuit.

It was certainly a vision I planned to take with me on my journey to the afterlife.

But for now, even as my eyesight began to darken, I could only watch as Caprice planted herself protectively over me.

I swallowed what moisture I had, but it felt like blood was beginning to well up my throat, preventing me from speaking.

I couldn’t cry out to her. I couldn’t warn her, or beg her to run away.

Celica would kill her if she didn’t.

Then I saw Caprice kneel down before her, placing herself between me and Celica.

She knelt and then lowered her head to the permacrete floor of the balcony.

I couldn’t hear them anymore.

They were growing faint and blurry, and my hearing was failing me.

So I wasn’t sure if what I saw was real or just my imagination as my body began to shut down.

Celica was looking down at Caprice with an empty, unreadable look, but she reached into her blue and white skinsuit then tossed something down at Caprice. The girl chose that moment to look up, probably because Celica called for her attention.

Caprice caught what was dropped into her hands, and continued to look up at Celica.

I couldn’t see her face, but for some reason I believed Caprice did so with a look of surprise.

Then Celica stepped past the kneeling Caprice, towering over the girl as she walked out of the chamber.

For one moment, I saw Celica pause at the open doorway and clearly look down at me.

For one heartbeat, I recognized the Celica of old, and I thought perhaps she was saying farewell.

Then she faced down the tunnel, crouched her body, and vanished as her armored body leapt out of sight. Despite my failing hearing, I could still hear the roar of air that resulted from her departure down the tunnel.

Caprice consumed my vision.

She knelt over me, and jammed something into my neck. I felt a warmth surge into me. Then she discarded whatever she had plunged into me, and quickly dragged my body out of the chamber. The doors to the spherical vault were slowly closing. Caprice got me outside with time to spare.

Then the warmth in my neck turned into a raging fire.

It spread through my collar, my chest and down my arms and abdomen.

It continued to spread, bringing a searing heat through the cold in my body.

That heat became pain, and I was reminded of a time in the Student Council room when Simone and Caprice held me down as I twisted my body in agony.

I was reminded of a time on the rooftop of my old school, when a blade had been plunged into my chest.

My eyes were open now so I saw her face as she stared down at me.

The expressionless façade was gone.

There was despair written in every corner of her beautiful heart-shaped face.

And there were tears streaming down her cheeks.

Like that time on the rooftop, she silenced my cries in a completely unorthodox manner.

She planted her lips on mine, and claimed my second kiss.

#

(Kaleb)

I looked at Drake’s face, wondering how the man barely broke a sweat.

Yet I stood before him feeling my sweat run under my skinsuit.

I looked at the face of my old teacher, and wondered how things had ever come to this.

To be facing him not as teacher and student, not as comrades, but as enemies.

I wanted to hear it from him, the reason for his leaving the Sanctum’s Paladin ranks.

Did it have anything to do with Celica Desanto’s execution order? Was it Celica who convinced him to join her at Crimson Crescent? If so, what had she offered him?

I wanted to know what he hoped to achieve by being an enemy of the Prides.

I had pushed him back away from the Vault, but only because he allowed me to. Someone watching the footage might have fooled into thinking otherwise, but I knew better since I was the one crossing Fragments with him.