Brother Blood
"My Lord, intruders in the forest," Mellor said. He was a leader in the priesthood and in charge of our enforcers.
"Gather your warriors, call on the war-priests and the demons!" I roared. "Nothing can stop the arrival of our Lord!"
"Yes, Brother Blood!" the congregation chanted as one. Members peeled off from the group, pulling blades, wands, and knobby staves from their sleeves and adjoining chambers, rushing out of the front door, behind Mellor.
"Mother Mayhem," I called softly.
"Yes, Brother Blood." May Bennett offered a low bow. She was the only member of the church, save for me, who was allowed to show her face. She wore a blood-red silk dress that gave her a regal air, and in her left palm sat a red-gemmed staff.
May was my birth mother, a devotee of the church, and our foremost sorceress.
"See to it that our devoted do not fail," I said.
There was a flicker of resistance on her face before she bowed again. "It will be done."
Slowly, she climbed down the stairs and followed after the warriors. Turning back to the pool, I stepped in. Even restrained, Raven was still the child of a god. She would not let me take her powers if she could help it. I needed to be at full strength to complete the ritual.
—
Artisan's POV
Brain had fled by the time I found his hideout, and so had the other members of the Light—except Vandal Savage.
He waited for me in his office, leaving the doors to the balcony of his seaside mansion open. His long, perfectly oiled hair whipped in the wind, and his hands tucked behind the small of his back, his chest puffed out. It was likely a habit he had picked up from his many lifetimes as a warmonger.
Vandal stood over a strange pentagram drawn in blood, written in a language I barely recognized—and I had Constantine as a teacher.
It had something to do with protection, maybe.
Against me? Likely. But what else? A spell backlash? Some kind of trap? There was something more there. I was almost giddy to find out.
But not so eager that I underestimated the threat standing before me.
The mystical energy screaming off it had my teeth on edge. Yet what I found most alarming was the man himself.
The immortal stood at five feet nine and two hundred and twenty pounds, with the densest muscle fibers I had ever seen on an unenhanced human—and no fucking soul.
I was so surprised by the phenomenon that I had to ask.
"An immortal has very little use for a soul," he said, managing to sound smooth despite his gravelly voice and heavily scarred face.
I agreed with him to some extent.
"I can't help but wonder if you got rid of it because of little old me?"
"Do not flatter yourself, sorceress."
I flashed him a coy smile, which Vandal promptly ignored.
"You can't really think you stand a chance against me?" I asked, floating closer to the balcony. My micro- and X-ray vision roamed over the estate.
Vandal's study smelled of desert dust, rich perfumes, and old paper. Vases and busts lined the walls, long-forgotten scrolls and parchments sat neatly in a large bookcase opposite a rich fireplace, and beside his desk was a bar that looked to be from this century, housing wines and liquors in decanters and tumblers.
It would be such a waste to tear all of this down.
"Your showing was most impressive, yet here I stand."
"Don't you mean cower?" I said, eyeing the pentagram.
"I thought you, of all people, would appreciate the ingenuity," Vandal said, a grim smile working its way onto his face. "Why fight an enemy on their terms when you can make them fight on yours?"
With a blisteringly fast twitch of my finger, I fired a Dismantle at him. It slammed against a blood-red shield generated from the pentagram.
That confirmed my earlier suspicion. It was indeed a barrier.
"Is this the part where you flood the room with hundreds of metas and mercenaries or unleash some sort of magical booby trap?" I sneered.
"Not quite," Vandal said. "Mother Box. Portal."
My eyes went wide as a strange cassette-sized box manifested in Vandal's waiting palm. Deep cracks covered it, and it sputtered intermittently.
I flooded my Shrine technique with cursed energy and rained down Dismantles on the shield and everything within and around it, carving the building to its foundations in a fraction of a second. But it did not penetrate the red barrier, nor did it stop the strange device.
A portal swelled open and swallowed the collapsing wreck, guzzling shattered glass, falling alcohol, ancient scrolls, and masonry.
I grabbed space with Sky Manipulation and pushed. The balcony shattered as I was flung backward into the night sky, crossing dozens of miles per second until I hit a mystical wall and ricocheted off it. The seaside manor vanished abruptly, consumed by the void of the strange device. The nearby vegetation and homes followed suit.
Heat poured from my eyes, drilling into the rising red pillar that protected Vandal as I cursed his name. Through my micro-vision, I spotted magicians and sorcerers I did not recognize standing outside the barrier, chanting.
How had I missed them? No—I hadn't. They must have just portaled in or concealed themselves from me. My sight was far from perfect, especially where magic was involved.
I thought I had been indulging Vandal, but it had been the other way around. This was always going to happen. He could have sprung his trap at any time.
My insides twinged with phantom pain as my hold on the sky shuddered, and I pushed off the air with my Kryptonian flight, fighting the drag of the corrupted Mother Box.
My skin rippled, and my communicator revealed itself. Its surface was dark. I had been cut off from the rest of the world.
I let out a hollow laugh.
More Dismantles bled out of me, joining my laser vision to ravage the pillar, hollowing out the seaside landscape to the bedrock. I briefly considered opening my Domain Expansion, but then I thought about where that would leave me.
So I sacrificed pawns instead, growing a pair of hands from my obliques.
I pulled transfigured Kryptonian clones, metas, and humans out of a hold within my stomach and smashed their souls together.
Idle Transfiguration: Soul Multiplicity.
They expanded to the size of a small hillock and kept growing as I fed the multi-faced, writhing, pleading abomination. In a few short seconds, it grew to the size of a small mountain and possessed enough mass that the Mother Box didn't immediately consume it.
It gave me enough leeway to ease off Sky Manipulation and let the flesh mountain anchor me, even as it was dragged toward the portal.
I briefly considered using a body double to fool the device, but I had a feeling Vandal wouldn't fall for something so obvious. No—he needed a victory, and I needed another painful lesson.
So I split off a small portion of my soul, as if I were about to create a new sorcerer—an act that weakened me temporarily—and shaped that fragment into a full body, a Kryptonian body, while I stretched and compressed the rest of myself until I was no larger than a garden snake and slithered down the fracturing soul-mountain.
I pierced the fractured bedrock just as the mountain broke apart and the Mother Box claimed a chunk of my soul before shuddering close.