It was totally unfazed by the punk rock. It’d been a long shot anyways.
That was all right, she wasn’t a huge fan either. There wasn’t enough time to switch to a new song, she randomly chose something and raised Gongoran to block an incoming swiping slice of the Gxen’s claws. Unfortunately, Gongoran wasn’t meant to be wielded with only a single hand.
The Charm of Binding was meant to be used with two hands and wouldn’t properly activate with just a single. The strike was far stronger than she could have ever anticipated and Pyx was left holding nothing but her phone. Gongoran skittered across the floor with an echoing clash of ringing steel.
Pyx crossed her arms in front of herself, preparing to take the blow. It was all she could do. Raking hot coals cut lines of blistering pain across her forearms and the force of its scream sent her flying halfway across the room. She landed on a metal machine and would’ve broken her back if not for the plates of silver-steel bracing themselves across her spine, sewn into the jacket like an extra set of ribs.
It did, however, knock the ever-living shit out of her.
If not for Hyuul renewing his attacks and drawing the Gxen’s attention, it would have gored her where she stood. Armored jacket or not. Blood dripped from her fingers. She pushed off the machine and got to her feet. Somehow she managed to keep the phone in her hand throughout it all.
There were too many choices, almost every type of music had a bassy thump and since neither of them had the time to study their quarry she didn’t have time to glance at the frequencies it was emitting again.
Time for a Hail Mary.
Imagine Dragons played, and the Gxen went into overdrive. Its skin gave off waves of heat and Hyuul backed away with reddened, sunburned skin on his face. Nope. She switched it to anything else.
While you could weaken an extraplanar creature with a resonance frequency, the opposite was also true. You could strengthen it by playing an opposing frequency and it just so happened that Imagine Dragons was the Gxen’s jam. The last thing she wanted was to make it stronger.
Pyx ran to Gongoran and scooped up the handle in one hand again. She banged the flat of the blade against the nearby table, the Gxen turned towards her. Hyuul needed time to recover. Even if they were only first-degree burns, they hurt like all hell.
The next few minutes were nothing but survival. Pyx tossed her phone over to Hyuul and called out, “Try EDM!” She gripped the hilt with two hands and felt the Charm of Binding take hold.
With a twist of her wrists a thin blue flame danced its way up the blades wavy edge. The Gxen approached her more cautiously than it had before, suddenly deprived of its hype juice it was a little disoriented. Pyx went on the offensive. She launched forward with a heavy overhanded chop, inelegant but powerful.
The Gxen, in its sluggish state barely managed to lift its claws up to brace against the attack. Her blade met the Gxen’s claws and a hideous squealing filled the warehouse. Pyx’s tail moved behind her, snaking itself into a small strap on her back. With a flick the tail let loose a small throwing dagger into the Gxen’s chest.
It sunk into its maw, disappearing into a puddle of black blood. The gurgling it issued should’ve given it pause to engage her again. Instead it pressed forward. Its strength was terrifying. She had to dance back out of its swinging claws that came after her with unrelenting speed and ferocity.
Her leathers had seen dozens of claws, teeth, and other armaments that monsters used, but this was the first time it proved entirely ineffectual. She shouldn’t have been surprised. Extraplanar creatures were solely the purview of Archivists and Magi. Hunters gave them a wide berth for this very reason. They didn’t play by the same laws of physics, and magic was the only thing that could violate physics in the same way.
It was her shirt of silver-steel that saved her. Light as a feather, made of intricately tiny links of metal so small it felt like cold silk, but could stop a bullet. It was also like having ice cubes on her nips, an unpleasant side effect she was willing to put up with. What did a little chill matter when you could walk away from machine gun fire with only a few bruises?
The EDM was, somewhat obviously, equally ineffectual.
Pyx flipped herself backwards over the nearest heavy machinery, hoping that’d put some distance between her and the Gxen. She took a moment to check her shirt, it was her mom’s and throughout her long career as a Hunter she had never earned so much as a scratch on the pale material.
There was a long scrape, a shallow cut across her midsection where she’d barely managed to suck in her stomach and throw her hips back out of the way. Not fast enough apparently.
Hyuul shouted at her. Pyx looked up just in time to see the Gxen perched atop the machinery like a bird of prey looking at a mouse. Behind it, the familiar rectangle of her phone, its glowing screen flying through the air towards her. Before the Gxen could pounce, Hyuul was on its back using a single breaker rod barred across its recessed face.
It would’ve worked great if the damn thing had a neck.
Gotta give the boy credit, he doesn’t know the meaning of, “quit.”
Pyx caught the phone while the Gxen bucked and thrashed, trying to get the Hunter off its back. Hyuul had scrolled through her music. It was that unfamiliar sensation when somebody else has been browsing your phone. It took her a moment to reorient herself, long enough that the Gxen had time to pop its arms backwards and grab Hyuul in a sickening bear hug.
She looked at the music choice. There was no way.
Hyuul’s scream filled her ears. She tapped the screen and slid her phone along the dusty floor towards the Gxen. She had no hope it would work, but there was no more time. Hyuul may have been an ass, but he was family.
Swing music pulsed into the room, bouncing off the walls with its big band ensemble of instruments. The thumping percussive bass sent a shiver along the Gxen’s body and it relaxed its hold on Hyuul long enough for him to slither out and roll bonelessly across the floor with a wheeze of pain.
Pyx was on it before the Gxen could recover. She screamed, bellowing her best war cry. It was remarkably out of place with the swing music playing, but it seemed to be working. She would have listened to country if it was the Gxen’s resonance.
Its arms popped back to their proper orientation in time to guard against Pyx’s horizontal slash, but the resonance was working. Instead of skipping against the Gxen’s forearms, the blade bit deep into its hide and the blue flames that licked up the blade sizzled in the wound she left behind.
With a roar of pain the Gxen skittered away from her, right into Hyuul’s battering breakers. A one-two attack created a series of sickening cracks that echoed about the empty floor. The Gxen was no longer protected from their attacks, its main advantage taken out of play they were on even ground now.
The right claws of the Gxen hung limp halfway down its forearm like it had acquired a new joint, courtesy of Hyuul’s breakers. A long ruby-red tongue shot out and wrapped itself around Pyx’s raised blade. She skidded to a halt trying to find purchase on the slick dust-strewn floor.
Hyuul smashed into the Gxen, but it had its sights set on Pyx and she wasn’t about to let Gongoran be taken from her. It was an heirloom. One day she’d give it to her daughter. She wasn’t losing it.
Pyx gritted her teeth and used her horns to pull in the surrounding residual magic, condensing it and channeling it through her arms and into Gongoran. The flames brightened into a deep cobalt-blue. “You’re not getting my sword,” she said through gritted teeth lined with blood.
She dug deeper.
The flames pulsed half a foot out from the blade in a deep aura. The Gxen’s tongue was unaffected. She couldn’t understand. It should have been burned to a blackened crisp. It was then that she noticed it. The tongue was covered in scale-like thorns. It would’ve shred her arm if it was wrapped around her, instead it seemed impervious to Gongoran’s flame.
She grinned.
There was something magically conductiv
e she had access to. Risky as it was, she knew what she had to do. The flames died down and she continued to channel through her horns, but storing it instead of using it.
The feet closed between them until it was hardly three feet from her. Hyuul was pulverizing the thing with all he had, its shoulders looked like hamburger meat but still it was drawing her in. In a few seconds she’d be in range of its claws and a moment or two after that she’d find out just how deadly its fang-filled maw was.
Every time Hyuul broke a bone, another popped into place to brace it. It would take an overwhelming force, or attacking a vulnerability. Not being an Archivist, she had no idea what its vulnerabilities were so she had to improvise.
With a grimace, she slid her tail across the exposed blade of Gongoran. She stifled a cry as blood welled up along her silvery fur. So that’s what a monster feels. Her fur slick with her own crimson lifeblood, she painted her blood along its spiny tongue creating a trail starting a few feet out all the way back to Gongoran.
“Hope you like barbecue, asshole.”
The built up magic burst forward and Gongoran flared with dark cobalt-blue flames. Pyx willed the flames forward, using her blood as a conductor. Just as she figured. The tongue was impervious to the flames, but she wasn’t trying to hurt the tongue. Her aim was deeper.
The flames raced across the blood like it was kerosene.
There was a gargled scream from the Gxen as the flames rushed past the fangs and into its mouth echoing the crackling - and unfortunately familiar - sound of crisping skin. It realized its mistake too late and released her blade, but the damage was done. The flames had found their purchase.
Blue flames licked along its body. Its hide turned from its sickeningly reddish hue to a black char, spiderwebbed with bloody cracks to the meat below. What would have taken several Hunters working in tandem to overwhelm the Gxen’s healing - even with the aid of resonance weakening it - Pyx’s flames and Hyuul’s breakers were achieving on their own.
Forced to choose between healing from the flames and the devastating blunt strikes, the Gxen struggled just to stay on its feet. When Pyx joined the fray it could only lash out with feeble swipes that went wide. They were still fast compared to any other monster she’d ever hunted, but with her horns and the damage done they were able to avoid any fatal blows.
A line of bright blood blossomed from Hyuul’s chest and he grit his teeth, changing up his attack. Like some kind of war chieftain he swung his breakers overhead at the stump of its neck where its recessed head was. He beat a sloppy rhythm into the creature’s skull, caving it in faster than it could rebuild the bones.
Together, the pair of Hunters turned the once fearsome monstrosity into an unrecognizable mess of black ichor and red meat. Even still, bones began to reknit even as they stuck out of the mass at odd angles. Hyuul beat on them relentlessly, sweat slicking his brow. Up close, she could tell more than one of his wounds required immediate attention.
Pyx planted Gongoran into the pile like a flag and flared its flames, consuming the corpse into a pile of charred bones and ash. The smell was atrocious. She would definitely need a shower. There was no way she was going to Brookmoors stinking like death.
First impressions would be hard enough being Enferri.
The pair of Hunters staggered back from the pile and collapsed. Pyx’s body was a roadmap of pain. By her estimation she’d cracked a few ribs, and a cursory look confirmed her whole torso was painted black and blue. The cut on her tail was already healing.
Hyuul was in far worse shape, the cuts she had were mostly superficial. Hyuul had been gashed trying to buy her some time. While she didn’t think she owed him - she was helping him after all - she couldn’t just let him bleed out.
Pyx hauled herself to her feet and came over to Hyuul’s resting form. As expected, his leathers hadn’t done much to prevent the Gxen from giving him some new badass scars. If he lived.
She whipped out her medical kit, a slim black case filled with vials in a padded set of hollows. Pyx looked at Hyuul. His gold eyes were wandering about the room, struggling to focus on her. She was losing him.
“This is going to hurt like hell, Hyuul,” she warned him.
He didn’t respond to her. There was a dark pool of blood gathering beneath him.
She uncorked a vial of black beads and ripped open his shirt. Carefully - she couldn’t afford to lose a single bead - she poured the beads into the deepest of his wounds. After she bandaged the wounds with a strip of gauze and some medical tape she flipped him over to get a look at his back.
Pyx let out a low whistle. It looked like he had been tied to a post and whipped for a week straight. There was hardly any skin left. The white gleam of bone was visible alongside the silver-steel plates, many of them cleaved in two. She shivered. Silver-steel was among the hardest substances known, once it was melted down it had to be shaped. It couldn’t be milled or cut like most metals.
Except, apparently by a Gxen.
She emptied her vial of Deathsbane into the remaining wounds. There were so many she had to spread it out more than she would have liked. He’d live, but it would hurt like a bitch. Maybe he would finally learn a lesson from this.
Pyx didn’t think he would.
At least he wasn’t going to die. She finished wrapping him up, once he wasn’t in danger of bleeding out from his wounds she uncorked a second vial. Placing the Bloodtonic to his lips, she dribbled in the elixir that would replenish most of his lost blood.
She would need to replenish her stores. Hyuul had just used up enough of her medical supplies for five normal Hunts. With a playful pat-pat on his cheek she went to examine the Gxen’s corpse.
If you could cleave silver-steel with your talons, they might come in handy. I’m sure you won’t mind if I take a few.
Back in the car, Pyx sat in the backseat with Hyuul stretched out. His head was in her lap and she idly stroked his hair like they were children again. He always got himself into so much trouble, it wasn’t that she was tired of bailing him out exactly she just wanted him to learn from his mistakes. At Brookmoors she would not be able to come to his rescue.
“You’re on your own now, Hyuul.”
He muttered in his sleep.
Pyx directed the Munc to take them back to her place and help her carry him up to her penthouse. Carrying him was a simple affair. She could practically lift up a car on her own, but it’d raise quite a lot of annoying questions. Instead she got the hulking homunculus to do it for her. Wrapped in a tight black trench coat and black hat you couldn’t really tell his skin wasn’t quite the right shade of flesh.
Aside from a few queer looks, they made it to the penthouse without issue.
The sun was fast sinking towards the western horizon. She didn’t have long to get to Central Park. Back in the warehouse she had downed the rest of the Bloodtonic and bandaged herself up as best she could. The collection of claws and fangs clattered around in Pyx’s bag.
They sounded like wooden wind chimes.
The Munc was given explicit instructions on how to tend to Hyuul and what to do if things got worse. You had to be ridiculously specific with them. It was a lot like programming. There was no inference, no frame of reference. If you said open a door, you needed to define what a door was and the correct series of operations to open it. Else they’d just bust through the doorframe or worse, the wall.
To Pyx, that made Muncs more of a hassle than they were worth.
There was just enough time for her to take a shower and change her clothes. Luckily she’d already been packed for a few days. She put her gear back up on the wall, reverently placing Gongoran in its rightful place. On the ride back she had taken the time to clean and oil it. It deserved that much respect for saving her life time and time again.
She touched it gently, running her fingers across the enameled symbols on the hilt. Her hand fell to the ruby gem set on a shelf below her gear. As always she felt close to her mom.
The ruby p
ulsed like a heartbeat, her mother’s.
She could smell her spicy perfume, see her kind smile and the way her Succubus horns glowed red when she was angry. Unlike Pyx’s they were closer to her forehead and angled up. Like Hyuul’s.
“I’m going to Brookmoors mom,” she whispered hoarsely. “I hope you’re proud of me… I miss you.”
Pyx snatched up the trillion cut ruby. It was about the size of her thumbnail, and her most treasured possession. It had always been her mom’s dream to learn magic, and Brookmoors was among the best place to learn it. To be a Magi had been her dream, but she had bowed to societal pressure and became a Hunter instead.
Stellum couldn’t learn magic they said, though she had a faint trace of Magi blood that few knew about. It wasn’t until Pyx and Hyuul were born that it truly became possible to be Magi. She hadn’t pushed either of them, but when Pyx began to show signs of being a Magi, her parents were absolutely thrilled.
Pyx's Tale- A Vow Delayed Page 3