- Slaughter

Someone grabbed her on her forearm.

Glancing to her right, she saw the arm belonged to an old man. His white beard was darkened by filth and almost blended in with his skin, which appeared as though it belonged to a corpse. His long, tattered robes, marked much like his beard, fell from his arm onto hers and threatened to cut her skin, as did his long, black nails.

Peering into his eyes revealed that his left was missing. In the space it should have been there lay a void, one sickeningly terrifying to look into. Glancing down, she noticed a large item hanging from his neck.

'Maybe an amulet' she thought.

Emanating out from behind the confusing and terrifying design of randomly joined 'fingers' shone a deep green hue. For the smallest of seconds, Tess thought she heard the item talk to her as she looked into the light.

Shifting her attention back to the man, she noticed that he was talking to her, rambling in such a way that it sounded like she was simply an observer of his talk, not the target.

His words discussed the coming end of days. He talked about some truth and some opportunity.

He warned her of oncoming dangers and offered her safety in some crazy-sounding group. He spoke of power, fame, and wealth. He spoke of opportunity, of a fixture in history.More than anything, he talked about a new age. A new dynasty. The toppling of the old, and the new rising in its place. He warned Tess that she shouldn't be on the wrong side of history.

Both uninterested and unnerved by his words, Tess twisted her arm free and hastily carried on back towards her destination.

With worry on her mind, she turned back to look at the man once more. She saw him absent-mindedly gazing up the street in her direction, with a strange, unidentifiable expression plastered onto his face.

She pushed the man out of her mind as she continued back towards the building. Once outside, she once again changed her form to travel through the gaps in the door.

Returning to human form, she visually scanned the room. The scene that laid out in front of her was similar to that which she had seen minutes before, with the only difference being that there was no sign left of the brutality she had witnessed.

Understanding what she was about to do, her focus on the room shifted. Glancing at the office, she established that the meeting was still taking place, although it now had a different, more cheerful tone to it.

The main subject of her attention was the guards. She studied their outfits, stances, and positions around the room in an attempt to glean information regarding their powers and weapons, if they had any.

They were all dressed in similar outfits that paired black trousers with a crimson jacket and finished with a variety of types of footwear.

'Maybe they're fire users?' she thought in acknowledgement of the red on their uniforms.

Their weapons were easily identifiable. Their hands were covered with a flexible combat glove that weaponised long, sharp, metallic nails and tough-looking padding that covered the knuckles. Some guards also wore a blunt weapon, similar in shape to a bat, thrown over their shoulder, easily accessible over the shoulder.

'No time like the present to try new things.'

"Rainfall."

Tess cast a spell, causing water to pour down from above inside the building. It had the desired effect of confusing the guards.

"I hope this works. Shadowshell."

Darkness poured out of her body, enveloping it and clinging to it tightly. Once complete, it looked like a liquid that stuck to her body, with mini waves and ripples being created at random.

As she trained, Garnell had supplied her with various tomes with which to research the history and uses of her two elements, as well as trained fighters who she could ask about various queries. During her research, she had stumbled upon mention of the 'ultimate weapon' of dark magic: a theoretical spell that encased the user in armour and supplied them with weapons made from their own magic with a direct link to their Magia, therefore being constantly supplied.

Due to the high intensity of the spell she had collapsed after using it for almost a second.

The version she used now was a rudimentary version of the spell she had 'created' using guidance from the information in the books.

This version had sacrificed a lot of the posterior armour along with almost all of the anterior armour, as well as reduced the supply of Manan through her body that provided the reinforcement. Another cutback was in the weaponry that she used. Thanks to the nature of the spell, the possibilities of weapons were essentially limited only by the imagination of the user. Therefore she could use whatever she wanted to.

She opted to create two thin, narrow tail-like tendrils, tipped with sharp shards of darkness that protruded from her upper back and raised themselves above her head. In order to also increase her time, even if for a second, she made her hands sharp and narrow, giving the tips of her fingers a weapon similar to that of claws.

She silenced the rain as she moved. Her arm extended an unnatural length towards the left side railing and latched on, before pulling her towards it.

She flipped over the barrier and landed, impaling the two guards closest to her with her tendrils.

She ran along the barrier and threw the now-dead bodies off the railing, before impaling a third in the heart with one tendril while slashing his gut with the other. At the same time, she slashed across, rending open the neck of a fourth.

She lunged at the fifth like an animal. She slashed with her claws before striking high with the tendrils. The guard, now recovered from the surprise attack, parried the claws before rolling back to dodge the tendrils, which struck the ground with brutal force.

The guard advanced and drew the weapon on his back. He swung the bat with one hand while keeping the other near his body, it acting as a defensive tool.

Unfortunately for the guard, the weapon was nothing in the face of such brutal magic. Two slashes of claws and the bat was reduced to a hilt.

The guard dropped the bat as Tess attacked with her tendrils. He attempted to parry them with his hands, but only provided her with easy access to the target of the attack. The tendrils pierced the man's hands and yanked him up, drawing a yelp of pain from his lips.

With the man held up, she slashed him twice in the chest and torso causing blood to run out of him.

As she withdrew the tendrils and let the man drop to the floor she looked around.

The guards on the opposite railing scrambled to react. Their reactions were plagued with fear, having seen four of their colleagues get torn apart in the blink of an eye from an unseen foe. Then, a few seconds later the foe was gone, having claimed another victim. They grouped tightly together and began advancing along the walkway towards the office, their focus fixed firmly on the opposite railing.

The people on the floor began to react both visibly and audibly with fear, the sudden appearance of blood and corpses sending them into a panic.

Tess regained the initiative by reappearing on the railing behind the five guards, between them and their destination.

This five offered no resistance, their grouped nature providing ease to Tess as her tendrils pierced vital points of each target in an instant.

She continued the attack with both tendrils, each blow severing a vital vein or artery or puncturing another organ.

Once satisfied they were dead, she turned towards the office. The people inside had begun taking note of the carnage outside, no doubt alerted through annoyance by the loud commotion outside on the work floor.

Their eyes filled with fear at the scene they saw.

On one railing, bodies were piled together, as though they were to be disposed of in some kind of mass grave. On the other bodies were scattered. Blood dripped from various places on the railing, coating the terrified innocents below in the fluids of their captors. There were also bodies on the floor, mangled and unrecognisable by the force of the movements and their impacts, impacts that threw blood and flesh across the room.

The people inside the office began moving in a panic, pushing furniture to each door on either side of the room in a futile attempt to keep the attacker out.

From below, a young girl had a full view of the scene inside.

Their efforts to seal the doors stopped as a figure, wreathed in shadows, appeared inside the room with them. Some collapsed, resigned to fate, while others began working on the furniture in the other direction, desperate to remove the thing that sealed them to their doom that they had seen as a saviour.

Two tendrils raised high above the person's head, before erratically and repeatedly slashing downwards. Severing limbs and sending blood through the air.

Within a couple of seconds, the girl saw no more as the window became fully obstructed. However, she could still tell what happened from the screams that leaked out, penetrating the usually sound-proof room that could only ever be heard while a door was open.

Suddenly the figure appeared on the floor below the office in front of the workers. Its tendrils swayed from side to side, blood dripping down from the tips and coating the surrounding floor. As the figure began walking forward, the tendrils flew ahead, their trajectory aimed towards the workbenches.