Lux Locus: Fractured Family
Nearing the End

"Could you explain to me WHY you hadn't already fortified this position?" Zenith shouted.

The regimentary flinched at the shout. "W-we were waiting for you!" he replied. "W-we weren't expecting to receive news that reinforcements were driving the cultists towards us."

The prosecutor passed a hand across the top of his head. "What drove them to do this, anyways? They think that dragging them where they want to be would be a smart idea?" He looked at the newly constructed, armored positions for him and the others here. "Fine. Take to the walls and do as I have suggested."

Zenith waited behind a pile of metal beams placed on an elevated platform, watching the only remaiing entryway to the depot. There were the massive gates on the sides of the depot leading to the outside where they were normally loaded onto massive cargo trucks, but they couldn't be opened from the outside and were purposely fortified enough that regular weapons wouldn't be capable of denting them.

Everyone present waited behind their own 'wall' while turrets of the hellbenders aimed at the large entry way. It was wide enough that two hellbenders were easily capable of aiming down it. The unbearable suspense was worsened by sounds coming from down the hall. Gunfire and roaring echoed, inching ever closer to the ambush. At its loudest, the walls were destroyed by large demons of marrow, prompting Zenith into action.

"Rifles, open fire!" he shouted.

Loud, repeating pops echoed in the massive depot, creating briefs lights that stopped at the demons and cultists running down the corridor. Some of the demons grabbed the people around them to use as a living shield, but this still exposed their legs, prompting an easier target.

"Magus, only use your spells when they have breached the 'bright perimeter'," he said.

The three magus nodded and remained hidden behind their metal wall. Their inexperience was showing from their bodies trembling despite their faces staying as emotionless as possible. Many of the cultists took bullets to their bodies, and the other humans stopped charging forward, preferring to let the lesser demons of marrow take care of the issue of flying death. Many of them sighed in relief at their wiser choice. Several mines had been planted in the walls and sloppily covered with enough paint to make them invisible to a person when rushing by.

The marrow demons quite literally disintegrated, along with sections of the large walls when they crossed the mines. Zenith snickered at the sight.

"You see that?" he shouted to the people. "What does a mean to the validity of a demon's power when they're killed not by the power of the pillars or the afol anda, but by the might of a regular human?"

Several bullets were exchanged between the two warring parties while the less equipped cultists ran forward, oblivious to the magus hiding behind seemingly innocuous debris.

"Now!" Zenith yelled.

The magus popped out from behind their cover and, with some focus, released focus, glowing beams of blue mana from their hands. The strength of this magic melted through the remaining few demons and punched through the ranks of followers of Blumarak. The prosecutor and his ilk around him were becoming confident in their task, at least, until the ceiling blew out and rained debris on the unfortunates below.

Kormsin rode one of the metal beams and hopped off of it upon impact with the ground. He was clenching his sword fiercely, and blood swirled around his wounds like rivers defying gravity and logic.

The warrior pointed at his brother. "I'm going to kill you for that!" he exclaimed.

"But what about having me join you in our 'better lives'?" Zenith mocked.

"Forget that! I'll kill you and take your soul. When the others are in my grasp, then you'll get your body back. Until then!"

Kormsin deflected a beam of mana and hopped on one of the barriers, using it as leverage to pounce at the prosecutor. Zenith would have died had he not used his 'new' arm to block the sword. He nodded in approval at the apparent increased density of his new limb and forced Kormsin away from himself.

"Don't shoot at him!" Zenith yelled. "He's my problem. You deal with the cultists and the demons."

"But sir--!" the law enforcer officer shouted.

"Keep to your duties or everyone on the planet will die!" Zenith scolded.

Kormsin scoffed at the sight and walked over to the second section of the depot.

"This should provide us with more room to scuttle around, no?" Kormsin huffed.

"I'm growing tired of hearing you all prattle about your lives. Pull the knives out of your arm and throw them at me, boy," Zenith taunted.

Kormsin's arms visibly twitched at the taunt, and he charged at the prosecutor, performing an overhead slash downwards and using the momentum to kick Zenith in the head with the back of his armored boots. The prosecutor blocked with his left arm, taking the brief moment to grab his brother's leg, pull him closer, and punch him in the face. With the warrior stumbling backwards, the prosecutor saw the perfect opportunity to shoot him at point blank range.

Kormsin waved through the smoke and the prosecutor watched in disgust as the demon of blood in his brother's veins repaired the charred bits of chest and stomach.

"Can't even fight on your own without the help of your pixie god's minions?" Zenith queried.

Kormsin scoffed at the rhetoric. "And you're more of an android with physical abilities superior to the average human." He jumped in the air and slammed his sword into the ground, cracking the cement and lifting up the new plates to destabilize Zenith's footing after the prosecutor rolled out of the way.

This gave the warrior his own opportunities. He dashed to the fallen man and lifted him up from his throat, threw him into the air, and impaled the prosecutor with the sword of red crystal. Kormsin slammed the prosecutor into the ground to get him off of his sword, but the servant of the Terran Expanse would not relent. He got up with some difficulty and readjusted himself when his body's redundancies kicked in.

The warrior of Blumarak laughed loudly at the sight of his brother's sparkling hole from which bits of metal and wire tumbled.

"So even you take a much harder time to kill than a regular human." Kormsin laughed. "It's quite amusing that you would still consider yourself as one of them."

Zenith rolled his eyes. "Yes. I've dealt with this speech before. 'You're not a human anymore. You're just a machine with human emotions'." The prosecutor scoffed at the notion. "That's not how that works."

The warrior of Blumarak wiped the fluids within Zenith's body off of his sword and bared his teeth through his damaged helmet angrily.

"Then I'll just kill you, then I'll kill the--"

The warrior was interrupted by a rifle bullet bouncing off his pectoral armor, then another hitting him in his uncovered left pectoral. He looked at the wound, then both men looked to the source of gunfire; It was a very young law enforcer holding up his rifle whilst trembling like a leaf in a storm.

"Why are you here?!" Zenith shouted. "Get back to your station!" he ordered.

"N-no! I-I-I can't j-just let him do what he w-wants," the boy stammered.

Kormsin wasn't amused, and he let the edge of his blade drag along the floor in a bid to psychologically break the child. "Then you're going to be emptied of your blood and bones for your bravery."

Zenith looked back to his brother and held up his pistol at him, his eyes gleaming with his intent.

"You really think one pistol shot is going to stop me?" Kormsin asked.

"Only if it's the overcharged shot like before."

"I'll get to him before you do that!"

"No!"

Kormsin was centimeters away from young law enforcer and Zenith was about to shoot the warrior when a portal opened up between them, creating a small shock wave that irritated the prosecutor and blew the warrior of Blumarak away due to lack of firm footing. It turned out to be a portal that Tzinma walked through casually. He looked to Kormsin, then Zenith, then back again.

"I see you've been having your own scuffle." He looked behind himself to see the terrified boy who clearly wanted to hug his gun close to him rather than point it away. "And it looks like I accidentally served as a deus ex machina for that boy." The magus turned his whole body to face the law enforcer. "Will you impede me?"

"A-a-a-arrrre you w-with the p-people--"

Tzinma's shoulders drooped a little. "Attacking this planet?"

"Y-yes. That's it!"

The boy held his gun up again, the entirety of the weapon trembling with its wielder.

"Yes, I am."

"Then I h-have to ssstop you!"

The magus straightened himself out. "Looks like this wasn't your moment of 'safety' after all."

The man waved a hand, causing the law enforcer to freeze in place, his face contorted into a silent, pained scream. His body gradually shriveled up until all that was left was a skeleton tightly wrapped in skin and surrounded by a protective jacket.

Zenith looked on with horror and rage while Kormsin keeled over in laughter.

"You've gotta admit that that kind of timing really brought the point to that kid." He looked over to Zenith, his sight obstructed by tears. "Come on, Zenith. Even YOU have to agree that that was funny."

"Not funny. NEVER FUNNY!" The prosecutor refilled the pistol with mana using the air around. "You just killed an innocent, and a CHILD at that! You two constantly kill without regard. People aren't just toys for you to break and thrown away."

Tzinma chuckled. "You're not one to talk. Being a prosecutor gives you the power of life and death over those found guilty of transpiring with forbidden deities."

"After thorough investigation," Zenith hissed.

Kormsin struck the ground with his sword. "Ha! Then tell that to your colleagues, idiot." The warrior prepared himself while Tzinma and Zenith did the same. "Glad to see that we're having our reunion," he noted positively.

"Then let's talk about what we've been doing all this time," Zenith said.

Kormsin struck his right pectoral with his sword. "Gladly."

A bloody path had been carved through the factory in a straight line. Cultists had been crushed to a bloody pulp, walls were torn asunder, factory equipment had been ripped and twisted and used as weapons, and many puwandese of Mumbass and Blumarak had been torn to pieces and tossed about the pathway. At the end of the ever growing road was an afol anda whose armor had been turned into a red mockery of its original self. Held aloft a single arm was a large mace with a golden handle and a head glowing white in purity, every drop of blood disappearing from its presence.

"My purpose is to remove threats of the forbidden deities and protecting those under my gaze. I will not fail this task."

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