The hound was moving as fast as it could, but that didn't seem to be enough to get rid of the crowd that was tailing them on the streets. Some of the Climbers were more agile than others, leaping up onto the rooftops to give a faster pursuit.
Worthy managed to, eventually, climb his way onto Bonecrusher's back with the assistance of Hiel. It was growing increasingly more dangerous for the child to be dangling behind them, since more and more of the possessed Climbers were opting to use their Rewards. Whatever limitation was preventing them from doing so before did not apply now, so the swarm was getting ever closer to them, and Taivat was working restlessly to create protection for them.
"We're never going to make it to him at this rate!" Worthy ducked his head down in time to avoid a disc flying at his head.
Ever since they'd left Asterie behind, the flood of Climbers have become more relentless than before. Positively, this has given Worthy quite a few ideas behind their newfound momentum. Depending on how complex or powerful a Reward is, the puppeteer most likely could not have its thralls use them in unison. It was a slippery slope, but there was no other way to explain it when eliminating the other theories.
As useful as the information would be if the boy could figure it out, none of that lessened the pressure being applied to them. Taivat was having it much worse than all of them combined. For some reason, maybe to get rid of the man responsible for holding up their defenses, the group of Climbers has put a lot of effort into killing Hiel's harpy, or at least knocking it out of the air.
Heat built up ahead of them, and a short moment later, a tongue of fire flew from the window of a building nearby. It moved fast, almost too quickly for Taivat to fend against. Fortunately, the Harpy was faster, and successfully twisted itself and brought Taivat dangling with it. The man's body was struggling to remain in one piece while getting thrown around by his shoulders. By now, the harpy's talons had dug into his shoulders enough to draw blood, and it was only getting worse.
No matter how much they might've desired to stop and catch their breaths, although they were hardly doing much physically themselves, the group wasn't afforded the opportunity to stop. There would be no freedom from the onslaught, and the situation would only get worse from there.
"Oro, how are you holding up, buddy!?" Taivat, as distressing as his circumstance was, still checked on his friend from the sky above them. Garnering more attention was beneficial, assuming that the entire city hadn't been enthralled by whoever Lord Edwin was.
"Peachy… I'm just damn… peachy…" Oro was not doing well at all. The man was delirious, feeling the effects of blood loss setting in slowly. Hiel tended to the injury as much as he could, including trying to create a tourniquet to limit the flow of blood through the wound. That was only a temporary, band-aid solution. He needed professional medical attention, or Esme's attention. Both would suffice in this situation, but the latter would have far greater results.
The hound, who Worthy was content with calling Bonecrusher, was faster than the harpy, as well as most of the other Climbers.
One of the pursuers was a unique issue, persistently following them. Getting away from him was more challenging than it was for everyone else, thus this Climber was not one that'd joined them at some point in the chase, but instead had been following them since they escaped Asterie.
Streaks of silver followed them on the street below, and something flew out of the object leading the trail. The Climber sprinting after them threw something, and the hound had no choice but to turn around and swat it away with its flaw.
By the time that Bonecrusher finished turning around, the streak had already moved closer. The moving blur passed by in front of him, and the hound jerked, its head moving in a way that did not match any of its movements before.
Worthy saw as the blur subsided, and a humanoid figure emerged from the streak of silver, the leading object, unveiling a man with a black, featureless mask over his face. In the man's hand, blood dripped and he was holding something — an eye. Bonecrusher's eye, to be more specific.
In an instant, the man had grabbed and torn out Bonecrusher's eye, leaving the hound blind in one eye. Worst of all, once the hound turned around to retaliate and hit the man why he was suspended in the air, the blur returned and the man's descent was accelerated, allowing him to avoid the swipe of the hound's long arm before it even arrived.
Hiel worriedly checked up on the hound's socket, where the eye was once held. Bonecrusher did not show any signs of distress besides the jerk from the pain, but Worthy could feel its fur suddenly become far more tense, standing upright. It was wary of the speedster darting around them.
Instead of trying to fight it, the hound did the action it deemed the most logical in accordance to its objective. It ran, disregarding its passengers and picking up its pace to a drastic extent. Bonecrusher was fast, so fast that running at its full speed could leave it difficult for anyone riding it to breathe. Worthy, Oro, and Hiel were experiencing that shortness of breath right now.
'This… can't… be good… for Oro…' It was hard for the child to even think, feeling himself becoming nauseous as the hound moved so fast that it abandoned Taivat in the distance. The harpy was relatively safe, save for the ranged attacks, so maybe Taivat would be safe too.
The monstrous hound was moving at a speed that'd leave anyone caught in front of it crippled for the rest of their lives. That is why it was so frightening to look back and see the masked man keeping up with the beast, dust left in his wake.
'What a persistent bastard!' Worthy did not have anything he could use to help get the man off their trail. However, he knew that he may not need to. The thread connecting him to Walkyr was getting shorter, meaning they'd soon cross paths with the gunslinger. Whatever happened then would be entirely up to him.
Worthy didn't like the idea of killing another human, especially not a Climber who was a valuable resource, but Walkyr didn't have that same restraint. If someone was going to stand in his way, then he'd effectively dispose of them without a second thought. He'd fought Knights for a living, and killed many men to earn his keep. Deadman Walkyr should've died a long time ago, and yet the world couldn't throw anything big enough to crush him.
'Hopefully it'll throw something fast enough to trip this guy up.' The masked pursuer was only growing faster by the second. Worthy did not know it, since they'd long left Taivat and the harpy behind, but the horde of Climbers had slowed their constant usage of their Rewards, and now only two thralls were actively utilizing their abilities.
Hiel's gaze sharpened as he looked ahead, holding a hand in front of himself to try and block the wind. Ahead, he saw a damaged rooftop, a structure that looked to have been eradicated recently.
He didn't dare question what sort of conflict happened to destroy half of a building. Instead, he focused on the opportunity this revealed to them — they could deal with the speedster chasing them, if all things went well. "Hang on tight!" The man shouted, and thankfully, Oro and Worthy were already hanging on as best as they could in their respective circumstances.
Until now, the hound had given up fighting the speedster. Whoever the masked man was could use his bare hands to tear out the eye of the ferocious hound that'd mauled hordes of flesh abominations up until now. Bonecrusher could kill men for sure, but it could not efficiently battle the swift thrall while carrying three people.
With one final leap, the hound closed the distance with the eradicated structure.
Seeing the beast approaching the flimsy building encouraged the swift man to pick up the pace, his swift steps somehow becoming even swifter.
The distance between the two rapidly closed. Watching as the heavy hound approached an unstable building, the sprinter expected the beast to fall. Once that happened, he would undoubtedly swoop in and incapacitate, and probably kill, all of the beast's riders. Maybe he was content with killing Hiel, who had summoned the hound and the harpy that carried Taivat in the distance.
Whatever his goal was didn't matter, because Hiel knew all too well what was going to happen.
Sharp claws drove into the unstable walls of the building, and the hound used another to grab hold of a more firm area. Supported with one hand, Bonecrusher pushed the wall and sent chunks of debris crumbling to the ground.
Amidst his dash, the sprinter couldn't slow down in time to avoid the falling chunks of rubble. He tried to slow himself and move, but failed.
The sound of crushed stones filled the air, and the hound continued its sprint. Nobody bothered looking back to see if the man was crawling from underneath the rubble out of the fear that observing him would encourage him to move further.
With him gone, there was no one left to chase them so efficiently. No one except…
"Oh… Oh. No. No way…" Suddenly, Hiel looked distressed, disturbed even. The once composed man looked sickly ill, color draining from his face. Soon, Bonecrusher stopped and turned its head in the direction that they'd come from.
"Mr. Hiel? What's the matter?" They were almost to Walkyr's location, stopping down was foolish.
When Worthy turned around himself, he didn't need to hear Hiel's answer. The child quickly understood what had happened, as well as why the summoner stopped in his tracks. The situation had become grim, more grim than it'd already been.
Dust rose in the distance, where a gathering of buildings once rested. There, the buildings were split almost cleanly, like something had sliced through them. Blood stained those buildings, because anyone that was inside of them was ravaged by the source of the destruction in question. Yet, the unknown deaths of these people weren't what bothered Worthy and Hiel.
Where one of the cut buildings was the sharpest, near one of its corners, a winged woman was impaled.
Blood was pooling from the mouth of the humanoid, and the feathers that grew from her arms and legs were soaked in an unnatural red. Her life poured out of her, and the color in her eyes drained away.
The harpy that had been carrying Taivat was dead.
Worthy didn't know if one of Hiel's creations dying meant that it was dead for good, but the beast did not fade away after its expiration. She was a corpse, executed in a fashion that looked too brutal for an ordinary Climber to accomplish. Thus, there was only one person that he could think of that could've been responsible.
'Taivat?! Where is Taivat?!'
There was no sign of Taivat, nor was there any sign of Asterie, his pursuer. The handsome man had a Reward that was effective at fending off the woman's spatial warping abilities. Whatever properties his light had, it was enough to protect him for a time.
Even with the ability to fend off the contortion of space, it hadn't saved the harpy. His efforts could fail, and all it would take was a split second for Taivat to die.
'Should… Should we really go back for him?' They'd abandoned him already. When they were being chased by the speedster, the harpy could not keep up with Bonecrusher's swift movements and therefore, they left them behind.
Before, Worthy just thought that the man was well-equipped to defend himself.
A worm of doubt crept into his head now. Asterie's odious ability to control space had torn Oro's arm from his body, destroyed several buildings, and allowed her to remove the distance of space between herself and other things. Truthfully, Worthy could not fathom why she was here at all. She was invulnerable, perhaps strong enough to defeat any monster sent her well.
Somehow, with all that power, she was still enthralled… Because the monsters they were up against were not merely mindless beasts, as it had once been believed. These were fragments of a beast that ascended to divinity, and was killed by a woman who was a mystery to even the world she existed in. Alice's memories showed a world that once had all sorts of mysticism involved in, far more than the one Worthy came from.
The Blood Marauder stole everything.
In the broader perspective, with that information, Asterie's power did not seem quite as harrowing anymore.