Chapter 278: Playing You For The Blind
For the second time since this council meeting began, a Demon corpse had appeared on the heavenly ground where no Demons were ever meant to touch.
Spectra stepped forward, and the air around her changed.
She appeared furious. So furious that even Thor stepped out of the way to allow her to pass. The Council Members all watched her silently. Odesto with more interest than others.
Her hand shot out magenta energy, wrapped it around the punctured neck of the Demon Head and dragged it back up to get grip. The thorns she had used to impale it were still embedded in its flesh, dark holes ringed with dried black ichor.
She lifted the massive body as if it weighed nothing at all and showed it to them, her crimson eyes blazing.
"This," she declared, her dark silky voice thunderous in the silence, "is the Demon Head that we fought in that half-citadel. The Demon Head I killed!"
The chamber started to listen, forced to by her commanding aura. The Council Members who had scrambled away from the table moments ago now froze mid-step, their eyes fixed on the slender woman holding a creature five times her size aloft with one hand.
The Sovereigns on their floating screens leaned forward as one, their royal composure forgotten. Even Malakai, the battle-hardened Berserker who had seen horrors beyond counting, watched like she was the most interesting thing in the world.
Lancet was caught off guard as well.
He didn’t know what she was doing. But at the moment, he trusted her enough to let her go on with it.
Spectra’s voice rang out again, dripping with contempt. "But if you want to doubt it. If you think that maybe I killed a Demon Head from my own army just to lie to you patronizing boasts. Then how about I prove it to you?"
She turned to Espel.
"You can heal anything with your butterflies, correct?" Her crimson eyes were intense, focused. "Heal the death injuries. Stitch him up."
Espel blinked, her mouth opening slightly. She glanced at Lancet, uncertainty managing to show itself in her plain expression. She was waiting for his own order.
Lancet met her eyes. He didn’t know what Spectra was trying to do either. But at this moment, they had run out of options.
The Council was wavering. The Sovereigns were sympathetic but unconvinced. Verdrak’s poisonous theory had taken root. They needed something, anything, to tip the scales.
He nodded.
The go ahead order was given.
Espel took a breath, then raised her hands. The Bloomwings streamed from her palms in a cascade of soft pink light, dozens of them, then hundreds.
They fluttered toward the suspended corpse of Braavas, their glow intensifying as they settled on its mangled flesh. The chamber filled with the gentle hum of regeneration magic, a sound like distant wind chimes.
The wounds began to close. The thorn-punctures in the neck sealed over, the flesh knitting itself back together with the quiet efficiency of Espel’s power.
The gashes and cuts from the battle — Thor’s hammer strikes, Kestrel’s dragon bites, Astensia’s holy slashes — faded one by one. The coral growths on its shoulder, which had crumbled during the fight, slowly reformed. Even the broken spinal spike straightened and hardened.
The Demon Head was still dead. But its body was whole again.
Verdrak, who had been watching with narrowed eyes, threw his hands up in exasperation. "So what now? What have you proven?" His pointed beard quivered. "The Demon Head is still dead! You’ve healed a corpse! Congratulations!"
Spectra ignored him. She turned her head and locked eyes with Lancet.
In that single glance, something passed between them. The only reason a person would heal a corpse was if they intended to bring it back to life.
Lancet didn’t do miracles, but he and everyone else knew someone who kinda did.
He turned to Thor. "Your Skill. Static Reanimation."
Thor’s eyes widened. Now it made sense to not just her but the other Heroines. Bringing the Demon Head back to life to be their own witness in this petulant case.
"With pleasure, Master Lancet," the Valkyrie said.
She stepped toward the healed corpse, the Hammer of Force crackling in her grip. Blue-white lightning arced from her armour, dancing across her shoulders, gathering at the head of her weapon. The air around her hummed with building voltage, the scent of ozone cutting through the chamber’s incense.
"STATIC REANIMATION!"
She pointed the hammer down.
The lightning exploded outward, a blinding flash that made half the Council shield their eyes.
The corpse jolted on the ground, its massive limbs convulsing as the electricity surged through its dead nerves.
Blue-white arcs crawled across its flesh like living veins, and for a moment, the Demon Head’s mismatched eyes flickered with a horrible parody of life.
It looked up.
It saw the Council Members in front of it.
And then it burst upward.
"ROAARRRRRRR!!!"
That roar tore from its throat with rage and animosity. Braavas, the Demon Head of Deathrock, a centuries-old servant of Lord Baal, who had died in fury and terror and now found itself inexplicably, impossibly, dragged back into a semblance of existence.
It did not understand what was happening. It only knew that these people before it were the Council Members. Knowing what their death would mean for the Second World, every instinct screamed to kill.
It lunged.
Malakai was already moving, his weapon drawn, his eyes crosshairing the best body part to strike.
But the Demon Head was fast, even in death. Even as a reanimated shell, it moved with the speed of a Void-rank. It crossed half the distance to the Council table in the span of a heartbeat, its claws outstretched, its snout-like jaw gaping open to reveal rows of yellow teeth.
Before it could reach the Grace Wall, tendrils of magenta and oxblood energy lashed out and wrapped around its throat, its arms, its torso. Spectra yanked him back, halting his charge inches from the invisible barrier.
Braavas thrashed against his bindings, his mismatched eyes wild with confusion and rage, his claws swiping at the air, his jaws snapping at the Council Members beyond the wall.
Obel looked plainly at the snarling monster before him, his deep-set eyes steady, his wizardly beard motionless. Some of the other Council Members flinched, pressing back into their chairs. Others gripped the ironwood table, their knuckles white. But none of them fled.
Spectra held him strongly.
"They know everything, Braavas," she said, her voice loud enough for the entire chamber to hear. "Hellfyre and the rest of your Second World will pay for double-crossing the humans."
Braavas thrashed against his bindings, his jaws still snapping, his mismatched eyes rolling with confusion and rage. And then he laughed.
It was a horrible sound, wet and guttural, the laugh of a creature that had spent centuries in the service of darkness and had never once regretted it.
"Pay?" he snarled, his voice distorted by the reanimation but still unmistakably his own. "Pay for what? For outsmarting you? For playing you for the blind, trusting fools you are?"