Chapter 14 - Chapter 13 Divine Requiem

Countless hours of pure hell quickly followed my arrival as Darkness and Mist shot out from their fingertips a dark magic which looked exactly like the marks around my neck causing me to scream and struggle "by our Emperor how long is this going to take?" Asked a young Mage no taller than six feet in height "we cannot rush such a process" Soul answered swinging his hammer onto an anvil smithing away at some armor which resembled mine but bigger, more bulky. After what felt like an absolute eternity Darkness and Mist stop and grab me by the arms and hoist me into an arming station locking me in place with Stasis as a couple members of the Scales chapter walk into the chamber alongside a few Mages who were seen praying quietly, they spent the past hour fitting on the new armor which attached and connected to the armor set i was already wearing through tubes and hookups, the tubes from what i heard from the chatter around me was pumping an Alchemic Concoction that glowed a bright light blue, i was made of sedatives, ancient chaos essense and lastly a type of fluid which was capable of healing wounds, disease and can even shield from harsh elements like Radiation. After the armor was fully put on and connected i was lowered onto my feet as the Mages recited the last prayers before leaving the chamber with the Scales chapter members, the armor changed me from six feet and three inches in height and three feet wide to eight feet tall and 6 feet wide, i felt like i was being held up in the air yet because of all the wires and tubes connected between the new armor and old it also feels like im standing on the ground with my own two feet all at the same time. I turn my head to Darkness who hands me a new helmet which resembled one of a Crusade Knights helmet and as i grab it with my guantlet and slowly put it on my head, the systems began linking to my armor, life support systems, radiation and other monitoring systems, and eventually communications amongst other hearing systems which automatically tuned and tweaked until i could hear perfectly everything around me "-you are our Bulwark, our Chosen Knight against the impure, do you swear to uphold this standard, to carry out the will of Drackon Assassin, my father, and the Grand Emperor of the Assassin Clan?" Darkness had asked me as my visor lenses for my eyes flashed through night vision, and several different types of thermal vision until switching back to normal and zooming up to one hundred meters and then back to normal magnification. I look towards his shadowy, ragged cloth hood and said "only if your sorcery doesn't kill me first" he walks to me only a dark shadow where his head and neck should be and only two small glowing purple orbs as eyes, he says "it only hurts because it requires a cost to fully develop within, that cost is just a bit of your life energy nothing fatal, it will subside within three months tops but if not just get killed again and we'll take a look" i stepped back with a gentle stomp of my left boot asking "what do you mean by getting killed again?" For some sort of elaboration only to be met with a faintly echoed laugh before he asked "you think you have been surviving this entire time without dying once? How do you think were able to bring you into a realm your kind cannot exist in or you would cease to exist because of the nature of our existence as a whole, its why we were able to make this realm and everything else, why you have what you have and why were able to yank you before anything else snatches you, the first time you died from hunger, thirst and pure insanity and once you did your body exploded covering the walls with all that crude nonsense at the time, the second time your body was mangled from the fall you took and you turned into a black liquid muck of chaos in your armor only to be thrown back by my mother, now were on the third which is shock from the wounds you gathered from your fight so to speed up your process we gave you a needed upgrade, that sum up everything?" I slowly nodded in acknowledgment and he nodded as well walking to a large weapon rack saying "your weapons you had are no longer usable because of how large your hands are now versus how they were originally, even your Phakizaki would crumble in your guantlets fingers" he looked to me "oh dont look so down we have solutions to all of that, come pick some out" he motioned to me, i slowly stepped towards him getting used to the feeling and movement of my legs and boots, i looked at the weapon rack to see a large rifle approximately seven feet in length and approximately two feet wide, it looked like a larger version of an assault rifle with a holographic optic if sorts, Darkness walked to him explaining "the optics do all the magnifying, the sight is just to give you a reticle, rifle links to your helmet so it can automatically calculate for range in the barrel system, we call it the M7G5 Skorpos Rifle and the caliber is 20x102 millimeter" i looked at him with quiet astonishment as i nodded, the pistol he showed me looked bulky and crude like it could serve as a small bludgeon against an enemy "what is this monstrosity?" It resembled what looked like to be a plasma blaster with a revolver-like cylinder with a straight pistol grip, the barrel was long, rifled and ported, bulky as all hell with small Picatinny rails on the top and bottom of the barrel, the frame was thick and came down at a length of approximately ten to eleven inches with the barrel matching, at the beginning of the barrel before the cylinder infront of the fairly enlarged trigger guard there was a metal frame piece that functioned as a hand guard for the pistol. He grabbed it, flicked the cylinder to the side opening it before giving it a light swish saying "this is the Redeemer a powerful pistol chambered in twenty two hornet a caliber im sure you know of" i nodded before he continued "the rounds themselves are elemental im sure you noticed" he pulled out a metal box the size of a cinder block full of glowing twenty two hornet, glowing from a purple plasma which swirled around each round, i picked one up and dropped it into the cylinder, locked it and rotated it until the round was lined up and i fired it at a vase seeing it not only shatter but unleash a purple molten inferno slightly melting the floor where the pieces landed before dissipating and slowly extinguishing, i say "ill take it" and attach it to my hip. The last weapon was an elongated shining longsword with a seventy-two inch blade and a straight hilt and handguard made of silver and gold with a round pummel made of shining silver which i put in my right gauntlet and grabbed what resembled a larger crusader shield. Darkness asks if im ready to return and i nod preparing myself for the battle to come giving my sword a few practice swings "good luck" he says before touching where my forehead would be on my helmet with his fingertips sending me back to Requiem. It started with optics going bright like a white void until wind could be heard, i was dropping from the clouds onto the slope of a mountain landing on my boots with a loud crash and then a rough hop before sliding down into trees of jungle valley down the mountain smacking into some of the trees before putting up my shield as cover, the surface at my feet began to feel more steep as i continued sliding until i eventually hit a very long tree that grew out of the side of the mountain outwards, i looked down to see the ground approximately a hundred feet up and i jumped down striking my new sword into the mountain wall next to me slowing down my descent until i reached the ground continuing my downward advance until i saw the wreckage of the Warband which i continued to advance to slowly, as i did i saw Locust grabbing what he could carry and tending to an injured Rosemary who was cut and scraped and Jackal who had been shot in the shoulder, as Corvine helps move the more heavier debris he turns to my direction and sees me saying "how many times will you surprise us?" Before letting out a bellowing metallic laugh as i walk to him and now almost as tall as him saying "hopefully this will be my last one" i remove my helmet and sit on a box Dr. Levine examining me complaining "first black ink sigils of chaos nature and origin, then you get thrown down a pit to turn into lord knows what and now you explode into black ash, you are overwhelming and truthfully quite frightening Hyde Jackson i do not understand it" i got up and went into the wreckage seeing my guns on the floor, i try to make a gentle pinch movement to the Phakizaki and it not only crumbles but also turns to dust leaving nothing to salvage, i stomped on my old guns leaving them crinkled up and deformed like soda cans when you crush them and i walk out to everyone else saying "we have a long road ahead of us."