The pale woman looked at him from behind her long bangs of black hair, her eyes contemplative and alight with an intense curiosity. Her regard was very much akin to that of an amused observer, studying something new and intriguing. Kain felt himself stiffening in indignation.
“The blackest nefastus.” Ophiel said, as if repeating something she had heard elsewhere.
While she was at ease, her accompanying golden haired and eyed men of the Divus slave race were most definitely not. They kept their eyes on Kain and did not waver. Their body language said more. They were tensed and pale and their postures were of men on the verge of bolting but they grimly stood there, defying the clear impulse.
Courage was not the absence of fear but rather acting in spite of it and in this gesture Kain could recognise courage. That at least he respected.
“I confess, given the depth of your unsavoury reputation…” Open leaned back with her face not showing any emotion. She hadn’t smiled or frowned since she had started talking, her face a deadpan and her eyes making up for the lack of emotion. “I had expected more to look that.” Her pale face glowed in the pale orange glow of the molten metal all around.
She was definitely human and obviously still not of the same race as the rest of them. Did her secondary affixed name of ‘Divus’ alter her upon receiving the status?
Kain glared back with equal intensity.
“I find no benefit in impressing you.” He replied. Ophiel only raised an eyebrow in response as silence dragged on, their eyes never flinching from each others gazes,
“Perhaps not.” She said eventually. “But you and I must have words.”
Kain snorted derisively, letting his arms hang down by his sides. They seemed at ease but the relaxation was a mere illusion. He was just as tense as any of the humans around him and ready to react with lightning speed to the slightest hint of hostility.
“More then words if you’re standing in my way.” He said, his tone implying that unless she wanted a confrontation she would remove herself.
Ophiel did not move but her eyes went frosty.
“If you proclaim yourself a Divus then you have sold your dignity to the Wheel of Fate.” He added, not so much as an accusation but more as a testing barb. While Ophiel herself did not react, the golden slaves did. Expressions of shock, terror and horror appeared on their faces although no sign of anger or outrage.
Apparently the slaves only feared the wheel and didn’t revere it. Ophiel glanced once back over her shoulder at them and they stiffened, trying not to meet his gaze. Then she turned back to Kain.
“I serve almighty God.” She said slowly and Kain found himself actually smiling.
“That’s all I needed to hear.” He said.
He released his tension in a spring, launching himself at her with talons forward. He blurred as he moved, hoping to catch her in the chest before she could get out of the way. Evidentially she had been anticipating the attack and dodged, ducking forward and rolling under him at the very instant he had begun to move. Rolling into her cloak she became a tight ball that he sailed over.
He lanced with a clank of metal on metal, the grill he stood upon clattering against others. Otheil was back on her feet instantly as well, spinning around to face him with her cloak twisting around her body. Two daggers had appears in her hands, perhaps hidden inside her clothes.
No, now that Kain could see them clearly they were not daggers but an eastern weapon called a Sai; its three stabbing prongs held expertly by trained hands.
“You will not profit by such behaviour.” She said, her face still not showing any emotion.
“I am under no illusions about that.” Kain replied, his talons still spread wide and ready. “But if nothing else it will vindicate my sense of injury.”
He came at her again, slashing at her side to catch her left arm. She parried him with her Sai, deflecting his talons with a spray of sparks.
Kain clasped her weapon, holding it immobile with one hand and slashing at her face with the other.
She bent backwards to avoid it but the tips of his talons caught across her chin, cutting deep and scrapping bone. Blood flew from the cuts and she let out a pained grunt.
She stabbed at him with the Sai in her free hand but Kain quickly dissolved into mist, letting her go to avoid the strike.
“Patron!” One of the golden slaves proclaimed in alarm, seeing the cut and blood on her chin. He started forward but Othiel glared at him, her eyes savage.
“Stay where you are.” She told him in a flat voice and the man froze.
Kain solidified a sort distance away. He was used to fighting with a claymore and as a consequence had let his hand to hand combat skills lax. Still he was not without knowing the practise and put what he did know to good use now, slapping away a thrust as Otheil dove in for an attack of her own.
She was fast, stabbing at him over and over with her twin weapons; never twice in the same place. She managed to catch him twice across the chest, reminding him that he was still covering from the brutal defeat Raziel-Divus had dealt him.
Deciding to end it quickly, he brought his leg up to kick her in the stomach. She dodged it and backed off, giving Kain the room he needed.
Gathering his energies he focused them down his arm and then out his palm, discharging a bolt of magical lightning.
As soon as he gave the power the command to act, it disappeared; the force sucked out in that very distant.  It seemed to vanish from his body entirely.
.
.
“As I attempted to summon magical energy to aid me in battle, the effect was a disappointing shock. It felt hollow and puny as it had no weight behind it.”
.
.
The affect left him breathing hard as he turned his palm up to look at it, dumbfounded. No spell he had ever cast had done this before.
He tried again to cast an energy bolt but once more the same negating effect.
Desperately he tried another spell and it too failed. Even telekenesis was negated, his mind unable to physically affect anything around him when he tried.
“Is something wrong black nefastus?” Ophiel asked, straightening up from her battle stance. “Does the fabled Kain the disruptor rely too heavily of transitory spells and incantations?”
Kain slowly looked up from his palm to her.
“You will find that in the holy fortress city of Fanum-Divus such things are impossible, negated.”
Kain did not understand how such a thing was possible in the first place but in response his lips pulled back in a snarl.
“All that has succeeded in doing is ensuring I kill you with my bare hands.” He said, his voice tinged with anger.
He took a step forward and stopped, feeling a throb in his chest; a painful sensation that began to eat at his strength.
He put a hand on his chest. The gesture didn’t help and he strained, willing the weakening lethargic weakness to go away. The attack, perhaps brought on by the sapping of his magic was like a spreading numbness that ate at his reserves.
.
.
“Again there was that numbing weakness spreading from my chest, worse then before; a obtund sensation that left me stupefied. What was happening to me?”
.
.
“Enough of this idiocy, Kain.” Othiel remarked, apparently not noticing his condition. He was grateful for her blindness to his weakness. She might have chosen then to attack but her pause gave him the precious seconds he needed to regain some control over his body.
“I dragged you from the Ether myself. I did not go to all that trouble to waste it in a fight.” With finality she sheathed her Sai’s inside her grey cloak and clearly did not mean to draw them again.
“Easy enough to say and difficult to prove.” Kain retorted, breathing hard through his nose as to not show her how out of breath he was. “No one with the postfix of Divus to their name has given me cause to trust their word.”
Ophiel took a moment to control her breathing, calming herself and relaxing her body; letting her cloak fall over her shoulders and hide her body.
“You speak of the King, Raziel-Divus; the Scribe of Heaven.” She began. Kain stared at her.
A king?
Of course, he decided in retrospect, what else would the right hand servant of the false god be amongst the sycophants?
.
.
“I still found it hard to believe that Raziel, in another lifetime beyond that which I had known of him, had been effectively the King of Heaven itself. The Raziel that I had known had been so self-effacing that it seemed ludicrous and yet I could not deny what my own eyes had seen and body endured.”
.
.
Had Raziel-Divus done something to him during the battle to weaken him this way? He thought back, pouring through the recollection of the confrontation in the Chronoplast.
He had been struck down, burned and then… Yes of course. Divus had literally yanked the spirit of his future self out of Kain’s body.
He did not understand how that could affect him so but he felt certain that had to be the route cause.
“When I pulled you out from nothingness I had at first thought you were dead for I felt no heart beat in you.” Ophiel said, her comment strangely echoing his own inner thoughts. “After closer examination did I perceive my error. You simply have no heart to beat.”
She approached him, cautiously slowly, her eyes wandering down to his chest and for the first time her face creased with an expression; a puzzled frown.
“And that is perhaps the most perplexing mystery about you.” She said. “You are alive, blood is moving through your veins and yet you have no heart whatsoever. You are impossible and yet here you stand.”
She was within arms reach now and gently she reached out and laid a finger on the left hand side of his chest.
“Something is keeping you alive but whatever it is it’s not in your body.”