Without the Storm Bearer Title, I could not use Stormsteps with my fleshy body, and had to become Lightning Incarnate first. Still, this was a minor inconvenience that I could easily work around.
Stormstep carried me to the center of their formation, and I unleashed the Loom. Silver-white threads spread through the air like a web, slicing through armor, shattering weapons, and the knights fell in waves.
It was a good thing that they were faceless and made no sound, because I was butchering these men, and only the blind would think of this as a fight.
I moved through them like a storm, not using much power, as each step carried me to a new target, each strike finding its mark, and I did not need to count or track these knights, not when I had fought against demons that moved so fast they left afterimages in the air.
These knights were just speed bumps on the road to whoever was running this place and my eventual escape.
I was surprised when the fox leaped from my shoulder, its silver fur blazing, and it tore through a knight with claws that glowed with the blue light of my lightning, as I felt my body becoming incredibly lightweight, and my feet left the ground.
The fox had invoked the Heavenly Posture, and the effect was fascinating, as the small fox was not necessarily strong even if it was very durable, but with my new title, it was able to use my lightning, and I could see the silver threads around its claws as it tore through the knights with a brutal relish that was a bit concerning.
The Moon Fox ran up the body of a knight, and its tails covered by lightning threads tore through the body of the knight, and it fell in three places. As it landed, it turned towards me and grinned.
I rolled my eyes as I tried to figure out how to move while my feet were not touching the ground. It was not instinctive, and a part of me was almost repulsed by the idea that my feet were not touching the ground.
"Behind you!" the Moon Fox shouted, in Mel’s voice. She did not need to inform me due to Death Touched quietly informing me of a growing cold spot behind me.
I spun, my hand already rising, and a bolt of Heaven’s Verdict struck the knight who had been about to impale me. This was the first time I cast this spell, and a faint golden lightning leaped out of my fingers, appeared over the knight, where it condensed into a spear and slammed down into the helm of the knight.
The lightning left only a small burn on the armor, but the knight collapsed as anything it had for a soul was burned to ash, although it was weird that I barely felt the weight of a soul... were these knights mere mortals?
The remaining knights fell in seconds. The last one collapsed at my feet, its armor smoking, as the little fox had cut off the knight’s legs at the knee. The lightning that cut through the knights also cauterised the wounds, so there was not much blood around me.
"That was thrilling." The fox climbed on the head of a fallen knight, and it screeched. "I want more!"
"Hmm, getting a bit bloodthirsty here, aren’t you?"
The fox bared its teeth at me, and then it smiled and said in a sweet voice, although because it sounded like Mel, I found it a bit creepy.
"So, Elric , you know I have been digging inside your head."
I frowned, "When you say it like that, it makes me less likely to want to talk with you. You know that, right?"
The fox batted its paws in the air in a dismissive fashion and looked into my eyes. "I wanted to ask you, why do you keep thinking of me as... it?"
I squinted my eyes and looked at the last knight who was struggling to crawl towards a sword, and I flipped him over with my leg. "That is not the best time for such conversations, don’t you think?"
The fox looked around us, "I know danger is not far from us, and this moment is as good a time as any. Besides, we would talk about my lack of a name, but that is another topic, for another day. Why do you think of me as it?!"
I glanced at the little fox, placed one leg on the chest of the squirming knight before grabbing his helm, and I began to pull it off. It was fastened tight, and I did not want to pull out the head of the man underneath, so I did it slowly.
"You know that you are a fox, right? Even if you are a Heavenly Beast. If you have read my mind, you know we refer to animals as it."
"Oh," the fox looked downcast for a moment, "But I am... an animal cannot speak and..."
"No more distractions," I interrupted the fox, as the helmet gave out under my pulling, "I promise we will talk about all of this later, including the matter of your name."
I looked at the face of the man beneath the helm, and my face went pale. The fox wanted to protest, but then it must have seen the look on my face, and then it looked at the knight, and it cringed, as its tails spread out behind it.
The face inside was a ruin, and it was not my fault. Rotting flesh stretched over a skull that should have been buried centuries ago. The skin was grey, cracked, held together by what seemed to be the same pale, luminous fluid that had filled the vats in the chamber behind me. The eyes were empty sockets, but they turned toward me, and I could see the faint glow of a chip embedded in the back of the skull.
The knight’s jaw opened, and a sound came out. A hiss, like steam escaping from a cracked pipe, and although there was no rotten smell, there was a strong smell of iron that made me want to sneeze.
A moment passed, and getting used to the image of the undead creature, the fox hopped onto the knight’s shoulder and peered into the empty eye socket. "Oh, that’s grim. He’s been dead for centuries. The chip is the only thing keeping him moving."
I looked at the chip, embedded in the skull, pulsing with a faint light. It was identical to the chip I had taken from the first knight I had killed.
I reached into my robes and pulled out the chip. I held it up to the knight’s skull, and the two chips pulsed in unison.
"They’re connected," I said. "The chips control them. They’re not alive. They’re just... vessels."