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Shadows have ere been friends to reapers. Perhaps it is the dark nature of their art or the inclination of their voidsent companions. Regardless, Rullus is glad of the affinity as he walks through the imposing halls of the imperial palace.
His form shifts from shadow to shadow in a smooth glide of movement. The guards he passes hear naught and see less. During his time in the reaper unit, he came to know more than a few of his fellow soldiers, and while he now shuns them for their embrace of the empire, that is not enough to warrant a death sentence.
Nay, he has but one goal tonight. To relieve Emperor Solus zos Galvus of his life.
Rullus slips through a door a second after a servant walks out, the edge of his coat a hairsbreadth away from being caught in the closing door. The deepest chambers of the imperial palace may be well guarded, but now that he passed those defenses, little will stand between him and his target. Ceruleum lamps have been lit to chase away the midnight darkness, but it is easy for him to stalk from pillar to pillar, avoiding the circles of illumination.
There are footsteps. Objectively quiet, only amplified by the soft silence of the otherwise empty hallway.
Scythe held low and at the ready, Rullus waits.
Many times has he laid eyes upon Solus zos Galvus, although he doubts the man would recognize him in return. There is a casual slouch to the emperor’s shoulders, as if the very act of ruling Garlemald is beneath him. Anger burns like acid in Rullus’s chest.
The footsteps are as a raging drum in his ears. Solus walks past his hiding place, and he hears the emperor’s beating heart.
Silent as a grave, Rullus shifts from the shadows of the pillar to stalk Solus. Two people, one set of footsteps.
The emperor reaches the door at the end of the hall. Rullus’s fingers tighten around his scythe. He breathes in, no sound escaping his lungs. This is right. This is justice. This is for the betterment of Garlemald.
His scythe slices through Solus’s neck.
Yet when Rullus blinks, the emperor is gone. Solus isn’t there. He’s simply… vanished.
“What’s this?” a voice asks, audibly amused. “A rogue reaper?”
Rullus whirls around to find Solus standing behind him, hale and healthy and with nary a single scratch. Never has he seen a Garlean move so swiftly, their inability to manipulate aether barring them from the bursts of speed some Eorzean warriors and sorcerers are capable of. And Solus is certainly no reaper, so this cannot be the result of a pact with a voidsent. All of which leaves Rullus at a loss for a single reasonable explanation.
“Tis impossible…” Rullus readies his scythe again, for while he may not understand this, his instincts are still sharp as ever. “I cut you down.”
With a flippant motion of his hand, Solus gestures to himself. “Evidently, you did not.”
He grits his teeth. “No matter. Persistence is a virtue.”
“Tell me,” Solus continues, infuriatingly refusing to acknowledge that Rullus had spoken, “what drives an otherwise loyal reaper to turn traitor? I do prefer to learn from these little oversights, you understand.”
“You have rendered up countless lives in service of this mad empire of yours,” Rullus snarls. “I have seen what this magitek war machine achieves and it is rotten to the core, naught but - “
“So, you’re an idealist. How… uncreative.” Solus tilts his head to the side, and Rullus gets the odd sensation that those strange golden eyes are staring straight through him, through to the voidsent that hovers just beyond his soul. He shrugs. “Hm, I suppose I have some time to kill. You have two minutes exactly, reaper. Do try to make this interesting.”
Of all the insulting -
The air itself is all but snipped in two as Rullus swings his scythe once more. Solus simply steps out of the way and the blade misses him by a scant ilm. He draws a gunblade, metal gleaming in the darkness. Where did - How did Rullus not see that he was armed? That should have been the first thing he’d noticed.
Solus rolls out his wrist, twirling the blade, adjusting to the weight of it. He considers the barrel for a moment and then flicks it open. Ammunition cartridges fall out, tumbling to the ground.
“I’ll even adjust the odds in your favor, shall I?” he says, flicking the barrel back into place.
It has been more than a few years since someone underestimated Rullus. He has spent his life training and fighting and preparing, honing his skills against the whetstone of combat. In comparison, Solus’s days as a legatus have passed. A duel should be in Rullus’s favor. It should.
Rage guides his hand as he slices across Solus’s torso, sparks flying as the emperor lazily blocks the scythe with his gunblade. Metal grates against metal for an ear-splitting second of painful noise. Momentum carries Rullus through the strike and around into a whirling spin, bringing the blade up, deflected again by a casual parry. At the height of its arch, he reverses the scythe and slams it back down in a devastating blow that has gutted more than one unfortunate foe.
Once more, Solus just isn’t there, having apparently shifted ever so slightly to the side in the second before the blow should have connected.
Snarling, Rullus rushes him, dashing forward and swinging his scythe again and again in deadly arcs. A lethargic smirk spreads across Solus’s expression, growing as Rullus in turn grows more angry, more aggressive. He’s being goaded, he knows, yet his fury is a match for Halone’s and his capacity for destruction outstrips Rhalgr’s.
Solus lets him push him backwards, giving up ground in the hall without protest, as though curious to see what Rullus will do with it.
Fine then.
He reaches inside his soul and tugs on the bond with his voidsent, the sensation not unlike yanking on a rope to reel in something as powerful as a dragon and twice as dangerous. A reaper may live and die with their voidsent, yet that doesn’t mean they are oblivious to the risks of dealing with such fatal allies. He and his voidsent have swallowed a hundred souls and he will consume Solus just the same, but he is aware that should his conviction waver and his strength wane, he could be swallowed up himself.
The voidsent envelops him, flooding him, turning the blood in his veins into a sickly red that glows beneath his paling skin. Power drips from him like steam, like ash. Enshrouded, he is more voidsent than man.
“Really now.” Solus doesn’t so much as blink as Rullus dons his enshrouded form. “It took you this long to summon your voidsent?”
When Rullus speaks, it is with a growling echo, an animalistic undercurrent. “Die.”
No enemy has withstood more than five seconds of combat once he calls forth his voidsent, all perishing under his blade. He throws himself towards his foe, scythe moving so swiftly that only his enhanced eyes can manage to track it. The scythe clashes with Solus’s gunblade, again and again, and he gains no ground, does no damage, and it’s infuriating - His scream makes his bones vibrate in tune with the song of his voidsent.
Nothing he does matters. Every strike is flicked aside or sidestepped, and while he gains ground, it is meaningless, for he cannot do anything with it.
Channeling every onze of strength into his scythe, he executes a grim guillotine of an ability, dark energy filling the air and coating his blade. He feels it connect with Solus’s gunblade, feels that grind of metal, feels his own power unleash.
Something gives, and the gunblade is cut in half.
Rullus exhales, a deeply vicious satisfaction sliding across his breath. Finally, something. Absent a weapon, Solus is vulnerable.
Solus glances at the broken gunblade in his hand. Neither surprise nor disappointment flicker across his face. The blade is nothing to him. He tosses it over his shoulder, discarding it like mere trash.
In that moment of distraction, Rullus strikes.
Something stops his scythe. All that power, all that momentum, stopped dead in its tracks. Solus has his gloves fingers wrapped around the handle of the scythe, not a single sign of struggle in his expression or posture or -
“Time’s up,” Solus drawls.
He rips the weapon from Rullus’s grasp and throws it aside, sending it skittering across the stone floor. Shock overtakes Rullus for a crucial second. Never before has he been disarmed. No one has ever so much as gotten close. Unarmed combat was a part of his training, true, but a reaper’s blade is their life.
“Rather unimpressive, I must say.” That bored slouch sinks back into Solus’s shoulders. “Run back to whatever sad group of malcontents spat you out.”
Unarmed, Rullus feels fear for the first time tonight. “What are you?”
“Currently?” Solus arches an eyebrow. “Bored.”
He raises a hand. All Rullus hears is a sharp snap of the emperor’s fingers and then Rullus’s own voidsent tears at him from the inside out and those too-familiar shadows swallow him whole.