Apocalypse Reset: My Crab Can Heal the World!

"Claw of Death!" Barns screams at the top of his lungs, swinging his empty hand at Adon. If he can believe it enough, it will happen!

Majestic light forms around Barns’ arm, transforming it into a crab claw, and he snips just like Clancy taught him to snip.

Adon is sliced clean in half, his legs falling out and his torso kept suspended only from the impact of Barns’ snip. He hovers in the air, gasping and staring at Barns, his eyes locked in the throes of death.

Barns uppercuts with his other arm, driving Silver Rake’s blades deep into Adon’s exposed entrails. The vampire screams as he lights up with holy light and simply - POPS -. Everything within three meters is sprayed with vampire blood, including Barns’ entire front half.

He turns his head, crab claw in one arm and shining claws in the other. He looks like an action hero.

"This is the fate of the enemies of humanity," Barns declares. "Let there be no question."

As Barns speaks, he feels a wave of malevolence overtake him - his Crab Intuition goes wild and his vision turns red. He whips his head around and a bubble of red blood emerges from Adon’s pile.

The bubble pops and reveals a sickly-looking bat. It flits quickly into the air, trying to escape.

Osmond reacts quickly, grabbing his wrist with one hand and focusing his magic. He shoots a powerful dart of magic toward the bat, attempting to pierce it through midair. The crafty vampire bat narrowly dodges the attack and flies up and away out of sight.

Barns rushes to the railing, gripping the metal in frustration as the bat escapes through a crack in the ceiling.

"Damn it!" Barns howls. "You have to be kidding me!"

His fists curl around the iron bar of the railing, shaking it so violently it could detach. Osmond hasn’t given up, though - not yet.

The demon floats up off the railway. He cannot fly anywhere near as well as a bat, but he can move freely through the air, albeit slowly.

"I’ll follow him! He’s not getting far, not after that attack." Osmond zips away after the bat, leaving Barns and Skado behind.

"Good teamwork," Skado says quietly. "I was able to successfully inject him with the ashes, mixed with some crushed fireglass for good measure. Even as a bat, that solution I prepared should be ripping him apart from the inside."

"I won’t be satisfied until I know he’s dead for certain," Barns sighs. "For Yunie’s sake. For everyone that monster killed."

Skado nods, but his attention refocuses elsewhere. He strides to the vampire’s corpse as other denizens of the underground city began to pile up around them.

"Something definitely died here," Skado notes. "And yet something got away. I don’t understand, Barns. Was Adon…more than one person?"

"You said he had magic you hadn’t anticipated, didn’t you?"

Skado narrows his eyes, reflecting. The eclipse did seem unnatural, and unlike any of Adon’s powers he’d known of.

"If that’s the case, then this is Adon. But that would mean he had another vampire living inside of him all this time…"

Barns shivers. The very thought is disconcerting.

"I hope Osmond comes back soon," Barns says.

Meanwhile, outside, the vampire flits down the mountain, flying back toward Ordella. It’s the only place it knows to go. It can start over. It can grow again. All it needs is some quiet time to feed and regrow its strength.

The bat lands on a large rock, nearly a full mile away from the Chatran Plateau. It flares its wings, looking around in a disoriented panic. It doesn’t appear to have been followed.

This is all that remains of Adea - when Adon ripped her head off, he didn’t kill her so much as absorb her. And that part of her that remained was able to manifest into one small, tiny bat, right at the moment of Adon’s death.

’Kill,’ the bat chants to itself. It’s hardly capable of a more refined thought. ’Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill.’

It thinks about Ordella, seeing the town as nothing but a source of blood and fuel. It knows what direction to fly in, and it knows what it must do.

’Kill. Kill. Kill.’

It repeats the mantra over and over in its tiny brain.

The bat doesn’t notice someone creeping up on it - but it is not Osmond who has found the creature. It’s someone else who craves revenge just as much as anyone.

Eldrie locks his eyes on the bat. He knows exactly what it is - he’d seen Adea’s transformation many times. Haunted memories of a life he’d rather forget bloom freely in his mind. He remembers what she did to him, to Wilfort, to Incantra. He remembers what she did to all of his people in Ordella.

He remembers what these monsters did to Yunie. The vampire twins could not be suffered to exist even another second in this world.

Eldrie withdraws one of the arrows that was custom-made for him by Underhill, made from the bone of one of the twins’ dead relatives. He trusts that it will strike true.

He pulls back his bowstring and lets the arrow fly in an instant. Eldrie is a master archer - the dim moonlight is more than enough for his arrow to find its mark. It passes clean through the bat, and the vampire falls to the ground, limp and dead. The story of Adon and Adea and their theatrical malevolence is finally over - it’s curtains for them both.

Eldrie stalks up to his prey, looking at the pitiful creature on the ground. "Looks like it wasn’t your lucky day, Adon - Adea. Whatever the hell you are."

He grabs the bat as proof of the kill, but as he touches it, his mind is suddenly assaulted with images of terror. Nearly every moment spent as a vampire forces itself back to the forefront of his mind as he’s forced to relive all of the trauma and terror he wrought as a creature of the night. It’s enough to make him drop to his knees. His stomach churns from the sickening awakening and he vomits over the ground.

He opens his eyes. His left eye has become a striking red color, radiating vampiric energy. What remains of Adea and Adon’s magic is still compatible with his body, as he was once a vampire of their creation. Now, their power surges inside him, finding a foothold in his mind. He realizes with horror and disgust something he never thought possible.

"The eclipse…it was my magic."