Alcerys used the time afforded to her in this moment to regain her bearings and adjust her positioning relative to the general.

“If you would see me punished, then do it,” howled the general. “Force your truth upon me! Beat a confession out of my broken husk!”

“Fine,” spat the Charred Judge, raising her left hand, touching the tip of her thumb to her little finger in a gesture of prayer, and the First Arm’s beastly claws followed suit. The Eye’s own righteous fury mixed and combined with hers, and through this divine spark she roused Emberthorn to a blazing inferno.

“If you would reject penance, then GIVE ME YOUR HEAD!”

Dedicating herself fully to an all-out assault meant to break the old man’s resolve, Alcerys charged in a zigzagging pattern. She wielded the First Arm as a wildly-flailing whip, its great claws scoring the ground and grabbing Cao’s swords out of the air, creating an opening just long enough to get in.

Though Cao Hu moved in an unnatural manner befitting the unnatural way in which he remained upon his feet, hopping to and fro much like a real puppet, it did him no good. With a wide horizontal slash from near-point blank range, Alcerys set loose upon him a veritable tidal wave of divine flame that was too wide for him to evade.

Despite that still, he kept on raging against her, ignoring fleshly wounds all together for the sole purpose of killing her… And despite his redoubled focus, despite his wielding of two Flying Swords, Alcerys now knew his favored angles of attack, knew what telegraphs to look out for not in his own body, but in the Flying Sword’s movement.

Clang. Clang. Clang. Clang.

Over, and over, and over again, he desperately repeated desperate, predictable moves, whilst uncannily skittering and hopping about to avoid her pursuit, knocking books and baubles off the shelves. The man looked like a meaty, half-burned spider.

His lackluster offense betrayed the reality that Cao Hu couldn’t handle puppeting himself whilst maintaining his previously unrelenting, barely predictable combat style.

Alcerys watched closely for a short while, building the pattern in her mind, before she snatched the silver-hilted Flying Sword. Setting loose a more focused flame-wave to drive Cao in a particular direction, she threw the silver-hilted blade towards where she thought he would land… And with a noiseless gasp and the scraping of metal wedged into stone, the scimitar impaled him through the kidney.

It twitched and wobbled about as Cao struggled to get it free, but neither he nor the artifact had the wherewithal to pry it loose.

Clearly aware of his doom, the impaled general set his golden-hilted sword upon Alcerys with a burst of renewed savagery, simultaneously screaming an incantation in Pateirian. His body began to swell up, strange light shining from within, and Alcerys instinctively knew it must’ve been some sort of greater suicide tool. If she didn’t get out of the blast zone, she would…

...be fine.

For in a split-second the Woman in Red - who had up until now stood nearly statuesque by the throne - rushed over to Cao Hu’s side, and with a blade of gold and red that protruded from her right forearm she disemboweled him, plunging her left, clawed hand into the wound. She ripped out an etched chunk of jade that absolutely seethed with arcane energy, holding it up within Cao’s disbelieving sight.

“You’ve become a liability, general,” she said in perfect Ikesian, reaching up to her face. In a single motion she pulled off the mask and tossed it aside, disdainfully staring down at the general before she spat into his face.

Alcerys’ attention turned towards her, and the Charred Judge had to get an ironclad grip on herself to keep her composure. Still, a single utterance slipped out at the sight of the woman’s robe slipping from her shoulders and her face being unmasked, “You…”

“Leave disbelief for later, Renegade, I do not intend to impede your mission,” Red cut in, jumping backwards out of Cao’s desperately-grasping reach. She raised her right hand, and upon a short series of one-handed signs, a Fog vortex formed above her palm, into which she dropped the jade chunk. The horns upon her head pulsed with light, accompanied by a brief, pained grimace.

“Strike him down if you would do so. I will not interfere. My sole charge by this senile idiot’s side was to prevent him from doing something monumentally idiotic that would harm the empire at large…” continued Red, looking to Alcerys before she cast another disdainful stare at Cao. “Such as trying to blow up one of the few Fog-sailing lighthouses on the continent. Come now, general. Did you really think I was unaware of the direct precursor to Emperor’s Mercy talismans?”

Alcerys was stunned by Red’s presence here in no small part because of the apparent partial reversal of her innumerable mutations, not to mention her seeming sanity, but rather the absence of something.

None of the filth born from abuse of power, from exploitation of one’s lessers, which the Eye of Judgment so swiftly latched onto. Not a single speck of it resided in her soul, and yet, Alcerys felt something ephemeral where that guilt should’ve been. An imprint, as if Red’s very soul had been scoured of what had made her who she was during their previous encounters.

The general’s disbelieving eyes glazed over as the emotion left his face, and with the sickening crunching of bone and cartilage his head twisted all the way back. In this backwards-headed manner, the cursed immortal used a silver thread to pull his head by the forehead that he might look at Red directly, and upon his face was the countenance of pure derangement.

“Come now, treasonous WHORE. Did you really think I was merely unable to rid myself of the curse?! I saw that those filthy volcano monkeys had given me a precious gift, for it is all too easy to point and proclaim: Here stand those who would bring this curse to an end!” he rambled with an inhuman, gurgling voice, his skin writhing as if he were a sack full of serpents.