Ethan walked through the monastery corridors slowly, tracing his fingers along the cold stone walls as he moved past room after room.
"Where are you two hiding?" he called out casually. "Baphomet and Tyler teaming up to beat me is honestly kind of depressing."
He pushed open one of the doors and glanced inside.
Empty.
Dust-covered beds. Rotten wood. Nothing else.
"You know this whole united-against-a-common-enemy thing doesn't really work for villains," Ethan continued as he stepped back into the corridor. "Mostly because both of you already got beaten badly enough to qualify as cannon fodder."
His voice echoed faintly through the abbey.
Still no answer.
"What exactly are two failed boss fights supposed to do to me?" he went on. "I beat you once. I can do it again."
He wasn't talking just to insult them.
His blood sense couldn't pick up anything in this place. The monastery itself felt wrong, like something here was interfering with it. So he was trying to provoke them into reacting.
But the silence continued.
Then—
a sound came from behind him.
A slow creak.
Ethan turned slightly.
A door at the end of the corridor was swinging open on its own.
"Hmm."
He stared at it for a second.
The door slowly creaked shut.
Then violently slammed back open.
Something lunged out of the darkness inside.
A nun.
Or something wearing the shape of one.
Its face twisted unnaturally, skin stretched tight over twitching features, black veins crawling beneath pale flesh while its mouth hung open far wider than it should. Its eyes were completely dark.
The scream that came out of it didn't sound human.
It hit Ethan before he could properly react, fingers locking around his collar with unnatural strength before slamming him straight through the wall. Stone exploded around him as he crashed into the next room, wooden debris and dust erupting through the air.
A large cross hanging above the far wall broke loose from the impact and dropped directly toward his head.
The wood shattered against him.
"Wow," Ethan muttered as he stood back up through the debris, brushing broken pieces of the cross off his shoulder.
The Nun stood in the broken entrance, staring at him with that twisted, unmoving smile. Its black eyes looked empty and endless at the same time while its jaw twitched unnaturally beneath the veil.
"You are one ugly motherfucker," Ethan said.
He waved his hand.
The room exploded.
Furniture, stone, and broken wood ripped apart at once as dozens of blood-red spears erupted from every direction toward Valak. The Nun moved instantly, twisting unnaturally through the attacks, the spears punching through walls and tearing chunks from the floor wherever they missed.
Then Ethan appeared directly in front of it.
His hand shot forward, grabbing the Nun by the hood.
And slammed it straight into the ground.
The entire floor cracked beneath the impact, fractures racing across the stone while the shockwave blew dust and splintered wood across the room.
The Nun's body twisted violently beneath Ethan's grip.
Then it split apart.
Its form collapsed into a mass of black snakes that burst outward in every direction, dozens of them wrapping around Ethan's arms, neck, and torso almost instantly.
Their bodies tightened hard enough to crack stone beneath his feet while fangs sank repeatedly into his skin, venom pumping into his body from every angle.
The snakes kept coming.
Sliding across the walls.
Dropping from the ceiling.
Coiling tighter and tighter around him until his entire body was buried beneath a living mass of black scales.
Then the room began to shake.
Red lightning started crawling across Ethan's body beneath the snakes, thin flashes at first before the energy intensified violently. The coils around him tightened harder in response, trying to crush him before whatever was building could erupt.
Too late.
Two blood-red beams exploded from Ethan's eyes.
The blast tore straight through the room, vaporizing entire sections of the snake mass instantly while the remaining creatures burst apart under the sudden surge of energy.
Ethan's body pulsed outward with force, the shockwave ripping the surviving snakes off him and smashing them into the walls hard enough to splatter black blood across the stone.
The red glow in Ethan's eyes slowly dimmed as the last remains of the snakes slid off his body and hit the floor in pieces. Black blood covered the cracked stone around him, thick enough to spread like oil through the fractures.
Ethan looked down at the mess with visible disgust.
"Fuck you," he muttered. "You really leaned into the whole snake aesthetic."
His clothes were torn apart in several places, deep bite marks covering his arms, neck, and chest where the fangs had pierced through. His skin was hard enough to stop most of the damage from going deeper, but the venom still burned beneath the surface.
If that had been a normal human—
they would already be dead.
The veins around the wounds darkened briefly as the poison spread.
Then blood began pushing out of the bite marks on its own.
Not normal bleeding.
The poison was being forced back out of his body, dripping black onto the floor as the wounds slowly closed over themselves. Torn flesh pulled back together piece by piece until only traces of blood remained across his skin.
***
A/N: And on Patreon, The Boys arc started.
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