Sin of the Saint

CHAPTER FIFTEEN: THE CHASTE SAINT VS. THE SIN OF LUST

**WARNING: VIOLENT COMBAT AND MENTIONING OF PAST TRAUMATIC INCIDENTS AHEAD**

Pudoris grasped Libidine by her wrist, her fist still pressed into her face. She threw the Sin over her head as she kicked both her feet into her stomach, flipping Libidine onto her back behind her, and rose to her feet.

"Get up," Pudoris said, spitting out the blood that ran into her mouth from her broken nose.

Libidine began to chuckle as she rose to her feet. Her giggling turned into maniacal laughter as she began to twirl her whip around herself and lunged at Pudoris. "You and I are the same! We are the same! You cannot be who you claim—because I am your sin! I am Libidine the Sin of Lust and I exist within you!" Libidine screamed hysterically, lashing her whip furiously, trying to land a hit on Pudoris.

Pudoris, in reaction, deflected each of Libidine's lashes with her own weapon, dragging the hilt of her own whip this way and that. Every few times their weapons would collide, Libidine would send a jolt of electricity through the end of her whip, which would travel up the shorter length of Pudoris' weapon, causing her to cripple in shock.

Pudoris caught her breath each time, though, and continued her counterattack. Caritas could tell that Pudoris was becoming tired and fast—each time she was electrocuted, she curled further and further into herself, and it became increasingly difficult for her to stand on her own two feet. Caritas saw as Modesta studied Pudoris intently, mumbling prayers to himself as his fists flexed and gripped nervously.

"I will show you your place, vermin!" Libidine's shrieking voice escalated as her eyes began to grow more manic. Her wicked grin nearly split her face as she cast her left hand upward. "I call upon my curse as a Sin of Conquest—grant unto me the rage of storms!"

Pudoris' eyes widened in sudden and startling fear as Libidine twisted her body in an almost dance-like twirl and lashed her whip, growing darker and darker black, flung itself far into Pudoris' personal space. The length of the electrified whip wrapped itself around Pudoris' weapon as Libidine slammed her fist carrying the hilt down onto the ground, throwing her entire body weight behind the blow.

"Do you hear me, Pudoris? I am your sin!" she screamed as true black lightning webbed along the length of the void-colored weapon, radiating from the hilt where she'd smashed it to the ground, and finally travelling to the blades on Pudoris' chain whip.

The shock of the attack enveloped Pudoris completely, and she seized up, her grip on the metal whip tightening as she fell to the ground, nearly lifeless.

Libidine smirked and began to stalk towards Pudoris' limp body.

"No..." Caritas whispered, her hand covering her mouth. "She can't have..."

As Libidine approached Pudoris, the excessive amount of electricity from her whip subsided and she lashed it backwards, untangling their whips in a single stroke. Libidine leaned down to Pudoris.

"I win, fool," she said. "And now everyone will know your sin—and they will know that I exist within even you...the so-called Chaste Saint Pudoris."

Without warning, Pudoris instantly raised her arm, and her chain whip began its wave upward. Pudoris rose to a kneeling position as quickly as she could, and stomped down on her own whip, hard—stopping the ripple mid-wave, which caused it to wrap tightly around Libidine's whip-wielding wrist nearly a half a dozen times.

In the next instant, Pudoris had grasped her own whip by the blades and pulled back with all her might, slicing deeply into her own palms to deliver the most gruesome attack this battle had seen yet.

Caritas didn't quite understand what was happening until she watched Libidine's hand, and only her hand, fly through the air and land on the opposing side of the battlefield, the fingers of the severed appendage still grasping the whip.