Chapter 126 - CXXVI. | O, burning Sea...! (1/2)

Hector felt at once as if he were waking from a dream while also sliding off a cliff. Lethargic and rushing. Fleeting sensations of up and down movement. Both pleasant and uncomfortable.

Then reality came bleeding back in. Sight and smell. Taste and touch. Balance and sound and motion and pressure. Everything was there.

He had a body again. Or some of one, at least. A huge chunk of his torso was gone, as if some giant had taken a bite out of him, leaving a cavernous and bloody hole where his left arm, leg, and most of his rib cage should have been.

That wasn't quite how he remembered leaving it.

But he was still regenerating. He'd become little more than a crumpled heap on the floor, but the vigor hadn't worn off just yet.

The sound of fighting echoed distantly, shaking the floor, loosening dusty debris from the ceiling.

”Garovel?” he tried. It came out coughing, but he was still mildly surprised by his own voice. It sounded almost foreign to him. And he was pretty sure one of his lungs was missing.

'I'm here,' the reaper said. 'You don't look so good, friend.'

He felt a shard in his one hand. It made him smile briefly as he wondered how the hell he'd managed to keep hold of it. He rolled over, trying to look around while he waited for his stomach to grow back.

He'd ended up in a cubbyhole of sorts. Whatever this room was before, it was so annihilated now that its walls were just piles of rubble. Maybe it wasn't even a room. It could've been a hallway, for all he knew.

”Alright,” he said, tasting blood in his mouth. ”Tell me what to do, Garovel.”

'Uhh--'

He was interrupted by Asad flying through a wall of debris.

Hector started crawling toward Asad through the shower of shattered stone, but the Lord Najir was already standing up again, visibly broken bones shifting back into place with the heightened speed of pan-forma.

The man's tattoos, however, were flickering. The golden glow had been constant before, so long as Asad was sustaining damage, but now it seemed to be lagging. Fewer of them were leaping from his body, as well, and the look on Asad's face spoke of disorientation.

And through the fresh hole in the debris, Hector could see the distant Marauder's translucent form moving toward them.

Hector already knew he wouldn't be able to do anything, but impulse told him to try anyway. He let go of the shard in order to thrust his hand out and concentrate on a barricade of iron walls. However, even his low expectations were not met, because no wall materialized. With a confused blink, he tried again, and this time, he managed to create a faint spray of dust.

His eyes widened as he realized. This was what Rasalased had meant by being weakened.

'Garovel, you need to run,' Hector thought.

'Don't worry about me,' the reaper said.

And Hector was about to wonder where Garovel even was right now, but something else stole his attention.

Between Asad and the oncoming Marauder, a flash of brown swirled into existence, then promptly vanished, leaving three figures behind. Hector recognized them immediately.

Ibai Blackburn, Darktide, and the Seadevil.

Hector could only stare, but the two Rainlord juggernauts wasted no time. Billowing smoke and liquid metal charged headlong toward Caster.

Hector braced himself for another explosion, but Ibai was suddenly in front of him, grabbing him by the shoulder, and teleporting him away. Hector barely remembered to scoop the shard back up in time.

The brown shadow dispersed as quickly as it had come, but they were in a new room now. And the explosion did indeed arrive a moment later, shaking perhaps the entirety of Dunehall, but for once, Hector didn't find himself getting caught in the blast radius.

”Hello again, my one black friend,” said Ibai. ”You seem to be having a hard time.”

Hector grunted as Ibai set him down. His freshly regenerated lung squished against the stone floor, not yet having a rib cage to protect it.

”I'm sorry it took us so long to come help,” the aberration went on. ”I've been a bit busy, what with all the sabotage and so forth. But now we've got a moment to rest.”

It made sense, Hector realized. ”You're the reason the Marauder couldn't find Darktide and the Seadevil.”

”The Marauder?”

”That Caster guy.”

”Oh, him. Yes. I figured Abolish would go for them first. They are our strongest combatants, but they were also unconscious and vulnerable. If I didn't hide them and wake them up, this battle would have been a foregone conclusion, I think.”

Hector understood. He wondered if Ibai's sabotage hadn't also had something to do with their assailants no longer being invisible.

”Where is your reaper?” Ibai asked.

'Here.' Garovel's skull peeked up through the floor.

”Please come with me,” said Ibai.

'Where to?'

”To gather the non-combatants. I would like to take as many as I can to safety, and your help would be appreciated.”

'Hector?'

He'd just about finished regenerating and was trying to find his footing again. In truth, he still felt a little woozy. His thoughts were largely clear, but there was a certain light-headedness that was throwing him off. ”Sure,” he said.

”...Are you okay?” said Ibai.

Hector closed his eyes, concentrating. ”Yes,” he said. When he opened them again, Ibai had no pants on.

The aberration stood there in his underwear, offering his belted trousers to Hector. ”You should have these.”

Hector's own pants had been shredded, of course, along with his shirt. The left leg was completely gone, and Hector didn't need to look down in order to tell that half his junk was hanging out.

He decided to accept Ibai's offer. He had a bit of trouble with the left leg. The whole left side of his body still felt a little sluggish and weird, but he powered through.

Ibai didn't seem too concerned about having to run around in his underwear. If anything, he looked happier.

Before Hector even realized it, they'd teleported again, and he saw a group of vaguely familiar faces huddled in the corner. Non-servant Rainlords, they were. Sebolts, he was pretty sure.

”By the way,” said Ibai, ”I wanted to ask. You seem fairly experienced. Have you been on many adventures?”

The question might as well have been in another language for all the sense it made to Hector at the moment. He just concentrated on gathering the Rainlords around Ibai.

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Xuan Sebolt could not have been more disappointed.

When he'd heard Ibai talk about how Caster Egmond was in the building, he'd immediately gotten his hopes up. The famed Marauder of Calthos? Opportunities like that didn't come along every day. This could have been his most satisfying fight in a dozen years, especially since he wasn't even fully recovered from Marshrock yet. The desperate and exhausting battles were always the best.

If only the Marauder hadn't turned out to be a destruction user.

Xuan almost pitied the man. It wasn't like destruction was a categorically inferior ability or anything. Obviously, it was very potent and deadly, and most servants were right to fear pan-rozum users who had it. But none of that applied to the Seadevil.

Caster hadn't even seemed to realize it yet. But then, that wasn't so surprising. There weren't very many servants in the world who could wield a gas the way Xuan could.

The continuous streams of destruction were certainly impressive as far as demonstrations of skill went, but the thing was, they couldn't actually destroy smoke. The concussive force of the destruction type was certainly powerful, but it was also slow by comparison to, say, a soul-empowered explosion, which could disperse Xuan's smoke very rapidly in all directions and thereby shred his soul.

Essentially, the only thing a destruction user could do to Xuan was push his smoke around. The molecular structure of gaseous matter made it a perfect counter to everything the Marauder wanted to do.

And that wasn't very exhilarating.

The only obstacle to victory here was reaching the Marauder's mind. Since he'd more or less become a being of living destruction, his one weak point in pan-rozum was going to be well protected.

But that wouldn't make much difference, either, so long as Xuan kept him smothered.

And so the fight unfolded. Xuan and Duvoss' two minds sat there in the phosphorus fumes, examining Caster's body, searching for the weak point. Caster could send waves of destruction through the smoke, which certainly still threatened Zeff, Asad, and Melchor, but Duvoss had them covered. A blatant, arrow-shaped smoke signal would shoot out and warn their comrades whenever an attack from Caster was imminent.

And soon enough, Xuan found the weak point. A speck in the Marauder's soul. Xuan could attack himself, but Darktide could hit harder, so he created an opening in his smoke and pointed the old bastard to it. Sure enough, soul-empowered javelins of frozen mercury flew into the opening and smashed against the Marauder's body.

But even with Darktide's help, this would be slow going. Caster had been declawed, but it would be a while before his defenses crumbled.

Which was why Xuan grew bored so quickly. This wasn't a fight so much as an exercise in tedium. It was enough to make his mind wander in the midst of it. Duvoss was still there anyway, and he'd always had more patience for these kinds of things.

The fight with Darktide had been much more satisfying. Now there was a well-rounded opponent. And that name. A bit superfluous, really. ”Melchor” was intimidating enough already.

As Xuan recalled, Melchor had gotten that name after going on a number of vengeful killing sprees many years past. For his fallen brethren. That was the kind of man Melchor was, the kind he'd always been. Even as a child. Xuan had only met him a few times in those early days, but he remembered that same severity, the same humorless demeanor.

But now that he was thinking about it, Xuan had been that way, too. They all had, really. Back then, the life of a young male Rainlord was even harder than it was now. None of this waiting until adolescence to become a servant. If you could walk, you could fight. And all the rituals. All the trials. Drowning, studying, fighting, training--all while maintaining the appearance of a sophisticated gentleman, of someone with high moral fiber.

And of course, they had to watch their elders fall in battle. One after another. Year in and year out. Death upon death. Some sacrificed themselves, trying to secure the next generation. Some died honorably in glorious battle. Others were simply murdered in cold blood.

Melchor hadn't changed. He was a product of his time--perhaps made a bit pricklier by his kin frowning upon homos.e.x.u.a.ls during his formative years, but still a product of his time nonetheless.