Even through the numbness granted by the pain suppressants, red hot agony coursed through John’s body. He could feel every single nerve as enough electricity to kill several mortals flooded through them, but he did not fall unconscious. In contrast he was more awake than ever, and his opponent that had once seemed so fast now moved at a pitiful pace.
Forcing his feet to move, the very act of walking like wading through boiling tar, he almost gingerly tapped his foe on her side. He saw her eyes widen in that infinitesimal fraction of time as she was sent careening to the side, skidding against the stone floor as impossible force hit her. In response to the hit, two barbed hooks connected to coiled tendon and steel cable shot out of her sides, ripping through flesh and hooking onto the ground to prevent her from being knocked on her side, or in this case, more importantly the pit of toxic waste that demarcated the border of the fighting area. It was a neat trick, and in any other instance it probably would have been enough to keep her in the fight.
Unfortunately for her he wasn’t quite done yet.
With a scream that he could not hear he rushed towards her, his meridians burst in a shower of blackened fluid across his body, but victory was well within his reach. ARTOS was silent, likely dedicating all its resources towards avoiding getting fried itself. All that existed in that moment was himself, his fist and his foe.
With her grappling cables still jammed into the stony floor she did not stand a chance at dodging. In a sound that was identical to a thunderstrike she was slammed out of bounds before she could react, bouncing straight off the protective wards, soaring right over the toxic waste and sliding to a stop before his feet.
Then the high wore off and he doubled back in pain, vomiting a gallon of blackened blood. The stationary dust clouds all around him suddenly began to move again and with everything from his skin to very brain seemed to burn. Nonetheless, vision swimming and organs screaming, he remained on his feet in victory.
Vee coughed up bloody phlegm as her body struggled to move smashed machinery back into the proper positions. Nonetheless she smiled widely after all was said and done, congratulating him in a weak voice. “Didn’t know you could do that… fuck I am not sure what happened but pretty sure it was a kracking good time.”
Physically unable to give a response, he gave her a bloodstained smile amidst the backdrop of a cheering crowd and the last fumes of rapidly draining toxic sludge.
[IMPRESSIVE SUSTAINABILITY, 55% ABOVE EXPECTED PERFORMANCE. REST EASY NOW JOHN, I’VE HELD UP MY END OF THE BARGAIN]
It was then when his body could no longer sustain its consciousness and he fell into familiar unconsciousness.
He would later find out that apparently he had walked himself to the medbay.
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If it wasn’t for the fact he came here without his blindfold Magni didn’t think he could have tracked John’s movements. Cultivators were always fast, even the slowest of their number was far above mortal limitations in every aspect including speed, however to watch the dance of two cultivators who specialised in speed was something else entirely. Both John and his opponent were merely early into the Mutant Realm, second or third steps at most, yet the finale of the fight happened in less than two seconds. He watched as the younger boy’s psychic energy flared and fluctuated, violently surging before sputtering as whatever power he channelled wore off, leaving him spewing blood and stumbling out after his hard earned victory. He noticed how John’s psychic energy experienced strange fluctuations as he dragged himself over the drawbridge and presumably straight to the medical ward, hardly unexpected for his habit of destroying his body in every fight, but still slightly concerning. That didn’t matter though, after all it would hardly be the first nor the last time John was willing to wreck himself for a fight…
So what was he afraid of?
His number was called after a short duel between a Greenhouse and Dustrider, a tar-faced cultivator belching black soot and a bright green multi-limbed regenerator respectively. He had not really been paying attention to the finer details of the match, only realising it was over when the loud fizzing of fresh steam erupted from where the Greenhouse cultivator was blasted by a geyser of boiling water which periodically erupted from the sides, rather anticlimactically sending them tumbling into the rapids just beyond the circle. For most of the match instead his eyes were focused on the seat which his senses insisted was empty, but he knew very much otherwise. A natural counter to his abilities, a rare and unquestionably dangerous mutation on a man who was only not famed in the Wolf Creek because his very nature kept him from memory. The man who shook his pride so hard simply by existing his mind returned to that survival obsessed state which had taken him whole through his early years.
Roan Carrion, a name that had become the only one to matter in recent times.
He had thrown aside his blindfold entirely on his way to the contestant cells, embracing the heady rush of overstimulation like an old friend. He let his mind focus on his one goal, and the burden eased, the throbbing headache draining into the background. It was impossible to truly tune all of his streams of information into the background as it stood, but as long as his mind remained focused on a purpose it was tolerable even as he made tentative steps out of the cell.
As the drawbridge was cranked down he looked the bastard in the eyes, lines of faint purple energy he could see with his top seven or so eyes coalescing around the points. Signs of strong psychic potential barely being held back. He tuned out the streams of data identifying the composition of the air, the contents of the pipes surrounding the arena, the stray thoughts of the crowd and the movement of distant insects. He could not afford to lose focus before the match had even begun.
Roan’s expression was difficult to read beneath the spirit beast pelt headdress that was customary of his Sect, but his body language said enough. It was clear the other man was assessing his foe, searching for hints of weakness in an analytical, predatory pose.
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“With how you reacted to my mutation initially I had almost expected you to back off.” Roan noted clinically, as if commenting on the weather.
“Well sorry bud, you have to endure me now!” He replied with a vicious grin, trying to keep the violent beating of his heart from reaching his face.
Roan hummed and pushed a long dagger of bone through his wrist. “I do hope you have a more impressive showing in mind then.”
“Well, it should be considered an honour to see my performance!” He laughed.
He could practically feel the glare against his skin. “Still so frightfully arrogant. Little matter. You will learn.”
A roar of flames erupting around them drowned out the sound of Elder Phagos announcing the match starting, briefly overwhelming Magni’s mind with a massive rush of infrared light. His foe at the very least had the courtesy to not immediately take advantage of this, instead loudly announcing what was quite possibly the last words the audience would probably perceive from him for the rest of the match.
“Mortal Memory!”
Where once he could vividly see in several spectrums of light the exact position, movements and speed of Roan now was a conspicuously empty space. He felt a strange movement in the burning air around him and instinctively moved to the side, and felt a trail of wetness on his chest. He did not need to look down to know he had been cut, he didn’t even register when it actually happened, only that there was now a wound where there was previously none.
He felt something distinctly not sweat dripping down his arm, at some point he had sustained a cut there. It did not make sense to target the arm, at the angle of the injury and the depth of penetration it looked more like something he sustained when trying to block. While he didn’t remember blocking, clearly his body knew more than he did. Three more times he sustained cuts that appeared from thin air, swinging blindly into the air based only on the angles of injuries sustained who knew how long ago exactly. The crowd was silent, he must have looked a fool spinning around blindly with his arms flailing in a circle of fire. If the hells were real this must have been one of the torments, to be picked apart by a foe you could not hit back unable to even flee from a systematic disassembling by a thousand cuts.
He grit his teeth and focused. Between the pounding heat and the opponent that his senses insisted wasn’t there despite all evidence to the contrary, it was like scaling an impossibly steep mountain with no handholds.
It wasn’t the first time he realised with a flash of epiphany.
He allowed himself to smile. With one fighter effectively invisible the crowd was certainly confused and soon to be quite bored. That just meant he had to make up for the difference himself.
He closed his eyes and let his own heartbeat take over the rhythm in his mind, allowing his steely focus to slip just slightly, instead readjusting his mindset towards making even his confused flailing an entertaining dance. When he opened them again he felt a sharp pain in his chest and followed the source to an unremarkable background of bright orange flame. There was no shimmer to suggest bending of light in the heat, no stray thoughts from the crowd spilling in with a dozen fragmented lines of purple, no mind numbing deluge of pointless data. He realised with a jolt he could see nothing there at all.
Almost comically he cartwheeled about, ignoring the throbbing pain in his growing injuries as he spun over jets of flame and hovered at the edge of the burning arena, tracing the illusive emptiness that signalled his target. He didn’t remember actually hitting something, but he felt the rippling soreness in his knuckles as he found himself standing with an extended arm over empty space. With a pleased smile he looked upon his fist, freshly decorated with blood this time not his own.
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Iktan’s frown deepened as he looked upon the handiwork of his spymaster. Cesar’s presence in his forces was one of necessity, none had the right mutations or skillset to quite replace him, but that doesn’t mean Iktan enjoyed keeping the honourless spider around. The parasite had after all once been sworn to service to Asta Kuklakan, and he was under no delusions that one whose loyalty was bought so easily had any loyalty worth anything at all. He didn’t know where the spymaster came from or how Asta found him under his employ, and only knew the exact gruesome details of his technique through the careful notes of his ever paranoid uncle. Still, the Empire hardly acted honourably when they had attempted to wipe his clan from the earth, it was only natural that the services of one as slimy as Cesar would be ideal for plotting the first steps of their downfall.
So he acquiesced to the feathered spider’s request to have access to prisoners captured in border town raids over the psychic link, and for the past three days his army’s movements stopped as the foul creature undertook his nasty work. In truth it would have been infinitely more merciful simply to put all the captives to the sword or brand them as tlacotin. The army didn’t know exactly what Cesar did, in fact save the highest ranking marshalls and himself none were privy to the terrible details, but all seemed to steer instinctively clear of the tent where sobs and screams went terribly silent in the dead of night. Even Cipactli was unnerved, the cheerful reptile nothing but growls and snorts of searing radioactive aggression when he felt the spymaster’s psychic taint.
“Easy there mio… when his purpose is served we shall dispose of him.” He promised over his private link.
A set of eight pitch black legs, each the size of a short man, scurried over across the encampment. Above it the rotund torso of a pale humanoid, clad in colourful feathers plucked from rare parrots, clammy grey skin glistening with venom and slime and tiny beady eyes glistening with inhuman intelligence. Standing at nearly twice the size of the average foot soldier or road-ship crewmate, and thus a bit less than half the height of Iktan himself, the large creature moved rapidly across the camp and in scant few seconds was able to address his Khan with a deep bow, a venomous rictus grin decorating his face. “The work is finished my liege! With remarkable success too! Even managed to keep most of the little children nice and intact!”
He nodded, barely keeping bile from rising up knowing exactly what it entailed. Mercifully the victims likely won’t remember any of the process from what he knew, not that it made the inherently violating act of creating sleepers any less of a sin. Still, needs were as needs must. “Excellent work. Deposit them some distance away from their villages by sundown, with supplies and carts to last them the journey to the Lead Cave. I expect you have the appropriate memories implanted?”
With a greasy grin of chitin coated teeth Cesar practically purred. “All is according to plan great Khan!”
Fighting a retch he dismissed his Spymaster. “Excellent work. Continue the search for the Birthright, and report any abnormalities to me.”
As he heard multiple sets of legs scurry away he allowed himself to breathe a sigh of relief
It was a shame he was so far inland at present, he really could use a proper bath.