Jerome felt himself being drained of blood as he fell from the sky. He saw drops of his blood float away from his wounds and rose to meet the enemy bearing down on him. He groaned, pain coursing through his limbs. He had to find a way to land safely, else he’d be splattered against the landscape like a juicy steak.

Good thing I trained a lot with Rihal on this, he thought as he shot out a ball of fire from one leg to get himself out of the way of the in-coming enemy. Lokta’s father shot past him but his myriads of blood-like chains wrapped around him, piercing his skin with thorns, and causing untold pain. Jerome screamed!

He felt his blood leaving his body in great gulps, as if the chains were sucking him dry. He tried to free himself to no avail. Jerome roared in anger and set himself on fire. For a moment the chains seemed to fall off but they attached themselves to him again. He felt the weight of his prisoner leave his shoulders and the chains began constricting him.

Jerome set himself ablaze again. This was going to cause him to waste essence but it had to be done if he didn’t want to be drained alive. The blue flame burnt so hot that the air around him caught fire. His assailant roared as the flame surrounded him but he refused to let go. Jerome unconsciously tried to summon Suzie but the living steel recoiled away from him.

Right. The claw bone he saw the man bring out of his storage bag. That was what must have been making Suzie act all weird since he woke up. He started bombarding the man with his flames, aiming for Lokta when he could. He was weakening fast but his assailant was using his own blood to replenish his vitality.

I just have to hold on till we touch the ground — if we touch the ground, he thought. Jerome renewed his assault. The man might decide to drain him completely in the air and that would be game over for him.

The beast reared its head and Jerome took hold of it — its rage and strength. He ripped the chains holding him apart and dragged the man to himself. A moment of shock flitted through Lokta’s father’s face. Before he could react, Jerome ripped off his other arm, causing Lokta to begin to fall.

“Nooo!” he screamed.

Jerome laughed out in glee. “You think yourself invulnerable? Your misery will be my entertainment!”

“You monster! I will rip you to shreds if it is the last thing I do,” the man replied.

Jerome watched as blood reformed the newly destroyed arm, even as he tried to protect himself from the man’s tentacles. He shot downward aiming to collect his prisoner but he was intercepted by those damned chains.

Lokta was passed out, possibly due to blood loss since Jerome severed his arm and he couldn’t cycle to stop the blood flow. Pushing enough essence out of all four limbs, he defended himself against the blood chains as possible. But he was no match for a peak stage Core Formation artist. The chains bound him tightly, aiming him toward the rising earth.

The ground was visible now. His heart began beating in anticipation. He pushed upwards and sideways to slow down his fall as much as possible. Right before he hit the ground, he set himself ablaze again, causing his enemy to let go.

Jerome hit the ground hard. He felt his bones break and his muscles lose strength. The pain was unbearable. Stars winked in and out of his eyes as his vision swam with numerous black spots.

“If anyone had told me that I’d find someone who would cause me this much pain in but a day, I would have killed such a person for besmirching my honor!” Lokta’s father roared.

Jerome looked up, seeing triple. His head woozed and he coughed up blood. But he struggled to speak nonetheless. “Trust…me. There are… more like me… out-there.”

Lokta’s father extended the claw bone in his blood-formed arm at him. Jerome felt the living steel in his veins recede further in fright. He also felt it wanting to burrow into the earth beneath him. Jerome let it. For the first time since that damned claw bone showed up, Suzie acted normal. Strands of chrome-red liquid steel bled from his body and burrowed into the ground. Whatever was down there he was going to buy Suzie as much time as possible to get to it.

Lokta’s father kicked him in the jaw and punched him midair as he spun. He was crushed into the earth and he felt his rib bones crack.

“What is your name, that I may know the name of the killer of my son?”

Jerome looked around to find Lokta but he didn’t see him. “Too bad,” he said, looking the man dead in the eye, “you’ll never find out.”

“Then you will die a nameless man and be left to rot in this deserted land.” The man moved closer as he spoke and Jerome perceived the rank smell of dead blood coming from his breath.

He took a good look at him now. Lokta’s father would have been considered a handsome youth in his late twenties… if it weren’t for the unkempt beard and the madness in his eyes. The man stood over him and raised his blood-formed arm. Chains with enormous spikes jutted out of them and the surface slithered like thousands of serpents, causing Jerome to shiver in disgust.

Just before the man thrust his arm down to rip him to shreds, a geyser of liquid steel burst out of the ground between them. Jerome cursed. He was aiming to inundate his enemy with the raw unrefined living steel that Suzie discovered in the ground. But Lokta’s father had jumped out of the way at the last second.

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He heard the man groan in pain as he walked through the geyser. Time to turn the tables around.

~~~

Grogg

The gods must be playing a joke on him. Or maybe they were testing him.

“Orka… where are you? Show mercy upon your servant,” he muttered. “N’tdaea… How do I kill this strange monster?”

He sat up groaning in pain. His whole left leg was gone and there was blood everywhere. Then he looked at what severed his leg. A geyser of shiny liquid was gushing out of the ground and taking up the available space.

“Visha stirh’aun!” he panicked. He began shuffling backward away from the liquid steel. He had shot backwards when he sensed danger and put enough distance between himself and the liquid, which had saved his life.

But visha stirh’aun was still gushing out of the earth and spreading everywhere. He watched the boy he’d been hunting walk through the liquid. He looked like a metal man, come to deliver justice on his enemies.

“Visha stirh’aun does not hurt you?” he blurted out. Grogg began to panic.

“My turn,” the boy said and sucked in the liquid coating him into his body. He breathed in deeply and grinned wickedly.

“Ho-how is that possible?” he muttered. No. He mustn’t lose his wits here. He tried to form a blood limb for his severed leg but was unable to. Grogg looked down and panicked. Visha stirh’aun was already creeping up his body!

He held his claw bone in front of him and the liquid steel retreated away from him. He grinned and stood up.

“I noticed how your artifact behaved when I produced my claw bone,” he said, walking toward the boy. The living steel surrounding him made way for him, afraid of getting close.

“Who are you? And what is that claw bone?” the boy asked, unafraid.

“I admire your tenacity and fearlessness… so I will grant you answers.”

The boy snorted. Grogg sneered at him in contempt.

“I am Grogg. Chief of the Blood Moon tribe. Father of Lokta, the boy you killed!” he roared his rage and pain in those last words. He wanted this boy to feel his rage when he pulled out his heart. “My boy was champion of the moon! And you took him away from him!”

“And the claw bone?”

Grogg growled in rage at the boy’s impertinence. He would teach him a lesson before killing him. “You will learn a lesson this day to fear those above your station. So that in your next life you—”

“That’s enough threats. I don’t have all day.”

Grogg attacked in anger. He shot forward, intent on stabbing this uncouth Sprout with his bare hand. Wait a moment…

His supposed hand met an armor made of visha stirh’aun. The liquid steel devoured the congealed blood and crept up his arm so fast that it covered his whole body before he could retreat. He immediately stabbed the Sprout in the chest with the claw bone but the Sprout also stabbed him with a spike of living steel.

Grogg felt the rest of his vitality leave him rapidly. He tried pulling himself away but was met with resistance, not just from the living steel flooding his channels but from his heart. The wild beating he once used to feel had reduced to tired thumps. His body began to desiccate right before his eyes.

This was the end then… Why?

~~~

Jerome staggered to the ground. He hurt everywhere. The desiccated corpse of Grogg fell from him and scattered on the ground. Jerome felt his heart beat wildly in his chest. The claw bone missed his heart by a few inches but he could feel it trying to bore into him.

“What the fuck?!”

He reached up with tired arms and tried to pull out the bone but it wouldn’t budge. Instead, it started boring into his flesh causing untold pain.

Jerome screamed! He watched in horror as the huge claw pushed through his skin and into his body, all the while wallowing in pain like nothing he had ever felt before. The pain was so unbearable that he passed out instantly.

“What?!” He sat up instantly and scrambled to his feet. Only he wasn’t on the ground in a deserted land. He was in his mind plane. “What the fuck just happened?”

Something pulsed behind him and he turned to find the claw bone he was stabbed with, pulsing and rotating as it hovered in the air. It was at most two feet off the ground. The claw was huge — at least three feet in length and very thick. Jerome took a deep breath and exhaled to get rid of the tension in his muscles.

He waddled toward it in a sea of red-brown leaves. He studied the claw bone for a while, hesitant to get too close to it. This thing was able to get Suzie to retreat, what would it then do to him? By the way, how did it get here? He had no answers to those questions. Even so he felt the urge to touch the bone, to… what? He couldn’t quite put his finger on it.

But he went ahead and touched the bone, and his vision swam before turning white.

Jerome found himself at the peak of a very huge snow capped mountain. Wait! The peak of the mountain was jutting out into space. He was pulled upwards and farther into space and his view expanded. The mountain was enormous. Covering almost a third of the surface of the planet he could see from space.

He fell.

He fell fast. Past the mountain and through a portal. The next moment, he was facing another mountain. This one was not as huge but it was dark. A dark cloud floated above it, ready to devour the world.

“I know this mountain,” he whispered.

The silence around him was suddenly broken by a powerful, guttural voice. “You are not ready.” The voice sounded like all of creation would listen for every word it spoke — the kind of voice that commanded absolute authority!

Jerome whipped around and sat up with a start. The sun shone down into his eyes making him squint. He heard people moving about and opened his eyes to look around. He took a moment to orient himself. Going from standing to sitting in a split moment was very uncomfortable.

“Are you okay, Jerome?” Rihal’s voice sounded to his left.