1

Alden dampened their fall with wind magic then, the Oracle held tight in his arms, moved away from the manor. He glanced behind him to see the white flames spreading fast like a flood of water on an open field. Upon reaching the broken gates he stopped and knelt down, gently placing the Oracle against a stone wall. The Oracle’s two heads breathed deep, haggard breaths. They appeared exhausted.

“Will you be alright?” Alden asked as he cast Diagnosis magic upon them. The two were an anomaly as far as humans went. Their internals were even more twisted than their visible form, constituted by a mess of shrunken and swollen organs both, as well as vestigial duplicates, almost none of which resided where it would in any other human. That their arrangement of organs seemed to work just fine was a miracle in itself.

“We shall be fine,” the head on the right said. Alden had no cause to argue. Strange as their internal system was, he could find no damage.

“Yes,” the left agreed. “But your action was unwise. Our conversation has been delayed.”

“If it will even happen at all,” the right added.

As if on cue, Alden heard the faint click click click of horse hooves hitting stone, as well as the metallic clinking of armor. He turned to the sound and found its source.

From down the road a host of knights, men at arms, and mages approached on horseback. They numbered over twenty in all and rode hard, almost frantic, until finally they came upon them.

With a wall to his back they surrounded him in semicircular fashion, spears and staves aimed in his direction. The mages did not attack, too afraid that their attacks might strike the Oracle as well.

“Surrender!” a female knight ordered. She urged her black destrier forward and the beast took a step, then reared back, refusing to budge further from its spot.

“Enough, Rowena,” another voice called. The host turned their heads to see Lukas as he staggered his way to the female knight’s side. He motioned for her to bend down in her saddle, and she did so. The two exchanged whispers, then, finished, the knight turned her head to the manor.

“The fire?” she asked.

“My doing,” Lukas admitted. By now the manor was almost completely aflame, surrounded by a small cluster of distraught survivors.

“I do not see the Baron,” Rowena stated.

“Dead, most like,” Lukas replied.

The knights grimaced. “What is to be done with the giant?”

Lukas turned to Alden, a resigned look in his eyes. “What can be done? The Baron is dead, the Oracle captured, and none of you can hope to face him, even together.”

The knight opened her mouth to protest, but stopped. Her shoulders fell. “What do we do?”

The mage grinned. “Almac Haptoro.”

As one the mages lifted their staves and spewed forth columns of flames, almost too quickly to react to. But Alden was just fast enough and, seeing the flames, conjured forth a wall of wind and water.

The wind pushed back the orange flames, slowing them, but they did not stop. Then they collided with the wall of water and it began to evaporate from the heat, creating a column of white steam. The heat was so intense that, even behind the shield of water, Alden felt as one did when standing too close to a campfire.

He pushed more power into the wind, hoping to push the flames back onto its conjurers, his veins burning from the flow of magic. Then a spike of pain shot through his left shoulder and his arm fell limp, and when he looked down to it he saw that the woman knight was at his side, her sword impaled in him.

Lashing out with a hand larger than her head, he smacked her aside. A split moment of distraction, yet it was enough for the bearded mage. A surge of pain struck Alden and his vision blurred, and suddenly he was moving through the air, spinning, the sound of wind in his ears. He struck something hard, heard a wet splatter, then hit the ground.

Overcoming the pain, which spread all across his chest and back and head, was the peculiar sense that something was off. Missing. His vision still a blur and his mind a dizzying mess, he could not focus on it. Not until his eyes recovered and his head cleared enough for him to push the pain to the back of his mind. Then, finding himself laying face down, he made to get up and found he could not move his arms or legs. Wriggling himself to his side, he looked down and froze.

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Where his legs should have been there was only a gruesome mess of blood and loose intestines covered in dirt and grass. His arms were gone as well, reduced to bleeding stumps that waved uselessly in the air as he panicked. Blackness took his vision for a moment. When it returned fear took over his will and he felt the burn of mana in his veins and his core become a furnace.

In moments he had legs again, thinner than they had been before, pale as snow and lacking the muscles they had once had. Not enough, and yet, at the same time, more than enough; he could stand, and he could walk. He did not bother regrowing his arms, instead focusing his magic within and, as the power swelled and threatened to come undone, unleashed a tornado of wind towards the group.

The wind bent and twisted, striking the group from the side and sending man and horse alike to the ground. In their daze Alden darted towards them. Pain throbbed up and down his calves as he ran, the effort of running almost too much for them to bear. He strengthened them unconsciously, and the flesh swelled with strength.

By the time he reached the Oracle he had grown arms as well, even thinner than his legs had been only moments before and twice as weak. He wrapped them around the Oracle’s malformed waist and pulled. But they were too weak and the Oracle did not budge from their spot.

Fire and lightning struck near him, weak spatters of magic meant more to frighten than harm. They did not dare harm the Oracle. Nor do I, Alden thought. He could not allow the battle to extend much longer, lest the Oracle come to harm from some stray magic.

Calling forth another whirlwind to protect himself, Alden looked at his Status and pondered.

Mana: 520/3430

Another conjuring of Syncope was out of the question. Even had he the mana, the bearded mage had shown well enough that it would not stop him. Escape, then, was his only option.

But he could not carry the Oracle in his current state, and the cost to his mana to strengthen his arms would leave him without magic to defend himself. In the back of his mind the answer lay. No, not an answer. A hypothetical, something untried, untested. Risky. He did not have to wonder if it would work; if it did not he would die.

Even if it works I may perish, he thought.

As the whirlwind began to fade he saw the mages standing at the ready, waiting. There was no more time to think. Pulling the Oracle close, he infused his mana with his flesh and felt it move under his will.

2

Lukas watched as the whirlwind faded, watched as the giant within stood and crouched and shifted, obscured by the flowing barrier of air. He had downed a mana potion in the peaceful moments, and now waited with bated breath and hands itching to cast magic. The giant would die this time, he knew for a certainty.

Yet as the whirlwind faded and the giant came into view Lukas felt his stomach twist and turn. A burning surge of vomit licked the back of his throat, and he swallowed it.

In all his life he had never expected to see such a sight. Countless thousands of hours he had spent studying books by the bright light of day and the dim candlelight of night, books written by the greatest minds of times passed as well as the greatest of his own time. Thousands more hours had been spent to expand upon the theories of his forebears, and thousands more had been spent on putting theory to practice.

Yet, staring now at the abomination before him, Lukas Merveillo was met only with a sense of confusion and, stronger than ever before, curiosity.

He did not know what to make of the sight, at first. The Oracle had always possessed a cursed form, one of an unnatural fusion of twins that had occurred under mysterious circumstances. Others found their form grotesque in the extreme, many even refusing to lay eyes upon them. An open revulsion that continued until they discovered the Oracle’s power, after which many had to be forced to part with them. Not so with Lukas. Strange as their form was, he had never felt a sense of revulsion at their form.

Not so now. A mockery of flesh stood before him now, a bulbous thing of twisted bone and muscle covered by loose, pale skin that sat upon thin legs ready to snap under the weight. Atop it were three heads, those of the Oracle’s at either side and, in the center, was Alden’s, larger than the other two combined. Blood trickled from open wounds all across their bulbous torso. Flesh moved to close the wounds, like pale worms that wriggled toward the flow of blood and knitted themselves together, yet as each wound closed another opened somewhere else and blood trickled anew.

Behind him Lukas heard wet splatters, followed quickly by the putrid scent of vomit. The urge to reprimand those responsible came over him suddenly, but he crushed it. Now was not the time, nor could he blame them.

“What do we do?” he heard Rowena say in a voice almost too soft to hear. Lukas opened his mouth to give orders, only to find that he had none to give.

The amalgamation of Alden and Oracle moved, their flesh jiggling grotesquely, then their formed vanished behind a flash of light and the crack of lightning. Lukas covered his eyes and ducked as chunks of marble and dirt struck him, and when he opened his eyes once more that their amalgamated form was aloft in the sky and moving quickly.

“What do we do!?” Rowana yelled, grasping the cloth of his arm. Panic had taken her, driving forth a desire to do something, anything to quell the feeling. But there is nothing to be done, Lukas thought, and he grabbed her hand softly.

He could kill them. Even now, as far away as they were, he could kill them. He had the mana. But in their current form he could not kill one without killing the other, and without the Oracle the war could not continue. And, with as badly as the fusion was, he did not know if they would live long even without his intervention.

He turned Rowena’s hand over in his own, interlocking his fingers with hers. There was spite, of course, a desire for revenge against the giant. A desire quelled by a much greater desire; curiosity.

He looked in the knight’s eyes, brushed a hand through her hair. Saw the disappointed look she gave him as she saw his answer in his features. He wanted to take that disappointment between his fingers and crush it into dust and leave a contented smile in its place. He wanted to win. But it was not to be.

“We flee,” Lukas said.