Chapter 87: Crossroads (II)
Lloyd urgently struggled to drag his exhausted body over the surface of clouds, while Zan was still face down, looking at the ground where his hands and knees were just barely supporting him from collapsing.
Twelve figures from below the clouds were rapidly approaching them, using a myriad of different techniques to rise towards the skies.
Some of them rode on mounts, and those mounts were either summoned through skilled magics, or were genetically created and raised. One individual rode on an illusory Eastern dragon with a long body, while another rode on a gigantic alien bird with four eyes and six fiery wings. Some beasts came straight out of magical fantasy, while others were genetic mutants that were the result of nuclear radioactivity and crossbreeding.
The other individuals, manifested wings on their body directly. One woman had a set of wings which were breathtakingly beautiful, each luminous feather creating a masterpiece of gorgeous phoenix wings. While another individual sported wings that were more menacing, as his illusory wings were in the muscular mighty form of a Western dragon.
As Zan was experiencing an extreme exhaustion of mind, body and spirit, he just barely heard the vague echoes of Lloyd’s desperate shouting at the ships above them.
Drowned in urgency and the trauma of past experiences, he briefly lost the composure that came with the title of the “Mellow Blade.”
“Fire!”
“Fire the cannons you goddamn fools!”
The crews of the fleet immediately rushed to their positions, and Rain Priestess Lara could be heard shouting command after command at the warrior-casters. In the next moment, five beams descended from the skies, bringing apocalyptic destruction down onto the earth.
Most of the assailants managed to dodge the heavenly pillars of water that came down from the railgun cannons, but the Eastern dragon’s long body was just barely brushed by the annihilating stream, and consequently was yanked out of the skies by its great force.
The rider was lucky enough to jump towards another person's mount, but her own summoned beast was dragged down towards the ground.
Its huge illusory body flew down and smashed the crowds below.
Contrary to its luminous display that looked to have been ethereal and weightless, it instead squashed hundreds of spectators into broken bones and flattened meat.
The following assault of the five beams of pressurized water subsequently eviscerated hundreds if not thousands of spectators, and created a flood of raging water.
If the hundreds of forces were unified they would most definitely respond to Everrain’s attack with anger and vengeance.
But they were not.
The neutral forces were unwilling to become embroiled in the battle of two superpowers, and thus most of them hurriedly tried to flee from the area of destruction.
Some however, took advantage of the chaos to strike at each other.
In the flood of water that was created, thousands upon thousands did their best to flee, while the other tens of thousands engaged in skirmishes between each other that quickly escalated to a series of hundreds of messy battles.
Stray elemental attacks, arrows, projectiles and other methods of widespread destruction frequently injured and killed passerby, leading to further confusion and disorderly conflict. Thus, the hundreds of forces and tens of thousands of people below fell into a gargantuan, chaotic war.
The ground forces of Agni were subsequently caught up in the messy war, and now not only had to face Everrain’s cannons and their fleets, but other stray forces and nations.
Yet they came prepared. If not, they would have never signaled for an attack on the five, flying titanic ships. Of the fifty-seven children sired by the Brightfire King, seventeen of them happened to be here, and twelve of them had already struck a deal.
The twelve forces of those individuals gathered into a mysterious array formation, and if one was knowledgeable about the Empire of Flame, they would see that the twelve points that the forces had arranged themselves in were similar to the arrangement of stars in a certain fiery constellation.
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Lloyd however, did happen to be knowledgeable about their war tactics. But when he caught sight of the scene below, it was already too late.
By the time the swordsman had shouted at the fleet of ships, the twelve groups already became concentrated stars of light and flame, before immediately fiery lines appeared and connected them into a true constellation and magical formation.
Within a one mile radius, flames rose from the ground and engulfed half of the gargantuan battlefield into hell.
Subsequently, the twelve leaders of those forces were lit aflame, and their bodies practically overflowed with flaming energies.
Like shooting stars, ten of the assailants shot towards the remaining five ships while the other two shot towards the dispersing shield of clouds, right towards the swordsman and the unknown figure.
Lloyd was smart enough to deploy the shield, not only because he didn't want his fleet to be destroyed in the process of their battle, but because he knew some unsavory characters were likely to interfere.
But he was not omniscient, and couldn't foresee how things would all turn out this way.
On the shield of clouds, a gorgeous woman with flaming phoenix wings landed, and unsheathed a sword that was similar to Lloyd’s dark blue blade in length. The difference, was that it was dark red in color, and the hilt was a dragon’s head with the blade coming out of its mouth.
A pleasant, sweet voice came out of the woman’s red lips, but her words were anything but.
“I told you the next we met, you would be on your knees.” She said teasingly.
“Look at you, now.”
The winds blew from below, and by her side, a muscular man with veiny dragon wings landed beside her. Subsequently, he looked towards his own opponent that was already on the ground.
Lloyd responded. Despite being almost fully exhausted, he was fearless in the face of death.
“Are you sure you were born from a phoenix and a dragon? Maybe your mother laid with a vulture instead?”
The man next to her couldn’t help but snicker, while a grim, furious look appeared on the woman’s face.
“We should hurry this up. The formation isn’t likely to last long.” The man with dragon wings said.
Already, the many forces below were angered by the fiery spell, and started to focus on the twelve points of the constellation formation. Likewise on Everrain’s side, those who weren’t busy dealing with Agni’s assailants were shifting the trajectory of their railgun cannons.
“It’s fine. The other five saw the flare. I’m sure they want to erase this threat before it affects us all.”
“Look. Cassian and that girl with the illumination bloodline are already moving.”
“Didn’t I say it already? You’re much more like a vulture than a dragon or a phoenix.”
The man with draconic wings burst out in laughter, while the mixed blooded girl was already slowly walking towards Lloyd, taking her time to scrape the red sword on the surface of clouds. It was meant to tell him that his death was coming soon and it was inevitable at that, but Lloyd looked at her without any sort of agitation. He even looked a little bored.
But a sick idea appeared within the woman’s mind, and her furious look turned into a condescending, cruel grin.
“When you’re dead, what do you think will happen to your sister?”
Those words entered Lloyd’s ears and finally, his expression changed. The swordsman could not have done it before, but now he pushed himself to stand, and tremblingly, he raised his broken sword to the skies.
The woman laughed in mockery, and in the next moment, the hilt of her sword transformed. It grew phoenix wings on the side, and now there was a sentient light on the eye of the dragon’s head. Vaguely the roar of a dragon rang out like a bell, and starting from the dragon’s mouth, flames started to engulf the sword.
Likewise the dragon winged man, started to walk up to Zan. His veins started to glow as he activated the power in his blood directly, then they started to dim as his muscles enlarged, and scales started to appear on his skin. It was unlike Balon’s transformation as it was much more incomplete, and the scales only covered his arms.
Zan was still face down on the ground, in two states of perpetual and existential hunger, and dazed, mindless suffering.
What was going on?
The youth did not know it, and no one else around him did either, but his very flesh was decaying. It was breaking down biologically and genetically, and it was unwinding existentially on the upper plane of the universe known as the mind. The soul of the eldritch flesh, at this very moment, was also being forced to depart.
There were many complexities and intricacies in the abomination that was his body, many that even Mila, the scientist who created it, was not aware of. It was already quite a testament of her genius intelligence that she was able to create such flesh out of the eldritch monster’s cells, and fuse it into a human being.
But she was no god. Although she had created a vessel just barely worthy of life, it was an unholy, deformed thing that was fated to die.
The eldritch flesh she created was flawed from conception in all areas of existence. Due to Mila’s flawed experiments, its body on a cellular level was not fit to maintain its very existence, and conversely its mind had already started to slowly unwind as soon as it was born.
It would start to unwind not just organically as soon as it was low on energy, but the unwinding of its mind would be sped up by the decay of its body.
Yet no one was aware of the miraculous, or more correctly blasphemous conditions that allowed it to advance, evolve, and live.
As the two remained in one body, they inexplicably started to link into each other. Hunger was the first part, as the two slowly started to share the desire to devour. Then, the two life forms would do their best, on an unconscious level, to keep each other alive.
Although it tried to devour him once before, if it was successful in doing so it would have died not long after.
If the eldritch flesh served as Zan’s body that kept him biologically alive, then Zan served as a stable structure of mind and spirit for the eldritch flesh, even if the two were not aware of it.
And at this very moment, Zan’s mind was straining itself, it's very fabric ripping as it did its best to hold the eldritch flesh’s mind intact. While his soul and the eldritch flesh’s soul, were holding on to each other tightly because of the bond of staying in a half fused body.
It was important to know that Zan’s strength was something he was given, and then conquered. It was not something that he had personally built step by step for himself. Although his immense skill and power of will was able to force the invasive power into his own, not unlike a tyrannical king, in the end it was not totally his.
From an existential standpoint, the two could not live being opposed to each other’s will. If the flesh died it would take Zan with him, and if Zan died first, even if the flesh parasitized his brain it would not live for long before its mind started to break down.
Now, the youth was facing the consequences of…well, everything. Everything from Mila’s ungodly experiments to his own choices and decisions that led him to this point.
But he could still save himself, if he took the right action.
Fangs started to grow in his mouth, followed by another row of sharp teeth. It was akin to the youth growing another set of ravenous jaws. Now, the only thing he could do to keep himself alive was to feed…