“You may look like a Vasiri, but you hold yourself like a Novice.” Zylara continued with a more assessing eye. “I sincerely doubt you could have achieved such a feat without a powerful Party. Where are they?”
“I don’t have a Party,” Aurelian said flatly while filing away the term, and taking careful note of the capital ‘P’ in her speech. It was good to know parties existed, and would make his life way easier moving forward, he wagered. “It’s just me and my partner.”
“Oh?” she asked with a withering stare. “Now there’s a partner, is there? Are they mighty?”
“He’s basically unique.” Aurelian admitted.
“A bold claim.” Zylara said flatly. “Where is he, then, this powerhouse ally of yours?”
“Keeping his distance.”
“To what end? To ambush us if we prove useless?” she accused.
“I don’t trust you. I’m also beginning to dislike you,” Aurelian said sourly.
“The feeling is mutual,” Zylara said coldly, “I assure you.”
“Well then, enjoy your time with your friend. I’m sure you will have a great experience together,” Aurelian said sharply while moving back to grab his supply pack and lift it onto his back.
“Wait!” Zylara called with a tone of alarm. “What do you mean? You’re leaving?”
Holy shit, is this chick for real?
Aurelian turned and looked at her incredulously.
“Of course I am. You’re acting like a bitch. Why the hell would I stay here? I had hoped my first interaction with people would be something positive, not this shitshow. I might have been easy with this stuff in my old life, but that’s before I nearly got my insides torn up by vampire juice.” Aurelian stated with unabridged annoyance. “I’m washing my hands of this shit.”
“You cannot do that!” she protested. “I have no means of stopping his transformation, let alone fighting him! There is nothing here for me to effectively end him with!”
Aurelian reached up to pinch the bridge of his nose with his left hand, while his right pressed his Crest’s blade-tip into the marble. “I’m going to get fucking whiplash from your moodswings, woman…” he muttered before focusing his eyes on her. “So what you’re saying is that, even after attacking me, treating me as if I should be grateful for it, insulting me, mocking me, and essentially calling me a liar; you want me to help you kill your friend because he might turn into a Ghoul?”
“There is no question of—! Ah, that is to say… um…” Zylara cleared her throat and reached up to tug on a lock of straight, silky black hair for a moment. “Perhaps I was, ah, a little hasty in my… my assessment of your merits. It has been a very… stressful few days and I did not—”
“Oh Jesus, just stop.” Aurelian said with a flush of heat in his cheeks. “Watching you try to apologise is worse than being insulted by you. Christ.” Aurelian looked at the convulsing and twitching figure of Karsys, and then back to Zylara crouched next to him. “Look, I’m not going to murder your friend for no reason other than your own suspicions, but I might have a way to help him.”
“How?” she asked with another flicker of suspicion.
“Call it luck that you happened to run into me, but I think I have something that can help. Maybe. Either way it’s better than cutting off the poor sod’s head.” Aurelian lowered his supply pack to the floor again and sheathed his blade on his back. While keeping an eye on Zylara, he reached inside and withdrew the carefully stowed essence loaf he’d already eaten a quarter of.
Delicately, he broke off another quarter of the sourdough, and turned to make his way toward the infected human.
“What is that?” Zylara questioned. “Bread? Why can’t I Analyse it?”
Aurelian didn’t answer, and instead kneeled down next to Karsys, at which point Zylara’s turn toned more aggressive. “Answer me, stranger! I swear if you—!”
Aurelian lifted his eyes to stare at her flatly, and she cut off mid-sentence with, of all things, a blush of what he thought might have been embarrassment.
Aurelian simply nodded in a self-satisfied way and looked back to Karsys, regarding the writhing human for a long moment. He was large, Aurelian realised; probably taller than most people he’d known back on earth and twice as muscular. A short, neat beard adorned his jaw and his hair was cropped in a military style. He also had features that he’d have called ‘mixed’ if he were back on Earth, but he had no context for what they would indicate in the Realms.
Karsys looked like a mix between John Cena and Kobe Bryant, and it was surreal.
In fact, the variation in ethnicity brought some sense of reassurance to Aurelian. It was good to know that humans varied in the realms, too. It felt normal in a way he couldn’t really articulate. One of his best friends, Lachlan, had been a Nigerian-Scottish mix—and Karsys looked enough like him that there was an immediate sense of calming familiarity.
Aurelian reached down to pry open the human’s mouth, and promptly pushed the piece of essence loaf inside.
“If what I think will happen does happen, you’re going to want to step back,” he said with a glance up at Zylara, before looking back down to Karsys. “I’m going to get him to chew and swallow, and if I’m right, it’s going to get way worse before it gets better… but he’ll probably make a full recovery as a result.”
Zylara eyed him for a moment and then, as if warring with her own decisions, pushed herself up with a slight wobble and half-stepped, half-staggered backwards. Very likely she was still not recovered from whatever sort of delirium had been induced in her during the sac’s containment, and Aurelian was rather impressed that she was cognizant as she appeared.
His attention returned fully to Karsys, however, and he began to gently work the man’s mouth against the piece of essence loaf until he started to chew instinctively. Aurelian waited only long enough to make sure that Karsys wouldn’t choke before standing himself and moving around to join Zylara.
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He kept his distance though, as much for his own peace of mind as it was for hers.
“Is something supposed to happen?” she asked him warily.
“Just give a minute,” Aurelian said grimly while keeping his eyes locked on the clammy human.
“What exactly was that bread you fed him stra—Karsys!”
Aurelian reached out to grab Zylara in the same instant that she reached out toward her companion, who had just started to shake violently. She whipped her head around to look down at where Aurelian’s armoured fingers were locked around her bicep, and her eyes rose to his own furiously. She opened her mouth, but Aurelian beat her to it.
“I told you, worse before better.” he reminded her. “You were ready to kill him, remember? You have nothing to lose by letting me try my method.”
“He is in pain!” she protested angrily.
“Better in pain than dead.” Aurelian replied with a grim flash of memory.
Something in his expression or tone must have shown something, because the moment he spoke Zylara seemed to swallow back her retort, assessed him with weighing eyes, and then turned back to observe Karsys.
Together they watched in silence while the human writhed on the floor and gurgled, his eyes rolling back while his limbs demented and distorted with agony at whatever was happening within. Aurelian activated Dragon’s Gaze on a whim, and focused in on the mana around Karsys’ body—all while berating himself mentally for not trying the tactic earlier.
It was incredibly elucidating.
Dragon’s Gaze is now Level 13!
Dark waves of black and green mana, eerily reminiscent of Marius’ own, raged within the channels inside Karsys’ body. It undulated and bubbled, seeking an escape as it raced through his veins. It was only when Aurelian realised, belatedly, that it was retreating from something that he truly paid attention to the rest of the tall man’s body, and saw the shining energy blazing in the man’s stomach.
The essence loaf was dissolving into pure mana, which then raced through the waiting channels like a sanitising flush of power. Its platinum radiance was pushing to devour, or perhaps eject, the virulent infection of Vasiri taint. Wherever the energy—Bael’tharax’s energy, and thus the energy of a fully realised Dragon King—surged through Karsys’ body, the ‘infection’ of corrosive mana was obliterated, or pushed back like Bael’tharax’s energy was registered on an opposite polarity.
Eventually, the mana seemed to react with such elemental incompatibility with the energy filling Karsys that Aurelian watched it actually force itself out of the man’s pores; and tasted the acrid nature of it in the moment it did.
The stench of it was like rotten fruit, spoiled meat, and corpse blood all mixed together into a nauseating odour that immediately filled the air.
He felt Zylara go slack in his grip and turned to her, only to see her vomiting noisily on the floor from the sheer overwhelming foulness of it all.
Aurelian empathised, and idly held her hair. He knew how bad it was first-hand.
On and on Bael’tharax’s mana raged, forcing out the infection like the world’s most liquid, and invasive case of mass blackheads. Everywhere the tar-like mana was ejected, it turned to smog-like vapour and evaporated upward into nothingness. To Aurelian’s enhanced sight, the particles rose, and then were dispersed by the natural forces of the world; the corrupted and focused mana too weak, and lacking in foundation, to survive the natural purity of the uncorrupted reality around them.
In many ways, even the corroded Manawoods were less putrid in how their essence appeared when compared to the Vasiri’s; which was much like a radioactive poison, formed from a sludge-like consistency paired with thick black oil.
The virulent green and viscous black were clear correlations for such substances, at least.
It took time for the process to finish, but when it did and Karsys was at last pure to Aurelian’s enhanced eyes, he watched Zylara—having released her the moment it was clear she wouldn’t try to get close and perhaps poison herself by exposure—move forward unsteadily and settle on her knees to speak to the slowly stirring human.
Dragon’s Gaze is now Level 14!
A deep sigh of relief and satisfaction left him, and he observed the pair with the same veil of mana-active sight he had been using since the start of the process. This time however he was tracing both of their channels, and noticing some trace elements of the same corruption within Zylara.
Faint, and perhaps inconsequential, but certainly present.
He would need to offer her the same purification, as loath as he was to waste even small quarters Bael’tharax’s essence loaves. It was at least a gesture of goodwill though, and while her attitude had certainly irritated him, he wasn’t quite ready to let the first real people he’d met since arriving walk away with that inside of them.
And also, not before they answered some burning questions.
It was a mercantile and cold way of thinking about it, but if they owed him, then at least they would have to offer some insights as thanks. It did assume a level of honour or fair play on the part of both Zylara and Karsys, but if they were anything resembling good people, it wouldn’t be a huge ask. Besides which, it wasn’t as though he couldn’t take them if they turned out to be less than benevolent.
With Bahamut helping, he was pretty sure he’d win a fight regardless of their Tempers. It wouldn’t be easy, and he’d probably skirt death doing it—they weren’t mindless simulacrums, after all—but they were unarmed, and weak.
Aurelian, too, was no normal Novice.
Deciding it was time to approach, Aurelian moved toward them and folded his arms while looking down at Zylara and Karsys. “So,” he said as pleasantly as he could manage. “Feeling better, I take it?”
Both of them looked up at him, and then as one they froze.
All the colour—what little there was in the elf’s case—drained from their faces.
“What?” Aurelian asked warily. “Is there something else on my face?”
“I—I didn’t know…” Zylara said in a horrified whisper. “Forgive me, I didn’t know!”
Aurelian opened his mouth, intending on asking what in the world she was on about, and then stopped when Karsys spoke.
The man’s voice was like rain in spring. It immediately put Aurelian at ease, and he felt an immediate sense of kinship—even more than earlier—with the golden-eyed giant of a man. He was shockingly soft, calm, and peaceful despite his massive frame. “Forgive my companion her brashness, Your Majesty. If you had only told her—”
Aurelian’s eyebrows were in his fringe by that point.
“Told her what?” he asked in bewildered annoyance.
“Your eyes.” Zylara said in a trembling voice. “You have a Dragon’s Eyes.”
“As was foretold.” Karsys said softly. “A Fallen Star, Marked by the Dragon, and buoyed by the Blood of Eld,” he pulled himself up, with a wince, to his knees and Aurelian felt himself grow distinctly uncomfortable when he realised that Karsys was genuflecting. “Hail to you, Nephilim. Hail to you, Reclaimer. Hail to you, Imperator of Elysea.”
Aurelian was struck mute in shock and surprise, and his eyebrows went skyward.
“Hail to you,” Zylara said with tears in her eyes, “O mighty Calamity.”