40. The Heart of the Storm

The Wayfarers made a midnight crossing of the Badlands, with a helpful local in tow.

Even Serac was surprised when Dashi had offered to accompany them on foot. Yet here he was, lighting the way forward as Serac herself kept her eyes on a fading trail of blood.

She would’ve been perfectly happy to ‘borrow’ the lantern, assuming Dashi could be persuaded to lend it. His counteroffer, however, had come from a place of courage rather than mistrust.

“The two of you are putting your body and soul on the line to keep my friends safe,” the boy had said in that mild-mannered, too-mature way of his. “The least I can do in return is to be your guiding light in the darkness.”

As grateful as Serac was for the boy’s assistance, she still had misgivings about bringing an Anchored soul—such a young one at that—to a boss fight. Zacko, on the other hand, had no such qualms—or if he did, he played it off with a gruff show of approval.

“We’ll make a man out of you yet, kid,” the Manusya said, voice noticeably tight, while Serac rolled her eyes behind him. “Come and fight with us. For your friends.”

That had been when Serac checked her eye-roll. For Zacko sounded sincere enough in his own right, and she knew how much the man cared, despite his repeated claims to the contrary.

Thus, two Wayfarers and a Rakshasa boy made a midnight crossing of the Badlands, following a trail left behind by a Huskbound giant. And it was this giant’s peculiar characteristics that had a sentient six-shooter racking his non-existent brains.

“I’ve been thinking, Wayfarer, about the ways to ‘damage’ Hanuman the Huskbound Sentinel,” Trippy announced. He’d been doing a lot of that lately—thinking on his own. “In the absence of HP, it clearly isn’t Attack Value that’s making the difference between Zacarias Borges-Juventus’s NINEFOLD techniques and the pitiful display of REVOLVER’s bullets.”

Pitiful? Them’s fighting words, Trippy!

“Which has led me to conclude that the destruction of Hanuman’s individual parts is adjudged by the interactions between an entirely different set of parameters. My theory is that it’s a Poise check rather than an AV check. Case in point, the success of PULVERIZER’s [Grind], which we can assume is higher in Poise damage than an unimbued bullet or even the first stage of [Catharsis].”

I mean, I guess that checks out with what happened during the first fight. But where does that leave me then? Just run around like a headless chicken and get in PULVERIZER punches whenever I can? I’m so slow and clumsy with this thing… not like Zacko’s fancy hiyah moves.

“Normally, I’d categorize any Wayfaring deficiency as a ‘skill issue’. However, in this particular case, I believe you may be forgiven for blaming your ‘build’. Perhaps, later on in your journey, when you’ve unlocked more of REVOLVER’s powers, you’d be much better prepared for a challenge of this nature.”

Trippy sounded friendly and reasonable enough, but Serac couldn’t help but feel like her ego had been slapped around some more. Besides—

I can’t afford to wait on ‘later’, though, can I? Hanuman is a problem right now. A problem that—

—was far bigger than she could’ve imagined.

The trail of blood finally ended—not because it’d led back to its source—but because it got swallowed up by the densest, angriest, most Blight-spewing dust cloud on any side of the Sanzu River.

The world beyond Dashi’s lantern was now a uniform mass of pale-gray, with not a single speck of Naraka’s night peeking through. The winds whistled and the dust particles battered the borders of light, producing audible drumming noises like rain against glass.

Even inside the light’s radius was no longer the safe zone it should’ve been. As the trio inched their way forward, they found themselves having to wade through a rising pool of bone-colored sand that had saturated the Badland’s uneven terrain.

They’d walked into the heart of the storm. This was where the bone dust was at its densest, angriest, and deadliest—so much so that it could penetrate the lantern’s magical barrier.

[Wayfarer Status Effect: OSSIFY]

[TRIBULATION active (x2): current buff at 10%]

And as the dreaded bone-colored status bar manifested anew, Serac spared her first thought for Dashi—the innocent who’d voluntarily dragged himself into the Wayfaring business. Even now, patches of solidified bone dust left their Blighting mark upon the boy’s flimsy body, starting from his twig-thin legs and working their way up.

“Leave us, Dashi!” Serac shouted to be heard over the storm. “Get out of here while you still can!”

“No,” came the immediate reply, steady in its resolve. “I won’t leave while I could still be of use. The lantern still provides some degree of protection, do you see?”

Serac did see (and didn’t stop to wonder how Dashi knew), in the much reduced rate at which the [Ossify] gauge ticked up. The lantern’s magic was—at least partially—counteracting the severity of the storm.

But that only served to buy the Wayfarers some time. Time within which they needed to finish what they’d started and bring an innocent, brave child to safety.

Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

“Appreciate it, kid!” Zacko yelled from the head of the group, voicing what Serac couldn’t in her rising anxiety. “I promise you. I won’t let your efforts go to waste.”

Zacko didn’t wait long for a chance to make good on his promise. Because, as it turned out, the Wayfarers’ big smiting target was just as eager for a rematch.

Hanuman’s foot—giant again—came flying from the grayness above, breaking through the light barrier to slam down where Zacko had stood just a Ksana ago.

The NINEFOLD master reacted in time. He twisted away from the stomp and, in the same motion, sprang back into a counter-kick, foot sharpened into a point that jabbed at the Huskbound surface with a crisp ‘crack!’. [The Eighth Dao—Lance].

The giant’s foot disintegrated into powder that piled onto the sand beneath. If Trippy’s theory had been correct, Zacko’s spearing kick had passed the ‘Poise check’ against Hanuman’s armor. But the boss kept itself busy, backing out of the dome of light and disappearing once more into the grayness.

The Wayfarers moved apart, positioning themselves on either side of Dashi by unspoken agreement. They kept themselves on their toes and darted their eyes, not knowing where the boss might strike from next.

The light broke. Hanuman emerged again, this time in its entire, shrunken-down form, barely a head taller than the Manusya it charged towards with fists raised.

It took a swing, and Zacko managed to just barely hop out of the way. He then tried to counter with his own punch, but this version of Hanuman was much more mobile than the giant. It sidestepped Zacko’s [Cestus] with ease before sprinting to the center of the ‘dome’—to where Dashi stood, holding his lantern in his too-skinny hand.

“No!” In her desperation, Serac fired REVOLVER from the hip, wanting only to deter Hanuman’s charge. The unimbued bullet bounced off a Huskbound chest, having failed its Poise check, and it’d also failed to dislodge the shrunken Sentinel from its course. A course that was headed…

… Past Dashi and straight for Serac.

[158!]

Serac was knocked flat on her back as Hanuman clotheslined her high across the chest. She fought through the pain (and breathlessness) to push back onto her feet, brandishing PULVERIZER in the wild hope it might clip the boss and trigger a Poise-check.

No such luck. Hanuman’s shrunken form was already gone from the dome, having jumped back into the heart of the storm.

“Well, that’s strange,” Zacko commented, with a casualness that rankled Serac in her freshly humiliated state. “Last time, it definitely took more hits than that to bring it down to size. Is it… weakened, maybe? Doesn’t have the energy to maintain its giant form?”

That’s not the only strange thing, Serac thought, but stopped herself short of voicing it without more confirmation. But she was almost certain. At least for one moment, Hanuman had a clear lane to get at Dashi and snuff out the source of the Wayfarers’ protection. And yet—

She didn’t have time to finish the thought, as the light broke again. This time, a massive giant’s fist flew into the dome, skimming the sand and headed straight for Serac again.

Neither did she have the time to react, other than by holding out the jagged rocks on her left forearm in a defensive gesture. The PULVERIZER shield had worked wonders against Jailers back in the Damnatorium. Surely, it’d come through for her again, here against a Huskbound—

Badoom!

[363!]

Serac fell on her butt again.

This time, she found herself immobilized. It wasn’t that she was Stamina-depleted or Poise-broken. No, she was simply in too much pain.

The force of Hanuman’s punch—giant version—even when blocked with PULVERIZER, had shaken Serac to the core. She prided herself as a former Penitent that had endured the worst hell could throw at her, but she now knew the truth of it. That all this time, she’d been but a frog in the well, unaware of just how much pain this world and its inhabitants could dish out.

“How much damage?” Zacko’s voice, now tinged with a note of real urgency, floated somewhere above Serac’s head.

“I dunno,” she groaned. “A lot.”

“Give me a number!”

The edge in Zacko’s voice reoriented Serac to her immediate reality. She forced herself to think and stay present.

“I think 300 something?”

“And that was with your shield up? Fuck. That’s definitely one-shot territory, if left unmitigated.”

Serac managed to sit up. Even as she did, her mind churned, trying to make sense of everything that had happened so far in Round 2 vs Hanuman.

“I think… that thing can reshape itself at will,” she shared her conclusions. “It’s probably this storm that’s helping it do that. And why it ran here in the first place. The little guy doesn’t hit that hard, but is super quick. The big dude is slow and easier for us to dodge, but also hits like a castle when the attacks do land!”

“Yeah…” Zacko agreed. “That also means it can ‘heal’ itself whenever it’s shrouded in the storm. And don’t forget about [Ossify]; clock’s still ticking on that front. Well, this fight just got a lot trickier…”

“Then, perhaps, you shouldn’t fight.”

The storm raged on all around. Yet the child’s voice carried as if lifted by its own kind of music. Both Wayfarers turned to the boy, and was met by a Dashi who trembled slightly in his youthful frame. A Dashi who—for once—looked his age.

“Perhaps the right thing to do is to retreat,” he went on, voice steadier than his anxious expression let on. “Reset the encounter and fight Hanuman on your own terms. I do not wish for you to risk more than you need to. On anyone’s account—mine or yours.”

The suggestion was directed more to the Manusya than to the Rakshasa. For even the child had seen, as Serac herself readily conceded, that this was one fight where the NINEFOLD master was the far more prepared of the two Wayfarers—both in skill and ‘build’.

Zacko appeared to take a moment, giving the suggestion its due consideration. Then his face twisted into his trademark sardonic smile, even as his hand reached for the laughing Buddha mask that hung from his waist.

“Something you gotta learn, kid, if you ever wanna call yourself a man,” Zacko said as he untied VISAGE and brought it up to his chest. “It’s that there are some fights you can’t back down from—even if it’s the right thing to do.”

The last part of this smug one-liner was muffled by the mask that now covered Zacko’s face. Serac dared not roll her eyes, lest she miss this moment of transformation. For when Zacko removed his hand, the new face behind it was no longer the familiar sight of a laughing Buddha.

For VISAGE, like the two sides of a coin, contained two Aspects. And the flip-side of a [Dreamer] was a—

[VISAGE Aspect: SINNER]