Elijah didn’t feel alright. He felt awful, honestly. His heart pumped the wrong way, his breath tasted different, and his right arm didn’t move as it usually did. He hated it, yet he knew all of this was the reason he was currently breathing at all.
‘Thank you for this, Dawn,’ he sent the plant, as it moved around inside him. Not in the sense of Plant Storage magically breaking the duck down and letting it sit inside his Core, but in the sense that roots were steadily moving through him so that the fake parts of the shoulder could act as they needed to.
He’d already felt the snap of pain when she had connected the plant matter to the rest of the nervous system. Being able to feel a somewhat accurate sensation when putting his finger against his new skin wasn’t exactly something he had expected for tonight, but it was certainly a job well done.
‘I’m sleepy,’ Dawn replied. ‘Wake up later.’
He felt her presence start to dim, as she began to rest to preserve Mana. What she had done was morbidly expensive, and would’ve been downright impossible even when inside the Dungeon. To do it out here in the open air was… he didn’t know how she had survived it, to be frank.
“Elijah, can you walk?”
…
Right.
The world hadn’t stopped when he had experienced near death, and time was still progressing outside of his mind.
“Yes, yes, I can walk just fine,” Elijah replied, rising back on his feet with the help of Grace. The world briefly turned black as he did, the blood loss giving him a rush at the sudden movement. “Somewhat.”
“That you can walk at all is… how did you do that?” Grace asked, looking down at the green chunk of his chest. “How did that plant do that? It just tore itself apart and forced itself into the wound and then… you just woke up and started coughing.”
“I would guess Dawn figured out a mix of herbs that I have fed her over the past days which would force my system to start at maximum output for a few seconds, which would then allow her to imitate my vital functions and allow the natural repairs to start up while she slowly integrated herself into my lesser functions as well, not outright replacing the flesh by simple guesses but instead with the assistance of a body that was desperate for… Sorry, I’m a little out of it,” Elijah apologized, stopping himself as Dawn’s memories continued to steadily be sent his way. It seemed that whatever rush job she had done at the end had caused the Animal Bond to be taken to its outright maximum in terms of effectiveness. All the thoughts and ideas that the little duck had been harboring were his own, a little distant but still there in the outreaches of his mind. “I’m in good enough form to continue, as I believe we’ll need to do very soon.”
With a shaky hand, he pulled out the paper in his pocket. Several more messages had arrived since he’d last had the chance to look at it. Harper was ordering those alive to give a signal, which Aleksi and the two mercenaries had done. Apparently, Vera had been captured, and…
Phillip was the orchestrator?
Not good. And it only got worse, when he could see the white lights in the sky brightening even further. The ritual was nearing its completion very soon. Harper wanted them all closer to the center to make a final push.
“Elijah, I need to know what’s going on,” Grace demanded. “I’ve seen people die, I’ve seen some guy who knows you be taken by Rubeus and the others, I just saw you do this, and I just used Wind Magic to kill a person.”
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Oh? Looking over to the end of the alley, where a body covered in cuts could be found on the ground, Elijah realized that part hadn’t been a hallucination. The floating hair didn’t seem to have been either, by the locks that still refused to obey the laws of gravity.
… Some part of him wanted to reject Grace’s demands, repeating the part of her not being fit for this, yet it was her who had carried this fight while he had fallen instantly. And now, without Dawn to help, he needed another regardless.
Her mother will kill me after this.
“The crown prince has partnered with your mentor to use sacrificial rituals to summon a monster that can be used to rule this country,” Elijah explained. “He’s already killed the King, he’s already killed a lot of other people, and he’s going to kill two people that I have been helping keep hidden these past days.”
“Jack and Sasha?”
“Yes, I— how do you know that?”
“Met them while I was captured,” she said, making Elijah realize Grace had already admitted to meeting somebody who knew him before they were taken away by Rubeus. “The man asked me to thank you. He was very… serene about all of this.”
Acceptance was not the emotion he’d needed from those two right now, but there was nothing to do about it. They needed to move.
“Regardless, they’re being used as sacrifices for the ritual going on right now,” Elijah pressed on, already writing on the paper that he was going to meet them in the prepared location. “If it’s completed, they will be killed. We can’t let that happen.”
“So what do we do?”
“Hope the others have a better plan than mine.”
They left the alley behind, hurrying down one of the smaller streets while ignoring all the sounds of combat around them. Others were hiding where they ran, making no sound while watching the duo. Just ten meters away, Spells were flung with no regard for others, explosions and fiends of fire covering entire chunks of the street.
The cries heard as people were burnt to a crisp would stay with Elijah for a very long time.
“Down here,” he ordered, taking a sharp right before being a second away from getting an axe to the face. Only his freezing allowed the edge to avoid his head, Aleksi barely able to slow it down. “That was too close.”
“Sorry,” the giant apologized before looking over at Grace. “Her mother won’t be happy about this, you know?”
“She’ll understand.”
If we live through it.
“Wind Mage?” Harper asked as they were allowed under the veil as well. Grace nodded in reply, eyeing the Illusionist and those behind her warily. “Good. We need somebody to make those closest to the alley off-balanced.”
“Yes, right, sorry, what is she doing?” Grace replied, pointing to the Dreamweaver a little further ahead. Elijah heard the muttering leaving her as Nightmares dug themselves out from her flesh, gathering in her open palm in a sphere that pulsed like a racing heart. “Is she with us?”
“She’s to focus on those you throw off-balance,” Harper explained, making Grace just nod without understanding. “Elijah, you’re throwing the last flash. Aleksi, you’re to protect Elijah. Fox, you’re with me.”
“Oh, sick!”
Even with half her body already covered in blood, the redhead looked none the worse for wear. Elijah felt jealous, more than ready to collapse once he was allowed the pleasure.
I’ll rest after this one way or another.
A hand on his shoulder made him look up to see Aleksi staring at him. The green pupils and veins around his face were impossible to miss.
“Are you alright?” the giant asked, glancing at the patch of green on his chest. The texture was obvious to the eye, and he didn’t doubt that the elixir-enhanced sight made it even more troubling to see.
“It’s a patch job after a spear went through there,” Elijah explained off-handedly, signaling he would give more details when it was all over. “I’ll throw the flash when the Nightmares bite into their victims. Get ready to shut your eyes and look away then, okay?”
The others confirmed their understanding, and they started to move. He and Aleksi moved to another alley some twenty meters away from the others, hoping to take more with them that way.
‘In position,’ he wrote on the paper when he was able to see the Ritual ongoing from the darkness. The white lights made the central area feel like day once again, and yet it felt so wrong. The bodies of the two he knew were floating unconscious in the middle, seeming to smoke as something was pulled out of them. They were still alive, but the increasing volume of Rubeus’ chanting made it clear that it wouldn’t last.