Chapter 96: The rift (Second Part)
Walmir and Ilan.
Meeting them was the best thing our group could have hoped for in our situation. We spent more than two months with them, but only a few days were necessary to realize that neither Jazor nor I would have been strong enough to escort our group through this chaotic land.
Of course, having allies we could truly trust would have been better, but hoping for something like that in our situation was incredibly unrealistic.
So, we settled for the second best thing after trust: fear.
The fear of mutual destruction.
It didn’t take us long to realize that Ilan and Jazor were evenly matched while I could also give Walmir a run for his money.
That’s why we were lucky to have met them.
If we had encountered another group more numerous or with even stronger individuals, things could have quickly taken a turn for the worse.
With equally skilled fighters in our respective groups, mutual destruction was almost assured if our two groups confronted one another.
However, this realization that reassured me for weeks throughout our journey was now making my resolve waver.
Jazor could match up against Ilan.
Not me.
Not in my condition.
Battered and almost defeated, I watched as Ilan brutally killed the animals encircling him one after the other without any difficulty. In a few seconds, Ilan had already killed five of these crazed animals even if one of them had left a nasty bite on his left arm.
Unfortunately, most of them were torn apart before I could try to gain any sort of advantage from their intervention, although I should probably feel lucky enough already as their arrival had prevented my complete defeat.
I shook my head to clear my thoughts, but it made things even worse as the world around me started to furiously spin. The breath of fresh air I desperately tried to take was also denied by all the blood in my mouth and nose caused by nasty cuts and broken bones all over my face.
I tried to use the healing aspect of the water element, but such fine control of my mana was already outside my reach with my mind dangerously hovering near unconsciousness, and my limbs barely strong enough to support my weight anymore.
With a violent scream, Ilan drove his axe through the head of the last animal, that had tried to force him to the ground, and finally turned his attention back toward me.
No, not toward me.
I looked around and finally noticed with horror that I had somewhat landed just a couple of meters away from the carriage.
Paul, who had finally managed to carry Alianelle there, was doing his best to unravel the Vrapy and make them ready to leave once again. Unfortunately, he was far from over and the help from Himara and Seth, still shaken by the previous impact, wasn’t enough.
“Sillath?” Himara gasped with a hand hurriedly put in front of her mouth when I turned my face to look at her.
I spit blood and straightened my back while trying to ignore the common look of horror they gave me. If I had any doubt left about my current appearance, it was gone now.
“It’s over, Sillath. Even they know it!” squarely but softly declared Ilan with an absolute certainty I had trouble denying with this kind of wound.
“I can still fight!” I declared stubbornly while wiping the blood on my face with my sleeve as best as I could, something I immediately regretted as the cuts and bruises there suddenly burned like molted lave.
“I’m afraid not, Sillath,” he answered with unreserved sincerity.
The blood covering his clothes was probably for the most part not his, but he didn’t come out of our confrontation unharmed. He was pale, out of breath, had nasty cuts on his chest and right arm while the left side of his face was visibly swollen. A part of his right leg had also been frozen, but apparently not enough to truly hinder his movements as he started to slowly walk toward us with measured steps.
I exhaled a long breath and prepared to confront him once again with all the strength I could muster, but he stopped a few meters away from us. For long seconds, he stayed silent, simply towering over us from his entire height and imposing his presence like an insurmountable wall I was no longer able to overcome.
It’s only in this instant that I truly realized.
I couldn’t win.
As if answering this sudden cruel truth laid bare in front of me, one of my knees finally gave out while a violent vertigo assaulted my head. Weapon in hand, Ilan didn’t let this moment of weakness go to waste. In an instant, his trusted sword was glowing and raised above his head to finally kill Paul, stumbling backward in fright.
However, Ilan’s magic never left his sword in the end despite my inability to stop him. Temples pulsating from sheer rage, he watched as Himara and Seth both put themselves in front of Paul to protect him, knowing perfectly that Ilan couldn’t let out this kind of attack against them.
“Stop hiding behind children, Paul!” suddenly shouted Ilan with more anger than I ever saw in him. These words of ridicule told with his weapon still raised and shaking from pure ire were more than necessary to understand just how much Ilan truly loathed him.
Was it this realization that finally made Paul ignore the shaking of his limbs to stand up?
I didn’t know, but even with my blurry sight, I was able to see something similar to resignation finally make its way onto his face.
“I will! If you promise you won’t kill my daughter!” he suddenly declared with as much firmness as when he had opened his heart to me and explained the reason for his betrayal.
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“Kill me! But don’t make my daughter pay for my mistakes!”
Surprised by his words and sudden acceptance from a man he always considered weak and cowardly, Ilan failed to immediately answer and made me remember a simple truth about Paul.
Everything Paul did, the best and worst, all of it was for Alianelle’s sake.
“You… You think I want to do that? To kill her?” he stammered bitterly. “Look around! Do you think you left me with any other choice?” he asked acidly.
With enough time to regain my breath and steady my thoughts, I was finally able to once more use my senses and immediately understood what he was talking about.
Alianelle was unconscious, unharmed, but releasing even more mana than before, and it continued to steadily rise without any end in sight.
“She will attract everything this cursed land has to throw at us!” he stormed in both outrage and frustration. “If you hadn’t betrayed us, we could have simply run away and confronted everything coming for us as we always did! However, I’m the only one left able to fight. If she continues like this, we will all die no matter what,” he concluded with absolute certainty.
None of us were able to deny his words, because the harsh truth was sadly on Ilan’s side.
Paul certainly couldn’t allow Alianelle’s true nature to become known. I didn’t doubt his words, but after the situation had degenerated to this point, he finally understood that if he had trusted us a little more, none of this would have happened.
However, it was too late for regrets.
All Paul could do was open and close his mouth as this bitter realization finally hit him.
“It’s all your fault!” finally exploded Ilan accusingly.
With a grasping motion, a gale of wind was summoned and violently dragged Seth and Himara, both powerless to resist, forward, face first and away from Paul. I gathered my strength and stood up at the same time as Ilan, weapon raised, used his magic to cross the dozen meters that separated him from Paul in a single monstrous jump.
Fist clenched, I fired three earth bullets to intercept him, but a single wave of his arm mid-air was enough to deviate my attacks and send me flying with an impact similar to a punch in my face.
Far from my agility when moving with wind magic, Ilan landed in a thunderous crash right next to a stunned Paul and mercilessly brought his sword down as if wanting to cut him in half.
Blood splattered everywhere as the sword missed his head, but left a deep cut on Paul’s right shoulder.
More agile than I could have ever imagined, Paul had avoided a fatal strike, but Ilan didn’t let surprise slow his motion. With practiced ease, he followed with another side attack destined to cut Paul’s belly open. Too far to directly intervene, I could only stretch my hand forward in desperation.
This time the attack connected and sent Paul violently crashing several meters away as if he was hit by a train.
“Paul!” Himara screamed in horror before being forced to the ground once more by a single motion from Ilan.
“What the…?”
Far from the reaction anyone could have expected from a man who had finally accomplished his goal, Ilan blurted out these words of surprise as he stared at his sword as if it were the first time he had seen it.
Laboriously, Paul slowly lifted his face off the ground to look at his belly and witnessed, at the same time as Ilan, the collapse of the remnant of ice I summoned at the last moment to save his life. This hurriedly summoned protection had dulled Ilan’s attack but did nothing to soften the impact, something made clear as Paul, unable to stand up, started to cough blood.
“Sillath!” Ilan screamed in anger while turning his attention back to me.
However, he was too late.
I had already landed next to him, prepared to use the only magic I had left able to stop him.
Having correctly anticipated his reaction, I ducked and avoided his sword strike, before extending my hand to touch his arm near my head.
That’s all I needed.
Just a single touch.
Bleeding, beaten, and as exhausted as I was, Ilan could have simply neglected this kind of desperate movement. However, we had spent too much time fighting side by side for that.
With a jolt, he interrupted his motion to retrieve his arm centimeters away from the tip of my fingers, before taking a heavy step back to truly get out of reach. I followed his motion, but a violent kick in my chest interrupted my attempt and took my breath away at the same time.
I had missed my chance.
Ilan will not allow me to get any closer anymore, and all the mana I had gathered couldn’t stay indefinitely ready to be unleashed, not in my condition. The harsh landing on my back was almost enough to make it disperse and, before I could rejoice that it hadn’t, I raised my head and was confronted with Ilan’s large palm directed at me.
Before I could react, before Ilan had the time to definitively take me out of this fight, a massive arm wrapped around his neck and made the impressive ball of compressed water deviate from its course.
*Boom*
The attack was strong enough to leave a significant mark on the ground just next to me, but I ignored it.
My eyes were rounded with shock as I realized that Paul had attacked Ilan from behind and was trying to restrain him with the brute strength he had cultivated along with his fields for years.
Probably the most foolish decision Paul took today.
In a violent motion, Ilan gave a headbutt with the back of his head that immediately crushed Paul’s nose judging by noise alone. The elbow strike that followed did even more damage and forced Paul to let him go. Sword in hand, Ilan only needed a single motion to end his life as he turned around.
That’s when my hand finally touched his back.
Gently, almost as if I was trying to apologize.
The torrent of the unrestrained mix of mana and cold that immediately followed was anything but gentle.
With my hand as a starting point, a devastating wave of ice was created, far faster and far more violently than any attack before. I watched, helpless to control what I had created, as Ilan was immediately engulfed in a coffin of ice freezing at the same time his expression of surprise and fear on his face.
Paul followed and was engulfed just as quickly in my attack, without any time to truly realize what was happening.
With a sound similar to the roar of the most ferocious beast, my magic continued its grim work dozens of meters beyond my unfortunate victims, engulfing anything on its path at the same time. The wave of sudden weakness that assailed me after all this mana had left me was almost enough to rob me of my consciousness.
However, the acute pain that quickly followed was sufficient to prevent it.
I barely repressed a scream as a horrible burning sensation assaulted me just before I realized that my right arm had been frozen up to my shoulder along with Ilan and Paul.
This was the price for my Sacred magic.
The price for a power I didn’t truly master or even deserved yet.
I gritted my teeth and pulled as hard as I could, almost not believing it when my frozen arm was finally separated from the rest of the ice.
When my attack had finally finished running its natural course, everything was deathly silent around me, with only Alianelle’s unrestrained release of mana staying the same.
I didn’t have the strength, the mana, or the will to immediately take care of that.
Almost as immobile as my two unfortunate victims, difficult to distinguish from one another anymore, I stayed petrified in front of my ruthless work for long seconds while images of Amanda trapped in the same kind of ice assaulted my mind.
Breathless, lightheaded, and with my whole body in pain, I fell to my knees and tried to calm down, to gather my strength for what was to come.
“Sillath!”
Himara’s shrill voice along with Seth’s gasp of shock when confronted with the scene I had created was more than enough to understand that we all shared the same feeling.
None of this felt like a victory.