“P-Pengu.” Alexander pointed towards the rubble with his trembling finger. Bison’s death had washed away the adrenaline, and try as he might, he couldn’t stand. Confined to the ground, Alexander relied on the strangers to check on his companion.
Maia cocked her. Alexander’s voice was raspy and barely audible, but she followed his finger to the shattered remains of the crates. “Is there something you need over there?”
Sluggishly nodding, Alexander’s head hung limply after he confirmed Maia was walking towards Pengu. He wanted to guide her better, but his body could give no more.
Maia crouched by the broken remains of the crates. She wasn’t really able to see anything, not at a glance. The rain had muddied everything together, melding the wood, stones, and earth into a messy scramble, but the wind carried the sound of a heartbeat to her so she persevered. Digging her hands into the mud, Maia threw scrap away until the little penguin surfaced.
Pengu was passed out, her breaths like a lonely candle with no cover in the storm. Taking her gently into her arms, Maia lifted the penguin and trudged back to Alexander’s tired figure. “Here, I believe you were looking for this.”
Not seeking to strain Alexander, Maia directly placed the penguin in Alexander’s lap and crouched to see eye to eye with him. “I hope this small gesture shows our sincerity in gaining your trust.” She paused to make sure Alexander was listening. “We are here… well, there’s really no better way to say it than to just be honest. We are here because of fate.” Maia paused again, expecting some sort of reaction from Alexander, but he remained stone-faced. Wondering if he may have passed out, she waved her hand over his healthy eye.
“What are you doing?” Alexander questioned. His tiredness accentuated his words with irritation.
“Oh, sorry. I thought maybe you had fallen asleep. You just didn’t say anything when I told you fate brought us here.”
“Ahh, I assumed you meant the prophecy. Dartuga, a mentor of mine, told me there would be others who could communicate with fate: some allies, some enemies.” Alexander stopped to take a breath, the mere act of speaking exhausting him. “Your group saved me and Pengu. That marks you as an ally in my book.”
Snickering softly, Maia replied. “That’s awful naïve of you, umm?”
“Alexander. The name’s Alexander.”
“Well, that’s awful naïve of you, Alexander, but no worries. The Emerald Warriors are not fond of treachery. We are here to aid you however we can. Which reminds me.” Spinning her index finger, Maia controlled her mana to form a wind dome, blocking the group from the rain. Two Emerald Warriors quickly dragged Bison’s corpse into the barrier and then took defensive positions at Maia’s flanks. The other two positioned themselves at opposite sides of the dome. Their hands drew back the string of their bows, an arrow forming itself on their emerald bow from the very wind of the dome.
Alexander closed his eye as he measured her words. It made sense in a way. If the prophecy foretold he was the catalyst to end the planetary war, groups would certainly approach him. “We can discuss what you want of me later, but right now, can you help my friends? We were ambushed not far from here. My allies… they’re dying.” Alexander said this as a statement, but his eyes were pleading.
Placing her hand on Alexander’s good shoulder, Maia nodded her head. “Of course we’ll help. We’ll take you and your penguin to safety and then we can…” Maia’s voice trailed away as she turned her head towards the rainforest. Cupping her hand over her ear, she closed her eyes and listened.
Alexander wanted to say something, ask what was happening, but he didn’t dare interrupt. He had noticed the Bucko’s disappearance earlier, but he didn’t question it. He was losing against Bison alone; he figured the Bucko had left to attack someone stronger. Once the Emerald warriors had incapacitated Bison, Alexander was happy to attribute the Bucko’s disappearance to them, but based on Maia’s stern face, maybe they weren’t quite out of the woods yet.
The group endured the building tension of silence for thirty whole seconds before Maia lowered her hand. Opening her eyes, she smiled once more towards Alexander. “We have a small situation on our hands, but it’s nothing you need to worry yourself about.” Stepping away, she moved to stand at the edge of the wind dome, pensively analyzing the line of trees.
Her words had said one thing, but her body language said something entirely different. There was something coming, and it would most definitely be dangerous.
Tenderly, he shifted Pengu to rest on his left arm as he reached into his right pocket. He had stashed a cookie in there earlier but hadn’t gotten a chance to eat it since the Puma and Eagle tribes had prepared them meals. He wished he had just eaten the cookie before. It would’ve saved him the misery he would have to suffer now.
Alexander’s body had yet to recover from the previous day’s mana depletion. Eating the recovery snack would force mana into his collapsed vessels, but just like a patient who’s had too many injections, Alexander’s vessels were irritated and scarred. Most of the mana would be wasted, and the scant amount he could absorb would be diluted and perhaps gift him with the greatest pain he had felt to date. Back in the Fausto Royal Hospital, he had heard the agonizing screams of patients who were rebuilding their vessels. Alexander’s were not permanently damaged, but he couldn’t help but think even a fraction of the pain would be incapacitating.
Holding the cooking up, Alexander sighed and stuffed it in his mouth. With a stabbed eye, an injured nerve, puncture wounds all over body, and bones that had only just been repaired, Alexander hoped his body would be numb to pain by now. It had been tortured enough, but as was becoming increasingly common today, he was wrong.
Biting down on the insides of his cheeks, Alexander tasted the metallic flavor of blood filling the inside of his mouth. It didn’t matter; he had no hope of unclenching his jaw. As the pain intensified, his eyes rolled back as he teetered on the edge of unconsciousness.
A burning pain like no other was diffusing from his stomach. It made its way up to his chest, stabbing knives into him all the way through, and then focused on his heart. Alexander began to clench his fists at this point, drops of blood trickled down his forearm as a result. His Adam’s apple trembled violently, and his neck muscles strained against his skin. The pain felt like it would burn a hole straight through his chest, like lava that was slowly burrowing out of his heart.
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It prevented him from breathing, for if he opened his mouth, a blood curdling scream would escape him. Stubbornly, Alexander faced the pain in quiet solitude. He did not want to alarm Maia, and he definitely did not want to alert whatever was coming. As his face began to purple and black spots appeared in his vision, he felt the relaxing sensation of the white flame ooze through his body.
Tears trailed down along the bridge of Alexander’s nose as he gratefully welcomed the white flame back. It did its job quickly and efficiently: closing all his scrapes and cuts and ejecting anything that had punctured Alexander. His hand and leg, especially, were flooded with the white flame to ensure the hastily reformed bones were healthy. He diverted the flame from his face, however. The mana expenditure for healing an eye was tremendous, and he was unsure of the extent of the injury. It wouldn’t be wise to spend his little mana this way.
While he was filled with renewed vitality, Alexander could feel the mana deplete passively. It was like a tire with a nail stuck in it, drivable but not for long. This was a temporary solution. One that would only allow him to fight once more.
He didn’t rush to join Maia, though. Alexander wasn’t sure of the threat, and he was likely to get in the way of their formations if he rushed the enemy. Based on the battle with Bison, the Emerald warrior’s strength was amplified due to their high degree of coordination with each other. It wasn’t Alexander’s place to jump in… yet.
Deciding being still was his best choice, Alexander opted to observe the warriors. Their positions had shifted while he was in the purgatory of pain. The two Emerald warriors on the edges of the dome were still aiming their bows towards the rainforest but three arrows were now slotted on their bowstrings. The two outer ones seemed like the regular arrows on their quivers with winged ends, but the middle one was amassed out of pure wind mana. It was ephemeral, seeming as if it was made out of wind but crystallized all at once.
The other two Emerald warriors who had stood by Maia’s sides earlier had reclaimed their positions alongside her. Their arms were held before them, clutched onto their bow. Holding it vertically, as they did, it appeared they were holding a sword.
Streams of wind mana flowed out of the bows and into Maia’s outstretched hands. She had placed them on the wind dome, almost as if she was pushing against it, but soon, Alexander realized she was morphing the dome. Packing more wind mana into it, the dome solidified until it appeared they were encased in glass. They still had a clear view of the outside, but their defenses were undoubtedly fortified.
Pursing her lips, Maia let out a long-whistled note, and each of the Emerald warriors tensed. Alexander, too, readied himself. He wasn’t sure exactly what the whistle meant, but surely, it would be better to be ready.
The archers shot out their arrows before Alexander had noticed anything. They arched in separate directions, leaving Alexander wondering if perhaps the warriors were just shooting at random, but he shook the thought away. Their faces were taut with concentration; they could see something out there that Alexander couldn’t.
Squinting his eyes, Alexander tried to see what they were aiming at, but try as he might, he saw nothing. The outside rain and the night’s darkness made everything murky. The only reason he could even see within the dome was because of some glowing crystals the Emerald warriors had tossed around the perimeter.
Three more rounds of arrows were released before Alexander could finally see signs of their opponent. Trees trembled in the distance, in the direction directly in front of Maia. Like lightning in the storm, momentary lapses of brightness would illuminate the forest before it sank back into the night. A few trees even caught fire as the sounds of battle approached their dome, but the rain quickly neutralized that.
Suddenly, a projectile shot out of the rainforest, nearly causing Alexander to leap from the ground. The thing tumbled through the ground incessantly before it revealed itself to be one of the Emerald warriors as it stopped outside of the dome.
Third degree burns were scattered over the man’s body, but he was not dead yet. Personally dragging him into the safety of the dome, Maia placed the man beside Alexander. She noticed how much better Alexander looked but said nothing of it, only addressing him with a firm nod.
Alexander quickly activated his eye technique to make sure the man was not in critical condition before turning his attention back to the rest of the Emerald warriors. The burns on the man had more than confirmed his earlier suspicion that Maia’s group had something to do with the Bucko’s disappearance, but it seemed they were only able to delay him.
He added possible invincibility to wind to his mental tally of the Bucko’s strengths. The archers had not stopped firing arrows into the rainforest since before, and if the intermittent flashes of light were anything to go by, the Bucko was unaffected. They didn’t stop, though, and Alexander was happy for that. Maybe one arrow did nothing, but perhaps a thousand would.
It was while Alexander was keenly observing the archers that the suspect in question finally revealed himself. Holding up another Emerald warrior by the throat, the Bucko looked haggard. His hat was nowhere to be seen, and his poncho was torn to shreds. One of his boots was missing, leaving him barefooted in the forest, and he resembled a porcupine with how many arrows were embedded into his torso and head. Hate was evident in his eyes.
Roaring more than screaming, he slammed the defeated warrior into the ground, or at least he attempted to. Appearing before the android, the two close combat Emerald warriors wrestled away their companion from the Bucko’s grasp while three bird arrows exploded in his face, stunning the android temporarily.
He roared again. “You measly rats! You lead me on a wild goose chase. You bury me. You try to drown me, and now you scurry around me like the bugs you are! Fine, if your purpose was to anger me, consider it done, but this will be the last thing you ever do.”
Opening up the dome to allow the Emerald warriors to return, Maia stepped out into the rain. Showcasing her strength, she dragged Bison’s body behind her, pulling him along with just one hand. “I think you’ll find we are a little more difficult to kill than you might expect.” Gathering wind around Bison, Maia flung him across the fallen trees to the Bucko.
The android observed his perished partner with empty eyes. Flipping him on his back with his foot, he sighed. “Looks like you kept his mace. That was the only thing of worth on this piece of shit.” Stepping on Bison’s exposed back, the Bucko began to walk towards Maia. “What? You thought this would intimidate me somehow? That I would be so scared of you, I would run away? Please, I could kill this block of muscle in a second.”
Maia cracked her back. “Intimidate you? Hardly. That would require me to put some thought into you, and who would want to waste their time thinking about some second-rate robot? No, I don’t mean to intimidate you. I was just taking out the trash. Not my fault if you look like the garbage robot.” Maia shrugged her shoulders innocently, but her words were anything but.
Lightning crackled around the Bucko’s body. He didn’t respond to Maia’s taunts, but he was clearly angered.
Noticing the lightning, Maia smirked as she prepared to send him over the edge. “Oh, shit. The trash robot has faulty wiring, too. Those Sabians are really outputting some terrible products nowadays. No quality control, I guess.”
The Bucko exploded in a blast of lightning. Both his hands were already charging beams, and his blue eyes had changed into a red coloring. Maniacally laughing, he responded to Maia’s goading. “I am a gentleman, but even I have my limits. You… you and your pack of rats I will enjoy skinning. Yes, hahaha, let me introduce you to the world of torture!!”
Maia ignored the Bucko, instead whistling in three short bursts followed by an extended note. Arrows flew freely towards the lightning charged Bucko as Maia and the two other Emerald warriors dashed towards the android.
Alexander watched their inevitable clash with bated breaths. What… what can I do?