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Chapter 45 – A Loss of Control

Chapter 45 – A Loss of Control

As the giant ape’s body crumbled to nothing, relief washed over Adam, together with the sweet adrenaline of victory. He let his head fall back, feeling the primal desire to drum his fists on his chest. That’s odd… Adam frowned at the blade in his hands. Tiny, prickling specks of light entered his hands, feeling strangely familiar. Heat from his heart surged towards them as if to defend his body from the foreign energy. It reminded him of how the right heart’s network repels diseases that try to infect the body.

Vague memories came along with the specks of light. How he’d climbed the jungle trees higher than ever to reach the Great Sweet Fruits. How irresistible he’d be to all the pretty female apes if he succeeded. How he had found a tribe of other apes and challenged their old grey-furred leader, only to be thrown off the waterfall. Swinging from branch to branch, he explored the endless sea of green…

Oliver yelped in a high pitch.

Adam gasped and shifted his grip on the sword’s hilt. He shook his head, clearing it from the ape’s memories and dashed back into the other room.

The furious battle between Emily, Oliver, and the Shepherd continued. Seemingly immobile, the Shepherd hadn’t moved from its spot near the wall. However, it had conjured a gnarled, round shell of vines, tree trunks and thorns around itself. The trunks reacted to incoming attacks from Oliver and Emily, moving and adjusting to shield the Shepherd from Invocations. The Shepherd’s defences were covered in green, glowing hieroglyphs. Apparently, this particular Invocation reinforced the thick trunks by an impressive amount, since they were able to withstand a two-handed blast of Shrike from Oliver.

Visible through the holes between his defences, the Shepherd feverishly kept writing in the air with its purple quill. It conjured vines and thorny trunks around its shell that writhed like wild snakes, reminding Adam of how an octopus defends itself with tentacles.

Oliver and Emily soared through the room, using their Ironglass chains to move around and dodge the seemingly endless lianas and thorns.

Thick, purple flowers at the ends of vines shot fist-sized nuts at Oliver. He formed a wide stained-glass-like screen of Ironglass in response, upon which the nuts burst open, spraying thorns in all directions.

A massive vine—with a set of toothed leaves like a carnivorous plant at the end—came straight at Adam. He rolled aside, dodging the bite. With a mighty upward swing of his sword, he ‘beheaded’ his attacker. There was no chance to celebrate though, since small, string-like plants writhed over the ground to grab his feet.

Enormous thorn bushes grew at an alarming rate towards Emily. She jumped around them, formed a Marrow scythe and dashed forward. Instead of attacking the mass of thorns itself, she sliced through the stem that connected the bushes to the Shepherd. After losing their connection, the thorn bushes withered and died. Just like the vines in the tunnel! Unlike the Roots, ape, or other separate entities, the Overgrowth needs a connection to some central part!

Apparently, the Shepherd was keen to punish Adam’s moment of distraction. It wrote in the air and the energy that seeped from Adam’s blade changed. It surged over Adam’s arms and formed green glowing hieroglyphs on his skin, causing his arms to move beyond his control. Adam growled in frustration as his arms repeated the motions they’d just performed in reverse order. Uncontrollably, like a drunk maniac who held a blade for the first time, he wildly slashed the sword around in front of him.

Adam bared his teeth in blind frustration, unable to escape the feeling that the Shepherd was merely toying with him. Even worse, it reminded him all too much of how the Crimson Urges had the gall to take over control. Shivering in rage, he had to step aside at the last moment before he would’ve cut his own leg off. Damn it, stupid thing! How dare—

At the ends of great thorned vines, six bulbous purple flowers aimed straight at Adam. He dashed to the side, his arms still flailing, but the flowers’ aim followed him effortlessly. Familiar brown, floating spores seeped from the largest flower as it prepared to fire.

Wild thoughts and options flashed through Adam’s mind, like to dash behind the Shepherd’s other vines, or use Osaehin’s Invocation to dodge. But I can’t evade a broad spore attack like that!

A surge of heat came from Adam’s heart and filled his veins. No, I refuse to run! I’ll never go down like this while damn Caine holds Eric! Images flashed before his mind’s eye: how Desdemona had gathered heat in her throat before she’d roared in defiance, blasting the snake’s breath of filthy, smoky spores away. He saw how the young Adam in Eulenschloss had roared with animalistic might on top of the walls.

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A small, nagging voice inside of Adam whispered he wasn’t the same man anymore. That his skills had waned…

“Gur Asaar,” his heart hissed. An old, nearly forgotten scorched brand on his heart flared up as rage flowed through him like liquid fire. Thoughts of a weakling! I’ve done this before so I can do it again. Caine will bleed for what he did to me. And his minions. Can. BURN. Heat from all over his body gathered into his throat.

The flowers in front of Adam fired. Fist-sized, explosive nuts and a billowing stream of spores came straight at him.

Adam set his feet right, took a deep breath and roared with all his might, spewing out all of the fury, pain and built-up frustration he had inside him. A shockwave of raw, primal power rippled outwards along with a deafening noise he barely recognized. It blasted the stream of spores away like dust. Nuts exploded harmlessly in mid-air, their thorns blown away. Adam’s Invocation shredded the flowers and several vines behind it to pieces.

Adam felt alive. Invincible. Raging satisfaction surged through him along with the overwhelming desire to charge the Shepherd and tear him to shreds. Why should Adam restrain himself? If he’d just follow his fury, the Shepherd would fall along with—

Adam gasped and shook his head. What am I thinking?! With deep breaths, he tried to take back control. No! I’m not some beast! Groaning in the effort, he tried to suppress the anger, the Crimson Urges that flooded his mind. Only now did Adam notice the blade was yanked out of his hands by the blast and that his arms moved like normal again.

In front of him, Emily and Oliver had closed in on the Shepherd from two sides. It had lost most of its vines but used its shell-like mass of trunks and thorns to defend itself. Writing feverishly, the Shepherd commanded the stems to move and block the incoming blasts of Shrike and weapons of Marrow. The hieroglyph-Invocation made its defences surprisingly durable; even with their combined might, Oliver and Emily weren’t able to get through.

Steadily gaining back control over himself, Adam dashed forward.

In between the Shepherd’s impressive defences, it opened small slits and holes between the trunks, possibly to see what was going on. When Oliver unleashed a two-handed blast of Shrike upon the Shepherd, the trunks around it moved around to form a mighty barrier. However, small holes were left open at the sides again. Emily held both hands in the Marrow gesture and threw a small dagger. Applying her newly trained control over Marrow, she just managed to curve its trajectory towards one of the slits between the Shepherd’s defences. Focused on Oliver’s barrage of big, conspicuous attacks, the Shepherd was too late to respond.

The knife pierced the Shepherd’s oversized head from the side before it dissolved into normal Oquira again. The Shepherd’s movement froze in its tracks, and after a moment of stillness, it dropped its pen. After the hysteria of the battle, all was suddenly oddly quiet. A silence which was only broken by a gentle rustling as the Shepherd’s body fell apart. Its war banner, the pen, and all of the vines, leaves, and bushes within the room crumbled along with it. Oddly enough, the symbols on the wall’s tapestries and banners disappeared as well, leaving blank canvases.

Oliver stared wide-eyed at what remained of the Shepherd. Adam bent over, rested his hands on his knees and panted. The tension in the sides of his head and jaw loosened as sweet, sweet relief washed over him.

“Yay!” Emily laughed in excitement and jumped up. “I did it, ha! It worked!”

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Adam moved his right arm around to ease an aching muscle. Each time he raised it above his head, he heard a painful ‘click’ near his shoulder as the muscle sprung back in place. Grumbling something indeterminable, he rubbed it with his other hand. To be fair, despite his impressive collection of cuts and bruises, he’d gotten off pretty lightly. Better than Oliver at least.

“Hold still!” Emily said sternly.

Oliver winced. “Ouch! You should apply it to Nyandin Sata, not—”

“Hold. Still,” Emily repeated even sterner.

The group was taking a rest within the house where they had fought the Shepherd. His bare and wounded back exposed, Oliver lay down on a luxurious carpet. Emily sat beside him and studied the cuts and the deep purple bruises again. Holding her hands in the Weaver gesture, with both hands in a complex pattern of overlapping fingers, she did her best to treat them. Although she wasn’t an expert.

Hungry as a hippo after the battle, Adam snacked on strips of dried meat as he observed how Emily worked. Beneath her hands, the Meridians under Oliver’s skin glowed. They looked just like blood veins and lit up in a bluish-white due to Emily’s application of Oquira. The Meridians, connected to the right heart, controlled many conscious and subconscious bodily functions. With her Invocation, Emily commanded Oliver’s Meridians to redirect the natural healing functions of the body in a more focused way to heal his wounds.

However, to allow another to command your Meridians meant temporarily relinquishing a part of your own control over your body. And if there was one thing Adam had learned about Novaseers, it was that they clung to their own power and control like a drowning man to a floating lump of wood.

Oliver’s mouth twitched as he tried to lay still. “Ow! It’s the second Sata, connected to the bottom left rib, like—”

“Do you want to do it yourself?!” Emily hissed.

“No, I can’t, I’m too hurt for that!” Oliver said through gritted teeth. “I’m just saying—”

Adam sighed and focused on his strips of dried meat again. Well, at least they’re talking again.