When things couldn’t possibly have gotten any worse, reality found a way.
The Pet-Keeper yawned. Fully, hand to his mouth, lips widened, the whole ordeal. It made Elmore want to tear everything in this damnable cavern to pieces. But he wasn’t so infatigable as he liked to make out.
For minutes on end — five, ten, possibly more — he and Donovan had been throwing everything they had at the plain-looking Unbounded. It had achieved, aside from keeping the man at bay, precisely nothing. Like hacking away at a marble pillar for hours on end, only to walk out of the endeavour with one indent made and a calloused hand.
And, what exactly, did the Pet-Keeper do with all that spare time, you ask? He absorbed all the Infinity that gathered around him. Dousing himself over and over in the empowering currents. It made it so that even the brief scratches they landed on the Unbounded were swiftly remedied.
Diamond armour appeared on him, bit by bit, and inch by inch, the suit expanded. It was Supreme Steel no doubt. All powerful Unbounded at Splintered Equivalent or higher could don all the armour they wanted, if the resources to do so were available. And what better place than this divine banquet?
It wasn’t the futility of it all that drove Elmore mad. It was the fact, the undeniable truth that any second the Pet-Keeper so wished, he could put Donovan to an end. But he didn’t; purposefully so.
“You sadist.” Elmore snarled. “What do you stand to gain from all of this?”
Speaking words was risky. The combined might of Elmore and Donovan pushing themselves to the brink was the only force preventing the Pet-Keeper from killing them outright. Or, as he knew the Unbounded would much prefer, enacting all the torture and suffering he desired in a long, drawn-out demise.
“Surely,” the Pet-Keeper’s lips quirked. “You prime examples of humans understand such fickle concepts as honour, and revenge? That is exactly what is propelling me, right this moment. Not blood, not flesh, not even Infinity. Vengeance. That is what animates me so.”
Elmore tried to push another inch forwards, closing in on the Pet-Keeper, but it felt as though an invincible barrier was blocking his advance. With great motions of the hand, the Pet-Keeper ensured Elmore could never gain more than a few centimetres at a time.
They were in a stalemate. But an artificial one; a stagnated playing field that the Pet-Keeper had devised simply to entertain himself.
He was teetering on spiralling madness, when four blurs in the corner of his vision made Elmore’s heart flutter. The others, they had finally arrived — alive! Six against one. Their invisibility may have faltered by now, but they were all as competent in battle as ever. His mask of worry cracking to reveal a smile at them all, Elmore paid rapt attention as Remus met the Pet-Keeper square in the eye.
Who didn’t have a care in the world. “Took you long enough.” He put simply, increasing the range of his strikes to offset the newcomers. The broad strokes of his arm really were devastating. “Now, how many corpses do you think I can stack in the next five minutes?”
A fireball from Remus waved across his face. Elmore was startled to find the Emblazed dripping with multicoloured blood, a hungry look in his eyes. Like he planned on devouring the entire world for supper. Something told Elmore, besides the lack of glinting gold, that the blood wasn’t his own.
“Milap’s dead.” He said, in a voice so nonchalant, it made Elmore double-take. He opened his mouth again, as if to proclaim something heroic, but no noise came out. Instead, he kept quiet, pouring a steady stream towards the Unbounded’s eyes.
It was like the Pet-Keeper was enjoying a warm bath. The day Elmore made the fiend flinch, he’ll have peaked in life.
Through the fires, the shadow knives, the natural projectiles, and Violet’s frantic claws, the Pet-Keeper rivalled Remus in dark casualty. “Of course that pipsqueak died. Always hiding behind nameless Unbounded to shield himself. But when push comes to shove, and you reach your breaking point, only your own strength matters. And mine,” every vein in the Pet-Keeper popped, every fibre of his now massive musculature bulging visibly even through his armour, “is a gift from the universe itself. You are fighting reality.”
Save for Elmore half-heartedly, none of them listened. They were too busy tossing everything they had at the Pet-Keeper, splitting open small cuts that shattered his face; chipped away at his azure armour. It was progress, more than he and Donovan combined had managed. Yet, at the same time, it was terribly slow.
Remus and Violet, despite their best efforts, were clearly at their wits’ end. Remus’ fires proved useless against the Pet-Keeper, and each attempt of the explosive ability ended with diminishing results. Several times over, until Elmore’s eyes hurt by the constant changing from blue to white, white to blue, the Emblazed tried to go hotter. Bring his blinding streaks to temperatures that would make even the Pet-Keeper crumble.
But defeating Milap had drained him too much. Even keeping his Mark alight was clearly bringing the boy immense pain. The same could be said for Violet — consuming all the Infinity suffusing the area could only do so much. Elmore realised there were only remnants lingering now, thank the gods, but the Pet-Keeping was engorging himself on it all. She would get her clutches on trickles at most.
Suffice the say, Elmore couldn’t rely on their support. And, while formidable in the right circumstances, Koa and Ash were simply too inexperienced to be of much help. It was harsh, but an undeniable truth.
Eventually, the Infinity in the room would be drained up. Violet was already commanding the few Unbounded left alive to bloat themselves with as much as they could. Therefore, the Pet-Keeper’s own reserves would reach a point where the Divine Right could no longer be supplied the necessary fuel. Then, and only then, would the opportunity arise to give the Pet-Keeper the slip.
But time was precious, and yet so fleeting.
Donovan himself seemed to understand this. His hulking doppelganger materialised behind his back, gripping the Shadow Clansman’s own shoulders. It sank into him, as if being uncalled, but Elmore had gotten the wrong impression. As if Donovan had taken a note out of Milap’s book, the two became one whole. Donovan donned the shadow like a twilight cape and armour. Two images appeared to superimpose one another, Donovan’s toned body topped by a flux of darkness.
Every shadow in the room, all those constructs the man had been manipulating remotely, flooded into him as if by individual strings. Donovan and his appeal expanded in size, no longer buckling under the Unbounded wrath.
At that exact moment, all of their focuses were the same.
Wood and flame shot into The Pet-Keeper’s arm, and simultaneously, Donovan wrenched his arm away.
The Pet-Keeper’s grip failed.
Elmore expected his companion, battered and bruised, to go on the defensive. Hopping back a number of steps to recover. In reality, he grabbed onto the Pet-Keeper. Together, as one intertwined bundle, the pair fell to the floor. The sound of sharp wind reverberated around the chamber, until Elmore couldn’t tell if the redundant noise really was repeating, or if the echoes in this cavern were absolutely extreme.
It took him a slow moment to spot the blades streaking out of the darkness, directly into the Unbounded. They rolled across the floor, and Elmore, his cousins, and Remus, ceased attacking. Anything they sent their way had just as much risk of hurting the Shadow Clansman as it did the Pet-Keeper.
Hope flared up inside of Elmore. Is he actually hurting him?
That feeling fizzled to dust, when Elmore laid his eyes on the image of the diamond-clad being, pinning Donovan down. The half-shadow’s open mouth was pushed down to enjoy the dusty taste of the rock floor. The only force preventing the Pet-Keeper from crushing Donovan’s head was the now detached shadow. Its dark arms encircled them by the chest, shaking terribly. Like any second, they would buckle. Donovan was, quite literally, holding on for dear life.
For what it was worth, Donovan’s efforts hadn’t been for nothing: the Pet-Keeper’s skin was chafed all over. In some places, even bleeding.
They all kicked back into high-gear, pouncing on the Unbounded. He yelped out one hasty word. “Now!”
Up above, blind-spots in Violet’s campaign to skewer every last one of her clan’s Marked clones, hung suspended from the cavern roof. It wasn’t just their positioning that compared the trio to bats; they were vermin of the lowest kind.
Imagine someone teleporting you directly in front of the sun. That, aside from pending incineration, was precisely what caught Elmore — and the rest of the group — so off-guard. The rug had been pulled out from under them, the room alternating to nothing but the brightest environment any of them had ever seen. What exactly the walls were forged out of, possibly fire and crystal, Elmore hadn’t the slightest clue.
But he knew one thing for certain. In this expanse, there would be no shadows.
Panic seemed to trigger Elmore’s eyes into adjusting quicker, the image of the Shadow Clansman being uplifted by one gauntleted arm encompassing his entire world. No shadows, no armour. Just the man’s helpless, fatigued, and raw form.
“Donovan!”
The Pet-Keeper crushed his head. There wasn't a squeal of horrific pain. No twitch or last minute plea. Just the sound of a grape being squeezed.
Screams that used up every iota of his body threatened to snap Elmore’s vocal cords. He hadn’t known Donovan for very long. He’d been frightening, slaughtering hundreds without so much as a drab of emotion. But he was human. They’d proved as much through the rare cracking of a smile. The occasional, knowing glint in their curious eyes.
Now, the man would never do so much as twitch his lips again.
Elmore sped forward, oak armour encompassing his body within a second. Hundreds of serrated leaves, sharp enough to cut through bone and scatter marrow, concentrated over him. The Pet-Keeper didn’t doge, standing his ground, bloody hands outspread. It would be his funeral.
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Voices screeched at him to top, but against their best wishes, Elmore stifled the nagging voices. If he didn’t do something now, they were all going to die. Now was the only chance. The image of a heart staining the Pet-Keeper’s brow was losing its colour. Any minute now, pushed to his regenerative and defensive limits, the Unbounded would no longer be able to rely on that vile ability.
The Pet-Keeper moved nearly too fast for Elmore to intervene. He flickered his head to the side, just in the nick of time, an otherwise lethal shot splitting his shoulder instead. Elmore pushed through the pain. His halo of ferns pierced past the Pet-Keeper’s shattered armour, and Elmore mentally rasped in a voice too inhuman to be his own. An eye for an eye!
The bone of his kneecap made a crunching sound, and tears momentarily blurred Elmore’s vision before he blinked himself to clarity. The toughest wood he could think of — quebracho — flew out of his chest, already sharpened like the finest handmade spear, right into the Pet-Keeper’s abdomen. Blood flew, and Elmore would have smiled if the pain hadn’t been quite so intense.
A flurry of strikes answered him. His achilles tendon tore, both elbows gushed blood, and it was all he could do to keep a hand on his side, as what felt like all the Ichor in the world came rushing out.
Spiked, thorny vines materialised out of nowhere, entangling the Pet-Keeper. The great Unbounded humphed, ripping them apart. But Elmore didn’t relent. The stronger bundles enraptured their feet, and large, twisting logs encircled the Unbounded. Elmore imagined squeezing the fiend as one would a water balloon. Exactly as Donovan had been slaughtered.
It was the perfect vengeance. An irony that would transcend this moment, ringing out through the most obscure crevices of existence. It filled Elmore with drunk excitement.
He flattened three of his spiked leaves together, piercing the Pet-Keeper’s eye.
A hand, no longer gauntleted, was raised before the bleeding hole. “You little-”
Elmore screeched over the Unbounded. Projectiles from the others covered for his now sloppy footwork, every step he took eliciting a spike of pain through his entire body. But this momentary pain would be worth it if his cousins survived. Why had he ever been jealous? It was ridiculous, it wa-
A swiped hand left a gaping hole in Elmore’s chest.
He rasped, vaulting himself on top of the Unbounded. He was weaker, willpower alone suffusing him with the might needed to pin the devil down. Gore splattered in Elmore’s face, but all he saw was the innocuous faces of his cousins. Ash, ever laid-back and carefree; Koa, logical, calculating, and a great talent left in the dark for far too long.
Elmore saw, faintly for a moment, Koa’s torn tunic revealing a brilliant Mark. Chantal, the goddess of The Wild, sending a batch of corrupted trees scattering.
It was subtly flaming. Like the fuzzy look sand dunes acquired through the filter of a desert’s heat.
Koa had made Emblazed. Possibly days ago, they’d just been too busy to notice. Pride warmed Elmore’s heart, love and adoration for his clan quelling the impossible pain riddling through his tortured nerves.
Turning his attention back to a bewildered Pet-Keeper, Elmore raised his neck backwards. His own eyes must have a blazing, sickly green — the brightest shade he’d ever acquired, no doubt. Elmore had never had the luck for permanent bodily alterations, only when his Wilderness energy reached a crescendo did it appear. But here, at the accumulation of everything, the image of those pupilless spots of green would be engraved into his legacy.
Horns, of the same wood Elmore had forged the spear from earlier, sprouted from his brow. He swung himself forwards at lightning speed, Mark feeling like it was going to burn itself off his body.
There was a devastating second of contact. Winds lashed off in a gathering tempest around them; more blood leaked down their faces, and Elmore had stopped paying attention to his hearing once all the pandemonium had begun.
The starkest agony he’d ever experienced struck Elmore, and he crumpled to his knees. He wiped out blood from his eyes, knowing full well the Pet-Keeper could slice off his head any second now. He glanced at the point of contact.
His entire right arm had been severed off. The pain became numb as he realised this, disbelief his greatest painkiller.
But the Pet-Keeper wasn’t faring too well either. His head was coated entirely with blood, but even through the sticky barrier, he could see their Divine Right fizzle out for good. Elmore leapt, knowing his fate, but foreseeing no alternative. He concentrated all his Wilderness energy into one wild blast.
It flickered from state to state in the brief distance between Elmore and the Pet-Keeper. A spear, vines, miscellaneous plants, a bird's nest. It struck the Unbounded square in the chest mid-transformation, tearing a sizeable chunk of flesh away from him.
An angry yelp, and time seemed to accelerate. There was a blow to his left, which he more acknowledged then felt, as Elmore’s other dismembered arm joined the first.
He turned his head hastily to Remus, a mouth full of Ichor making it difficult to speak. “Remus! Protect my cousins won’t you? Won’t you!”
It all happened so quickly, but Remus didn’t hesitate, bless his heart. The Emblazed nodded, expression so resolute, all of Elmore’s fears perished.
As his body was split in twain, Elmore, for once, felt at peace.
His clan was in safe hands. Even as he wheezed his last breath out of severed lungs, Elmore knew that for certain.
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Koa stopped thinking. He simply acted.
He rushed forward. Past the line of Elmore and Violet, past the piles of gore, and right into the Pet-Keeper. His Mark blazed brighter than ever, the showings of an Emblazed, but barely a fraction of his mind registered the advancement.
Great wooden claws blasted out of Koa’s hands, and in the same fashion as Violet would in her Unbounded form, his arms swept down.
The Pet-Keeper cackled through his gushing mouth. “Come join the death toll! You know, I really am starting to feel bet-”
Koa roared something incoherent that even he didn’t understand. Remus rushed forward at his back, but at that moment, nothing could stop Koa.
The gods themselves could try to integrate themselves between him and this loathsome bastard, and he’d devise a way to get through. With brute-force if needs be. Again, Koa swiped down. Once more, a third time, and then Koa’s arms became a blur. Blood splattered upwards, the last scraps of wrecked armour flying overhead.
Hands wrapped themselves around his chest, pulling him back. He fought and fought, cursing like a madman. Remus was dragging him back, snatching away his vengeance. Ash was on Violet's shoulders, eyes glazed over.
“What are you all doing?” His vocal cords shook. “We have to kill him! Look — look at him! He’s half-dead as it is, we can finish him off!”
The Pet-Keeper was exposed. Armour destroyed, one of his eyes burst, and an arm Koa had torn off dangling by a thread. It was the single greatest thing he’d ever achieved, but he couldn’t get celebrating until the Unbounded was reduced to his Infinity. Until he was six feet under, for all the world to see.
But they were already running away. Koa whacked his knuckles against Remus’ back, screaming until all he could hear was the sound of his own voice. He had to fight. He couldn’t just focus on his own survival after what that freak had done to Donovan and Elmore. Never. Never-never-never.
Purple light exploded. Violet and Ash disappeared for one second, before rematerialising. The three hiding Unbounded which had transformed the room earlier, dropped past them. Dead.
Another eruption of magenta. New environs formed around Koa, but more blasts of mauve transported him before he could take any of them in. Hall by hall, room by room, Violet was getting them out of this hellscape. Under any other circumstances, he would have cried out in joy.
They were in the air, far overhead, the ruins of the manor beneath them. But it wasn’t enough. It’d never be. The place could easily be rebuilt, repaired even. That wasn’t anywhere near satisfactory. Koa’s ire wouldn’t reach its end until the entire place was razzed. With the Pet-Keeper’s head spiked on a pitchfork, embedded into the ashes.
But in the end, as Remus flew him for what felt like miles away, Koa didn’t have in him to fight anymore. Not even to fight for consciousness.
Sleeping in the air wasn’t practical, but his exhausted body made it work.
When he next awoke, no more energised, it was to Ash’s nagging words. He was calling his name, over and over. Finally, when Koa guessed that he couldn’t feign deep sleep any longer, he got up slowly to a sitting position. They were at a campsite.
Koa focused on a weak campfire blazing away, half-expecting to spot Donovan and Elmore there. When he saw nothing but empty logs, by a pitiful fire of sticks, he burst out into tears. It was at times like this that Koa was thankful he couldn’t see himself from an outside perspective at all times. It would have been quite the sorry picture.
“Koa.” Ash said, choking on his own words. “Violet and Remus dragged us out of there. They promised to escort us all the way back to First Rite if need be.”
Motionless, it was all Koa could do to listen. Even achieving Emblazed — an event he had been eagerly anticipating for literal years — now seemed trivial. He wanted to lay where he was, preferably forever, and sob his woes away.
“I refused.”
Jolting upwards, Koa shot his brother a wide-eyed stare. “Why? Those two are the only people that know the truth behind why Donovan and Elmore died tonight. The only link we have in getting justice, and you throw that chance away?”
Ash snorted. “Oh, get a hold of yourself. Don’t you think I want to tear the Pet-Keeper to shreds? I do, I do more than anything else Descent has to offer.”
“Then why would you decline?”
“Because I am not working with criminals!” Ash snarled, the most serious Koa had ever seen him. It took him aback. “If we’re to kill that devil, we do it properly. Through our clan. They won’t take this lightly.”
Koa had gone from outraged, benumbed in his half-conscious state, and was presently rebounding back to overwhelmed.
He got to his feet, not caring that with any step, he could teeter over. “Who knows if they'll even be bothered to help us? How many failed missions can you recall?”
“I don’t know. Probably hundreds, why does it-”
“How many of those were ever revisited? This will all be overlooked as a freak accident.” Koa was trembling. “No one would believe the truth anyway. What proof is there?”
Ash, far faster on his feet than usual, had a rapier reply at the ready. “We advance! We reach Splintered Rank and above, and make them care. Command them to. It would take time, a few years if we dedicate ourselves to nothing but ascending in physical and political power, but what other choice do we have?”
They locked eyes. Koa didn’t need to speak for Ash to divine the message.
“Like I said.” Ash’s voice rose in volume. “No. Our cousin dies, and the first thing you want to do is work with the people who opposed the sect he loved?”
“It’s not like that.” Koa spluttered. He couldn’t believe his brother was turning things on him like this. “Look, I don’t want to start an argument. But waiting until people will finally listen to us, while that fiend is still out there, slaughtering others . . .” He shook his head. “I just can’t. Especially when there are people out there actively opposing the Unbounded as we speak.”
His brother inhaled. Koa tried not to look at their tremulous fingers. But, despite the affliction, Ash eased slightly. “We don’t know their intentions. One of them is an Unbounded themselves.”
“An Unbounded that helped kill two of Nova’s strongest units. You're cherry picking details. You heard everything Violet revealed. She probably wants to kill the Pet-Keeper more than us.”
Ash spat at his feet. There was blood in the saliva. “I can’t stop you.” He said, after pacing back and forth for a heated minute. “But I won’t join you Koa. You might even be listed as a deserter of our clan. Are you willing to face that?”
Koa went to open his mouth, but his brother raised a hand. “Not yet. You need to think first. If you become an enemy of the clan, and if we cross paths . . .”
Neither of them said anything. The intention had been clear.
“Let’s . . . Let’s get some sleep.”
He nodded. Ash turned back to him for a second, as if about to say something. But then he was gone.
Koa lied under his kilt for hours, trying to ignore the sound of someone sobbing. Eventually, some indiscernible time later, sleep finally took him.