-Erik-
Erik took another gulp of icy Wayspring water, the crisp taste sending shivers down his spine. He could see the magic within the water, revealing itself as a subtle, mesmerizing shimmer, dancing just beyond his direct gaze. He could feel the magic in the water, see it in his periphery, but looking straight at it, it just looked like… water.
Struggling slightly to turn off the spigot on the siphon hose with only one hand, he finally got it closed before leaning back and closing his good eye. He wasn’t yet asleep when he heard what could have been a yell in the wind and a shadow blocked the what was left of the blue sun over the dune. A moment later, his brother crashed through the tent and hit the ground with an awful crack.
Blinking, Erik awkwardly shoved the sheer cloth of the tent off himself. On the other side of the crushed tent, a large creature that appeared to be made of liquid darkness stood towering over him. It's uneven wings fluttered, and the creature's empty eyes stared down hungrily at Erik.
Ignoring the obvious danger, Erik shot forward and laid his hand on his brother the same time the creature took a step.
No.
Erik’s grip tightened on Oskar’s shoulder as he fed a trickle of his own life essence into him, and he fought back a scream as the magic ripped what it needed from his body to heal his brother.
Lights danced in his vision, but Erik noticed the creature stagger as it bore down on him and Oskar, one of Touwon's kukri suddenly sticking out of its torso.
Its scream of pain and rage was like two voices, one so high pitched it hurt, the other louder than it should have been.
Erik held on until he felt the most severe of his brother’s injuries stabilize and heal before he had to let go. He refused to give in to the delirium that hit him.
The ability worked more like a denial than a mending. It wasn't a denial that it happened, it was instead a denial of its power over him. His own willpower had actual power here. It felt more like he was pushing the injury away from his brother at a heavy cost to himself rather than mending the wound.
Yet the magic took its toll and did its job on Oskar, which is all Erik cared about.
Erik pulled at Oskar’s good leg, trying to drag his baby brother to safety. Panic spiked, and he forced himself to stop for a second to regroup and breath. And then, with grim determination, he pulled his brother out from under the ruined car.
Tent. It’s a damn tent. And he’s a grown ass man. Not a baby anymore, he reminded himself.
Oss was grown now, and stronger than Erik had ever been. Stronger than he’d probably ever be. Erik wasn’t the 5-year-old trying to pull his 18-month-old baby brother out of the mess of buckles in the seat of an upside-down car. Fortunately, then, his brother had been fine, just shaken. Their mother wasn’t fine at all.
Why does this have to hit me now? I’m so damned weak.
Erik attempted to stand up straight and try to assess the threat, but the cost of healing Oskar was still taking its toll. He had to pause; his feet unsteady.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way.
He’d originally been able to heal himself. His original class had been Harmony Weaver, a Legendary healer class that focused on serenity and balance, until Valla had gotten a hold of him. They’d destroyed his Gear when they realized they couldn’t wear it and gave him these Goggles, which were basically useless.
I’m not useless.
He didn’t know what his class was, now. It wasn’t the same, though.
I’m not useless, but I'm sure as hell not supposed to be this way.
He could do nothing to stop the rush of repressed thoughts and memories that suddenly took over, his brain and body at the brink of collapse.
The Crocs… mostly Valla, had both taken him and then kept him at the edge of death for so long. Years. Maybe a decade. Seeing Oskar almost the same age as he’d been when Erik had last seen him had been maddening. He had spent so long fighting back fear and fighting to become numb. He’d not been allowed to heal himself, but after he’d stopped caring if they killed him, he’d finally tried to heal himself again.
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It didn't work. The best he’d been able to do was to deny the pain. He knew it was there; he just denied its power over him. Shut it right the hell down. That had felt like years ago, though.
Did Oskar not age, or was he sent to a different place in time?
Thinking back, though, Erik didn’t know exactly what happened, but he knew adding in time travel was a long shot. It most likely was the worst of his fears; the absolute hell he’d been through just hadn’t lasted as long as he’d thought it had. He was so weak that he’d lost all reasoning… no matter the reason, though, seeing Oskar the same age had been a cruel, unexpected kick in the gut. It just hadn’t made sense to him.
Initially, he'd been sure his brother was another vision like the ones he’d had during the worst of the torture. The ones with his brother looking desperately for him. Visions of a vaporous Oskar that could never reach him. Visions that somehow managed to reach out while still shying away from Erik’s screams. Close, yet never close enough for Erik to feel any hope.
Eventually, those dreams had strayed into the waking world, too. He’d seen his brother lying awake in a dark room, tears streaming from his eyes. And then he’d seen his brother sitting on the edge of the bed for almost a minute holding something under his chin that had finally made Erik feel pain again.
He’d gotten a little better mentally when Valla left. However, when his brother and the Kobolds had come to save him, seeing Oskar again had, in some ways, been worse than the torture he’d endured.
Well, at least the torture before Valla had taken over. In his lightheadedness, the flashes of images hit him in a whirlwind of terrible memories all at once and distantly, he felt his body hit the sand.
Other than those visions of Oskar, the only time he’d felt anything other than pain and hate since Valla first started in on him, whispering to herself and giggling like she was playing with a doll, was the day she’d finally left Gramm's Oasis. She'd left with Vulk and that other imbecile- a pale green Croc whose name he never learned weeks ago.
He’d felt relief at her disappearance… but anger that he might lose a chance to watch her die.
And then, in a petty moment of pain and frustration, he’d flicked what he was sure was an apparition of his brother a surreptitious middle finger, not considering for even a moment that Oskar was real.
However, Oskar… his actual brother… had looked right at him. Had seen him through the pain. The missing eye and arm. And thankfully, Oskar didn’t look with pity or fear.
I don’t think I could have handled pity then, even from a hallucination.
Oskar’s face had been stone, but Erik knew Oskar was pissed. That was when he knew his brother- his real brother had come for him. God knows how, but one way or another, the torture was over. And Oskar had done it. His brother had come for him.
And now I’m on my knees in the sand trying to shake off a twenty something year-old trauma.
Erik wasn’t blind to everything he’d been through, but that was no excuse for sitting here… weak… and potentially allowing whatever had attacked the group to kill his new friends. People who he suspected were the only reason Oskar was even alive right now. Thankfully, the heavy toll of the healing had finally finished taking its pounds of flesh, and the flash of memories subsided.
Standing on shaky, thin legs, Erik looked down at his ever-declining body and sighed. He pulled the cork of his waterskin out with aching teeth and drank deeply, and then he activated his Spiritual Awakening.
If one half of his power was Deny, this, as best as he could figure, was Demand. The power was his.
It just needs to be reminded.
Yes.
Light radiated out of him in waves of healing and strength, and the cost of the magic made spots of light dance in his vision. The regeneration didn’t work on him, and Erik did not know if it ever would have if Valla hadn’t broken his ability to heal himself- but the embattled Kobolds reacted like it had just started raining vaguely illigal pre-workout. Fox screamed and launched herself at the strange beast, and her ferocity cleared Erik’s muddied head as he got a better look at the enemy that had attacked his brother.
The thing looked like a mix between a Crocodilian and what Erik imagined a wyvern would look like, but it was so black that it seemed to drink the suns' light. It rippled and reacted like liquid darkness.
The flashes radiating out of Erik, though, made the black liquid weaken and recede from the radiating light. The beast staggered initially, but regained its bearings quickly. Luckily, the worst of the cost had been in the power’s summoning, and even though he couldn’t do this much longer, he had enough left in him for this.
Unfortunately for the creature, the receding darkness revealed rotting, vulnerable flesh beneath, and the stagger gave both Touwon and Fox time to dash in and do actual damage. In a burst of terrifying speed, though, it lifted its enormous claws overhead to hammer strike Touwon, who was slightly slower to get out of the huge thing’s reach.
In a moment of panicked inspiration, Erik focused all the light from his Spiritual Awakening into a single ray that shot forward from his outstretched hand, pulsing deeper and deeper into the creature until it fell, a smoking hole through its chest that, from this angle, had also severed the creatures right arm at the shoulder.
Apparently not one to take chances, Fox snatched up Oskar’s spear from near the destroyed tent and shoved it with surprising strength into the neck of the abyssal creature, tilted it downward and then shoved again, pushing the spear up into its skull.
Erik almost fell to a knee, but turned around to look for Oskar and make sure he was okay. Relieved at seeing his brother move, he watched as his brother rolled onto his side and then pushed himself up with a groan.
Oskar took in the surrounding scene for a moment before his eyes locked on the creature, who was now fading into motes of black and drifting away like ash in the wind. The faintest smell of burning flesh drifted in and out of his senses, and Oskar said, “Who stared too long into the abyss? I swear it wasn’t me.”
Erik groaned at Oskar’s joke and then let go of the magic. His knees buckled, and Fox was there to catch him.