Ranvir hit the ground hard, rolling across the wet stone before ending with half his face dipped into a puddle. He didn’t hurt. The roll wouldn’t have caused him any notable pain, even with a mediocre Sandstorm Rage, so that wasn’t surprising. But even the impact with Sabas didn’t hurt.

It was jarring, but otherwise, he was fine. The impact rattled his entire body and threw him onto a new trajectory. He was a little disoriented and surprised, but unhurt.

Ranvir blew bubbles into the puddle. “Locust on his body, now!” Latresekt commanded. Loce’s presence blossomed within his spirit, traveling from his arm into soul and then disseminating. Reflexively, Ranvir tried restricting the spirit, but he failed to make more than a halt in the creature’s momentum.

Latresekt reached towards his mind space. Annoyance and anger proliferated as red and orange soaked into the fabric of his mind, with the spirit of war’s presence. With two terrible slams, Latresekt hammering its enormous fists into the landscape, the colors stilled. The spirit’s silhouette was fading in with all the rest.

Pain, incandescent and white, burned to life for only a second before it too was smothered. Loce was doing something to Ranvir’s spirit, or… He blinked, rolling onto his back as his physical senses returned to him. Again, the pain returned, only to be near instantly choked off.

Ranvir coughed twice, rolling his head as his wits gathered. “Are you bridging my body and spirit?” he asked. With an effort of will, he sat up.

“It is,” Latresekt growled, strain evident in its voice. “Now, how about you carry your weight and start reinforcing?”

Ranvir licked his lips. Latresekt’s words slowly disseminated through his mind, into thoughts, then into action. Reaching into his Fundament, Ranvir touched on the core of his soul. A part that he’d fused to it, even if it was an imperfect fit.

Persistence.

Light and heat and energy and power soaked into Ranvir’s spirit, traveling into Latresekt and Loce as through him. He sensed the strain lessening on the creatures as Ranvir asserted his own reality.

Blinking, Ranvir examined his surroundings. Within moments, he found what he’d been dreading. A figure walking towards him, outlined in silver light, spear still sheathed over his shoulder.

“Fuck,” Ranvir groaned. He attempted to draw mana to him, but the effort spread him too thin, lessening the effect of his Concept. That might be a risk he’d have to take, but it didn’t look like Sabas was in a hurry right now. The captain stooped to pick something up before continuing forward.

Without his reinforcement Ability, Ranvir endured the storm on his own. The wind ripped at his ears so hard, a headache was already developing. Droplets hitting like a thousand people, all flicking him with their fingers. The cold was digging into his forehead and send shooting icy pains around his head and down his neck.

Sabas stopped in front of him, holding up the item he’d picked up. “I didn’t think I hit you that hard,” he dropped onto the ground before Ranvir.

How? Ranvir couldn’t get the word out though, he could only stare. I should’ve noticed… but then his mind turned to Latresekt and its efforts in dulling his mind, and Loce’s efforts in bridging spirit and body. He looked down at his hands.

One was pale and trembling, the ring finger broken in two places. Slid and scuff marks had etched cuts onto the skin where he’d tried to stop his fall. The other was unsteady, a rattling mess of sand and buzzing. Gritty and disturbing. He clenched both hands, feeling fingers rubbing against each other, even as the lines of his right hand blurred.

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Ranvir opened his hands again. He reached out to the object Sabas dropped, one hand of flesh, one hand of sand, to pick up an item of flesh. Blood dribbled weakly from the exposed stump of flesh, cut off at the upper arm. Ragged bone, making it clear where the force of the captain’s tackle had sheared them off.

A chuckle escaped his lips as Ranvir fell back. Cradling his arm to his chest. The rain and wind had already cooled it completely. It reminded him of one time, when the door’d sprung open in the middle of the night. His dad had shut it when he realized, but even then Ranvir’d slept with his arm above the blanket and awoken to no sensation in it at all. He could barely feel or move it. The sensation had scared him so much he couldn’t even speak. Ranvir’d barely pulled it under the blanket and curl around it. But no sensation returned to it this time. The blood did not continue flowing.

“So this was all a game to you?” Ranvir yelled, his words barely audible over the wind. “You were just playing with me?”

Sabas clenched his jaw and looked away. The scarred old mercenary scanned the area before dragging Ranvir away. Frowning, Ranvir first tried to resist but was realizing one of the greatest benefits of relying on Amanaris for your physical improvements over handling them on your own.

He did not have the oversight to manage his mana, Sabas didn’t even have to think about it. The mercenary dumped him behind a few growths of fyla, creating lee from the wind. It sat in a dip in the stone, so had to sit in a puddle of water that would’ve gone halfway up his forearm. But it provided shelter from the wind, allowing them to talk.

“I did not want this,” Sabas said.

“What are you doing?” Ranvir accused. “Are you still playing with me?”

“Listen kid-“

“Get it over with already,” Ranvir cut him off. “You’ve already begun. Are you waiting to go through it limb by limb? Is this another of your sick plays?”

“Careful boy-“ Sabas got an ugly look on his face as he leaned down.

“Or what? You’re going to kill me?” Ranvir sneered at him. “Maybe you’re going to throw more of your people away? Force me to kill them fir-“

Sabas backhand rocked Ranvir to the ground, his nose searing for a moment before the pain faded again. A crawling sensation as sand traveled up his arm. Ranvir screamed as Loce, without warning, righted his broken nose. It took moments or minutes before the tethered felt sane enough to speak. By then, the iron taste of blood filled his mouth.

“I did not want this,” Sabas said. He tapped either feet on the stone a few times, as if wanting to pace. “I- I didn’t mean for anyone to die-“

“Fuck off!” Ranvir couldn’t hold his sentiment back. For a moment, anger blazed fiery within him, pure furious disdain for the man before him. Ranvir spat on the ground, blood staining the pool of water he was sitting. It lasted moments before Latresekt ruthlessly smothered that as well. “You cannot be serious. What am I going to do with that? ‘I didn’t mean to do it. I didn’t think you’d actually fight for your life.’”

Sabas worked his jaw, looking away from him. Ranvir couldn’t help himself. The pathetic bastard really was acting like the victim in this situation. “You really believe what you were thinking matters?”

“I was trying to provide for my people,” Sabas said. “Provide for them without risking their lives in war. I’m sorry, I-“

“Hah!” Ranvir snorted loudly. “You’re sorry? What am I going to do with that? Bring that to my daughter? Should they tell her ‘Your dad’s dead, but his killer is very sorry’? Fuck all the way off,” Ranvir stared into the storm, looking away from the despot standing before him. “Even if you don’t kill me. If you let me live, what the fuck kinda good is ‘sorry’ going to do? You forced me into a situation where I had to kill people. So many people. People you let die,” Ranvir’s chin quivered and for a moment his eyes stung before Latresekt’s reasserted itself. “How am I supposed to come home? Look in my daughter’s eyes?” As Ranvir’s emotions grew once more, cracks in Latresekt’s hold showed more clearly. “How could I look her in the eye after what I’ve done? After what I’ve become. There isn’t enough water in this fold to wash the blood from my hands.”

“I know,” Sabas whispered. The sound was quiet, barely audible over the nearby storm, but his spirit and his mind screamed at it. “I know. I understand.”

Ranvir laughed through his sniffles. “Still on your self-righteous high horse?”

Sabas didn’t reply. Instead, he simply bowed his head, resting it against the leeward wall. Ranvir waited long moments, but the old man didn’t move to speak.

The fold shifted. At first, Ranvir couldn’t quite tell what had happened, but soon the truth revealed itself. Within minutes, the wind tapered off, going beyond the heights of a natural phenomenon to a regular storm. The rain too went from near solid sheets of water to a transparent veil of fat droplets.

The seal had broken, and mana was leaking out fast.