Part III
- Kya - Wade - Sayrin - Carcelo -
______________________________________
Kya stumbled on a tree root, arms flailing out to the sides as she struggled to regain her balance.
She had always considered herself as someone who enjoyed running. Track, cross country, magically enhanced vaulting over burned out fields, there were lots of reasons and examples to go for a nice run.
Of course, running had its drawbacks too. She sometimes got these awful, gut wrenching side stitches under her ribs. She could, as she’d just done, trip over the various obstacles in her path and possibly injure herself. Although, in this new and crazy world, she had discovered several new reasons to maybe reconsider going for that quick midnight jaunt. Most of them, in fact as she reflected on it, all of them, were related to running from her life as some crazy demented abomination of flesh and nightmares chased after her.
Alder had slowed just a hair to allow her time to catch herself, Wade still in a fireman's carry over both his shoulders. Without turning or looking back, he barked at her “Come on Kya, we need to move, and we need to move now.”
Regaining her balance as quickly as she could, she continued sprinting after him, as they made their mad dash away from the… thing that was chasing them.
Again, Kya was struck by the contrast in the man's bearing. It almost seemed like he’d flipped a switch, changing from the carefree and goofy guy she’d met in the city, or even the guy cheering them on in their battle earlier, to a hardened warrior and commander who gave commands with an iron will, expecting them each to be followed with immediacy.
Alder, now that she was able to see this side of him as well, reminded her quite strongly of her platoon sergeant back in her world. The man was relaxed and easygoing ninety percent of the time. If you wanted to do some nonsense, he would almost always be on board with it too, such as the time they’d stolen the lieutenant's patrol cap and hoisted it up the flagpole. However, the moments they did any dangerous stuff that wasn’t funny, stuff that they had no right to be doing, he turned into a different person. He had on multiple occasions, smoked the ever living hell out of them, but never without a good reason at least. In those moments, he wasn’t the guy to tell jokes and shoot the shit, he was a monster that did ever exercise with them saying they wouldn’t stop until he stopped. “You’ll be the smartest platoon or the strongest platoon, I don’t care which” was his favorite saying.
Kya, since becoming all magical and whatnot, had found her baseline physical abilities to be significantly enhanced. What was an all out sprint before was now a manageable pace that she could maintain for some time. However, this was doubly true for Alder as he stood a full star above her. Trying to stay with him, even while he carried the massive form of Wade and slowed himself down to be near Kya as they fled, she was still pushing herself to her limits just to keep up. Collecting her haggard thoughts and breathing together enough to finally ask a question, she said “That thing… is a 2-Star? Can’t you fight it?”
Alder took long enough to respond that Kya almost thought he hadn’t heard her. Just as she was about to try and ask her question again, he finally spoke up and said in a voice that was frustratingly free from exhaustion “Fight? Absolutely. Win? Possibly. Win while protecting you and Wade? I don’t feel comfortable with those odds. If I had my team with me, it would be a different matter, and if it comes to it, I will absolutely fight while you take Wade and run.”
Kya took in his words, then asked “So… you couldn’t take it… with just my support?”
Responding more quickly this time, he asked a question rather than answer her directly “What ability did you just unlock? I know Wade was stealing the show there, but I noticed your class advancement as well.”
Before Kya could respond, the earth shaking screech tore at the air from the abomination flying overhead. Up until now, it hadn’t done much, and Kya could feel why. Alder’s aura was all around them, like a blanket or a shroud. She wasn’t always the brightest crayon in the knife box, but she could assume that he was hiding their presence from the monster somehow. She hadn’t asked, nor had he told her, but it didn’t feel oppressive or hostile, and the screeching demon above hadn’t yet descended so, that was good enough for her.
As soon as the ear piercing cry faded, Kya realized that it might have literally been ear piercing. The world had taken on a semi muffled quality on her left side, like she had water in her ear or…
Placing a hand to her ear and pulling it away, she found a small trail of blood had begun dripping down her neck.
Cursing while she ran, Kya summoned a health potion from her storage space, and using her teeth to tear off the cork, downed the shot of revitalizing liquid in one go. She noted that, after getting her second ability, it was beginning to taste more and more watered down. The original sweet fizzy lemon flavor was now barely detectable, and the fizz almost nonexistent. Smacking her lips, she compared it to drinking a flat soda several hours after the ice had melted.
However, despite its flavor continuing to degrade, it at least still had enough potency to return functionality to her ears making the sounds of their mad dash through the forest return all at once.
“Did that thing… just injure me… with a screech?” She asked Alder, still breathing heavily as they ran.
“Yes,” he said, still calm and cold, “it’s a full blown 2-Star after all. Anything it does to you will naturally be more effective, while anything you do to it will be almost laughable. You saw the beginning of it with the juvenile, it was just about ready to try for an evolution itself I suspect and was already starting to shrug off your ability. But that’s not important right now, come on, what ability did you get?”
Kya swallowed before she said “It’s called… slow fall… it-”
“Slow fall? He said, cutting her off as he looked back for a moment, before quickly returning his attention ahead the very next moment. “Now that’s a fantastic ability… I wonder…” He trailed off, and Kya swore she could hear the gears in his head whirring quickly as he tried to make a plan.
“Can you affect other people yet, or just yourself?”
“Uh, yes… I think so. But I don’t really… have any idea how it works yet.” She said back, trying to make it clear that this was going to be an unreliable plan at best, and a terrible idea at worst.
“That should be fine,” he said, slowing to a halt so abruptly that Kya almost ran into him as she stumbled to a stop, veering off to one side just to avoid him. “You’ll need to learn sooner rather than later, but this is probably our best bet. We’re going to have to be quick about it, but I imagine you’ll be pretty quick on the uptake.”
Shrugging Wade off his shoulders and placing her down gently against a tree, Alder then came over and stood exactly opposite Kya. He closed his eyes for a moment, and took an absolutely tectonic breath in, before seeming to release half the atmosphere back out as he exhaled.
Kya could slowly feel the air around them… shifting. It wasn’t becoming clouded like fog, she could still see perfectly well, or at least as well as one could hope in the dim light of the small blue moon. Nevertheless, she felt as though- and then she realized what was happening. Her aura senses were being clouded. Her sphere of perception was growing slightly yet measurably weaker as Alder continued to breath out and out and out.
“What…” She started to ask, before the monster answered her question for her. Another yipping, guttural cry clawed through the forest, however when it met this small pocket of air that surrounded them, it almost seemed to simply pass over them. She still heard it, still felt it, but less so than before.
“You’re hiding us? If you could do that all along, why didn’t you?” She said, her voice steady once more as she tried to catch her breath in this respite, not sure what would happen next but eager to take the chance to recuperate.
He took a moment longer to finish his weird breathing technique, before sucking in a sharp breath of air and then several more, all much more shallow than the initial one. “Because, that thing still knows where we are generally, just not specifically. The cry it sends out lets it get a glimpse at the world as the sounds echo back. I’m told it’s not a magical ability as we’ve tried to disrupt it several times before but that doesn’t really matter.” He said, waving away the line of thought. “The point is, this aura shield I’ve made isn’t a permanent fix, just a temporary measure to allow us time. Eventually, it will hone in on us, especially since you two” he jabbed a thumb over his shoulder at the still unconscious Wade “definitely have the smell of her kid on you, so we’ll pretty much never escape it fully. My hope was to get back or at least close enough to town that it backs off. At this point though, I think it will be better if you can quickly get a grasp on your new ability, then you can carry her while I take on the beastie.”
Kya took a moment trying to reconcile what Alder just said with what he’d talked about earlier with not wanting to fight it without the support of his team. “But, you just said that you weren’t confident about taking it down on your own, what do you mean?”
For the first time since Kya and Wade had defeated the epic rarity 1-Star jellybat, Alder smiled and even let out a slight chuckle. “Because, there’s a solid chance I can win if I don’t have to worry about two bystanders getting hurt in the process. And what you’ll learn later on in your path if you haven’t already is that this whole thing” he gestured all around, at himself, at her and wade, and the forest around them “is all about taking risks.” Then with a fierce gleam in his eye, harkening back to the lighter side of him she’d seen earlier, he said “And besides… I just wanna see if I can win.”
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
Kya, unable to help herself, smiled back at him. At last, she was able to understand exactly how he felt. Hell, if she could, she wouldn’t have minded at all playing a support role and helping him take out something like this. It would probably be one damn good fight after all.
Nodding, shaking out her arms and getting ready, she said “Alright, let's get started. Do you have some quick technique in mind to-”
She was cut off as he suddenly appeared mere inches in front of her, smiling broadly and in an almost giddy tone said “Yes, yes I do.” Then before she could react he grabbed her by the waist and launched her at least a good twenty feet into the air.
“AH DUDE, WHAT THE FUCK!?!”
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
In the great capital city of Loterre, in the massive sparring area found underneath the grand western colosseum, there was only a single match currently underway. Sparring in the designated areas wasn’t anything out of the ordinary, in fact it was highly expected that the powerful users and denizens of Loterre make use of the training grounds on a near daily basis.
No, the thing that was different about this match, and the thing that was different about this night, was the particular singularity of this bout. It was the only bout currently underway; all others having stopped to observe and to bear witness.
The sheer silence in the sparring hall was haunting, oppressive even. At all times of day, whether the dead of night or middle of the day, there were always, always practitioners in the various sparring arenas, the ringing of metal on metal, the clang and clamor of battles taking place.
Not tonight, though. Tonight, there was still the crowd of people, never fully dispersed in a city like this.
As Carcello entered the sparring grounds, and as he took in all of this, the silence, the crowd gathered around a single sparring ring, his hands grew cold, and he felt his chest constrict and his breathing quickened.
He knew. Without needing to feel the complex tumult of auras, without needing to take a step closer to the fight underway, without even needing to lay eyes on the combatants in the ring, he knew without a doubt. His theory all but confirmed a moment later when he heard, or rather felt, the pounding and shaking of the ground beneath his feet. It was like a drum being played in another room, beat inconsistent and yet terrifyingly powerful.
Nevertheless, he needed to confirm, needed to know, needed even to step in and get his father out if his wrought iron feeling of certainty turned out to be correct.
As he pushed forwards, the crowd stepped back as flecks of blood and viscera were flung into the air, rising to tall peak overhead. Quick sparks of uneasy murmuring broke out in various places around the room, before ultimately dying out just as quickly.
Carcelo persisted, pushing his way forwards through the crowd, the various 2-Star and 3-Star users all giving him dirty looks as he shoved through, but they nevertheless parted for him, perhaps sensing the similarity in his aura to that of the combatant ahead.
He was absolutely certain now, he could feel the raging spikes of aura occasionally breaking through the barrier to meet the crowd, that alone an incredible feat of raw power in and of itself. But then, Carcelo knew he shouldn’t have been surprised. His father was in the throws of an episode, he had little control at this point over his own actions, like a drunkard prone to sleepwalks.
Carcelo hung his head for a moment, steeling himself against what he was about to see, what he was about to have to do. He fucking hated this, these moments, right here. At least this time it was just a random person and not someone with whom he was close.
Taking a shaky breath, he continued onwards, finally making it to the front of the crowd and getting his first look at the unfolding scene ahead. There was his father Sayrin, as he knew he would be. His tan. Sandy brown armor covered in sprays and goblets of crimson blood standing out in sharp relief. His helm, normally having a sharp and smooth angular appearance, was webbed with cracks and chips to the point it looked more like it would fall apart at a touch than provide any actual defense. As he looked further, Carcelo saw that this was the case for almost all of his father’s armor. From the greaves and bracers to the breastplate and even his boots. They were all badly damaged, and each one leaking out tiny rivers of scarlet from beneath.
However grizzly his father looked, and he looked truly unwell, his opponent was far and away worse off. The man’s armor looked marginally more intact, but where his father had been scratched and pierced dozens of times by the smaller twin swords black armored man, his father wielded his massive two handed great sword. It was clear he wasn’t landing hits as frequently, but neither did he need to land as many. Carcelo saw only three signs of a clear hit. One lay on the ground in the form of a discarded sword that had been bent so badly the point of the blade now formed a forty five degree angle almost pointing back towards the handle itself. The second was on the man's left thigh, where an apparent glancing blow had sheared off the armor there and exposed the bloody muscle and sinew of his leg. This alone would have been enough to call a stop to the fight, if either combatant had wished. It was clear that this was an injury that would take some substantial and dedicated healing from a life user, but 3-Star users were incredibly durable, able to take quite a beating and keep going long after a 2-Star or lower would have outright died.
However, the hole in his leg wasn’t the worst of it, oh no. he man's entire right side, where the front half of his breastplate met the back was simply gone. A massive gaping hole in the armor exposed the similarly large, and similarly missing parts of his abdomen and lower rib cage. Through either some strange aura technique, ability, or something there was a stark lack of blood from the wound. Carcelo could clearly look in and see the stark white of bone, the tiny layer of yellow fat, and even the muted pinkish red of muscle and organs beneath. He knew that they weren’t strictly necessary for a high ranking star user to survive, most organs becoming vestigial by late 2-Star or early 3-Star, but it was still a chilling sight to see the human body laid bare like that.
The crowd, despite both combatants clearly being well past what most would consider a good stopping point, did not step in or call for the fight to end. On the contrary, they seemed morbidly invested in the fight to continue, to see these two combatants strive against one another in the fullness of their strength and to the best of their abilities. Carcelo’s spirits lifted somewhat as he took all this in, he too looked on as the two broken, beaten, and battered combatants picked themselves up, and began clashing once more at speeds that he could just barely follow.
Perhaps… perhaps this wouldn’t end how he’d feared. Perhaps he didn’t need to step in, or drag his father away, perhaps…
His thoughts were dead on arrival, proved idiotically naive in fact. The very same moment the thoughts crossed his mind, the man plunged both of his swords into his fathers chest as if his armor weren't even there, while at the same moment, his father landed a powerful horizontal strike, severing the man's arm completely.
“Oh gods no” Carcelo said under his breath, aura flaring as he ran forwards into the ring.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Kya felt incredible. She laughed like a child, giddy, excited, whimsical even.
The first time Alder had thrown her into the air, she had flailed her arms out like panicked chicken, and laned painfully on her right side, accruing deep bruises on both her arm and leg. It wasn’t as painful as it should have been, she suspected her cloak and armor distributed some of the force from the fall as their resistance to blunt force trauma kicked in, but it still hurt like hell.
She sluggishly got to her feet, rubbing her sore bicep and was about to yell a particularly creative and colorful string of words at Alder, when he’d appeared right in front of her yet again, still grinning with suppressed laughter.
“Hey, you know what they say. If at first you don’t succeed, try try again!”
“No god dammi-i-i-it!” she screamed
Her words and exclamations proved pointless, however, as she was once more launched airborne. Even knowing the fall wouldn’t prove fatal, she still had absolutely no desire to repeat the experience of colliding with the ground at high speeds. Knowing this was intention, and simultaneously hating and respecting him for it, she searched within herself for the ability that was now hers, she would really, really love to slow her fall right about now.
With her first ability, she’d had some practice already with the magical staff she had taken from the temple. This meant that when she reached for the newfound ability, she was able to almost easily and without much difficulty master the ability. But this new one, trying to control her fall, affect the very gravity on her body. She was struggling to feel the ability, to know what to activate.
As she reached the peak of her unwanted airborne excursion, she felt herself go weightless in the brief moment before she knew she’d start to fall. It was there, right there, in that infinitesimal moment that she was able to feel it. Her ability to affect this, to recreate this, to control this. She reached for the ability even as she began her rapid descent, and felt as though she was on the verge of something when she once again landed, fortunately feet first this time, though she tried- and failed- to roll with the fall, ending up sprawled on her back, coughing slightly as she tried to get the wind back in her lungs.
Flashing over in a burst of speed yet again, Alder started to say “Alright, maybe this isn’t the-”
“No,” Kya croaked out in a cough “again. Let’s do it again. I can feel it, like I just grew a third arm and don’t know how to use it yet, but I can feel it when I’m up there. So one more time, let’s do it.”
Alder grinned down at her, and then without further ado, threw her up once more into the air.
~ ~ ~
It actually took them a total of seven more times before she finally got her ability to activate. Grinning like a child with a brand new toy, she felt herself go weightless from the fall, and then… she felt it in her bones, in her muscles and organs. She wasn’t weightless, she could still feel gravity’s pull into its embrace, and yet rather than a plummeting fall, she was like a leaf drifting slowly downwards at a gentle clip.
Alder waiting below grinned and laughed, simply excited for her as she shot her fist in the air and yelled in triumph “This is incredible, I feel amazing!”
However, as if in response to her call of delight, of success and achievement, the massive beast that she’d seen circling around occasionally letting out screeches for what she now knew was echolocation. This time though, the odd feeling of sound sliding off her ears like water on a raincoat shattered while she floated down, and even just the tail end of the creature's cry made her ears ring and her head ache.
“Alright, aaannd… good feelings gone.”
Cutting off the ability and dropping the several remaining feet to the forest floor, she looked at the suddenly grim faced Alder and asked “Was that you?”
“No. No it wasn’t. I had hoped for at least a couple more minutes for you to grow accustomed to the ability but it looks like we’ll have to get moving again as soon as possible”
Nodding her head, Kya asked “Are you sure you’ll be able to take it alone? My first ability has reached the next level now, I’m sure you could use the help.”
He looked almost tempted to agree, but after a moment of hesitation, shook his head no. “Take Wade. Even if we could take the monster without risking your own safety, I won’t put her in danger while she’s unconscious. It would be all too easy for the monster to take a swipe at her and kill her before she could do anything about it. No, better to use your ability to make yourselves both lighter and then get going.”
Sighing, Kya nodded her head in agreement. However, when she turned to get Wade, he face broke out into a massive grin, looking back at Alder expectantly.
“I don’t mean to countermand you,” said Wade, rising to her considerable and towering height over both Kya and Alder, “but how about instead of taking me anywhere, we just knock this thing back from whatever nightmare it was created.”