Chapter 416 (2/2)
Suddenly the ground whereswarmed by Darvish sand sharks The handful of terror leeches still round, where their bodies were pulverized by so I still couldn’t see
Lyra hurried to Mica’s side, between is started forith theed his shoulders helplessly
As the ground gave way, so started to surface from beneath it A wor down its shi+ning crimson carapace It was as tall as an elshi+re tree before it stopped growing, and I had to wonder how round It didn’t have a head, only a huge hole for a ular teeth that rotated around within the chasm of its mouth, like one of Master Gideon’s crazy inventions
Even Mica didn’t have anything flippant to say as we all stared at the hua roar so loud I had to cover my ears with my hands Three tentacles slithered out of the mouth, each one covered with dozens of smaller, tooth-filled sets of jaws, just like the terror leeches Thes tentacles swayed back and forth, each one letting out a low, irritating hissing noise
“Work together,” Arthur said “Ellie, you stay back Regis will be at your side”
“Let’s get it done then,” Mica said cocking back her arm, she hurled her hammer with incredible speed It hit one of the leech-tentacles and burst straight through, only to turn in the air and zoom back to her hand “Huh, maybe this won’t be too hard after…all…”
As Mica’s words trailed off, the severed tentacle—Is it a tongue? Orinto two at the base and forreat,” Mica muttered
As one, the four heads reared back and sprayed streareen acidic slied black lines scored the air with a noise like nails on glass, shi+elding us from the attack Wherever the acid touched the black lines, it sizzled and see and clear water falling as theother things, too More terror leeches and blood slugs were swi from all sides
With a battle cry, Mica threw herself into the air,like a ballista bolt She spun ravity’s pull on it, until she collided with the two freshly-grown leech heads
They burst apart like sacks of half- all over Mica herself She gasped in pain, but didn’t slon as she redirected her ha heads But it slithered away from the blohich missed, while the other head snaked around behind her
From the corner ofhead so that it peeled apart down the rotesquely But I hadtoward us Waiting for it to crest up out of the thick acid, I aimed for one of the many mouths and loosed My aim was precise, and the arrow sank into the rubbery flesh and out of sight, but the leech kept colea, I focused on the tether ofme to the arrow, and pushed outward on the mana
Inside the terror leech, my arrow burst apart with a bass-heavy whump The monster’s sides swelled with the force, then collapsed inward like a deflated waterskin, and it tumbled end over end for a couple of seconds before splashi+ng to a stop, floating on the acid’s surface
But all I felt was a growing dread as a dozen more followed behind it “There are too one fro around between the instead at the towering wore
I released arrow after arrow, each one bursting within a terror leech body and stopping it in its tracks On the other side of the path, Arthur had started unleashi+ng aetheric blasts to fend off the swarm of monsters from that direction
A scream drew my attention back to the hydra worht Mica, several s and torso When she drew her hammer back to strike at it, another coiled around the head of the hah the air, but yet another head moved to intercept the spell The black slash sheared the tentacle-like head frorew in its place
My heart was racing, and I could feel the panic start to cloud , I conjured two arrows and usedthe both arrows separately, I took ht white beams flew just inside the tly for Mica, but the second ainst the thick flesh of the second head, which had pinned her hammer
Both arrows burst in a shockwave ofMica shi+vered and went lih that it released her weapon Wasting no tiht up into the air, only to be followed by several arcing streaht down Even froravity, and watched as it flew faster and faster until it vanished into the writhing round shook as the hammer impacted somewhere deep inside the hydra wor on a sickening resonance as it was amplified several times over My stomach churned, and I distantly felt my body wobble atop Boo’s back
With unfocused eyes, I watched as twooff the trunk of the limp head that I’d shot to free Mica There were so er count thelare at Arthur Her voice was barely audible over the continued screeching “Lesson’s will help none of us if we are all dead This beast is round shook again The hydra as lunging upward toward Mica, growing taller and taller as its ht up until her s The beast on her heels was sixty feet tall, then eighty, then a hundred…
Arthur didn’t respond, but soone, vanished into a bolt of ais ju and purple fire rolling out over the onco hoard of terror leeches Whatever the fire touched vanished, not even ash re
My brother had reappeared above the hydra worhtning, a beah I should have been helping Regis, I couldn’t do anything but watch, allseveral of the heads
But the huge , and I could picture how those spinning rows of teeth were closing around Arthur
At first I thought it was a trick of the light, but by squinting and focusing rowing, lengthening into a huge two-handed weapon that rivaled Mica’s haain, several heads went tu
Regis had spun to the other side and was unleashi+ng another blast of purple fire that devoured any reht, but Lyra, like ht overhead
As the heads forain, Arthur kicked off one of the trunks, hurling hiht his huge blade over his head, swinging doard as he fell
Where Mica’s hammer had done little to the hydra worh the side of the gaping h the beast’s body, opening it up like a fileted fish The hu body gaped open above the falling point of light that was Arthur, the noise died into a grotesque gurgle
Then, feet from the acid pool around the hydra worm’s base, Arthur vanished in a violet flash, only to reappear back where he had been seconds earlier, wreathed in electricity
Black blood and green acid rained down fro insides of the hydra worm as it swayed back and forth, then it tipped toward us, the flaps of its opened body pushed out by the rush of wind Lyra darted back past us, and Boo moaned as he turned around and trotted farther down the trail, putting more distance between us and where the body would fall
Arthur and Regis didn’t move
Ground and acid exploded outward as the corpse struck the ground, crushi+ng the trail we’d been following, the longest of the heads falling just at Arthur’s feet Then I lost sight of everything as a wall of dust and yellow stea apart
I closedit prickling along my exposed skin wherever it touchedroan, and I patted his neck coust of wind kicked up and pushed the caustictoward inable
I felt Mica approaching before I saw her She drifted out of the cloud, flying wearily, his skin covered in blisters from all the acid she’d been splashed with Parts of her ar froround, she settled onto Boo behindtoward Arthur and Regis “Mica thinks this place kind of sucks,” she said under her breath
“You need to practice your Mana Rotation,” Arthur said as he reached us “You didn’t use it at all that entire fight”
I felt Mica’s head lean back onto my shoulder “Yes, Professor Leywin,” she mumbled tiredly
“And you were all distracted by as in front of you, so you ignored what you couldn’t see The mana fluctuations froround—that happened every time you cut off a head should have told you where to strike” His frustrated gaze focused on me “Ellie, you should have been the first to notice this Being on the backlines doesn’t er picture and com of his rebuke, but could only respond with a fir my voice to speak
The truth was, in that moment, Arthur didn’t even quite feel like my brother Not here, in the Relicto back in Vildorial had stayed there Here, he was a cold and distant teacher, an emotionless protector…brotherly love was an obstacle, and so he was suppressing it
I wasn’t sure how that s like that My emotions are a part of who I am Who is he, really, when he’s like this?
“We should leave this zone quickly,” Lyra said, just ahead ofpools “We need rest, but this is no place to set up caestured for her to lead the way, and she did so, continuing in the direction where I’d originally seen the distant glito reduce the tension “How did the ancient ? And why?”
“Alacrya’s ure that out for hundreds of years,” Lyra answered over her shoulder “The ancient es were a pacifist race, or so we believe That they created things like this abo of their nature”
I was silent for a while, not having expected an answer to my rhetorical question
“You did well, Eleanor,” she continued “With practice, you will be able to increase the range and nuh willpower, you will be able to make more complex and powerful manifestations as well, I aht this spellfor?”
“Oh!” I felt a wave of e, I set a hand on Mica’s shoulder and focused onthe course of Mica’s ot!”
Mica took a deep breath, relaxing against me “Thanks, kiddo That’s…better”
Lyra had turned around to look at us, and I caught her hiding a sain “Most runes haveains proficiency in the provided spells Ealias often have potent innate effects as well, which do not require activation to provide their benefit”
Mica shook her head “Souess Why aren’t all the Alacryan soldiers rocking a full-body ink suit of these regalias and stuff then? If one little tattoo can nearly put a teenage girl into the silver core stage, why don’t you guys have entire arration stage es”
“Most bestowments do not result in a rune,” Lyra explained “And when a rune is granted, it generallythe ritual more times doesn’t result in more runes It is said that, in the early days of Alacrya, the Sovereigns atteo years of forced bestow the marks into their flesh in an attees’ powers
“But this is little different than if your Dicathian e's core is a byproduct of a ht, as is the reception of a spellfore
“Which, of course, explains why these efforts were a dismal failure, and tens of thousands of people died That, at least in part, led the High Sovereign to combine the bloodlines The bestowy can be enhanced with asuran blood, creating a new race of beings capable of handling er runes”
“That’s so creepy,” Idown my spine
“An entire continent birthed as an experi she was thinking the sa I was “It’s no wonder you’re all absolutely psychotic”
Lyra’s shoulders stiffened “One must step beyond the swa naent was no less than yours when you werea life outside the iron grip of the Vritra Clan, well…”
Her stride slowed, and she looked up into the glooht it was you Dicathians ere ic, the way you bent the knee to lesser kings and queens, like poor ins…and all that freedoet done when every man and woman was free to skitter across the surface of your continent like insects in the dark?
“But the longer I stayed in Dicathen, the more clear it became to me…which of us was rowing close enough to the edge of the zone that everyone could see the curving stone wall and the glea arched portal that Arthur would use to take us on to the next one
“How many Dicathians d’you think you’ve killed?” Mica asked suddenly I could feel her body tense against my back
“By ine On my command? Tens of thousands, at the very least”
Already tired and on edge, ht of all that death So many people were killed in this war, and for what?
I glanced overhi into another fit of bickering He was looking away froainst the dim backdrop of the zone, and I realized he wasn’t really listening to this conversation I could see in the set of his shoulders, his stiff gait, the slight frown on his sharp features…
My brother was a million miles away I wondered which of his many adventures was on his mind now With the hydra worm’s corpse still visible in the distance behind us, it see but that fight, but it seeh so h he’d toldout Was this talk about the war and all the unnecessary deaths ht He bla strong enough
“And what about you, Lance?” Lyra asked “How h,” Mica shot back, hostility oozing from those two simple words Then, after a second’s hesitation, she added, “Or far too many I won’t know, I suppose, until this is all done”
“We’re here,” I said as the zone wall rose up in front of us, the only breach in the dark stone a single carved arch The portal inside the frame was softly luminescent, but wherever that portal led, I kneasn’t where ere going
Arthur see a e “The path forward isn’t completely clear,” he said as he activated the device
The opaque portal becaes melted in and out of focus in quick succession on the other side
“I have a map in my head, but it’s just pictures The way to the next djinn ruin—the next keystone—is confused It ether,” I said, immediately embarrassed by the childish optimism that came out in azefrom Lyra to me, then to Arthur “Hopefully the next zone or whatever smells better than this place, yeah?”
Lyra shook her head, her fla around her shoulders “Rarely do the zones become more pleasant as you ascend farther”
Mica rolled her eyes and threw up her hands “So s and honey wine are out the ?”
With a wry, huestured to the portal “Only one way to find out”