Chapter 215: ...Claw's Nest (16)

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Life doesn’t give you a pause button.

Everything would be easy, if it did.  The moment before a car crash, when your heart rate accelerates to a mile a minute, brain barely able to register what will happen and mustering neurons to fire at maximum capacity in the precious few seconds that’ll matter.  Because it knows, the next few moments are pivotal.

There are moments like these.

The last few seconds for a sprinter.  When you lean in towards your crush, waiting for that anticipation to see if she’d close her eyes or shy away.  When you pick up the phone and your father says ‘get home right now’ and his tone isn’t right.

If life had a pause button… you could pause it.  Right before something bad happened.  You could delay it.  Think.  Strategize.  

I had nothing of the sorts.

Kyrian got up, facing Delas.  His cloak swept the ground, throwing up a little cloud of dust from the obsidian floors.  His ankles blocked my view and I couldn’t do a damned thing about it.  My feet, fingers, even my tongue: the only thing that I could still move were my eyes and they were screaming.

“Delas Ender.”

I expected Kyrian’s voice to tremble.  The sign of his youth to be betrayed in his voice somehow.

His voice was steel and fire, lightning and thunder; a barely contained rage within.

“The Mage.”  Delas spat.  “Too bad I don’t make a habit of memorizing NPC names.”

Kyrian shifted his stance, and I could see between his ankles.

Delas stood there, clad in hues of forest green and dark shadow.

He held a new dagger in his hand.

It pointed downwards, its blade the color of crimson blood.  It wasn’t straight, but curved like the waves of an ocean.  A kris, except the ending point, curved back in a wicked manner; like an artist taking a brush and flinging the stroke back at the last second just for style.  He had an identical dagger in his other hand, except this one was blue.

I recognized the daggers.

Artifact-class, [Stillness].

HEre’s the thing about weapon gradings.  End-game gear are separated into two different buckets: [Legendary] for martial classes and [Artifacts] for caster classes.  But sometimes, there are weapons that get categorized into [Artifact] class and caster items that get categorized into [Legendary].

Just as my party had gotten stronger and hunted for loot on this expedition… Delas had done the same and finally found something above the [Unique] daggers he’d been wielding before.

My eyes strayed to his companions.

Astelion Giantler, his cervidae eyes regarding me silently.

Tanya, the dwarven shielder standing at the side.

Behind them, a blindfolded and gagged Cecilia Lightridge.  She was being held up by her arms on either side by [Cultists].  

And behind them…

More cultists.

So many that I couldn’t count.

More than two dozen.  More than three dozen.  More than fifty.

Delas had a veritable expedition squad in here.

I absorbed all this information in a split second and Kyrian shifted again, covering them from my view.

And covering me from their eyes at the same time.

My heart sank.

Oh god, something bad was going to happen.  Something really bad.

I needed to move my arms, my legs, do something –anything– but nothing.

I tried to grit my teeth.  My mouth refused to move.

The only thing that could move…

Were my eyes.

Watching.  Absorbing.  Learning.

Thinking.  Imagining.  

…Praying.

“Just you and him?”  Delas sneered and I didn’t miss the small sound of half-a-step.  Delas had dragged his feet half an inch forward.  Half an inch closer.

Kyrian didn’t respond.  A skilled warrior would have noticed it.  Skaris would have stepped back, needing more space to use his Fire and Explosions.  Aurora might have stepped forward, readying to receive the blow while simultaneously decreasing his run-up distance.  Stole would have ran.

Kyrian just stood there.  Remaining calm.

Except his breathing quickened a bit.

“Move, Ender.”  Kyrian said so softly, that it came out as a breath.  “And I won’t hurt you.”

No sounds for nearly five seconds.

Then the laughing began.

Tanya’s high-pitched laughter that bounced off of the walls, Astelion’s deep throated grunt that seemed to shake pebbles lying on the ground.

Delas’ cackle that went on and on and on and on.

“How about this,”  Delas’ hand moved.  I couldn’t see the man’s face, but I could imagine the man feigning wiping a tea from his eye.  “I’ll let you have a head start.  Ten minutes.  Six hundred seconds.  But just you.  You leave the paralytic fuck behind.  How’s that?”

I could feel Kyrian hesitate.

His eyes turned back and met mine.

Please, please, please, please, be scared.  Run, just run.  There’s no honor to be had in–

The young mage’s eyes were anything but wavering.

They were set the way I’d seen before in the most seasoned of adventurers.

Unshakeable will.

He flicked his gaze back to Delas.  “No.”

And slowly, he raised his staff.  He turned his body sideways, pointing the staff towards the [Players] and their [Cultists].

Delas smirked and shrugged his shoulder.

“I always was curious.  Borealis kept going on and on and on about Slaveborn’s leadership abilities.  How he has this ‘uncanny’,”  He made quotation marks in the air, “knowledge about the best Cores for his party members to absorb.”

“Well, let’s put it to the test.”  Delas snapped a finger.

“Kill the mage.  Bring Slaveborn to me.  Alive.”

I screamed but I had no mouth to scream with.

The tide of cultists behind Delas stiffened as one, like hive-mind insects that all just smelled the same pheromone –an order had been given and their mindless brains had to take time to understand the directive.  Then calculate it, trying to see what was the most ideal way to work together and–

A living wall of black cloth, flesh, Cores, and zealotry surged forward with the silent obsession of brainwashed dolls.

And Kyrian lit up the fucking room with the fury of a storm god.

He screamed as he did it, mana welling up in the air and building pressure –instantly the scent of burnt ozone and humid forest assaulted my senses and the build-up of air pressure being released caused an audible pop in my ears.

Lightning fell like rain.

Tiny beads of lightning formed before Kyrian, above him –a veritable net of pure energy that pulsed with blue-white voltage.  As the Cultists surged forward, they used a variety of Cores –body transformation, elemental missiles and some of them even closed the gap using some kind of [Teleportation] or [Dash] Core.

Kyrian caught them all.

Lightning arced, hissing and crackling as it burnt flesh off of the face off a Cultist, sending him wordlessly screaming and flailing to the floor.  Other cultists simply stepped over him, just to receive another lightning bead to the face which suddenly expanded in size –swallowing the woman whole and living her with miniature seizures.

Kyrian waved his staff, sending another curtain of lightning that hissed angrily.  On the other hand, he created a small cyclone of wind; releasing it to the air in front of him and combining the two.  The two gave birth to a tempest of thunder that pulsed with purple mana, streaking out with beams of lightning that acted like tentacles, frying up anyone who dared to come close.

One.

Two.

Five.

Ten.

Twenty.

Twenty cultists in the span of three seconds.

But they swarmed over the wounded like flies over rotten meat.

And Delas said one word.

“Priestess, heal them.”

Perhaps being blinded by so much light –not just from Kyrian but from the [Cultists] too– had enhanced by sense of smell and hearing.

I heard her whimper, followed by her hair brushing rapidly over her neck.

She was shaking her head.

“Tanya.”

Metal sank into flesh.

Soft flesh.

Maybe fingers, or stomach or the tendon behind the knee.  Somewhere it would hurt.

And golden radiant energy pulsed out from Cecilia, covering the downed cultists.

They rose again.

One of the cultists finally reached Kyrian, throwing himself at the mage.

Kyrian responded, pointing with his staff and sending a blast of lightning straight through the man’s brain.  This time, the spell didn’t just slough skin –it pierced through skull and left a gory melted heap of flesh where the man’s head had been.

The first death.

But it wasn’t in vain.

The man managed to land a glancing blow over Kyrian’s wrist.

A flesh wound.  Annoying at best.

Except for the fact that as the sword dropped from the man’s hand and landed right inf ront of my face, I caught the faint whiff of sourness and acrid rot.

Poison.

…

Kyrian glanced down at his wrist.

Then he redoubled his efforts.

Mana began to swirl around him.  The physical manifestation of Mana was out of reach for Kyrian, he was too weak for that.  He hadn’t had time to reach that level of [Mana Mastery].  But I did see the wind around him pick up as he gathered mana for one of his ace-in-the-hole spells.

｢Kyrian Tricilan casts [Chain Lightning]! ｣

  “FALL!”  Kyrian roared, as a sheet of lightning, at least four feet across, bounced from his hand to the nearest group of cultist sand began zigzagging between them.

And with the same hand, Kyrian closed his fist.  

｢Kyrian Tricilan casts [Lightning Flash]! ｣

Bright lighted flooded the room.

“...I’m sorry, Lock.”

I couldn’t move, but I breathed a sigh of relief.

Yes.  This was the smart choice.  Leaving me behind–

Hands grabbed me, rolling me over and the world shifted as I saw the world –how it looked when I was piggybacked upon the much smaller mage.  I was so much taller than him that my feet began to drag on the ground.

He smiled back at me.

“Bare with me, even if it’s uncomfortable.  Perhaps I’ll start exercising with Skaris after all this.”

And he began to run.

Mages don’t run.

They ride Mounts.

Kyrian had twisted his ankle during the fucking march before we even fought a monster.

Painfully slow, Kyrian began to make as much distance as he could, limping, struggling, breathing hard and–

Something sank into my back.

It hurt.  But not too much.  Maybe an arrow, maybe a dagger.  I had [Cores] that raise my [Physical] enough to ignore that.  But the most important fact was warning Kyrian that his distraction had already run it’s course and that they were–

“AAHHHHHHH!”

Kyrian roared as he turned around, shooting out another bolt of lightning at the attacker.

Lightning turned the man into blackened-meat.

And the young mage turned again and sprinted.

"Y-You... got wounded because of me."

“I’m…”  He panted for breath, “Sorry.  That must…”  He sucked in air, desperately trying to keep up the pace and retain his lung capabilities, “hurt.”

No.  It didn’t.

But I couldn’t tell him.

“You’re always… getting hurt.”  He wheezed, “Protecting us.  All of us.  From the front.”

“We always… talk about it, you know.  That when the times comes… we’ll be the ones to protect you.”