Advent of Eternity - Chapter 51 (Patreon)

Knell moved as quickly as his injured leg would let him, the girl’s dragging across the stone behind him as he rushed to the portal. She’d thank him for it, even if she took a beating on the way down. It was better than being left to the slavers.

He hurled her through the portal and staggered in after her. By the time Knell’s feet touched the ground on the other side, Stix was already standing by his side. Green strands of energy curled off her shoes and back, turning to smoke in the air behind her.

Cyll was the last to appear, a wide grin on his face as he popped out of the crackling blue. Without a second of hesitation, Cyll turned and slammed his massive sword into the portal arch. The stone cracked and he reared back, repeating the strike three more times.

With a groan of protest, the stone crumbled. The arch collapsed to the ground and the flickering blue disk sputtered before blinking out, taking much of the light in the room with it. Knell slumped against the wall with a sigh, but he couldn’t hide the grin on his face.

“That was incredible,” Cyll said, rolling his shoulders. “You should have seen the expression son their faces up close. I pretended to die at the end – I don’t know if it’ll convince any of them now that my body vanished, but you’re probably going to start a few rumors about yourself, Cap.”

“That’s the idea,” Knell replied. “I would have preferred to show less of my hand.”

He yawned, fighting back exhaustion. More of his hair had turned white, but he’d expected that. Casting Haste twice – and overloading it on Stix – had been excruciating.

“Are you okay?” Stix asked.

“Backlash from making you move that fast,” Knell replied, shaking the weariness away. He couldn’t afford to sleep. “And possibly having three spells running at once. I would greatly prefer if we don’t do that again.”

Pain spiked in his chest and he gritted his teeth until the wave subsided.

“What about the girl?” Cyll asked, nudging the young woman that Knell had thrown through the portal. “Why’s she just lying there?”

“I assumed she’d passed out,” Knell replied.

Stix knelt beside the woman and put a hand to her neck. The elf frowned and tugged the woman’s torn clothing back, revealing a sickly purple patch spreading across her body.

“She’s poisoned. Her heartbeat is slow.”

“Shit. I liked the fire in her eyes,” Cyll said. “Bummer. She dead?”

“Not yet,” Stix replied, glaring at Cyll. “But she probably will be. I don’t know that much about individual poisons, but considering how slow her heart is beating and how weakened she looks, I doubt it’ll be long.”

“It’s not guaranteed, though?” Knell asked, studying the woman.

“I mean, there’s always a chance she pushes through,” Stix said. “But it’s probably incredibly low. Look at the shape she’s in. We don’t have a healer, and she isn’t going to live long enough to make it to one.”

Knell’s hands tightened around his staff. He rapped the woman in the shin with it. She let out a weak groan and Stix stared at him in shock.

“What are you doing? Let her pass in peace at least!”

Knell ignored Stix and rapped the woman a second time. She coughed, her eyes flickering open. They were dilated and her skin was so thin that Knell could see the veins under it.

“Do you want to live?”

Her lips quivered, but her eyes were dim. Whatever she wanted to say was lost to the poison. Knell drummed his fingers on the staff for a few moments.

“It’s fine, Knell,” Stix said softly. “She didn’t die a slave. We gave her – and a lot of others – a chance. Let her pass with dignity.”

“No,” Knell replied, coming to a decision. The woman wasn’t dead yet, even with the poison eating away at her. That was enough of a declaration for him. She wanted to live.

He forced his exhausted body to gather what energy he could, then cast Anchor on the fallen woman. Green smoke enveloped her, fading a few seconds later.

“Isn’t that just going to bring her back to where she was a minute ago?” Cyll asked.

“Correct.”

“But… she’ll still be poisoned,” Stix said. “That doesn’t cure anything that happened before it was cast, does it?”

“It does not.”

“Then… you’re just going to be torturing her! She’ll die as soon as you stop casting Anchor.”

“You said there was a chance she could push through,” Knell replied, sitting down to watch the woman. Pain tightened her features and a moan slipped through her lips as the poison worked deeper in to her body. “I will give her that chance again and again, until she succeeds.”

Stix gaped. “That’s… even if she does somehow pull through, do you really think she’ll be okay after? It could take hundreds of attempts! Do you even have enough magic to do that?”

“I will go as long as she can,” Knell said, leaning his head against the wall. “Then, if she does fail, it will not be because I did not do everything I could.”

“Do you think this is a mercy?” Stix asked. “If she does fail, her final minutes will be in agony. That’s a hellish way to go.”

“Mercy is for the gods, and they have none,” Knell replied. “This is not mercy. This is my will.”