[Ashborn-B1] 85. Fall (Patreon)

LXXXIV

Fall

Judith leapt away from the smoke and gasped the moment she landed. Saying that she was in a ‘bad state’ didn’t even begin to describe her situation. Her mind was spinning. Her chest could no longer expand fully.

‘Breathe, I need to control my breathing.’

As she thought that, she stumbled and went to one knee.

Judith, Dorothy said. You need to exit the avatar state.

A small smile pulled on Judith’s lips. Even if she didn’t want to, the power was slipping between her fingers. That a reject like her could keep it active for so long had been a miracle in and of itself.

As if to prove her point, more blood forced its way out of her throat. Now her second knee gave out as well, and she was kept upright solely by her staff.

‘Please,’ she prayed. ‘Please, if any god is listening let Vyke—’

“You’ve grown stronger.”

His calm, unhurried voice slithered out of the dust cloud. Boots crunched on the ground as his shadow stepped into the light.

Her teeth ripped into her lower lip. ‘Even Avatar wasn’t enough?’ Iron dripped into her mouth. After all that talk, she still wasn’t enough.

The creak of her mother’s chair sitting in front of the fireplace played in her head.

Her gloves creaked as she gripped her staff.

Despite being severely weakened, Vyke didn’t approach to finish her off. He made a show of dusting off his armour, of forging his spear anew (for her final attack had destroyed it). He even took off his helmet and ran a hand through his sweat-matted hair.

Judith strained and rose to her feet.

Vyke smiled. “I like that about your clan, you know. You have a fierce spirit, all of you.”

She spit out a glob of blood. “Spare me your horseshit.”

“Horseshit? Please, never. The respect I feel for your people is genuine.”

You should let him speak, Dorothy said. I’ll gather as much essence as I can.

Judith was in no state to cycle, so that duty would fall to Dorothy.

She wiped her mouth with the back of her sleeve. “You’ve got a strange way of showing respect.”

His grin widened like he’d been waiting on that comment.

“Respect and a desire to kill someone are not exclusive. Especially not when you need to send a message.”

“A message? Stealing souls for some abomination isn’t much of a message if you ask me.”

He smiled. “Don’t let the methodology distract you.”

With blurry eyes, Judith judged the distance. The space between them was small enough he’d be able to cross in a one jump. She wanted more room than that, but it wasn’t like she could put more space between them because she wanted to.

‘I need to take him by surprise.’

She made sure her thoughts echoed to Dorothy, but the spirit was too busy cycling to respond.

Her lips pressed into a line. Having more essence to work with wasn’t bad—don’t get her wrong—but Vyke had survived every move in her arsenal. That wouldn’t change just with more energy at her fingertips.

‘There’s only one other option.’

But it would never work. Even if it did, given her current state, it would kill her…

‘Does that matter when he’s here?’

Her gaze followed Vyke like a hound trailing blood. Vyke stepped around her in a circle.

“The message,” she repeated.

“The message,” he nodded.

She didn’t rotate to follow him as he stepped out of her view and instead peeled her senses. There was no bite to his demeanour. Neither was he preparing his essence to launch an attack.

He really was set on speaking to her.

‘Why?’ she frowned. Though she hated him with all her heart, she herself shouldn’t mean anything to him. The answer—a reality she had buried but not deep enough—dug itself from the depths of her mind.

“You don’t mean to kill me,” she muttered.

His hidden steps crunched on the earth. “What makes you say that?”

Her knuckles whitened. She’d analysed the events around the skirmish a hundred times by now. One moment that always stood out to her was how Vyke had stared at her before the battle started.

Back he angled back into her field of view. “Well, I suppose hiding it no longer matters.” Then he nodded, hummed and said: “The original plan was to capture you and force Caelia into an unfavourable position.”

If there’d been any more blood to draw from her lips, her teeth would sucked it up like a vampire.

“That’s what you asked, Aurille, wasn’t it?” she said. “You didn’t ask for a fifth of our force.”

“Is that what Aurille said?” Vyke chuckled. “No wonder you all chose to fight. Cultivators truly are the most selfish human beings—she could’ve spared dozens of lives if she simply handed you over.”

Had that happened, Ray wouldn’t have died and perhaps Ashe would’ve never gotten into a fight with the Dragonflight.

The pit in her stomach, one of hunger, fear, and dread, expanded. Slowly. Like a worm burrowing its way through an abandoned fruit.

“You’re lying,” Judith said. “Aurille would never do that.”

The heiress to the Snow Moons was the coldest and most pragmatic cultivator she’d ever known. Aurille wouldn’t sacrifice that many lives just to save her.

Vyke shook his head. “What reason would I have to do so?” He stopped in front of her and looked down. “Ugly, aren’t they? Cultivators. Without regard for anyone else, they do what is beneficial only to them.”

“Don’t act like you’re better than anyone else!”

His lips, which had a natural, rosy tint, pressed together as he closed his eyes. “I don’t expect you to understand. But know that what I do, I do for the good of others.”

A sense of strength returned to her arm, allowing her to grip her staff harder. Oh, how badly she wanted to jab a knife into his neck and twist it! Every syllable that vermin uttered was enough to make her insides curl.

I’m ready, Dorothy said.

A deep sigh slipped past the bottom of the helmet sliding back over his face. “Culling the selfish—” His voice distorted through the protection. “—is a thankless task. At the end, nothing but martyrdom awaits a saint.”

Thin tendrils disconnected from the armour around his neck and connected to the edge of the helm, which fused in place. Black liquid pooled from his palms and morphed into his spear.

Judith collected her breath. This was it. Her last and final chance.

She didn’t allow the image of her mother to enter her head, lest she miss his attack.

We can do it, Dorothy whispered.

Inside herself, Judith felt the spirit contract in preparation of what was about to come.

The ground didn’t burst underneath Vyke, yet he hurled at her so quick he was less than a blur.

Essence ripped through her veins like a knife. The pain barely registered. ‘Don’t bother aiming.’ Light condensed and wove into a thick rope. She whipped her staff in a cone which tore the overworked muscles in her back.

Anger and anguish both fuelled her cry. Light rammed into Vyke’s spear.

His laughter rippled over her shout. “On your last legs, huh?” He flicked the attack away as he would a random insect on the ground. But that was the point. To draw him in close, when he didn’t expect her to have anything else up her sleeve, and victory was all but guaranteed in his mind.

All of the essence Dorothy had collected rushed into the tip of her staff. Vyke’s gaze rotated to her weapon his body curved like that of a snake to intercept it.

She squeezed her buttocks. ‘Manifes—’

The pit in her stomach, which had grown large enough to cover her belly, imploded and warped into a hole sitting above her hip.

Watch out! Dorothy yelled.

Like an aftershock, she heard Dorothy’s voice in her head. It wasn’t that Dorothy had been late. Judith’s mind just hadn’t registered the warning until now.

She looked down. A barbed, black horn had broken the ground, and the arm of the plant disappeared into her stomach.

It pulsed and the hole widened.

Every attack is fatal, the thought replayed between the confines of her skull.

Her control over the essence in her staff snapped and the energy burst like wildfire.

She managed to catch a glimpse of Vyke vaulting away, then her light washed over everything.

The blizzard struck the moment we shot out of the veil. Saber’s shroud flared around me and held off the worst of the cold.

“Keep running!” Aurille yelled. Her dress billowed as she darted towards the king. She swiped her arms and a set of barriers on our flanks broke the winds.

Though we were running faster than ever, there was quite a bit of space between us the king’s throne.

“I have to be directly on top of it!” I yelled.

Being close to his feet wasn’t good enough—it was the base of the throne I needed to cut off.

The crane couldn’t have understood me, but it did its best to fend us off us all the same. More golems spawned from the miniature celestial body. Since the constructs formed high up, most tumbled to their doom. However, the myriad of flying summons created swooped in to save their allies’s landing enough they didn’t break upon impact.

None of the constructs would’ve cared either way. Their limbs and broken extremities reformed with the speed of snapping fingers.

Golems bulldozed across the land. Boulders hurled through the blizzard, and their surface area grew three times as wide while still in the air. The spindly legs of arachnids broke the frozen ground and leapt, their forms becoming a total blur in the veil of snowfall.

I grimaced. ‘All their stats and abilities are being empowered.’

Saber struck a golem out of the air before it reached me. I ducked low to the ground and let another pass overhead. Two of Erri’s serpent—small ones—crushed a boulder in their jaws, then hurled into a golem set on tackling the drake princess off her mount.

“Hold it stable!” Jake screamed. He was hanging onto the tail of the serpent Erri was riding.

The princess must’ve tried to leave him behind when we started running.

She didn’t even glance back to snarl at him.

In front of us, the ground burst, and mounds of earth launched into the air. A deafening screech whacked the insides of my skull. A beast reminiscent of a worm, though a lot thicker and with a gaping mouth with two rows of teeth, whirled out of the dust cloud.

[Frost Leviathan - lvl. 40]

‘Fucking hells that’s big.’

It was two times the size of a four-story structure. And that was just the part sticking out above ground.

The gigantic beast curved and shot for the centre of our party.

“Scatter!” I yellled.

Gaje’s powerful leap got him well out the way of the attack. Aurille jumped, used the blizzard to her advantage, and flew past the strike zone. Erri and I were the only ones confined to the ground.

So I summoned Skul. He loosed from the portal in a full dive, and I latched onto his head. His full speed sideways movement was barely enough to save me.

My head whipped over my shoulder. ‘What about the others?’ Behind me, the leviathan devoured the ground as if it was for breakfast.

I wasn’t worried about Saber, who was a lot more nimble than I was, and frantically searched for Jake and Erri—

Her serpent broke the mist blocking the view. Jake happened to be looking my way and gave me a thumbs up. Saber exited the fog nearby and returned to my side. He cast a hateful glance at Skul and turned his snout away.

‘Really. At this time you’re having an attitude?’

Not caring about my summons, the leviathan’s gargantuan body finally finished roaring past and disappeared into the earth.

My neck shivered. “Please let there be just one of those.”

Which was, of course, when multiple fountains of soil erupted like we were in the middle of a violent hot spring area. More than six of the beasts reared their ugly heads.

I dug fingers into my forehead. Should’ve kept my damn mouth shut.

I kept Skul summoned. He wasn’t big enough for me to comfortably sit, however, the force keeping his head permanently afloat wasn’t bound by physics. So flying low over the floor was actually faster than running myself, though it did require plenty of essence to propel us.

But the manoeuvrability was worth it.

He zipped between golems and past leviathan jaws like the seasoned flyer he was. The others were having a harder time. Having identified Erri as the easiest target, the leviathans dogpiled her and Jake (who had managed to climb higher onto the snake’s back). Erri didn’t stop whenever the tail end of serpent got hit, but reforming the beast over and over cost her a lot of energy. Eventually, it slowed her movement.

Enough for a leviathan to break the ground right underneath her—

My gaze widened.

—both riders and serpent were carried into the air and levitated. For a heartbeat.

Then they tumbled straight towards the leviathan’s open maw.