Chapter 27 : Hit Me Baby One More Time (Patreon)

Mnemon Rhomon

Realm Year 764, Descending Wood

House of Hale Mind Outskirts, An-Teng, Satrapy of the Realm

Pain burst to life again, little blooms that left lingering agony coursing through his body. He slid back, body crashing into stone walls with the heavy thud of metal on rock, and his vision blurred. He pulled himself up just in time to see another fist approaching.

His virtuous guardian flashed forwards, smacking the fist aside- a mistake the spell didn’t have the awareness to stop from making, as the blow was merely a feint to lure out its defensive flourish. The second fist came moments later, gripping him by the chainmail collar and tossing him bodily up.

A half-second later, a heel smashed against his side and sent him flying again. Pained and dazed and eventually coming to a stop against the stone bricks of a decayed manse, the wall quaking with the force of the impact. A hail of stone rubble crumbled down from the wall above him, sliding down and burying him beneath.

Each of these blows could’ve killed a man outright, but his invulnerable skin of bronze rendered them mostly ineffectual. Like being beaten to death by a foam sword. He grunted, pushing up and letting the stone gravel of the manse wall slide off him, staggering into an unbalanced stance and raising his fists.

A spinning kick, shrouded in hateful red flames, smashed into his virtuous guardian, smashed through the arc of fire, and into midsection before he was ready to guard against it. 

He smashed through the wall entirely this time, a brand new doorway heralding his unexpected side-entrance into the manse’s lobby. He duly noted this, breath kicked from his lungs, as he hit the ground and rolled again, tearing up vines as he fell back. 

Rhomon’s strategy was simple.

He was going to get beaten, probably to pulp. Any Dragonblooded worth their salt was going to be better than him in just about every way. They’d be more durable than him, they’d be faster, they’d be stronger, they’d even be more skillful. It was difficult enough to keep up with slacker dragonblooded back in his school days who weren’t interested in martial combat at all- adults were going to be outmatching him without even trying.

So how does one win against an opponent who is, in every way, your superior?

Another pair of blows, one to bait his virtuous guardian, and one to send him into the floor, came from the blurring form of an elemental supersoldier. Rhomon’s face smashed into the ground hard enough to crater the earth, and his limbs kicked up as the shockwave traveled through his body. His invulnerable skin made the blow feel like being hit in the face with a soccerball, but that didn’t help him resist the knockdown. 

His helmet slipped off his head as the burning hand grabbed his hair and lifted him up, pulling him off his feet entirely. Rhomon’s eye rolled around in the socket, trying to stop the dizziness, as the dragonblooded heft him. 

“You’re certainly resilient, worm.” Galan growled, tongues of red flame licking off his body, surrounding the both of them in the immense heat of his destructive aura. Rhomon’s magical bronze skin warded him entirely against it- even at its most powerful. The blazing heat simply wasn’t powerful enough to actually breach his defensive magic. 

“Invulnerable Skin of Bronze.” Rhomon coughed, catching his breath and reaching up to grab the hand grabbing his hair. He smiled, clenching around the wrist as hard as he could. Galan didn’t even seem to notice, but that was fine, this was all going according to plan. “I’m well aware of how fragile I am compared to you dragonblooded- I took steps to account for that.”

Galan sneered, tossing him up again and pulling both arms back.

“Five Dragon Force Blow.”

Unlike the previous blows, this one hurt a lot. Rhomon’s vision went black for a few moments, and when it returned he was lying on his back, staring at the open sky, gut clenched in agony.

He groaned, half-leaning, half-crawling to get up and orient himself. He was laying in another pile of stone rubble, outside in the courtyard again. There was the hateful ache of something broken in his torso. The sound of rocks crumbling caught his attention.

He pushed himself up, eye shooting over to see the lobby of the manse collapse entirely, the stone walls broken in yet another place and the ceiling being unable to bear the punishment any more. A bonfire of red pushed its way out of the collapsing rubble, step after patient step, pushing rock aside and treading over broken stone.

Galan stared down at him from an elevated perch, bloody and bruised in many places, but strong-shouldered and illuminated by his fiery halo.

Rhomon coughed, pushing himself up, his virtuous guardian of flame rushing to catch up with him and settle around his head once more. He stumbled once as pain flared up in his ribs, clutching at his gut with tears wheeling up in the corners of his eyes. 

Delicately, he leaned forwards and made sure not to put pressure on that part of his body for the moment.

“All your spells cannot protect you from my wrath, worm.” Galan declared, rolling his neck to audibly crack it. “Your sword of fire cannot hurt me. Your steel flesh crumbles against my fists.”

Galan tilted his head. A small trickle of blood spilled from his lips, but he didn’t seem to notice. “You may try to lay down and beg for mercy, if you wish. I will not be granting it.”

“How many times have you hit me, I wonder?” Rhomon smiled, forcing himself to stand up, in spite of the pain. “I wonder if you can even feel what’s happening?”

Galan tilted his head, then started approaching again. Slow steps with a mild limp, on account of whatever injury he sustained to his groin. As his foot hit the ground, he blurred from sight again.

A fist approached one side, Rhomon turned to see it, just in time for it to smash through his virtuous guardian and pull away. He twisted, but not in time to avoid the leg sweep.

The second blow smashed him into the dirt again.

Galan, a blaze of fire, smashed another fist into his chest. The wind was driven from his lungs at once and his torso was alight in renewed agony. 

Then another fist.

Then another.

His vision went black for some time, as pain continually forced his mind to shut down, and dirt continued to pile up around him. He couldn’t breath- drowning on dry land from lungs that were forcibly emptied of air every time they tried to suck in a breath.

The black explosions of pain slowed, and then eventually stopped. His face, half buried in the stone, could pull up just enough for one eye to be exposed and one nostril. Slow, easy breaths returned him to a sense of awareness.

Galan was holding his hand out in confusion, bewildered by what he was looking at. His nose was gushing with blood, even though a dragonblooded’s biology was supposed to prevent deaths of blood loss from even being a possibility. 

Rhomon smiled, and he slowly extracted himself from the stone with shaking limbs. “Arrow Frog Venom… It’s pretty scary, isn’t it?” He asked with a rasp, a grin twisting over his face again.

Galan looked up at him with angry eyes, a note of desperation and terror slowly building. “What- what did you d- do!?” The dragonblooded tried to take a limping step forwards, but staggered and fell to one knee. He stared down at the leg in confusion and betrayal, as if it failing him was a matter of loyalty. 

“Those of the Exalted do not experience the same frailties of mortal men.” Rhomon chuckled, a mild note of envy in his voice. “They are more durable, they do not age as quickly, they do not bleed as fast, they shrug off infections and diseases, they resist poisons…”

He chuckled and forced himself into a standing position, bronze body aglow with pain. “They are, however, not immune to any of those things…”

“Poison…!” Galan gasped, another choking mouthful of blood spraying out of his nose, gushing from his mouth, and spilling from his ears. “Wh-when!?”

“How many times did you strike me? A dozen times? Five dozen times? I lost count- too busy with pain you see.” Rhomon continued, ignoring the dragonblooded’s desperate demand.

Galan blurred again, lunging forwards in a heavy pair of blows. The virtuous guardian sent aside the first, and Rhomon’s raised forearm caught the second. 

“You’re much slower now, Peleps, slow enough that even a mortal like me can keep track.” Rhomon muttered warningly, pulling back and letting the dragonblooded stumble. “One dose of Arrow Frog Venom kills a mortal man after six hours of agony- you’ve struck me so many times, you must have a hundred doses in your system right now.”

The dragonblooded collapsed forwards, a bloody palm planting in the ground, red flames flickering around him inconsistently. A constant trickle of boiling blood spilled from his face at this point, and the man’s eyes were wide.

There was a sense of confusion in that expression, as if the dragonblooded couldn’t even understand what was happening. “Y-you… Poison…? But your skin isn’t…”

“Not normally, no.” Rhomon shook his head, an almost pitying gleam coming into his eye as he stared down at the thoroughly weakened exalted. “Every time you struck me, you were testing your ability to resist the toxin of a largely unremarkable amphibian from the far south-west, a bit farther south than An-Teng. Every time you fended it off, your body expended some energy, every time you failed to fend it off, another organ was flushed with numbing agents and dissolved.”

“You won’t die, you’re a dragonblooded after all, but it’ll be at least six hours before your body flushes out the poison, and weeks to recover from the damage. I could kill you right now. It wouldn’t be very hard either.”

He let the threat hang for a few moments, then turned, walking towards the crumbled form of his allies. “If any of them are dead, I’m killing you.”

“Y-you… worm…”

“I imagine the Anathema were saying things exactly like that, when the Dragonblooded rose up to overthrow them.” Rhomon said, conversationally, crouching next to the burned limbs sticking out of a pile of rubble. He crouched, pain shooting up in his chest, and started to push the rocks aside.

He was immune to his own chemicals in this state, otherwise he’d poison himself whenever he tried to accomplish anything, meaning he couldn’t give himself the ability to heal for at least one hour. Pulling a lump of essence together in his chest, he slowly wrangled it into the correct shape, and forced it towards the temporary mutation he had.

The incredible poison of the arrow frog cut off, shifting and mutating into a new chemical. Rhomon reached over and laid a hand on the crumbled form, checking for signs of life.

This was… Shuri, he was pretty sure. It was hard to tell thanks to the burns that covered his entire body and shrouded the features. From around the neck and all across the face and upper torso, burns like bloody beef jerky littered the once-fair snakeman’s form. 

Almost immediately, visible damage started to be reversed as the regenerative mutagen took hold in the beastman’s body. Tiny, almost invisible pulses of a weak and faltering heartbeat kicked up, and Rhomon sighed tiredly. 

He stood up, and walked over to the next in line.

Brahm lived, if barely, body littered in burns that cut down to the bone and with a crater in his lower torso, off to the side of the spine. Rhomon stared right through it for a few moments, a sense of awe that he could see tiny, faltering, struggling breaths coming out of the monk in spite of the damage he had sustained. 

Almost immediately the regenerative mutagen took hold, but that wouldn’t be enough on its own. The damage to the monk’s torso was too catastrophic for his unconscious body to manage.

He’d need to spend his internal energies to accelerate the healing process, but he couldn’t do that while unconscious, and he wouldn’t live to see the next hour as he was.

Rhomon took a deep breath, pulling together another lump of his miniscule reserves of essence, and forcing it into a new shape. A sweat took over his brow, and his vision swayed. 

He pushed the lump of essence towards his mutation, and a new chemical began to secrete from his skin. He touched the monk again.

Immediately the near-corpse was forced back to wakefulness, as the potion of forced activity took hold. Rhomon held him by the shoulders as the monk thrashed in agony, forcing him to be still

Ruined gasps and screams came out of a charred throat. 

“Listen to me Brahm.” Rhomon declared tiredly. “I have given you that regenerative potion- you have to force yourself to heal. You will not survive if you don’t.”

The monk shuddered, blind eyes ruined by heat and fire. 

“You have to will yourself to heal- I cannot do this for you, you aren’t an animal I can command.” Rhomon growled, tightening his grip around those ruined jerky shoulders and ensuring a constant dose of the awakening chemical was forced into the monk’s body. “You have the power to do it. You have to do it to live. Do you want to live or die?”

There was a few moments of quiet, groaning agony as the monk clenched lipless teeth and writhed under his grip, before he grew still. Rhomon watched silently, a grim frown on his face. 

Slowly, painfully, with nauseating and wet noises, the scorched hole in the monk’s gut bubbled with new flesh that gathered towards itself. It stretched out like warped taffy, then began to inflate out to fill the space with raw, red flesh. About half of it was covered in skin.

Rhomon used a hand to brush charred flesh away, the loose damaged skin pulling away easily to reveal half-healed skin and muscle beneath. Like some kind of magnificently fucked up form of fried chicken.

He’d live. Rhomon sighed and pulled back, letting the monk slump again. He almost thought about staggering over to Siata, before thinking better of it. None of his potions would be able to improve the regenerative properties inherent to the exalted- if Siata was to live or die, it would be up to him alone. 

“...No care for me… cuhsin…?” Siata groaned through a thoroughly black and red face, still half-buried in a burned crater. A flicker of seafoam green essence surrounded him.

“You’re a dragonblooded. You’re too strong for my potions.” Rhomon muttered, crouching down near the collapsed ram lizard.

“...Make sure… everyone else lives…” Siata mumbled weakly. 

The beast, remarkably, was still alive and conscious even through the cratered skull. It groaned weakly at him, a familiar and affectionate sound as it attempted to push up and headbutt his hands.

Rhomon took a deep breath, and pulled together another lump of essence.

His vision swam. 

Blindly, he forced it together into the regenerative essence-shape of the mutagen. He had to switch back and forth each time he wanted to do this- only one chemical could be produced at a time, and he needed to recreate one if he had to switch for whatever reason.

The world danced as his light-headedness redoubled, but the sweat on his palms converted successfully to the mutagen, and he slumped down against the ram lizard’s side.

A few moments passed as he waited for the mutagen to take hold. 

…Man, the sky was pretty.

“Heal thyself.” He muttered a command, laying back against the dinosaur and closing his eyes. Just a moment to rest his eyes. 

The virtuous guardian danced over his head as a sprite of fire, protectively, as Rhomon slipped into a dazed half-consciousness. 

A sickening series of crunches and snaps of the ram lizard’s skull reasserting itself was his lullaby. 

—

A warm crackle of golden fire washed over his eyes, and drove away the pain that once covered him like a heavy blanket. Rhomon pulled himself to full wakefulness quickly, eye cracking open and rapidly blinking away lingering dizziness. 

“Huh..?” He muttered dumbly, wiggling his fingers and toes to get his bearings, casting his gaze around to his surroundings. It was dark now, with the moon and stars twinkling overhead, and his virtuous guardian winked out of existence with the vanishing of the sun. 

He began to push up, only to be stopped by a strong hand on his chest. A strong hand with smooth skin and adorned in bright white robes. He followed the arm up until he found the arm’s owner at the end.

The smiling face of Swan Dragon greeted him, purple eyes clear and old skin smoothed out into young and supple flesh. He maintained a white beard and long hair, but his hair had returned to the top of his head, and fell in clean and smooth locks rather than the frazzled mane it had once been. 

“Rest easy, grandson, I can manage the rest from here.” The voice was strong and full of purpose, with none of the drifting attention or fog that he was used to from the old dragon.

“...It worked…” Rhomon muttered dumbly, before blinking and shaking his head. “It worked then-! You have-”

“My mind is returned to me, yes.” Swan Dragon declared with a smile and nod, pulling up and away from him. Kindly eyes stared down for a few moments, before pulling away as the old man stepped over to the crumbled form of Brahm in the distance. Swan Dragon laid a hand upon the monk, and a wave of golden fire spread out and washed over him.

A few moments passed before the golden flame died down, revealing the restored form of the monk laying unconscious upon the ground. His burned and blackened skin had entirely disappeared, leaving a healthy pink tint to bare flesh, features no longer harmed. 

“It worked, Cousin.” Siata’s voice called out, bringing Rhomon’s eye over to him. The dragonblooded looked tired, rubbing the side of the equally-weary ram lizard with a smile on his face. “We did it.”

Rhomon stared for a few moments, then glanced over at Swan Dragon who had moved on to heal Shuri with another wave of golden fire. A tremendous sigh escaped him, and he fell back onto the ground with an explosive gesture of tension leaving him.

“That’s good.” He declared, staring up at the night sky. “It was looking pretty close there, for a moment or two.”

“I wasn’t worried- I knew you’d be able to pull something off.” Siata laughed and shook his head, then pointed over at the returning form of Swan Dragon. Brahm and Shuri were both held over his shoulders, carried like children by the mighty spirit. 

“Now that we’ve gone and accomplished it- who is this guy anyways?”