August Intruder- Chapter 250- Bow (Patreon)

The ring went flying, sharp and bright blue. Bayad’s eyes tracked it easily through the air. But there was something about it that he couldn’t quite put his finger on. Its deep white, its movement speed.

He titled slightly to the side. His wings came up in defense, driven by nothing but instinct, and batted the ring to the side.

Pain filled his muscles immediately as the ring was sent flying into the wall a distance away. It forced Bayad to curl his wing inward, to reach for it with his hand. He found a burn mark there. It was harsh and sharp, a single line, as if from the end of a whip.

How? his mind cursed as his eyes tracked the overgrown children that had come to take him.

The one called Melmarc, [August Intruder] to the planet, was already chasing him down. The fool had not yet mastered his [Optimum Existence] and was allowing his aspects to take control of his mind. Had nobody told him that the aspects were supposed to guide him not control him?

As Melmarc came at him from one side, the second boy, Tar’arkna, an old name that did not belong on this world, came at him from the other. Bayad fought away the pain in his wing and prepared for the pincer attack.

Tar’arkna had a peculiar type of fire that burned a bright black. From what Bayad knew, there were sections of some parts of different hells that possessed such flames. It marked Tar’arkna as a little too powerful for his age.

Stay away from the flames, he told himself as he turned and met Melmarc head on. His wing flicked out at the last second, forcing its way through the pain.

It fired eight sharp and strong feathers at Ark, a simple trait from his angelic side, not a skill the system recognized. It was akin to a human jumping. The feathers would keep Ark at bay for a moment while he dealt with the [August Intruder].

Melmarc attacked him, fists moving.

Bayad paused, momentarily taken aback. He had expected the boy to come skills flying. While he knew that at his age Melmarc would not possess more than three skills, but he had expected the boy to continue with the skills in his arsenal.

Doesn’t matter, he thought, deflecting the first thrown punch with a variation of an old fighting technique from a world that no longer existed. He displaced Melmarc’s fist and struck the boy in the neck. Melmarc staggered back, the pain of having his own throat crushed probably blinding him.

Bayad capitalized. His hand came down on Melmarc’s head. He would not crush the boy’s skull, merely crack it.

His hand completed its fall, and Melmarc vanished from out of under it. Bayad’s attack missed, and Melmarc struck him in the rib.

Bayad’s eye twitched as pain flared in his side, greater than he had expected. He staggered back, more from the impact of the strike than the pain of it. Something was off somewhere. The thought filled his mind as his eye darted to the side, picking Ark out. The boy had survived most of the feathers but there were currently three protruding out of his skin. Two had embedded themselves in his forearm and one in his shoulder, but he was still coming.

Melmarc stepped forward, straight into Bayad. Bayad raised his hand in preparation for his defense and Melmarc struck with a low kick. Bayad’s leg came up, slightly faster, and checked the kick. Their legs connected. Bayad felt the pain, but again, something was off about it.

Focus, he scolded himself, realizing that the kick was only a distraction. Melmarc ducked low and dived him. His shoulder slammed into Bayad’s stomach. Again, pain came, but for some reason, it did not knock the wind out of him.

Tar’arkna appeared to the side, slightly outside of Bayad’s peripheral view. It was smart, but Bayad had been fighting longer than the boys were alive, even if he was a little rusty.

[You have used skill Sunder Strike]

His hand ignited in yellow flames, a sharp contrast to Tar’arkna’s. He slammed it into Melmarc’s exposed back, knowing that while it might crack his spine, it would not kill the boy.

Melmarc roared as the strike connected. Bayad felt the boy’s hold around him weaken and swung his wing at Tar’arkna.

Tar’arkna did not run from the attack or try to evade it. Instead, he slammed his burning hand into the wing.

Pain ignited once more, filling Bayad’s head like a million pin-pricks. He felt the burn on his wing and fought against the urge to physically rip his own wing off.

With the pain still filling his head, he turned and flung Melmarc off him, slamming the boy into Tar’arkna.

Tar’arkna lifted off the ground at the last second and took the brunt of Melmarc’s flying body. They flew back but did not crash as Bayad had hoped. Instead, Tar’arkna settled back on the ground with a grace unreasonable for his size and let Melmarc down.

“You good?” he asked Melmarc.

Melmarc rose to his full height and cracked his neck one way and the other. “That hurt like hell, but I’m peachy.”

Bayad blinked at that, wondering which of his aspects allowed him to handle all that pain as if it was nothing. [Sunder Strike] was not an attack just anybody shrugged off.

The pain from Tar’arkna’s attack still filled Bayad’s head and he wondered why, pulling his wing closer to himself. His jaw hardened at the sight of the black flames still burning, ruining his feathers.

He gritted his teeth against the pain, took it like a stone even as his feathers began consuming.

“What have you done to me?” he growled, while he felt something leave him, as if just realizing that he had attacked Tar’arkna with nine feathers instead of eight.

Tar’arkna shrugged, smug. “I heard it burns forever.”

[You have used skill Profane Shed]

It was a defense skill that he rarely used so it was not necessarily the strongest. When he’d gotten the skill, his teacher at the time said it came from the djinn part of him not the angelic part.

He banished the memory as his feathers and a part of his wing molted, discarding a part of itself along with the burning flame onto the ground.

Melmarc looked at the boy. “Will it spread?”

“Nope,” Tar’arkna answered with a touch of intrigue. “I had no idea angels could do that.”

<<Not angel,>> Veebee said, hovering at the door. <<Abomination.>>

It said it in that casual way, as if it was not insulting him, but simply stating what he was.

Bayad had always hated it.

Melmarc cocked his head to the side in what looked like curiosity. “[Rise]?”

“[Rise]?” Tar’arkna gave him an odd look. “What the hell is that?”

“His class.”

Tar’arkna shivered visibly. “That’s a strange class name. No offense.”

Bayad gritted his teeth, realizing now that he was in more trouble than he had thought. He had identified Tar’arkna by the smell of his mana. The djinn side of him could very easily spot demonic affiliations very easily. He recognized Melmarc from Mrs. Talwort’s video.

Being the [August Intruder], he had expected Melmarc to know his name. But to know his class meant the boy had some form of identification skill that he did not know about.

That makes two skills, he thought, counting whatever the ring the boy had thrown at him was and the identification skill. It left the boy with one more skill in secret, two in a worst-case scenario.

“Alright then,” Melmarc said, flexing his fingers. “Let’s try that again.”

One of his hands ignited into a ball of fire and Bayad froze. He stared at the boy. One of his hands was engulfed in golden flame while the other moved slowly from side to side with a ring of mana around its wrist. The same ring the boy had thrown at him at the beginning of the fight.

Fuck.

Bayad had not know that he would be dealing with a [Faker]. In the wider cosmos, beyond the reaches of this world, the class was feared for good reason.

Identification, the ring, whatever he was doing while we were fighting, now copying [Sunder Strike]. Bayad catalogued everyone carefully. Alright then, he surmised. I can handle that.

Melmarc leapt at him, crossing the distance. He crashed into the chandelier above, shattering it on impact yet showing no sign that it had affected him.

Bayad prepared for impact, then remembered that the boy was not fighting alone. Fire spread forth, crawling through the ground from Tar’arkna. Fortunately, this one was not black. It was simply the color of fire. Bayad hoped it was nothing but fire as it trailed its way to him.

With that hope in mind, he turned and faced Melmarc.

[You have used Sunder’s Form]

His body ignited in golden flames and Melmarc slammed into him. They met in a flurry of punches. Bayad threw his head into Melmarc’s first punch, slamming his flaming head into the boy’s flaming hand. Then he took the blow from the ringed hand more cautiously, turning it aside, avoiding the ring of mana.

Heavy, he noted as he turned the blow aside. Watching the flow of the boy’s movement, he stepped forward to intercept it, slamming his head into the boy’s only to meet nothing.

He stopped as Melmarc casually walked away from him, abandoning the attack. Bayad frowned, wondering what was happening. Which aspect guided the boy now?

The boy walked over to the table and grabbed hold of it.

“Are you insane?” Bayad called out, then leapt at him.

Tar’arkna moved, intercepting his attack as Melmarc fought to rip the table out of the ground. It explained why the boy was confident that Bayad would wait for him to lift the table.

Tar’arkna slammed into Bayad midair. Bayad caught him by the scruff of his neck and sent him flying. Before Bayad could hit the ground a wave of mana hit him, and his interface flared to life.

[You have been afflicted with debuff Mana Dilation]

[No resistance detected]

[Debuff Mana Dilation takes effect]

…

[Cooldown time for all skills are increased by 50%]

What the fuck? He swore.

Just how many skills was the boy willing to have? Even in his thoughts, as he tried to orient himself, another ring of mana came flying at him. Again, his instincts flared. His wing curved around him. He took the blow on it, balked in the pain and landed on his knees instead of his feet.

“Mel!” Tar’arkna barked from where he was sitting on the ground next to a wall.

Bayad raised his head and found Melmarc standing in front of him. The boy was without the table he had tried to lift.

Still, he looked pissed as he looked down on Bayad in contempt. “I’ve always hated people who don’t know where their eyes should meet mine.”

Bayad pushed himself to his feet and Melmarc grabbed him by the head. Pain flared in his mind as black flames engulfed Melmarc’s hand, the darkness of the flames fighting against the protection of [Sunder’s Form].

Bayad fought against the pain and tried his best to rise to his feet. Somehow, something about the boy’s strength seemed to double, increasing with every passing moment until Bayad head the floor beneath their feet crack even as he managed to lift one foot and plant it firmly on the ground.

His hand shot up and grabbed Melmarc by the wrist.

“I am Bayad,” he declared, channeling a new ability.

“I don’t care,” the boy replied.

“And. I. AM. SPOTLESS!” Bayad roared in defiance, throwing the boy’s hand off him and staggering him back.

The boy took only two steps before another ring appeared around his wrist once more. Bayad had come to the conclusion that the rings were currently the one thing about the boy that he had to be careful with.

But the boy did not attack him with it. No. Instead, he slammed it into the ground and leapt backwards, creating a massive distance between them.

Then the ring shattered, forcing Bayad to take a hesitant step back. He looked down, then around him. There was something different about the ambient mana. But he also had Tar’arkna to look out for.

“Bayad.”

His head snapped to Melmarc at the sound of the boy’s voice. There had been something in it, something that did not belong in this world. Something old that Bayad could not quite place. More daunting, however, was the boy’s eyes.

They had gone a pitch black. Every inch of them.

Melmarc moved his hand to the side, and it was no longer covered in flames.

Bayad took a preparatory step back, no longer willing to figure out what was wrong with the ambient mana. The child was about to do something dangerous.

His mind ran through his options and he realized the [Sunder’s Form] was growing pale, dying out a little too early.

How?

It was his last thought before the boy moved his hand.

Bayad reacted, his instincts honed over years of trying to stay alive before finding his way to Earth. He called upon his two defense skills as [Sunder’s Form] failed him. they did not obey. His interface did not tell him why. They merely moved to activate—he felt them move—and then fail.

“Didn’t you hear Veebee,” Melmarc said, his voice clear as day, strong, gospel.

Realization hit Bayad late, as a wave of darkness roared forth from the boy’s gesture, and he knew that it was not the same darkness the other boy had used, because it was like water and mist, black and corrupted.

Behind it was the boy’s voice. A single word. And it was law.

“Bow.”