41 – What Sort of Power?

Guardian’s Rescue was a spell with three distinct effects. The first was to put a protective shell of Energy around the target, in this case, Rellia. That Energy shell would, for several seconds, reflect any damage done to Rellia back to whoever dealt it. This was made moot by the fact that the spell also teleported Rellia to the space Victor occupied and vice versa before Thoargh’s void sword struck her. Instead, Thoargh’s blow hit Victor on the arm, just above his elbow—roughly where Rellia’s neck would have been.

As the void Energy crackled and hissed, struggling to consume his void-resistant flesh, Victor glowered at Thoargh’s surprised face. “You just fucked up, pendejo.”

Thoargh pressed his vicious weapon into Victor’s arm, and it hungrily consumed the sleeve of his fine linen shirt, and, though the blade sank further into his flesh, it stopped short when it hit the dense bone beneath. “You’ve grown stronger, hmm, boy?” Before Victor could respond, Thoargh unleashed the full weight of his aura. It rolled out of him like a tidal wave, pressing down on Victor, who leaned into it, snarling.

Thoargh’s aura was impressive in its density and vitriolic flavor, so much so that Victor thought perhaps the Warlord had finally passed through the veil. It reminded him of Ronkerz’s aura, though it was more acidic, and the nature of the hate carried on its waves had a petty, biting nature that would have paled in comparison to Ronkerz’s deep-seated, glowering fury at the injustice he’d faced in his life.

The currents of the Warlord’s aura held images of blood-soaked prisoners, legions of wailing, impaled foes, rivers running red with blood, skies darkened by clouds that poured red rain on cobbles slick with the viscera of his enemies. Here was a man who’d slaughtered entire civilizations to claim and maintain his vice-like grip on a whole world.

Victor was aware of Rellia falling to the cobbles behind him. He heard his friends and the children fall to their knees wailing, and, moreover, he knew that the people of his small town were suffering under the weight of Thoargh’s animosity; all around him, inside the businesses and homes, out in the gardens and side streets, people collapsed, crying out. Meanwhile, he leaned forward, growling as he pulled off the fetters of his aura, letting the full weight of it slam against Thoargh’s.

“Do you think you have a monopoly on hate?” he asked, grinding the words out through clenched teeth. Thoargh’s eyes widened and, to Victor’s delight, he saw a flicker of doubt cross over his hawk-like irises.

“Fool. I’ll crush everyone you love,” Thoargh hissed through clenched teeth, and Victor felt a renewed surge of pressure from him. It was fruitless, though, because he’d only felt a fraction of Victor’s aura. No, Victor had spread his aura wide, encircling the two of them, shielding everyone around them. Now, as Thoargh doubled down, he began to reel it in, a mighty dam, holding back the storm-surge of Thoargh’s animosity.

The two men leaned toward each other, scowling with the intensity of their efforts. A vessel burst in Victor’s eye, but it healed instantly. Meanwhile, blood poured from Thoargh’s nostrils, and Victor grinned. “Is that all you have?”

Thoargh sawed at his arm, drawing his void-blade toward him, trying to penetrate his bone. Victor knew Thoargh was strong. He knew that blade would have cut most people in half, even with bones as dense as his. Thankfully, the void Energy he’d taken into his Breath Core had granted him a resistance to it. He wasn’t immune, but it was like trying to cut steel with steel—possible, but difficult and requiring great effort.

“Feels good,” he grunted. “Nostalgic, even. I’ve spent a lot of time getting acquainted with the sting of the void.” While he ground the words out through clenched teeth, he heard movement behind him and surmised that Efanie had gathered Rellia and taken her away. Had he stalled long enough? Had people cleared the area? He struggled to hear further, but the cataclysmic clash of his aura with Thoargh’s created a grinding roar in his ears that was hard to penetrate with his senses.

To his surprise, Thoargh spread his wings and, with a twitch, flung himself back a dozen paces, pulling his aura in and shielding himself from Victor’s. Was he giving up? The man answered the question before Victor could guess, “So. You’ve done much to improve your power, eh, boy? I’d thought to play with you a while, allowing the tale of your pathetic demise to spread and lure in that dragon bitch, but it seems I’ll have to exercise part of the strength I’ve been saving for her.”

Victor regarded the man, aware of the strange conflict stirring in his chest. Back in Coloss, he’d admired Thoargh’s strength. That changed when Tes warned him and Valla of the Warlord’s plans, but even then, Victor hadn’t felt real hatred. The stories of Thoargh’s evil had always come second-hand. Now, though, he’d done something to affront him personally. He’d stuck his dirty fingers into Rellia’s mind and tried to kill her out of spite.

With Thoargh’s aura in check, Victor pulled his own back, quieting the roar of their clash. The silence in the absence of conflict was deafening, so much so that Victor’s keen hearing easily picked up Rellia’s choked, ragged whisper. “Th-thank you.” Somehow, Efanie had helped her to regain control of her mind. As a ragged, gasping sob escaped her, she choked out, “He… He killed most of my staff. He killed Polo.”

Victor felt his heart stop. He felt the hot fury in his pathways turn cold. He turned to look over his shoulder to where Efanie was helping a limping Rellia move behind the general store, where, hopefully, Lam and Edeya had taken the girls. The intensity of his gaze must have been palpable. Both women stopped in their tracks and turned to look at him. Rellia’s crimson eyes were pouring tears as she regarded him.

“Kill him,” she whispered, but the words were like thunder in Victor’s ears. When he looked back at Thoargh, he saw the man was smiling, exposing his too-long canines. The pressure in his gut told him why: the bastard had stabbed his void sword into his stomach when he’d turned. The blade was crackling and buzzing, gobbling up his flesh and blood as pink froth bubbled around the enormous wound.

“I can’t cut your bones, but how’s this for a compromise? A slow death from a rotting gut will amuse me just the same…” His voice grew less and less sure as he spoke, and he finally trailed off when he saw Victor’s impassive face.

The cold fury that had turned Victor’s blood to ice began to heat as Rellia’s words made their rounds, echoing through his mind. Polo was dead. Polo Vosh, the hero of the axe, the man who’d volunteered his time to take Victor under his wing, however briefly. He’d helped with the war. He’d given him advice. He’d never done an underhanded thing in his life. Everyone loved him—a spirit bigger than life.

Victor stepped forward, increasing the volume of smoking, hissing, crackling sounds as his flesh was destroyed again and again as it tried to regenerate. “You piece of shit,” he said, stretching out his titan hands and grasping Thoargh’s shoulders. He wanted to rip him to pieces, and so, he tried. He tightened his grip, applying enough pressure to shatter stone, and then he pulled.

His mind was full of bloody visions of Thoargh tearing down the middle, ripping apart in a spray of blood and viscera. The Warlord was no soft piece of flesh, however. He strained against Victor, and when he felt the terrible pressure of his titanic grip, he sawed his sword to the side, slicing through Victor’s guts and flesh. The wound was awful and would have left a lesser being half-sawed in twain. Victor’s regeneration was prodigious, though, and his flesh was well-acquainted with the touch of the void. Even as the sword ripped out his side, his guts had restitched and his flesh had grown back together.

Meanwhile, he pulled. Thoargh grunted and took a step back, bracing himself as he struggled to hack at Victor again, despite the pressure on his shoulder. Victor’s left hand began to slip, so he yanked Thoargh closer and shifted his grip to his wing. The feathers and hollow bones bent under his grip, and a savage grin split his lips as he continued to pull his hands in opposite directions.

Something like panic flickered across Thoargh’s eyes, and he punched his sword at Victor again and again, driving the horrible void blade into his guts, his thighs, even his groin. Victor’s rage wouldn’t let him feel the pain, though, and that was when he realized he’d gone Berserk without consciously casting the spell. It was the first time he’d done so in a very long time, but that thought never entered his mind. All he could see was Thoargh’s flesh, and all he could feel was anger at its yet-whole status. So, he pulled.

Victor was absurdly strong without being Berserk. As a titan, the effect tripled his strength, and so, when he squeezed and pulled, the weakest point of Thoargh’s flesh between his two hands began to tear. Thoargh felt it happening and, as his wing pulled free from his back, the Warlord screamed and a great surge of chaotic Energy exploded out of him—enough to rip a crater out of the cobbled street. Victor was thrown back, toppling head over heels toward the end of the street and the ocean behind it.

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He'd never know why Thoargh waited so long to unleash the Energy burst. Perhaps he’d felt a stubborn need to withstand Victor’s strength. Perhaps he’d thought that, surely, his void blade must strike something vital. Whatever the case, he’d waited too long to save his wing. Victor still clutched the bloody thing in his hand as he came to rest on his back, looking up at the pale blue sky.

His body was numb, but he could feel it rapidly recovering from the blast of Energy. He held up his trophy, grinning. He’d enjoyed that. In fact, at that moment, he resolved to finish the job with his bare hands. He’d rip the bastard limb from limb. A grin split his lips as he thought about it. Lifedrinker would be jealous, but she was too good for the son of a bitch. As he stared, grinning from his perceived victory, something flickered up there in the distance, and then a tremendous bolt of lightning poleaxed him as a peal of thunder rocked the village, so loud that glass shattered in the windows.

Victor wasn’t weak to lightning, but of the elements, it was the one he was least resistant to. The bolt wasn’t natural lightning, in any case. It was crimson in color, and it drilled into him for an unnaturally long time. His fingertips exploded as it sought egress, dancing from his blasted hands into the cobbles and down into the earth as it traversed his body. It blackened the flesh of his chest, stopping his heart, and cooking his lungs. Victor’s eyes boiled in their sockets, and his teeth cracked as he clenched his jaw, grinding them together.

The experience probably would have been agonizing, but Victor allowed his mind to go elsewhere as his body was blasted. As his consciousness slipped free of the rage coursing through his pathways, he felt dismay at the suffering Rellia had gone through. He keenly felt the loss of Polo, yet he reminded himself of Rellia’s words: the Warlord had killed most of her staff—people who were helpless before the might of someone well past the iron ranks.

They were people Victor had known. They’d fought in the war with him. They’d welcomed him to Rellia’s home and brought him refreshments—small things, but still, they’d had no dog in this fight. There’d been no reason to kill them other than to be cruel to Rellia.

As he felt the torment of his body begin to wane, he allowed his mind to return, and this time, rather than the heat of unexpected rage, he opened his pathways to the cold, calculating fury of the glacier.

###

“Leave me,” Rellia gasped, leaning against the brick wall of the merchant shop. “I won’t cower in hiding while Victor fights that devil.”

“You can’t fight him,” Efanie hissed. “I

can’t fight him!”

Rellia waved her off, pulling her arm free. “If Victor dies, then I’ll die with him. I won’t let his efforts go unwitnessed.”

Efanie’s auburn brows drew together in a scowl, but she didn’t argue. “A fair point. I’ll stand beside you.”

Rellia knew what she was thinking; if Victor died, she might yet whisk Rellia away while the stranger—what had Victor called him? Thoargh?—was distracted. She didn’t care, though. Let the woman do what she thought she must, so long as she wouldn’t try to make her leave now. Leaning on the wall, she limped back to the corner and peered around it.

Victor was still standing off against the stranger, but now his hands were on his shoulders, and Thoargh’s sword was buried in his guts, protruding from his back. “Oh, Ancestors!” she cried softly. She knew what that sword could do. Would Victor’s fate match Polo’s?

“Fear not,” Efanie whispered, her cheek close to Rellia’s as she, too, peered around the corner. “Victor’s vitality is unnatural. See how his flesh knits around the wound?”

Of course, Rellia knew that about Victor, but not to that extent. Something happened between the two men, and Victor’s hands shifted. Then the Warlord hacked his sword sideways, ripping it out of Victor’s side and destroying a considerable section of his shirt. All he accomplished, though, was to provide a clear view to Rellia and Efanie of Victor’s flesh rapidly regrowing and knitting together. It was uncanny. Meanwhile, the muscles and tendons on Victor’s broad back stood out with the strain of whatever he was doing, and the stranger rapidly and repeatedly stabbed his sword into him.

“Is there no limit to his healing? Does he not feel the pain?” Efanie asked, her cool demeanor shattered by the display.

The fluttering thrum of Ghelli wings heralded the arrival of Lam and Edeya as they landed in the grass beside the building. “Do we fight?” Lam asked, hurrying forward, hammer in hand.

Efanie shook her head. “Only if you want to distract Victor. Are the children safe?”

Lam nodded. “Through the portal to Iron Mountain.” She looked at Rellia. “Who is that?”

She shook her head. “He came through the System stone. Damn me for an idiot!”

Edeya took her hand, crowding close to watch the fight. “No, Rellia. Victor knew him. The name plucked at a memory, something from his time on that wasteland world…”

Lam snapped her fingers. “Coloss!”

Edeya nodded. “That was the city.”

“Whatever his origin,” Rellia replied, “I should have foreseen—” Her words and crippling guilt were cut short as the stranger screamed and exploded with crackling crimson Energy.

“Chaos!” Lam cried.

The light was too bright to look at, and Rellia turned her head in time to see Victor bounce and flip over the cobbles, crashing to rest at the end of the street where the pathway down to the beach began. He was closer, and she instinctively felt she should run to him, but then she saw him lift his left hand, which clutched the stranger’s bloody, severed wing.

“Yes!” Edeya hissed. “He ripped the devil’s wing off!”

“Should we—” Lam started to ask, but then a sizzling static filled the air and all four of the women’s hair began to stand on end.

“What is it?” Rellia cried, peering around the corner again. Her eyes fell on a crater and, at its center, the stranger. His face was spattered with blood, his one wing stood out, making his figure lopsided, but he didn’t look beaten. No, he was fury incarnate. His eyes blazed with red Energy, his dark hair stood out, and his sharp fangs were bared as red lightning coursed around him, undulating and pulsing, as if he were a lightning rod at the center of a magical storm.

“He’s like Darren,” Edeya hissed.

Rellia glanced at her sharply. “How so?”

The young woman pointed. “Chaos and lightning.”

“And void,” Efanie added. “How many affinities does the bastard have?”

Meanwhile, the stranger stretched out his arms, and the lightning coursing through him began to jump and spark, leaping from one hand to the other, coiling around his body, then coursing up and repeating the process. “What’s Victor doing?” Edeya cried, pointing.

Rellia looked, and Victor was still lying on his back, staring at the bloody wing in his grip. It had only been a few seconds, but shouldn’t he get up? Had the blast of chaos Energy stunned him? She turned back to the stranger in time to see the lightning that had been building up in his body explode into the sky—a great crimson arc that was so bright she had to blink her eyes and look away so her vision would recover.

Suddenly, thunder split the air, and with it, a shockwave that sent all four women stumbling. Rellia nearly fell, but Efanie caught her wrist. She could see her lips moving, but no sound came to her. For some reason, she could barely see, and everything was cast in a garish pink-red hue. Efanie looked positively mad as she gesticulated with one hand, clearly shouting. Try as she might, Rellia couldn’t make out the words, and then, finally, it dawned on her that the light was coming from a bolt of ongoing lightning.

Squinting against the glare, holding up her hand to shield her eyes, she tried to get her bearings. There was the wall of the building. She leaned her hand against it, and using its location as a guide, she turned toward Victor, and that was when she realized the lightning was striking him! She started to stumble toward him, but hands grabbed hold, hauling her back. Lips touched her ear, and finally she made out a faint, high-pitched voice—Efanie yelling. “We should flee!”

Rellia shook her head, staring at the blasted figure beneath the brilliant, arcing lightning. What sort of power was this? Who could harness that much Energy? Was that devil one of the veil walkers Victor had told her of? Poor Victor! His shirt was gone, his flesh blasted to black char. His hands were destroyed as the lightning passed through them, arcing into the ground. Efanie had been right to hold her back. Rellia glanced at her wrist to see that it wasn’t just Efanie holding on—Lam had a grip on her, too.

She shook her head, trying to clear the confusion caused by the thunderclap. She peered around the corner toward the stranger, fearful that he’d be right there, ready to finish his promise to torture and kill her. He was still in the street, standing in his crater, coursing with red electricity. He wasn’t just channeling it into the sky. As it passed from the ground, coiling around his body before exploding skyward, it did something to his flesh. Each pulse seemed to thicken and elongate him—he was growing.

“He’s twice as big!” Lam yelled, her voice tiny and distant in Rellia’s damaged ears.

Rellia stared, watching as Thoargh grew, his crimson eyes blazing as he stared at his enemy. Soon, the crater in which he stood was only deep enough to contain his feet. He was gigantic. Rellia turned toward Victor just as the lightning finally stopped, throwing the street and the entire village into stunned silence. Victor looked dead, and Rellia felt her eyes fill with fresh tears, but then he stirred.

“He lives!” Edeya whispered.

Efanie nodded, tugging Rellia’s wrist. “More than alive. Can you not feel the Energy? We must flee!”

Rellia concentrated and realized the Fae-blooded woman was right. A tremendous surge of Energy was radiating from Victor. It was cold and angry, and, even as she let Efanie pull her back several steps, he sat up. He held up his blackened wrists, and Rellia saw new flesh, blue and steaming with cold, erupt from the stumps as his hands regenerated. He sat there, scowling, and his body expanded.

As she and the others continued to retreat, moving away from the buildings into the uncleared land that was part of Victor’s estate, he turned to regard the stranger standing in the middle of the street, looming gigantically with a blazing, fiery sword in one hand.

“Fire now?” Victor rumbled, ponderously climbing to his feet. He smashed his gigantic, rime-covered fist into the palm of his hand, producing a thunderous smack. “All right, pendejo, let’s dance.”