Chapter 19: Powering Through
The two forces clashed as Valens tried to keep his hold from slipping away. Blood was precious for a reason, and he was too deep in the Ward’s body to manage a Lifesurge to tend his wounds. The delicate balance was hanging over a thin rope, and losing it meant certain death.
He felt a stubborn insistence rise within him. He would keep at it. End this creature for good, then take a look at that gaping hole. Just another wound. Yes. He’d fixed broken men all his life and could fix himself just as he’d done before.
Clenching his teeth, he gazed deep into the Ward’s body, feeling the strange movements of the rotten source. Death mana had always laid in a lull in the Resonance, its song one clear tune that lost its rhythm ever so slowly, but here, it had a stronger, wilder set of frequencies that thrummed in Valens’s ears.
An unnatural strength that seemed to be coming from beyond.
Something or someone was feeding this creature. That was the only explanation. And life mana was responding with fury against it.
These two different sources almost seemed as if they were made to clash, Valens thought, even if mana was supposed to be this mindless, emotionless energy. Like water spilled over on a burning bonfire, the Resonance hissed deep in his mind. The fleshy maze grew wide and weak, the bony walls flexing into a stretch that allowed Lifesurge threads to course free.
On their way, they came across more rotten mana spheres. Valens noted the change in them. That how weak they felt. That how aimlessly they hung there, now that the Lifesurges had slashed them apart from the main trickle that fed them.
One tendril wasn’t enough. He had to dig his way to the main mass of the Ward, where he hoped he would find the real core of this foul energy, and fix this freakish creation that defied nature like how he would fix a cut on a patient’s arm.
Stronger resistance on the way. Clanking of a sword and a brutal tear of a roar that dinned sharp in his ears. The woman’s cry, a warrior’s cry, one that carried nothing but a deep, hot fury. Nomad was screaming at her. Alive, then. That was a relief.
Valens wanted to open his eyes and see them for himself, to tell them that he was trying to end this creature for good. He couldn’t. He feared that the moment he let the outside fill into his vision, the delicate threads of Apathy weaved across his emotions would break, and pain would spill forth like a crashing wave. Here, in the dark, it was away. A stray thought that was cast off from his mind like an unwanted guest.
Lifesurge threads reached the end of the tendril. The Resonance had told him so. Threads of it found their way into the main mass of the creature. A Lifeward painted its outer frame in Valens’s sound vision. Human-like, but not quite. It didn’t have a heart. Any organs or such. Bones were missing where they should be, replaced by a blend of cartilage and rotten flesh patched over with an ungodly amount of balmy skin.
One, two… ten… eighty. A total of one hundred fifteen gaps in the Resonance, scattered across the creature’s body where it sent the tendrils outward. Valens didn’t have the mana to pull them apart one by one. Not when the Ward could easily patch them with more rotten sources. He had to find the hole that the woman had opened, the one that screamed closer to its head.