12-79. Holding On
Trevor’s hooves thudded into the beach, kicking up gravel and sand until he and his rider had reached the tree line. Miguel finally slumped against the stag’s back, his breathing labored as dozens of toxins flowed through his veins. He’d already done what he could, but he needed help if he was going to survive.
Sensing the gravity of the situation, Trevor bore him through the forest even faster than normal, and soon enough, they reached Biggle’s enclave. Trevor nimbly leaped over the low stone wall, hardly acknowledging the flicker of ethera. If Miguel hadn’t worn one of the island’s access pendants, entry would not have been so easy.
Certainly, Trevor had found that out on more than one occasion when he’d tried to snack on Biggle’s garden. The shield surrounding the Alchemist’s home wasn’t lethal. Nor did it completely prevent entry. Instead, it inflicted a heavy restriction upon any intruder. And it caused quite a lot of pain.
But with the access pendant, Miguel – and Trevor by extension – were exempt.
Upon reaching the small cottage, Miguel slid from the stag’s back, leaving Trevor’s coat slick with blood. It stank of disease and had taken on a slightly green sheen. He staggered up the three steps, tripping over the last and stumbling into the door. It held firm, and for a moment, he couldn’t understand why.
Then, his foggy thoughts caught up to the situation, and he turned the knob. It swung inward, releasing a cloud of medicinal odors that very nearly overwhelmed Miguel’s senses. He took one step, then clutched his spasming stomach. Before he could move another inch, he vomited a mixture of bile, green-tinted blood, and whatever was left of his lunch upon Biggle’s scrubbed wood floor.
He fell to his knees in a puddle of his own sick, then keeled over as a seizure shook his body. It gripped him tightly, his every muscle clenched. But somehow, his mind was still working, and he managed to take enough control to inch across the small cottage and to his destination.
All the while, he could feel Trevor pacing outside, a mixture of frustration and anger building in his heart. He was so distraught that he didn’t even notice the garden – a rarity for the stag who never missed a chance to eat high-quality herbs.
Miguel ignored his companion’s distress. There was only room in his mind for one stream of thoughts, and he couldn’t afford to focus on anything but the task at hand. Finally, with foul-smelling sweat drenching his clothes, he managed to reach the storage cabinet.
He reached up and unlatched the lock. The door swung free of its own accord, allowing him access to a treasure trove of potions. Each one was, at least in part, based in vitality, and Biggle had left them in the grove to cure, claiming that it increased their potency.
Miguel could only hope as much.
He dragged himself up the wardrobe, knocking a few potions to the floor. The vials were shatter-proof, but the concoctions were delicate enough that even unwanted movement could foul their efficacy. Biggle had explained it all to him on numerous occasions.
Or complained about it, rather.
The Alchemist wasn’t a particularly social person, but he made a habit of talking the ear off anyone who visited his little enclave. And Miguel had made it a point to do just that, as much to ensure easy access to potent potions as because he wanted to know every member of the grove.
Those visits paid off when Miguel finally wrapped his fingers around a red-tinted potion. The liquid inside was no thicker than water, but he knew it was the strongest healing potion Biggle had ever brewed. The Alchemist had gone on and on about it during Miguel’s last visit.
Hopefully, it was ready, because none of the others in the cabinet were.
And Miguel suspected that it would require something truly potent to counteract whatever the invader had done to him. The wound itself wasn’t that much of an issue. Miguel had been stabbed in the kidney before, and he knew he would heal from that kind of injury. Especially on the island, where his attributes had reached ridiculous numbers.
But the afflictions were a different story altogether.
With trembling fingers, he tried to unstopper the vial, but he couldn’t get a grip. He was too weak. Panic rising in his chest, he bit down on the cork and twisted to break the wax seal. It didn’t work.
If he’d been in his right mind, the failure wouldn’t have been surprising. The wax had come from the grove’s apiary, and it was a treasure in and of itself. Still, Miguel worried at it until, finally, his teeth cut through the durable stuff. He finally got it loose.
And very nearly spilled the potion in the process.
At some point, he’d fallen to his side, his body still racked by an ongoing seizure. He couldn’t sit up. He could scarcely bring the potion to his lips and tip it sideways. A few drops spilled out of the corner of his mouth, but he managed to corral the rest of the vitality-infused liquid.
The red color suggested that it would taste like peppermint or cherry flavoring. That was not the case. It was salty, with an earthy undertone that suggested mushrooms had been one of its key ingredients. Not a pleasant taste by anyone’s measure, but it teemed with enough vitality to give Miguel hope that it would do the job.
Swallowing was the next challenge, though one he undertook with every ounce of focus he could muster. And like all other obstacles that had stood in his way, he surmounted that challenge.
He could feel the potion burning down his throat, but in his increasingly addled state, he had trouble grasping why it was even important. Ethera and vitality spread through his body, arcing through his soul as he finally collapsed. The vial clinked against the wooden floor, rolling across the boards until it came to rest against the base of the cabinet.
Miguel lay there, his eyes glazed over as he stared unseeing. His body continued to convulse, while his thoughts had already succumbed to enforced dementia that didn’t fade until he heard a great crash. He didn’t have the energy – or the desire – to turn his head, though.
In fact, he couldn’t be bothered to notice anything else at all.
* * *
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Chan Yiu-lung dodged an arrow, slicing it in two with a backhanded blow from his sword, Transcendent Whisper of Unfathomable Dao. The clean cut sent sparks flying, but Chan Yiu-lung paid it no mind at all. Instead, he slowly advanced across the battlefield, secure in his invulnerability.
After all, he was a destined sword saint. Nothing could stand between him and his goal of meeting and slaying the dragon. Elijah Hart had disrespected Heaven’s Bastion one too many times. Now, he would pay for that loss of face.
It was too bad that he cowered behind Ironshore’s walls like the ineffectual weakling he obviously was. The whole world had crowned the little dragon as the most powerful man in the world, and yet, Chan Yiu-lung knew the truth. He’d heard it from Nico Song’s own mouth.
Elijah Hart was a fraud and a coward.
And his ineptitude had cost Heaven’s Bastion one of their own. Dat Bao had been an outsider. Barely worthy to live in Hong Kong, much less accompany the estimable Sadie Song as her companion. Yet, he was of Heaven’s Bastion, and Elijah Hart had gotten him killed.
What’s more, the man hadn’t stopped there. He’d returned cloaked in disrespect, threatening the Healer most responsible for their victory. Nico Song had channeled the humility of wise ancestors to turn aside that insult, and he had lost his sister as a result.
How Elijah Hart had managed to beguile such a beauty, Chan Yiu-lung would never know. What he did know was that he had no intention of letting that string of insults go. Nico Song might have been humble. He might have been willing to ignore the disrespect in the interest of serving the greater good. But Chan Yiu-lung had adopted his name for a reason.
He had the heart of a shining dragon, and he would not stand for insults against his clan.
He advanced across the field, though he didn’t rush. Instead, he maintained perfect, unhurried form as his sword lashed out to cut through any attacks hurled from the walls. Meanwhile, the latest horde of disgusting jiangshi crashed against the walls. The qi barrier held for a few moments as the yin creatures bashed against it, but after a few moments, it shimmered and fell.
The rotting monsters piled high, using one another as a ramp until they reached the crest of the wall. That was where they met the defenders, who treated them like the disposable piles of animated flesh they were.
Chan Yiu-lung paid them no mind.
Destroying those things was a service to the world. He would have done it himself if they weren’t so useful.
Besides, they could – and would be – replaced. Such was the power of Yin. It was already dead. Still. It could not die, only be repurposed.
Chan Yiu-lung’s rope-soled sandals barely touched the churned earth as he glided across the battlefield that had already claimed so many lives. Others within Heaven’s Bastion eschewed the old ways, embracing terms like ethera and spells. That was a mistake, as evidenced by Chan Yiu-lung’s prodigious cultivation. The only path to enlightenment lay through traditional teachings.
Thus, his robes, which were sewn from the purest cotton that he’d picked himself beneath the silvery mist of a dozen mornings. Each boll had been chosen for its perfection. As a result, his flowing garments had been ideally harmonized to breathe qi. A master tailor had sewn the outfit, adding layer after layer of arrays meant to connect it to the dao.
Therefore, it remained perfectly clean. White to signify his unfathomable connection to the heavens, the only decoration being the embroidered dragons around the cuffs.
As Chan Yiu-lung plotted his upcoming encounter with the false dragon, he saw a curious plant. It looked like a lotus, though three times the size. More, in the churned battlefield of mud and blood, it stood alone, its blood-red petals a sign of its connection to the dao.
He could not resist.
Even with the battle raging before him, Chan Yiu-lung knelt and gently cradled the flower. It pulsed with so much yang energy that he was nearly overwhelmed with reverence.
And then, it grew.
Chan Yiu-lung couldn’t keep the joyous laugh from erupting from between his lips. He was truly chosen. Heaven’s champion indeed.
The flower continued to blossom, spreading its petals inch by inch until it reached a diameter of nearly four feet. All the while, Chan Yiu-lung resisted the urge to pluck it. Clearly, the heavens had granted him a boon.
“Heavenly Blood Lotus,” he breathed in awe. It was a fitting name for such a glorious treasure.
Yin creatures flowed all around him, instinctively giving the flower all due respect. Even they knew it was special. Heaven-sent.
When the thing stopped growing, Chan Yiu-lung reached out, brushing his fingers against one the petals. He jerked away, his finger bleeding.
“Sharp…”
That was the last word he uttered before a surge of qi grabbed his attention and directed it at the lotus heart. And from the center of the flower grew something terrible. Something powerful.
Chan Yiu-lung never had an opportunity to realize the error of his ways before the flower exploded, cutting him into a multitude of pieces.
* * *
“What in all the hells was that idjit doin’?” growled Kurik from his position atop the wall. He glanced at Essex, asking, “You saw that, right? Prancin’ across an active battlefield, and he stops to look at my murder flower?”
Essex, his hands clutched behind his back as he stood at parade rest, didn’t look away from the battlefield. “You really should work on those names.”
“It’s a flower that murders. Murder flower. It suits.”
Indeed, the trap had proven even more effective than Kurik could have expected. The explosion alone was enough to kill mid-level mortals for almost a dozen feet, but the real damage came from the petals. They were harder than most metals and sharper than even Carmen’s blades, and the explosion hurled them outward with enough force to cut even low ascendents into pieces.
But the damage didn’t stop there.
The petals were also brittle, which meant that after a few good cuts, they tended to shatter into a thousand sharp pieces that embedded themselves into the enemy. Or turned them into diced meat, if their constitutions were low enough. The zombies fell into that latter category.
“I’m markin’ it down as a successful test,” Kurik said.
“It’s still too slow,” Essex pointed out.
That was the only real issue with the murder flower – it took a few moments to activate. That, and it required seeds grown under very specific circumstances, but that wasn’t a problem for Kurik, who had access to the grove and a spryggent who loved engineering vegetation.
“Workin’ on it.”
“Work faster,” Essex ordered.
Kurik didn’t need the man’s instructions, though he didn’t resent being told what to do. He could be a good soldier when the situation called for it. And this invasion was just such an occasion.
Only a few of the twenty thousand fighters from Heaven’s Bastion were a real threat in a one-on-one fight. Not only were there idiots like the prancing, white-robed man who’d, for some inexplicable reason, stopped to investigate a murder flower, but there were plenty who just weren’t fully invested in taking Ironshore.
The necromancers were the real problem, though. And Kurik believed that most of the soldiers had only been brought along to provide fuel for the necromancers. After all, each time one of them died, another, oft-reusable zombie was born.
But even more than that, Kurik feared the off-worlders.
He’d only caught a few glimpses of them, but from what he understood, they were a crack team who knew how to go about their business. One report in particular worried Kurik.
“You really think they got a demi-god in charge?”
Essex shook his head. “I don’t know. If so, then we need Elijah to come back sooner rather than later.”
“Damn right,” Kurik muttered. Elijah had been gone for months, and though he could come back at any point, every day he remained in that Primal Realm increased the chances that he’d return to a very different world than the one he’d left behind. “Are the off-worlders still guarding the Spires?”
“They are.”
Kurik wasn’t certain if that was a good thing or not. On the one hand, if they were guarding the Conclave Spires, those dangerous people weren’t attacking Ironshore’s walls. But on the other hand, it would mean that any help they received would be forced to go through a couple hundred high-ascendents.
And one potential demi-god.
“I’m gonna get to work. I been tryin’ to grow a wiggly vine trap that might work even better against the zombies. Needs a bit of work, though.”
“Let me know if you need anything,” said Essex, his eyes still on the battlefield. Or more importantly, the seemingly endless horde of surging zombies.
“Will do, boss. Will do.”
And then Kurik left the wall, eager to create something that might turn the tide of the battle.