Chapter 74 - Abelion.
Eveline raised her head with a rasp, her mind spinning, while Alvazar landed in front of her.
Gray came down and walked over to her, and picked up her pouch of crystals.
He held his eyes on her, and then sat back on Alvazar in silence and flew on.
"N...no..." Eveline said, and got up off the ground with difficulty.
Rexy coughed and raised his head, and saw Eveline come over to him.
"How are you?" she asked, and looked him over.
Rexy had got off with nothing worse than a light concussion.
"Damn it all! I thought we were about to witness something unimaginable! Then again... it happened anyway..." Kelo said.
"It seems number 33 has yet another serious problem... and although it's clear enough that she's doomed... it is worth noting that the seventh sector is the longest, and is designed for a long fight among the competitors before they reach the finish... so who knows... perhaps she'll make it," Noro said.
"Oh come now, Noro. I understand you're as impressed as I am by her trick with that acceleration... but I don't think she's such a miracle worker that she can run down numbers 17, 48 and 23. On top of that she has to find at least 9 crystals somehow... so it's all rather obvious," Kelo said.
Fliers passed overhead.
Ground riders went past her.
And she went on walking with a limp toward her lightsurf, where it lay on the far side of the course.
Every step was heavy less from the pain than from the knowledge of a dream coming apart.
She turned her head and saw a zone with a duel node.
Olen dropped to his knees, Artus fell back onto the bench, Uro lowered his eyes, and Aren and Deron watched with the same pain in theirs.
Eveline took the lightsurf and walked into the duel node, still trying to get her breathing back.
She touched the photocyte that activated the node, and waited.
"Nobody's likely to spend time on a duel right now... but even if she takes that crystal... she'll have only two points... and she's let too many competitors past her..." Olen said.
Eveline waited out the last seconds for the node to register that there was no opponent, so that she could take the crystal.
Yet in those last seconds the node closed under a dome, because an opponent had entered the zone.
Everyone went still.
Eveline drew her brows together and turned slowly.
Horror and despair mixed on her face when she saw her opponent.
"Ilau..." she whispered.
He stood facing her beside his boar and looked at her with a dark stare.
"Who... is that..." Artus asked.
"...Ilau... her best friend... or he was once..." Deron answered.
Ilau touched the photocyte on his chest, and a magic shell formed around him.
"Ilau... if you need the crystal — just take it," Eveline said.
Ilau shook his head and activated his rod.
Eveline drew a ragged breath and started to step back, then set her foot down where it had been.
Unable to activate either a rod or a protective shell, she raised her hands, closed her fists and took a stance.
"Noro... is it me, or has that girl forgotten that the rod and the protective shell exist?" Kelo asked.
"Don't be a fool, brother... it's obvious... she can't use them... it seems she's a null."
The spectators in the stands talked among themselves as Eveline and Ilau closed.
"A null?... Aren't the students of Midar University Conductors and nothing else?..." Kelo asked.
"I'm afraid... that question should be put to someone other than me..." Noro answered.
Ilau closed slowly, and his boar came around from the other side.
Eveline never took her eyes off Ilau, while Rexy watched the boar.
At one moment Ilau lunged forward and swung the rod down vertically, but Eveline turned and threw a fist back at him that caught him full in the face.
He staggered back and ran a finger under his nose in surprise, and saw blood.
Rexy set to drawing the boar off, flying around it and blinding it with flashes.
"Not bad... did your new little friend teach you that?" Ilau asked, and came at her again.
Eveline stepped back, shifted aside and slipped every arc.
She kicked him straight under the knee and his leg gave way beneath him.
And then she tried immediately to take him into a choke.
"No! Too early!" Artus shouted.
Ilau reversed the rod in his grip and drove it straight into her side.
She let out a breath with a cry of pain and reeled back at once.
Ilau's boar, unable to catch Rexy, saw its chance and charged Eveline, who had no time to react and went down under it.
After a blow that heavy she could barely draw breath, lying face down and rasping with everything in her lungs.
Ilau rose and looked at Eveline on the ground, then glanced at Rexy, who had gone rigid at what he saw and now charged the boar in fury.
In that same moment the rod came flying into Rexy.
He was thrown aside and dropped into the dirt.
Ilau walked over to him without hurrying and picked his rod back up, and then turned to Eveline on the ground with a light sway.
"Still think you're special?... Like HIM?... You think that since you're 'Different', that makes you as 'Great' as he is?... Ha... you're probably thinking about how lucky you are to have met him... am I right?" he asked.
Eveline looked at him from the ground and did not answer.
Ilau smirked and wet his lips, and looked at Rexy, then at Eveline, and back at Rexy.
He shifted his grip and struck Rexy with the rod, and Rexy let out a cry of pain.
"R-Rexy!" Eveline cried through the rasp and the pain.
"I AM ASKING YOU! AM I RIGHT?!" Ilau shouted back at her.
Stolen novel; please report.
Eveline froze in horror and looked into Ilau's mad eyes.
He turned and struck again, harder, and Rexy howled more terribly still.
"STOP IT!"
"ANSWER THE QUESTION YOU BITCH!"
He went on beating Rexy with all his strength, and added a word to every blow.
"I!...AM!...ASKING!...AM...I...RIGHT?"
Blow after blow came down on Rexy, until his cries stopped and a small body lay at Ilau's feet, covered in blood.
"YOU'RE RIGHT!" she screamed, and Ilau stopped.
Eveline's eyes began to fill with tears.
Artus and Olen watched in horror, and then turned their heads as they felt the air thicken.
Aren stood crushing the railing until it cracked, and fury burned in his eyes.
The moment he made to jump down, both cadets stopped him and caught him by the shoulders.
He turned his head to them, and they shook their heads and looked at him with understanding.
"Uh...Noro... does this not strike you as... a little much?..." Kelo asked.
"It does not... but as a man... who knows the rules of the competition by heart... I will say that unfortunately there is no violation in what he is doing... it may well be time to add a new clause to the rules..." Noro answered.
"Or perhaps... it is a lesson for those... who chose to go against accepted tradition... Midar University is not for the weak after all... and it is certainly not for nulls..." Kelo said.
Aurelius glanced at Varian, who let out a deep breath and looked back at him.
Lucia was following the broadcast, and something like partial sympathy could be made out in her eyes.
Ilau walked over to the red crystal and pulled it out, and the barrier dissolved. He mounted the boar and, with one last glance at Eveline, raced away.
Eveline got onto all fours and crawled slowly over to Rexy.
Her trembling hands covered her mouth as she looked at what was left of him.
Every breath came out as a short cry, and her body began to shake.
She could barely hold back the hysteria.
Aren landed beside her on his wings and ran straight to her.
Lucia made to jump down from the stands the moment she saw Aren step in, but Aurelius stopped her with a hand.
Aren dropped to his knees and looked at Rexy with horror and pain as the life went out of him. His head was shattered, his legs and ribs broken, and blood ran everywhere.
The cadets came down on their fliers together with Deron and Uro.
Aren's hands were shaking with panic, yet he had no intention of giving up.
DAMN...DAMNDAMNDAMN... THINK AREN... THINK FOR FUCK'S SAKE!... I CAN'T LET HIM DIE!... WHAT DO I DO?!...
"Artus! Olen! Do you have a ser—" he began, but the cadets shook their heads at once.
"Aren... I'm afraid even if we had one... he's already... past saving..." Olen answered.
Deron held his daughter, who had begun to sob into his chest, while Uro crouched beside her and laid his hand on her back.
Aren looked at Rexy on a shaking breath and turned over every possibility in his head.
And then a memory surfaced in it.
The First Archon. A dying serpent. The Basilisk King.
Aren's eyes widened, and he let out another breath, as unsteady as the last.
Will it work?... It doesn't matter. I'll do whatever I have to.
Aren rolled up his sleeves and moved closer to Rexy.
"Aren?... what are you do—" Artus began.
"You should all step back. All of you," Aren answered.
They exchanged looks, and Eveline, still barely holding her ragged breathing together, watched him at a loss.
They rose slowly and moved away, but Eveline refused.
"A-Aren! Wh-what are you..." she said, and then saw him hold an open palm out toward her.
"Trust me," he answered without turning around.
Deron came over and laid a hand on her shoulder, but she shook it off.
Aren lowered his hand and knelt there, breathing deeply, his eyes on the dying Rexy and the face of the dying Elen in his mind.
"You're a hero too," Elen had said once.
Aren drew another breath and laid his hands on Rexy's bloodied, broken body, and closed his eyes.
Aurelius and the other Archons leaned forward.
Concentration began to narrow the sounds around Aren as he recalled what he had learned in the lectures and in the library with Eveline. The method of joining with another's Pandorum.
Please... little one... Please... answer me... Aren thought.
He felt a barely perceptible pulse, and his consciousness was carried across in an instant.
Aren opened his eyes and saw a dark, boundless space around him.
Threads of energy in many colors drifted about him and shifted through one another.
Then he lowered his head and saw Rexy lying there.
Running to him, Aren dropped to his knees and looked him over.
Rexy appeared whole, yet his eyes were clouded.
Then he noticed the little beast's tail beginning to dissolve from the tip.
This... this is his life energy... Aren realized, watching Rexy die slowly but surely.
He reached a hand out to Rexy and laid a palm against his muzzle.
In that same second the whole dark space gave way to blurred pictures out of the little beast's memory.
All of it felt warm, tender and light.
The first meeting with Eveline. How she healed his paw. How they spent time together in her room. How he lay in her lap while she studied. And... how she cried quietly in secret from everyone, and told herself all the while that she was coping with everything happening at the university.
She was everything to him. And every second spent with her, he was happy. Even dying, he was happy that she was near. He was happy to die protecting her.
Aren felt all of it as though the memories were his own, and tears came into his eyes and his lips shook.
He lowered his head and watched Rexy, half dissolved already.
"You... you can't... you can't just up and die," Aren said and let his face drop.
Rexy raised his clouded eyes to him and laid his vanishing paw carefully on his hand.
Aren raised his eyes and saw a small smile on his muzzle. As though he were saying "It's all right."
"No... it isn't all right..." Aren answered, and then raised his head to the threads of energy wrapped around his own body.
"Forgive me, little one... but I'm not letting you go that easily. Not you," he said, and raised a hand to his energy.
"Are you sure?" a voice came from behind.
Aren glanced over his shoulder and saw the colossal Bjorg-Var standing in the shadow, and beneath him stood Ursus, the Basilisk King, Doomhorn, Cortex and the White-Stone Boar.
The energy wrapped around Aren was bound to every one of those creatures.
There was not a drop of doubt in Aren's eyes. And that answer was enough.
All the creatures stepped back and vanished into the shadow, and Aren returned his eyes to Rexy.
In. Out. A deep breath in. A deep breath out.
The energy gathered on Aren's raised hand, and then he brought it down hard and laid it against Rexy, and all of it poured into the little beast's body.
Eveline and the others went rigid and saw Aren's tattoos begin to shine with a bright blue light.
"What the..." Olen said.
Eveline's eyes widened when she saw Rexy's bloodied body covered in shining runic tattoos of its own.
In that very moment, inside Rexy's body, at the deep cellular level, every molecule, every atom, every neuron began to take on a sheath of blue energy and enter an endless magical reaction that ran out through the whole body in a wave, until it reached the Pandorum.
An energy impulse of such force went out from them that Eveline, Deron with the cadets and Uro were thrown dozens of meters in every direction, and a broad, powerful beam of light struck into the sky and punched clean through the clouds.
From that energy surge wreckage flew across the whole sector, and the air began to twist into a vortex that grew into an enormous tornado.
Aurelius stretched out his hands instantly and made magic barriers of light over every stand.
The whole ground filled with chaos: a tornado, shot through with thunder, destroyed everything around it, while the spectators pressed back in panic to the far edge of the stands.
Deron crawled to Eveline with difficulty and tried to cover her with his own body, as everything around them flew apart and broke.
The fliers of the competitors ahead went into a frenzy and a panic and threw their riders, trying to press closer to the ground.
The cadets' fliers folded back their ears and pressed into a corner as the tornado grew stronger and stronger.
"GET THE PEOPLE OUT! NOW!" Varian shouted, as Aurelius held his hands out in front of him and controlled the protective barrier over the spectators at the epicenter of the chaos, even at that distance.
Lucia sprang down from the stands immediately and flew forward.
When she arrived, she saw Eveline and the others below, barely keeping their feet and struggling not to be taken into the tornado.
She had only just made to fly to their aid when she froze at the sight of a shadow that came out of the tornado.
A colossal bone limb came down on the ground directly in front of Eveline and Deron.
As they watched, the limb took on muscular structure and grew a covering of white-stone scale.
They raised their heads and saw enormous spiked tails beginning to spread apart through the whole wall of wind, and a gigantic head rising.
One of the pieces of wreckage broke off directly above them, but Lucia pushed father and daughter aside in time.
"We need to get out! RIGHT NOW!" Lucia shouted.
Then she felt a strange change in the air, and turning, she saw the beam that struck into the sky disappear and the tornado slow.
For a moment it grew quieter.
And in the next second a powerful shock wave from inside broke the tornado apart entirely, and everyone below was scattered once more.
Eveline flew straight at a stone wall, but Olen caught her in time, and Artus caught Uro.
Deron caught Lucia, falling to the ground and rolling with her to the far edge.
Aurelius's barrier shattered under an impulse of that energy density, and the Archon of Light himself could barely believe what was happening.
The whole sector lay under a cloud of settling dust and wreckage, while the people at the stands lowered their hands from their faces in fear.
The cadets and the others below raised their heads slowly.
Eveline coughed and lifted her eyes, and went still at once together with the rest.
Lucia watched what was happening with a shock she had never known before.
Aren remembered a recent conversation with Eveline.
"What? A dream companion?" Aren had asked once.
"Well, yes... before I met Rexy I'd read my fill of books about all sorts of mighty creatures... and you know... I used to imagine having a mighty companion of my very own... strong and truly magnificent... I even came up with a name for him..."
"And what was it?" Aren asked.
Eveline put her hands on her hips and said it with pride.
"He would have been called..."
A stream of wind ran out through the settling dust and brought Aren into view.
He opened his eyes, and they shone blue. He stood straight and spoke his words with an unnatural volume and an unnatural depth, so that everyone around him heard his voice.
"Rise. Abelion."
[LISTEN TO THE SOUNDTRACK]
Behind him rose a colossal creature, greater in size than anything anyone in the Republic had ever seen. Six limbs, two pairs of gigantic, electrified wings, four long and enormous spiked tails, claws long as blades, saber fangs and scale of a blue magical material.
The enormous drawn-out ears and the wing membranes of gleaming blue matter made Eveline recognize her companion at once.
"Wh...what is that..." Kelo said.
Aurelius froze with his mouth open, and then a single word came faintly out of it.
"A beast...god..."