Chapter 4250: Warrior’s Oath (part 3) |
Barago dodged the following claw sweep and countered with a diagonal slash that severed Makhari’s fore leg at the shoulder. .
The Byk couldn’t afford finesse. To even scratch his enemy, Makhari needed to put his full weight behind every blow, making them predictable.
"Stand down, you stupid beast!" Barago said. "You need a Healer, and I need to get away from here. Don’t waste my time and your life on a fool’s errand."
"I am Makhari, a warrior of the Byk clan!" The magical beast said without letting the amputation stop his attack. "I’d rather die than let my oath go unfulfilled."
Without light fusion, blood gushed from the stump of Makhari’s shoulder like a fountain. Darkness fusion allowed him to feel no pain, but his strength abandoned his body with each beat of his mighty heart.
"Mister Bear!" Lenart sobbed, looking around in the hope of seeing Lith or one of his many aunts and uncles come to his rescue.
The young boy wanted to run. He wanted to help the Byk. Even screaming for help would have been better than sitting there, staring at the fight in a daze. Yet Lenart’s mind and body refused to listen.
"I can arrange that!" Barago snarled as Makhari’s claw opened three cuts in his cheek at the same time as the Awakened’s sword pierced through the Byk’s chest and came out of his back.
Makhari clung to Barago and used all the mana he had left for a final pulse of darkness magic. He raised his snout, roaring with the last ounce of his strength before lowering his maw and closing it around Barago’s neck.
Barago noticed Reaper, the King in the South, appearing from a Blink, but Makhari’s body weighed him down. The Awakened man tried to raise his blade to block Harvester, Reaper’s glaive, but like the Byk’s mouth, the claw that held him refused to let go.
Reaper’s lunge blew Barago’s head open and turned it into ashes with one swift movement.
"Mister Bear!" Lenart’s voice finally found its way out of his throat. "Uncle Reaper, please, save Mister Bear!"
Reaper cast Lith’s tier three Spirit Spell, Mother’s Embrace, to sew the foreleg back on the shoulder and pump the lost blood back in the Byk’s body. Mother’s Embrace healed the wounds, and Makhari’s life force became weaker.
"I’m sorry, kid." Reaper had seen enough magical beasts with a cracked core to know there was nothing he could do. "Let’s bring you to safety."
"Why?" The boy wailed. "Why are you letting Mister Bear die?"
"He’s already dead, Lenart." Reaper replied with a coldness born out of necessity. "If you want to honor his sacrifice, shut up and stop struggling. While I have to deal with you, the rest of your family is still in danger."
Makhari breathed with great difficulty, but at least the pain was gone. He didn’t understand why the little man kept screaming and trashing now that everything was over, so Makhari pulled his snout up in what he hoped would look like a smile.
In his final moments, the Byk wanted to reassure Lenart that everything would be alright.
After all, the Crownless King’s cub was safe, and Makhari’s sacrifice had ensured the safety and prosperity of the Byk clan in the years to come.
***
Faluel had just finished dealing with the violet-cored Awakened outside Lith’s house when she listened to the report of Lenart’s rescue.
’There’s only Surin left.’ A single Spirit Blink brought her above Lutia, and from there she followed the trail of blood and magical beasts’ corpses left by the Awakened in his wake.
Faluel had listened in real time to the battle reports and had already traced in her mind the original escape routes of the Awakened, where they had been spotted, and in what direction they had been moving.
’They scattered to spread the pursuing forces thin, but with four out of five Awakened found and killed, the path of the last one is obvious.’ She thought, and she was right.
Consulting a map of Lutia and cross-referencing the reports made the Awakened’s escape route obvious, but only because she had seven heads that worked in unison and cast spells faster than an entire squad of the Queen’s Corps.
Even with the Erasers jamming Lith’s tracking enchantments imbued in the Scalewalker armor, Faluel knew Surin’s life force like the back of her hand. The Hydra’s Life Sensing array covered over a kilometer, allowing her to spot the baby girl even from a considerable distance.
A Spirit Steps brought Faluel to Surin’s last known position, and a Blink moved her in front of the Awakened.
"Give me the baby girl, and I promise you that you won’t suffer much." Her voice was a hissing choir of angry gods. "Touch one of her hairs, and I’ll leave you alive for Lith."
"I’ll take my chances." Yryn swallowed hard, pushing her knife against Surin’s neck until it bled.
The sight of the scarlet droplet ignited something primal in the Hydra. She had already failed her own son, Sedra, and now she was failing another innocent child who needed her help.
Friya’s pregnancy already troubled Faluel, stirring her maternal instincts, and the cries of the baby girl pushed the Hydra over the edge. She felt something boiling over deep into her mana core as the scales on six of her seven necks turned violet.
Faluel weaved Friya’s Dimensional Ruler spell without even noticing, her hands clenched around Strife’s haft so hard that her scales creaked. A mist of golden sparks of light enveloped Surin, creating a dimensional field that enveloped her like a blanket.
One moment the baby girl was in Yryn’s arms, and the next she was in Faluel’s, flabbergasting both women.
"About my offer..." The Hydra swung Strife, hitting the Awakened woman with the violence of a freight train and turning her into a stain on the nearest wall.
"That woman was lucky you and your niblings are my priority, Surin, or I’d never let her off that easily."
***
The tower appeared over the mana geyser in the Trawn Wood’s clearing, and Lith used the Warp Mirror to reach Lutia while Solus was still scanning the area with the tower’s sensory arrays after the spatial shift.
Tista emerged from the tower a heartbeat late, but her brother was already far away, moving as if something possessed him.
’Solus, status report!’ He had left Valeron’s castle for less than a minute, but the attack had started earlier.
Killing someone took but a second, and Warping away with a hostage didn’t take much longer. Every second he had spent in Valeron, flying toward the nearest mana geyser, and waiting for the Tower Warp to charge up, was one second too many.
’Everyone is safe and sound!’ She said as she checked the position of the locator beacons enchanted in the Scalewalker armor and received the reports. ’Nobody got hurt badly, but...’
She used a partial mind fusion to share the details of Aran’s and Leria’s fight. Of how Leran, a six-year-old boy, had been forced to kill a man in the attempt to rescue Teryon.
Of Lenart’s desperate cries for the Byk who had died for him.
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