Think Cal, think!
His mind spun as he tried to find a viable path forward, wading through the shock. It was disquieting to be surrounded by six bloodthirtsy Mycari and not even feel their auras, all the while left to assume each one of them is strong enough to kill his friends without breaking a sweat.
Should I try talking? No… this has already gone too far, for too long. Talking isn't an option. Money? One hundred gold might not be much to Narbok, but to the others—
"…And then there's Jakob."
Cal heard the merchant's name and felt his face go ashen.
He knows about Jakob?
Narbok kept talking, but Cal didn't register anything beyond the name.
It's only been a few days - how'd they find out? We were careful! Ok, ok, maybe buying a couple spirit cauldrons from Yorrin wasn't the brightest move, but I'd only visited Jakob with batches of potions to sell twice. How many eyes does Zarven have? Who talked? How did this happen!?
Cal mentally shook himself out of the panicked spiral. Stop! Think!
Then the elf produced the leather bag and pulled out a sample before upending it.
[Perfect Memory] delivered before he knew it. Jakob behind the counter of the Magnificent Market, gesturing emphatically as he pitched a waterskin upgrade. Cal knew those fingers.
Oh no, Jakob. What have they done to you? Cal grit his teeth against the shock and fear that had him so off balance, refusing to give Narbok the satisfaction.
The Mycari swept a hand toward Cal's friends as he asked if they knew what he'd been up to, keeping his eyes fixed on Cal.
Cal didn't turn from the enemy to see how his friends were reacting. He didn't need to.
He could feel a change in the quality of tension in the air, like something on the back of his neck. Corinne inhaled sharply. The rustle of someone adjusting their grip on a weapon. And below it all, barely audible, a small, wounded sound from Leo.
Shame consumed him. For all of it.
The full, ugly scope of what he'd done and who he'd endangered in the doing. He'd told himself a story, a convincing yarn about the Sovereign's Toll, about how the astronomical cost justified the risk. He'd framed it as necessity. The Toll was the price of perfection, and perfection was the only path that might lead back to Evelynn, Katie, and Jack. He didn't want to miss a day more than he had to, and every corner he cut and every reckless gamble that paid off would bring him one step closer, that much faster. It didn't help that the power he kept gaining since coming to Veraxus had puffed him up. A suburban dad and corporate drone turned superhero? Nevermind the close calls. He'd been walking on cloud nine for a while, the change in his personal power giving him a feeling of agency he'd never experienced back on Earth. And each trial he overcame only made him more confident that he'd continue to succeed.
And now his friends were paying for his inflated confidence. He never should have put them back at risk.
Something in Narbok’s performance changed: the theatrical mockery draining away, replaced by a flatter tone that Cal's subconscious flagged before his conscious mind caught up to what the elf had been saying. Two-fingers flicked at Durk.
Cal jerked toward the movement, but [Combat Analysis] told him it was already too late. Durk was mid-lunge, quickly covering the distance before driving his spear into Gavin's neck.
Corinne screamed.
The sound ripped through the clearing. Cal saw her charge as the elf dodged back, but all he could do was stare at the young man who valiantly tried to stop himself from bleeding out. The shame spiral nearly drove him to his knees.
You weren't paying attention! You were uselessly wallowing in guilt, and Gavin paid for it! He's dead because you! It's your fault! He's dead, and all your friends are going to die because you—
No.
No, this is what he wants. You, on your knees, broken. While he kills the rest of them. Look at Corinne. Look at Leo. Are you going to let them die because you’re busy feeling sorry for yourself? Are you going to fail here when you have so far left to go to get home?
Something inside him shifted, a corner of his mind pushing back against the grief and guilt and shame. It compressed the emotions down into a dense point, then ignited them all. A cold fire of rage burned away the useless self-recrimination. My mistakes? Yes. My fault? No. The fault belonged to the hand that held the spear and the mind that gave the order. Narbok. Durk. And the man pulling all of their strings: Zarven. He shoved the horror of Gavin’s death away and used the anger it birthed to hone his focus to a razor’s edge.
They started this… I will finish it.
He quickly assessed the situation and concluded that martial skill alone wouldn't be enough. He needed a force multiplier.
He needed magic.
[Liminal Breath]
The world slowed to a crawl, colors leaching from the clearing as sounds stretched. Cal threw himself into the challenge.
Six of them. Too many to engage at once. I can’t be in that many places, but a Spell can. How do I turn six threats into six victims? I need to disrupt their ability to fight and coordinate. Something that hits them all instantly… maybe turning their own senses into a weapon against them?
[Savant of the Mind] seized the problem and began strategizing, leveraging his knowledge of military tactics on Earth against his fledgling magical acumen. He remembered his experiments in the Rootbound Depths with overcharging [Light Orb], and he began rapidly iterating on an idea. [Lux], which governed light and radiation. [Vox] for sound. [Condense] and [Project] to help weaponize and guide. [Continuance] for the payload.
Cal began to raise his left hand as he merged the theory into a design for a new Spell.
He lifted his arm calmly, even though there was a tremor of fear beneath his rage. Trialing a new Spell in live combat was incredibly dangerous, but he didn't see another option.
Each enemy eye in the glade tracked his movement, and for a moment, everything paused.
Then his fingers blurred through the air, drawing the newly conceived Spell faster than he'd ever cast before. The runes burned with light-blue energy, symbols for light and sound materializing against the green backdrop. With a final series of angular motions, he snapped the vice of the compression array into place around the elemental cores and ignited the Mana.
The construct pulled. Energy collapsed inward toward the Spell's center as the runes vanished, the air brightening as photons and vibrating air were created and compressed into a point of searing brilliance. The clearing drowned in a harsh white glare, intensifying with each passing moment of Cal's Legacy, swallowing shadows and turning the ancient spruce trunks into washed-out columns.
Cal squeezed his eyes shut, turning his head away as he released [Liminal Breath].
The Spell erupted.
A solid sheet of white flashed through his closed eyelids, while a concussive crack pushed his head sideways and a ringing drone began in his ears.
[New Spell Gained: Flashbang (F) - Novice]
He opened his eyes. Six Mycari scattered across the glade, blinded and staggering.
Movement to his right. Corinne. She'd taken the sound component, hands pressed flat over her ears, face twisted in a grimace, but her back had been to the light. She recovered fast. Opening her eyes, she swept the clearing and fixed on Durk. He was the closest blinded Mycari to her position, lurching with one hand over his face, his bloody spear dragging through the undergrowth.
Cal glanced at Narbok, who staggered backwards blindly from the blast. The primary threat, but not the first target. The Mistblood's incorporeal form made a one-shot kill impossible, and a duel would waste precious seconds. He had to cull the others while they were still out of commission.
Griven had stood between him and Finn, but the eldest triplet's combat instincts had him quickly retreating with his spear up in a clumsy guard. Finn was closer, and the sight of him rekindled Cal's rage. The weasel was on his feet, blind and panicking, stabbing his spear in wild arcs in every direction. It wouldn't save him.
Cal closed the remaining distance in four quick strides to drive his spear tip through Finn's left eye. He felt a thin crunch of bone as the spear sank deep. Finn locked up rigidly before the tension drained out of him and he collapsed into the ferns.
No [Life Shield] to stop it this time, you coward!
Wrenching his spear free, Cal turned to seek his next target.
Fendrel. The middle Greenshade triplet. Still reeling ten paces away near the edge of the clearing, both hands clamped over his streaming eyes. Cal covered the ground at a sprint, planted his back foot, and drove the spear beneath the elf's ribs into his heart. Fendrel folded around the blade, his back slamming into a spruce trunk where he slid down and went still.
And then there was Morian. The youngest. Trying to run.
The lanky Greenshade had stumbled through the bracken, half-blind, crashing through the underbrush in a desperate flight. He'd covered twenty yards and was still moving, bouncing between the trunks of hemlock like a pinball.
Cal set his stance and drew his spear back behind his head. [Spear Mastery] guided even this. He judged the distance, the angle and timing. Then he threw.
The spear crossed the distance in a whistling arc and took Morian in the center of the back. The Mycari pitched forward and hit the earth face-first, fingers clawing the moss, legs kicking once before they stopped.
[Your proficiency with Throwing (F) has increased to Practiced]
The high-pitched whine in his ears finally started to recede, collapsing into a dull hum. A metronomic sound began to punch through the noise.
Behind him, across the open ground, he saw Corinne drive her spear home for what must have been the fifth time. Stab and withdraw and stab again, punctuated by furious grunts.
Durk wasn't moving anymore. He hadn't been for a while.
Cal drew his shortsword and stalked toward Griven.
The eldest Greenshade was still standing, and he blinked rapidly as Cal approached, clearly starting to overcome the Spell's effects.
As Cal pressed in, Griven lunged, his E-tier speed making the thrust a blur. The steel tip stabbed the air where Cal’s chest had been a half-second before. A follow-up sweep forced Cal back and he parried another thrust, the impact shocking his arm to the shoulder. Griven was faster and stronger, and the reach of his weapon made a direct approach hard.
Griven’s next thrust pushed him back, but Cal settled into the fight as his instincts began to take over. [Spear Mastery] let him feel it from the other side. He recognized the exact weight shift required for the lunge because the mastery was part of his own intuition. The spear became a shared language, and Griven’s form was suddenly full of tells - the slight overextension, the grip that left his wrist exposed.
Cal feinted a low attack. Griven responded as predicted, bringing his spear down in a defensive sweep. Instead of retreating, Cal stepped forward, catching the wooden shaft on his shortsword and guiding it past his body. He was inside the guard now, too close for the spear to be a threat. Griven’s eyes widened in panic.
Cal slashed his blade in a tight arc, slicing across Griven's forearm. The Mycari let out a choked cry as he lost the grip on his spear, and before he could react, the shortsword came across in a second, killing stroke. Steel flashed as it passed through his neck.
Sheathing his shortsword, Cal began the walk toward Morian’s body, keeping an eye on Narbok with his spatial beam all the while - whatever obscuring magic they'd used having no effect on Cal's unique trait. The cold fire of his rage waned slightly. Five of them. Dead. They weren't monsters in some cave. They were boys, barely older than his own kids, with families and futures. The thought sent a tremor through his hand as he reached into his belt pouch.
His fingers fumbled for the potions. Just add it to the tab, Cal. Another pound of flesh for the Sovereign's Toll. He forced the thought down, crushing the guilt beneath a fresh layer of resolve. He couldn't afford the weakness now. He pulled the two vials free, uncorked them with his teeth, and downed the meridian liner first, chasing it with the Mana potion. He tossed both empty vials aside as he reached Morian.
Planting his boot on the corpse, he grit his teeth and unceremoniously ripped his spear free, quickly turning away.
Corinne had repositioned. She stood between Narbok and the others, spear leveled, blood dripping from the tip. Leo knelt behind her with Mira in his lap, his blue eyes vacant. Cal couldn't help but admire the strength in Corinne, even now, as his heart broke for Leo.
This was his first contract. We were supposed to show him the ropes and keep him safe on a simple hunt. Instead, I led him straight into a slaughter.
He glanced at the girl whom Finn had left crippled. I'll fix this. I don't know how, but I'll fix it. All of it. Then his eyes found Narbok, and his fury kindled anew. There's just one more thing to take care of.
Across the clearing, Narbok straightened as Cal drew near. There was an empty vial in his hand and his pupils were blown wide, amber irises reduced to thin rings. He'd visibly swollen, cords of muscle standing taut beneath the green skin. When he unlimbered his spear and settled into a low stance, the motion carried power that hadn't been there before.
An acrid smell reached Cal.
He'd smelled it before. In a different clearing, on a different day, kneeling beside Rufan's delirious figure. A Vitality-burning elixir. Life force converted to raw power, trading against the user's own remaining years.
Cal rolled his shoulders as he squared off against the elf, realizing his job had just gotten harder, but not regretting his decision to eliminate the others first.
It was time to finish this.
Narbok lunged first.
He crossed the gap with an explosive burst that ate distance faster than anything Cal had seen from him in the tournament or training yard: four strides swallowed in the time it should have taken for one. His spear drove forward in a straight thrust aimed at Cal's sternum, backed by enough kinetic force to turn the air ahead of him into a compression wave.
Cal pivoted on his lead foot, barely adjusting in time. Narbok's speed eclipsed even the vorlag serpent, and the thrust hissed past his ribs close enough to tug at the leather of his chest armor. He answered with a counter-slash aimed at Narbok's extended elbow, a textbook riposte that should have punished the overextension.
His spear tip passed through Narbok's arm like it wasn't there, sliding through misty flesh and armor to emerge from the other side trailing wisps of grey vapor.
Narbok grinned, but it only confirmed Cal's assumption that the bloodline was already in effect. He immediately flowed into his planned follow up, snapping his spear down and whipping a vertical cut at Narbok's inner thigh.
Clang.
The spear deflected off something hard beneath the fabric. The impact stung Cal's wrists, the vibration running up the shaft.
Crumb, it's armored!
Narbok's counter arrived in the same heartbeat. His spear carved a rising diagonal slash through the air, aimed for Cal’s exposed ribs. Cal had anticipated it: the price of landing his own strikes. Instead of a useless parry against an phasing weapon, he burned a [Flicker Step]. He slid back a few yards as Narbok’s spearhead passed through the space his body had just occupied.
And then it was all Cal could do to dodge.
The elf's boosting potion was still ramping. Each exchange came faster than the last, Narbok's movements gaining speed and force with inevitability. His technique remained inferior, and Cal could read every telegraphed thrust and sloppy step, but the gap between skill and power was narrowing with alarming speed. Another thirty seconds and the Mycari began to overwhelm everything Cal's Mastery could offer.
There was no choice.
[Crimson Overdrive]
Stamina flared throughout his body in a high-velocity circuit. As his aura blazed with a crimson corona, he knew he wouldn't have time to down another liner elixir. He needed to end this fast.
Cal closed the range, refusing to give ground. He met Narbok’s relentless advance with a blur of evasive footwork, pivoting to create angles where none existed. He feinted at the eyes, drawing the misty spear up in a futile guard as the elf flinched. The instant Narbok’s guard was committed, Cal’s own spear dropped, the feint flowing seamlessly into another slash on the inner thigh where he'd struck earlier.
The blow once again clanged off reinforced links, and Narbok retaliated with a driving thrust. Cal twisted sideways, but the incorporeal spearhead managed to pass straight through the Legion plate on his chest, scoring a hot line of pain across his ribs.
Beneath the battle, a second war began to rage. The meridian liner burned up, Cal feeling the protective coating thinning until it was finally exhausted. Then the real timer started, as a notification appeared in the corner of his vision.
[Channel Erosion: +0.50%]
Pain lanced through the pathways in his body, an electrical sting that made his fingers spasm on the spear shaft. He buckled down and maintained the Ability. It was that or death.
Cal continued to press the martial advantage. Three more rapid slashes, each one landing over the same armored section, but he couldn't break through. The reinforced links turned every strike.
[Channel Erosion: +0.50%]
Before Narbok could reset, Cal rotated his grip and drove his spear tip at the thigh, trying a thrust where slashes had failed. The chainmail held, but the kinetic force momentarily buckled Narbok’s leg. The Mycari grunted and stumbled back a step before launching a furious thrust of his own.
[Channel Erosion: +0.50%]
The pain intensified as Cal dodged. He could feel the micro-tears propagating through his spiritual pathways like cracks spreading through stressed glass, each draw of Stamina widening the damage, each exertion leaking energy. His spirit was eating itself from the inside.
[Channel Erosion: +0.50%]
Cal sidestepped another of Narbok’s clumsy, sweeping attacks. He struck back with a low thrust at the ankle, the one place the chainmail didn't seem to protect, but Narbok read it and skipped backward, laughing, the sound high and wild and drunk on borrowed power.
[Channel Erosion: +0.50%]
This isn't working! That potion is going to last a lot longer than I am! What am I going to do? I need something else!
He used his perception to scan around the clearing, but he couldn't find anything to help. Corinne and Leo would just get cut down. He didn't have time to cast another Spell - Narbok was too fast.
Wait… a Spell?
Cal activated the remainder of [Liminal Breath], reality dilating as his mind raced ahead of it.
Thinking back to the [Flashbang] Spell he'd just developed, he theorized using [Condense] and [Project] with different inputs would be plenty dangerous.
This is going to hurt.
He released [Liminal Breath] just as the ocular nerve pain was reaching the breaking point, and time skipped forward while his meridian channels continued to erode.
Cal adjusted his grip on the spear. Barely perceptible. A loosened hold that angled the shaft higher than was optimal, presenting the bare wood of the mid-section to Narbok's next swing. Not an obvious opening, just enough to read as a mistake.
Narbok did not disappoint.
Cal watched the recognition flash through his eyes, the predator spotting weakness.
The blow came as a vicious horizontal cut aimed at the exposed mid-section of Cal's spear. And Cal felt it this time: Narbok's weapon solidifying in the fraction of a heartbeat before impact, the insubstantial mist hardening at the last possible instant. The crack of wood-on-wood split the air. Cal's spear ripped from his loosened grip and spun away into the ferns.
Narbok grinned incandescently. The triumph and vindication. The pure ecstasy of a man who'd dreamed of this moment and was watching it materialize before his very eyes.
Cal took dark satisfaction in what came next.
Unknown to Narbok, Cal almost instantly formed the runes for a new Spell inside the Mana channels of his right hand, replacing light and sound for fire and air. His command over his internal Mana was absolute, operating at the speed of thought. And Cal's mind was fast.
The Mycari swung back around, moving to end his disarmed opponent.
Cal stepped into the advance and drove his right hand into Narbok's torso.
The mist-form met his fist with clinging resistance, like plunging an arm into freezing sludge. Snarling, he shoved deeper, forcing his hand past the boundary while the Spell construct hummed inside his spirit, waiting for release.
Narbok’s triumphant expression wavered. A flash of confusion crossed his face as he must have felt the magical pressure stirring within his phantom body.
Dawning horror replaced the confusion as he looked down to find Cal’s arm buried in his chest. Cal could see the moment panic seized him. Felt the mist around his hand begin to tighten, a desperate attempt to physically crush the limb and expel it. Simultaneously, Narbok tried to recoil, to pull the rest of his vaporous body away from the invading threat.
He began to shout. "NO! WAI—"
Before the word could complete, Cal ignited the Spell.
Fire tore Narbok Blackbriar apart.
The compressed inferno detonated inside him; the incorporeal form that had protected him from every spear thrust doing nothing to stop the blast. Fire and concussive force expanded outward and for a horrifying instant, the Mistblood bloodline collapsed. Flesh and bone became solid just in time to be ripped apart by the eruption. The grey vapor vanished, replaced by a spray of superheated gore.
At first, Cal felt the impact more than he heard it. A sodden whump of displaced air and a wave of heat that stank of cooked meat threw him back a step.
[New Spell Gained: Combustion (F) - Novice]
Then the pain came.
His right hand ceased to exist.
The detonation had consumed everything below his wrist. He'd tried to use his Intent to project the energy outside of himself, but all he'd gotten for his trouble was a ragged stump of cauterized ruin. The fire had crawled up his forearm, blistering the skin from wrist to elbow in an angry red welt that cracked and wept as the heat seared through bracer and flesh alike.
Cal staggered backward three steps. His left hand seized the stump of his right wrist instinctively, and the pressure against charred meat sent a fresh bolt of agony through his arm that nearly dropped him.
He blinked, and his surroundings swam. Where Narbok had once stood there was nothing more than smoking legs.
Cal looked down at what remained of his right wrist and felt the pain pulse with each heartbeat. Then he finally checked his notifications.
[Channel Erosion: 29.50%]
The acknowledgement of the notification seemed to break the dam, and the price of what he'd put himself through came due. The shaking started in his remaining hand. A violent, full-body convulsion followed, seizing his muscles from the ground up, locking his legs and his core in rapid succession, a relentless chain that continued to ravage up into his shoulders and arms. His knees gave way.
Hitting the ground, he tried to catch himself with his left hand and choked out a cry. The clearing tilted sideways. A grey sky rolled overhead and kept rolling, the spruce trunks spiraling lazily around each other as his inner ear lost its grip.
His vision tunneled. The edges of the world darkened, contracting from all sides at once.
Somewhere nearby, yet sounding and a thousand miles away through the ringing:
"CAL! CAL!"
Corinne. Shouting his name.
Everything faded to black.
AUTHOR'S NOTE:
And so, Narbok finally meets his grizzly end.
I thought the POV swap of the last two chapters sounded really cool in concept, and I'm fairly happy with how I executed it. But I'm curious how it felt to all of you. Maybe it worked, maybe it didn't? Let me know in the comments.
To give a little progress update... I've about 9 chapters left outlined in this book. So if anyone is trying to min/max their subs, it should wrap in the next three weeks. Then we'll be rolling over into Book 3. I don't intend to take a two-week break again for the next volume, at least not on Patreon, but we'll see where things are at in a couple of months.
Personally, my day job is ramping up, and we've had a death in the family that has hit my wife and I pretty hard, so I've had less and less time to write. This is bad, because - on a good note - I've signed with a wonderful agent who wants to submit my story to some trad publishers. Who knows if anything will come of it, but if he thinks it has a shot there's a non-zero chance prints of TST could be sold in a bookstore someday. How cool would that be? But not only do I need to suck it up and finish book 2 and work into book 3... I also need to edit book 1.
Pray for me, fam.
Thank you for all of your continued support and readership. It's an honor and a privilege to have you here.
Have a great weekend.
Jon