Chương 152: 65 - UNSEEN UNHEARD

Lila Bloom remained singing during most of the battle. But it had gotten increasingly difficult once the mist came. It infected her lungs, shortened her breath, and dampened her sound. Yet she remained too determined to let her people hear her voice. Even in all the chaos. Even in all the death. IN her mind, if her people could hear her voice, representing the soul of the Bestower, then they would not forget what they fought for.

David's small squad of men in druid dark robes surrounded her stage, pretending to be unaffected by the battle around them. There were two wind loot users among them. They would brush away the mist, only for it to come back seconds later in an unrelenting cycle. They made it seem like they were protecting her from it, but really they were guarding the statue and Uriel, who hung from its neck. After singing her third verse, Lila's voice broke out into a fit of coughing.

"Stop! Just go, Lila!" Uriel's voice faintly traveled down to them. She shook her head. She wanted to say, "Not until you come down." That was the mission T'balt had given her after all. Keep singing, every day that Uriel hangs. But the man was stubborn. If all this didn't bring him down from there, she didn't know what would. She would just do as she was told and sing her next verse. But there was a thud down underneath her stage.

She stopped seeing that one of the men pushing the wind away had suddenly fallen over. The others rushed to his aid, searching for a wound, one of them being a healer, but they saw none. The mist reclaimed her right side.

"What is it!? What wrong with him!?" David shouted.

"We don't know." The healer said. They tried to heal anyway, but the man had gone unconscious, showing no signs of coming back. He wasn't dead. But his body was completely still. Then suddenly the mist got ten times heavier, like it was actively adding weight to the air. The single wind looter could hardly hold it back on his own. The druids then gathered on the stage, hoping the higher ground would give them a better view. They surrounded Lila, who had stopped her singing.

"Stay behind me. You no fight." David told her. She clutched onto his back, but no one could see any attackers coming. Then another man dropped suddenly. This one started convulsing on the stage, as if they were having a seizure.

"GET RID OF THIS DAMN MIST!" David yelled. The wind looter began working overtime, but it was a losing battle. That was when they heard her voice.

"I'm sorry. Did I interrupt your drab little concert? Unfortunately, you're about to die. But I never liked sad songs, so instead I'll commend you for going out in style." The voice sounded like it was coming from all directions, bouncing around the mist as if it were an empty room. Uriel closed his eyes, remembering exactly what this was and exactly how it would end.

"I did warn them to go…"

"Protect the Bestower!" David shouted. There was a dark silhouette ahead of them—a thin woman with a large sun hat. A few of the druids ran towards it, attacking with building loot: steel, stone, and wood. It disappeared a few feet in front of them and hit nothing. Though the silhouette still stood there, cackling. Those men went down shortly after, holding their necks.

"What a waste of good men?" the mist said. Lila shivered in fear. But as she held on to David's back, Lila could feel her hand start to warm. Like she had put it under a warm shower, and the outline of David's body began to glow. Something zipped through the wind, catching him in the neck. But David didn't fall like the others. The tall man didn't appear even to notice. Because that thing didn't actually hit him, Lila could see it just floating there beside his neck as if it were stuck in an invisible wall.

It was a dart, leaking some violet liquid from its tip. David plucked it out of the air and held it.

"Poison darts… A coward's weapon."

"David, what is this? How did it not hit you?" Lila frantically asked.

"A loot of my own… My aura. Very strong," he said in his accent.

"Go hide. Let David fix problem." He took a few steps forward, seeing that slim figure.

"Give me wind." The wind looter blew straight ahead, granting him a momentary line of sight where the woman stood in her vibrant dress and botox-injected face. As soon as David saw her, he attacked. The aura loot functioned as moldable energy his body emitted into a solid but flexible material. It ejected from his pores like sweat into something he could readily manipulate.

It formed the outline of his hand into a greenish transparent shape and lunged out towards the woman, quickly punching her as she tried to block. But it flung her back into a wall, knocking the breath out of her. Lila took a few steps backward, not knowing where the hell she was supposed to hide in all this.

"The stage's stairs are ten paces to your right. Five steps and then keep walking until you hit a door and hide in that building." It was German in her head. She steadily did as she said.

"Did he say it was poison darts?" Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

"Yes," Lila said, stepping slowly down the stairs.

"She uses the mist to hide herself and poison to incapacitate her opponents. How do we deal with that?"

"I don't know."

"I'm thinking," German said sternly. He still had to manage between his own thoughts and what he communicated. A while ago, he had stopped worrying about getting them crossed.

"What… Lila, change of plans. Turn left."

"What?"

"She's ahead of you. Duck now." Lila did so, and she heard a dart zoom past her dark hair. Then, called by German, the wind-loot druid jumped up and cascaded the wind with a small tornado. It cleared the space just enough to expose Mauve's body standing.

"How unbelievably rude." She was holding on to the top of her sun hat.

"This is an expensive, velvet suede sun hat. I hope you're planning to reimburse me if you blow it into the sea." Lila didn't understand. She could hear David attacking someone in front of the stage.

"Was that the same woman?" David continued to attack the figure even as it tried to recover itself in mist. He didn't relent, turning his aura into giant fists and pummelling the area where she stood. He could feel a body crumble underneath his pounding. Then he grabbed the body and lifted it in the air. The woman was dazed, her body drooling and bloodied. The slightly transparent hand pulled her towards him.

"You must be in charge of this mist, yes. Then you must perish." Two darts flew from his right, which would've hit his head had his aura not caught them. It confused him.

"Multiple attackers." He sharply turned.

"Wind." The druid came from behind him, wiping away the mist only to reveal the same woman standing there. He did a double-take, looking back at the woman in his aura's fist.

"A twin?" Then the one in his hand started to melt as if it had been made of colored mud this entire time. It spilled onto the floor before disappearing into smoke and blending with the mist.

"You're not the brightest of the bunch, are you?" Mauve said.

"They're clones," German said in David's head.

"Corlander must've given her a clone loot after a left."

"Oh, friend in library. How do you do?" David thought.

"Not the time for pleasantries. Mauve has this whole city under her thumb at the moment. Taking her down will be key in getting this battle back in our favor. We now know what she's got: mist, poison darts, and clones. Keep that in mind."

"You seem a little lost in thought there," Mauve's voice suddenly whispered in his ear. David reacted, smashing his aura'd fist into the ground behind him. When he pulled it up, that strange mud coated the bottom of it and sizzled into smoke.

"We don't need to fight, dear," the voice said.

"Just fetch me that little man up on the statue, and we can all go home happy."

"Not my Bestower… Wind!" David called. But nothing came. Instead, the mist got thicker.

"He was feeling a little tired, so I think your man is taking a nap now." She then appeared next to him, lunging at him with a small pocket knife. He blocked with his forearm and swung his fist at her head. The woman ducked and slashed at his torso. But the manifestation of his aura stopped it from connecting with his skin. Momentarily, surprised by it, she allowed David to seize her by the throat, only for the body to melt in his hand. He could see another figure, sitting on a chair, details faded by white clouds.

She was using the small knife to file her long fingernails.

"Well, that is a troublesome power you have, isn't it? Too bad your little singer friend doesn't have the same." Lila ran aimlessly around in the mist, not knowing where she was or where she was going. She just knew she had to get away from that woman. She appeared in front of her from every direction. She was only still conscious by the grace of German's warnings. That wasn't going to last forever, though.

"You're running out of room to run," German said.

"She's surrounded you."

"What else can I do?"

"You have to fight."

"But I don't have anything to fight her with…" She began to panic.

"Let me think of something…"

"Wait, don't go. Hello? Hello!?" The second hello she said out loud was in her panic. The mist cleared in that little pocket, revealing that she was near the Bestower statue's feet. But also that there were five different Mauves surrounding her, each with a knife in their hand.

"Well… seems we've reached the end of our little chase." The Mauves said in unison.

"I'm running low on darts, so unfortunately for you, I have to use the painful way. Which should be fine since I've noticed you have no loot." They raised their knives. Lila, sensing no other choice, dropped to her knees to pray. She was near the Bestower after all. The only power in her that had saved her. She had no loot, but she had her microphone.

"I hope you can hear me, Uriel Grace. All I wanted was to sing for you… All we wanted was to fight for you. You made a home for us when we had none. You gave our minds strength when we had none, in the old world and the new. All I wanted was to repay that. My only regret was that my song could never make you smile." Mauve grabbed her by her short dark hair and pulled her close. She was inches away from cutting her throat when suddenly she stopped. All of them stopped and started clutching their ears.

"What is that racket!?" She chided. But it wasn't just her. It was all of them. All of the hunters fighting in the streets. All of the Razorwind soldiers. Emil had stopped paying attention to Acelin on the roof. Hobbs had taken his eyes off of Vienna, long enough for her to slip into the shadows and escape his sight.

"What in the hell is going on here? Get this voice out of my head." But they didn't have any choice but to hear it. It spoke in all of their minds at once.

"To the red country and part of the gray country of Oklahoma, the last rains came gently, and they did not cut the scarred earth. The plows crossed and recrossed the rivulet marks. The last rains lifted the corn quickly and scattered weed colonies and grass along the sides of the roads so that the gray country and the dark red country began to disappear under a green cover…"

"Stop! Stop it!" Mauve screamed. The mist around the city began to rupture with her confusion. Even her clones started to turn to mush, leaving just one directly in front of Lila. Hobbs came on the earpiece.

"It's German Casas. He's messing with our minds. Clear your heads and get back to work."

"HOW THE HELL AM I SUPPOSED TO DO THAT WITH A MAN IN HEAD READING HUCKLEBERRY FUCKING FINN!"

"It's the Grapes of Wrath." Emil corrected.

"The perfect soundtrack to my depression." German sat cross-legged in the library, reading an open book that he hadn't experienced since high school. He turned the page and continued reading. Lila looked on as Muave continued to lose her mind. But just then, near the Bestower's feet, something fell from the sky. It was a coin, fallen like a teardrop from the clouds. She picked it up and looked to the sky. Mauve steadied herself, hairs popping out of place as she felt out of control of her own head.

She couldn't think, but that didn't mean she couldn't kill. She pointed her knife at Lila, who was still on her knees praying… But as she approached, a song filled the air, and something seemed to whoosh the mist away. The paralyzed Gracelandians suddenly rose, leaving her surrounded by David and the others. Mauve was dumbfounded, no longer hidden by her mist.

"What happened to my poisons?" It was a prayer loot—an area healing spell known to cure poisons and debilitating ailments. One did not exist in Graceland. It only existed in the mind of one man. David crouched down to Lila and smiled…

"The Bestower has heard you."