Chương 135: Everything the Rain Gave Back

Andy didn't slow down when he reached striking distance. Hexa's lead head drove into the serpent's flank at a full sprint, six more necks fanning out behind it a half-second later, and the impact threw a wave of mud fifteen feet in every direction. The serpent recovered fast, faster than its size should have allowed, and turned its full attention off Ant entirely for the first time since it had broken from the tree line.

"Go," Ant said, mostly to himself, because Andy hadn't waited for permission and wasn't going to start now. Garrick came in on Ashclaw's back at an angle that put the big Epic between the wounded and everything still fighting, claws raking a wide arc through the nearest cluster of Rares. Two of them broke off outright, tails low, done fighting the moment Ashclaw's attention swung toward them. A third tried to hold its ground and lasted about four seconds longer than the other two, which wasn't very long at all.

Two down to one, Mahkir said, breath still ragged, tracking the heavier Epic as it turned toward Natalia's approach. That one's ours now. Or Natalia's. I don't much care which, as long as it stops standing soon. Andy had already made the call himself, going straight for the serpent the moment Hexa cleared the ridge. Garrick had his own scar from the same opponent, healed over but never quite finished, and he'd been handed the job of holding the field instead, no complaint in it that Ant could see.

That left the heavier one. Natalia was already moving toward it, having apparently reached the same conclusion half a second before Ant had.

"Stay with her, leave Andy his fight," Ant said. Mahkir didn't argue. They cut across the field together, Roulette's borrowed speed carrying them past two more of Grant's people without either of them stopping to finish the job properly: a shove, a redirect, whatever kept a body out of the way without spending the seconds a clean kill would have taken. Somewhere behind him Raven's voice cut through what was left of the resistance on her side of the field, most of it already breaking rather than holding.

Hexa lunged into open, dry ground, and the serpent used the gap to circle wide, unhurried enough that Ant didn't like watching it. Three minutes of fighting him and Mahkir both had taught it caution. It wasn't going to give Hexa a straight fight if it could help it.

"She needs water," Ant said, to no one in particular, and heard it answered before he'd finished forming the thought into anything useful.

"I KNOW!" Rebekah's voice, off to his left, already moving. She'd dropped to one knee beside Lem, both hands buried in his fur, and whatever she said next didn't carry far enough for Ant to catch it. She didn't need him to hear it. Lem was already answering. Lem held her eyes a moment longer. Then his fur went dark at the roots first, a deep blue chasing down his spine toward his tail, the pale coat underneath gone entirely by the time it reached his ears. He lifted his muzzle to the grey sky, and the sky broke.

It didn't build the way weather builds. There was no gathering, no first fat drops. One second the field was mud and wet grass, and the next it was water, sheeting down in a hard, straight fall, drumming off armour and hammering the ground into standing puddles within seconds. It soaked through Ant's borrowed colours, through Mahkir's fur, through mud already thick enough to fight in. Off to his left Andy laughed, once, short and startled. It was the first sound out of him all fight that wasn't a command.

Hexa hit the serpent again a heartbeat later, and this time it didn't get away clean. Ant didn't have time to watch how the rest of that fight went. Natalia had reached the heavier Epic, Cindermaw's coal-bed hide steaming under the sudden rain, and the impact when the two of them collided shook the ground under Ant's boots from thirty feet away.

"Together," Natalia called across the gap, already committed to the answer, and Ant was moving before he'd fully decided to agree with her. I'm with you, Mahkir said, and there was nothing left of the fear from three minutes ago in it. Now. Three of them worked the heavier Epic at once, Cindermaw driving in low and absorbing the worst of its weight while Mahkir circled its flank, claws finding the same channel of burned flesh he'd already opened once and hadn't been able to finish.

Ant fed Flame Fist down through Soul Render and put everything Roulette had left behind the strike, and for the first time since the thing had crested the ridge, it staggered rather than simply absorbing the hit and coming on. Roulette: fourteen seconds, the voice said, flat and even despite the sheeting rain. Whatever you're spending, spend it now. There isn't going to be a second chance at this price. Ant didn't need telling twice.

Mahkir felt it too, the same countdown running somewhere under both their skins, and he committed to the strike without holding anything in reserve, claws raking a full, unguarded arc across the Epic's exposed throat while it was still turning to meet Cindermaw's weight. Ant matched him a half-second later, Flame Fist trailing along Soul Render's edge in a line of white heat, driving it into the same wound. XP +85. XP +90.

The Epic screamed, a sound that scraped all the way down through Ant's back teeth even through everything else happening around him, and Cindermaw answered it with everything Natalia's Epic had been holding in reserve all fight.

The smoke that had leaked steadily from her spine-plates the whole battle drew inward all at once, pulled down through her long body like a furnace catching a fresh gust, and came back out through her jaws as a single beam of fire no wider than a spear-shaft — short, blinding, and impossibly hot. It went in through the wound Mahkir and Ant had already opened and came out the other side of the Epic's throat before the sound of it had finished reaching Ant's ears. The head came away clean. It didn't get back up.

Nothing left in it was ever going to let it get back up again. XP +9, 400. The number flickered past on its own, too large to be anything but the kill itself, and Ant didn't have the spare attention to do more than register that it had happened. Attribute Sharing: expired.

The notification arrived in his head without ceremony, and Ant felt the borrowed strength drain out of his limbs all at once, replaced by the honest, bone-deep exhaustion of a body that had been running on someone else's numbers for three straight minutes. Mahkir sagged where he stood, catching himself against Ant's arm rather than the ground, and for a second neither of them said anything at all. The rain kept coming.

Behind him, Hexa's roar cut through it, six-throated and furious in a way Ant had never once heard from her before, and when he turned to look, the serpent was down, coils gone still in water finally deep enough to matter. Andy stood over it without moving, breathing hard. That was when Ant caught what was wrong with the picture. The serpent wasn't dead. It was breathing, ragged and shallow, one eye still open and tracking the field around it with something that looked less like fear now and more like calculation.

Its handler had already reached it, a tall figure Ant didn't recognise, hauling on a strap looped through its collar, working fast and without any pretence of confidence left in him.

"ANDY!" Ant shouted it across the distance, half a warning, the rest of it left unfinished. There wasn't breath left to spend on it. Andy didn't move to stop it. Hexa stayed down in the flooded ground beside him, all six heads low, one trailing a thin line of blood into the water — spent, not broken, but with nothing left in her for a second fight tonight. He watched the serpent drag itself upright, watched its handler half-lead, half-drag it back toward the tree line, and let it go.

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"Today's not the day," Andy said, quiet enough that Ant almost missed it under the rain.

"She's got nothing left to finish it with, and neither do I, not without her." There was no relief in his voice, and no satisfaction either. Four strikes to nothing had finally settled into something closer to even, and it still wasn't the ending he'd apparently wanted. Across the field, what was left of Grant's people had stopped being anything that could be called a line.

Two more broke and ran the moment the heavier Epic went down, splashing through the flooding ground toward whatever direction looked least likely to get them killed. Nobody chased them. There wasn't a reason to. Grant himself hadn't run. He stood where he'd been standing, soaked through, sword still in his hand and nothing left in his stance that looked like an actual fighter's, and when Ashclaw's shadow fell over him a moment later he didn't so much resist as refuse to lower the blade.

Garrick's voice carried an offer across the distance, low, the words lost under the rain before they reached Ant. Grant answered it by raising the sword instead. It was over before Ant had finished crossing the last stretch of ground toward it. He didn't have room to feel anything about that yet.

The field was still full of people who needed checking on: Mahkir leaning into his side, Rebekah already moving through the wreckage with her bow slung and both hands free, working her way toward the wounded rather than toward him for once. Priya sat on an overturned crate feeding Marcus's hawk scraps of dried meat from a pouch at her belt, her hands busier than the bird actually needed them to be.

Marcus crouched near one of Grant's fallen fighters and closed the man's eyes with two fingers, quiet about it, and didn't explain himself when Priya glanced over. He didn't need to. Ben still hadn't sheathed his blade, staring out past the tree line where the retreat had gone, and when Priya reached over and put a hand flat against his back, some of the rigidity finally went out of him. Ant caught Rebekah's eye across the distance. She gave him a short nod, not much, but enough for both of them right then.

She'd come back for him twice today, once with a warning and once with three Epics behind her, and there wasn't a version of thanking her for that which would fit into the time they actually had.

"We went out with ten," Raven said, arriving at his shoulder without announcing herself, the way she always did. Her voice had none of its usual edge in it.

"Nessa, Corrin, Fane, both the Hollis brothers, and two more who didn't last long enough for the rest of you to learn their names. Seven gone, against three of us still standing: Ray, me, and Willa, if the leg holds."

"I'm sorry," Ant said, because it was the only true thing he had. Raven looked away from him, out at the field.

"Wasn't your fault whose colours they stole." Natalia moved through the aftermath with a kind of unhurried purpose that made everyone near her a little steadier just by proximity: checking wounds, calling for Rowan's people by name before Ant had even thought to send for them, kneeling beside one of Grant's fallen fighters for a moment longer than the man's uniform strictly earned before moving on to the next.

Andy stood apart from all of it, watching the empty tree line, water sheeting off his shoulders, arms folded tight enough across his chest that Ant left him to it a while longer. You're hurt more than you've noticed, the voice said, unhurried, threading in without asking. And there's a fair amount waiting for you, if you'd like to actually look at it now that nobody's trying to kill you. Ant almost laughed. It came out closer to a cough.

"Go ahead." [EXPERIENCE] Encounter concluded. Experience gained: 40, 000. [LEVEL UP] Congratulations. You are now Level 13. Strength +2, Agility +1, Magic +1, Endurance +2. HP +10, Mana +10. [LEVEL UP] Congratulations. You are now Level 14. Strength +1, Agility +3, Magic +2, Endurance +4. HP +10, Mana +10. [LEVEL UP] Congratulations. You are now Level 15. Strength +3, Agility +2, Magic +2, Endurance +1. HP +10, Mana +10. He read through them twice before any of it fully landed.

"Fifteen," he said out loud, and Mahkir's head came up fast. Say that again.

"Fifteen, I was Level Twelve this morning." You were Level Twelve an hour ago, the voice corrected, entirely too pleased with itself. Thirteen and fourteen both happened somewhere in the middle of all that, same as I told you, and then this last stretch finished the job properly. I did warn you not to make a habit of checking mid-fight. I stand by that. This, however, was worth the exception.

[ANT — LEVEL 15] Strength: 58 Agility: 68 Magic: 63 Endurance: 66 HP: 127/127 Mana: 315/315 XP: 4, 150/28, 000 to Level 16 He stood with that a moment, rain running down the back of his neck, disbelief sitting somewhere low in his stomach that refused to fully resolve into anything simpler. Three levels. He'd spent the better part of a year clawing his way from ten to twelve. [SKILL UNLOCKED] Pressure. User may project the strength of his bonded Kithren onto everyone nearby.

Those with stats lower than the Kithren's struggle to remain standing; particularly weak individuals may faint outright. The effect weakens the closer a target's own stats come to matching the Kithren's. Ant read that one twice as well, slower, and didn't have the first idea yet what to do with it. Whatever it actually felt like from the inside, this wasn't the field to find out on. [LEVEL UP] Congratulations. Mahkir is now Level 9. No stat increase this level. XP: 22, 680/60, 000 to Level 10.

Mahkir went quiet at that, which was new enough on him that Ant felt it through the bond before he'd finished reading the words himself. Unchanged, Mahkir repeated. I fought two Epics today and got nothing for it.

"Wait," Ant started, and then the next notification caught up to both of them at once. [SKILL UNLOCKED] Cinderguard. Raises a standing wall of heat around the bonded pair, scorching anything that strikes it and reducing damage taken while it holds. Draws from the Kithren's own mana pool. Duration and cost scale with need. Oh, Mahkir said, and whatever had been building in his voice a second ago came apart into something considerably lighter. That's — all right. That's the last slot, isn't it. Four for four.

"Took the system long enough," Ant said, and reached down to put a hand against the side of Mahkir's jaw, still warm even through the rain.

"You've carried an empty one since you were Level 5." Don't get sentimental about it. I did the actual fighting. But he leaned into the hand anyway, just for a second, before pulling back to stand up straight on his own again. Across the field, Andy was still watching the tree line where the serpent had gone.

Behind him, Natalia's voice carried steady instructions toward Rowan's arriving people, and somewhere under all of it Grant's body lay where it had fallen, already forgotten by everyone with breath left to spend on the living.

"Things like that always come back," Andy said, before Ant had gotten within ten feet of him. Ant didn't have an answer for that yet, and the rain showed no sign of stopping.