Chương 71: CHAPTER 70 — The Need To Research

The ceiling detonated with force, sending a rain of concrete and iron crashing down onto the shelves and scaffolding. From the curtain of smoke, Ascan glided away, clinging to the few remaining intact shelves. A fireball crashed to the ground, all beneath his mocking gaze, flickering with curiosity.

"Here it comes!" The scientist exulted, leaping from his handhold and landing on the ground. The moment his heel touched the debris below, an enormous serpent of flame and rock tried to sink its fangs into him. His body swept away the rubble, revealing incandescent jaws and lifting the earth itself." Nitron!" Dense drops of intense red mixed with the smoke of the explosion, spraying in every direction. At the centre of the vast warehouse now sat a furrow no less than several metres deep.

"Your ability really is quite thrilling, you know? How do you manage to operate so well with so many variables?" Ascan sidestepped, avoiding a shard of rock that nearly pierced his torso. Maliard emerged from the smoke, his gauntlet wrapped in an amalgam of burning currents. He raised his head, slowly studying his surroundings and then the enormous hole in the ceiling, now sealed by a strange greyish aura.

"The interior does not match up… Lexa must have found a way to use the relic for the interior as well." As Maliard mused on this, a small pebble roused him from his thoughts. He turned his neck slightly, catching sight of Ascan's figure toying with nuggets of molten rock.

"It really is bad manners to ignore a question so full of curiosity!" He answered, tossing all the stones to the ground and vigorously brushing the dust off his coat. Maliard sighed, turning to face him fully.

"Is it not even worse manners to interrupt someone who is thinking? I am trying to figure out how to reunite with my companions, since our communications have gone down…" Ascan smiled, with a veil of surprise and bewilderment. He pointed a finger at his own face, which instantly went blank of every expression.

"I imagine that is due to all the Lambdite I have scattered across the tower and outside it…" Maliard smiled, raising both fists into a guard. The moment the fingers of the gauntlet clashed together, a hiss sounded, as though the air itself were vibrating.

"Then you will be the one to tell me how to get there, once I am finished." Ascan shook his head, sneering as he pointed behind himself. A sound of sparks began ringing through the air, growing steadily louder.

"There is no need! If you follow me, I will take you there myself! But I want some answers in return." An explosion blew apart the wall behind Ascan, hurling bullets and shrapnel everywhere. Between one cough and the next, Maliard launched himself into pursuit, all his senses stunned and dulled. Suddenly his stride stretched out unexpectedly, only to plunge into space. It was only then that Maliard noticed the cisterns in that enormous room, its walls decorated with bluish stripes.

His speed continued to increase as the cisterns grew ever larger." Farbern!" A violent gust of wind released itself from his arm, forcibly arresting his fall. The wind tore through the floor and the metal, creating a torrent of reddish liquid that soon reached his ankles.

"This is…"

"Taumite… Yes, precisely that, and extremely pure as well." Ascan sat down on the small footbridge connecting the ground to the top of the great cistern. His voice began to outmatch the now-fine jet of fuel. Maliard pointed his finger at him, but quickly realised there was nothing he could do.

"Taumite is extremely volatile when untreated. One spark, and the whole tower goes up! Though, honestly, I do not even know how large this place is myself." Ascan leaned his chest out over the iron railing, fixing him through the cracked lenses of his glasses.

"You are rather too carefree, for a scientist…" Maliard smiled, using the wind to separate himself from the crimson sludge. Ascan smiled, sliding his fingertips along the iron.

"Perhaps you are used to Lucas Hoppenheimer, so you do not know how things actually work in the world of science." Maliard laughed, slowly climbing the stairs of the cistern before him.

"You certainly do not think as much as he does…" His hand released a jet of steam before being rapidly swung against him. The cistern, along with part of the bridges and cables, was split apart by the blade of air. The Taumite received the scalp of iron, rippling across its surface. Maliard immediately recharged his gauntlet, fixing his gaze on the shadow beyond the reddish vapour.

"Actually, I imagined you were looking for the best moment to decapitate me…" Between his fingers gleamed a small violet coin, no larger than an ordinary denarius but twice as thick. Maliard stared at it, terrified, fixing his gaze on the constantly rising Taumite.

"So I prepared myself with a little disruptor." The coin snapped, falling into the red lake at their feet. Maliard laughed, balancing atop the railing to avoid falling.

"Are you putting on a show for me, or is this your way of paying a compliment?" Ascan did the same, walking back and forth along the thin iron cylinder.

"Nothing of the sort… I was thinking it had been a while since I last had to use my head so much in a confrontation." Ascan clapped his hands, and a white light began orbiting his wounds, slowly stitching closed the burns and the cuts.

"I see you are curious about Lucas. Why is that?" Maliard returned to his classic, serious expression, locked into monotone. Ascan smiled, adjusting his little spectacles on his face and his coat on his shoulders.

"His file is a mystery, and yet our client knows him very well. I would like to understand what the man who killed tens of thousands of innocents and tore the very landscape from these islands is doing now." At those words, Maliard lowered his head, accompanied by the thin hiss of vapour along his forearm.

"You know…" Ascan let himself go, sitting on the railing without holding on. Between the scientist's fingers began to slide a granular substance, resembling tar. A sweetish smell pervaded the air, overpowering the faint, acrid stench of the fuel.

"Malcolm told me your story, of the disaster, and of what you all intend to do… I found it so BORING!" The metal began to heat, losing its solidity.

"Protecting this world is like clipping its wings! One must experiment and kill in order to draw out the true hinges of this gift nature has given us! Shutting the gates of discovery is the worst sin that you can cast upon humanity!!" His voice built to a crescendo, and his hands began waving like those of an orchestra conductor.

"The black calamity that struck you decades ago was proof of it! Proof of science's rebirth! A gift, an omen I want to seize, to grant the world new instruments!" He began breathing heavily, finally falling silent. Maliard raised his head, walking toward the lake of Taumite.

"If you think that thing was a gift…" With force, he tore the railing free, hurling it behind him. A loud thud resounded before Maliard fixed him directly in the eyes.

"... THEN YOU ARE MAD!" Without hesitation, he threw himself off the cistern, sinking into the red beneath Ascan's stunned gaze. Within moments the liquid began to boil, then exploded, revealing the floor once again. Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

"Those are…" Smoke and sparks rose from Maliard's arms as he smiled, the Taumite being torn away by the wind. Tongues of fire slid along his arms and shoulder, concentrating at the tip of his finger." Feuer!" Ascan pulled another coin from his pocket, but the jet of flame was faster regardless. The metal melted almost instantly, sliding to mix into the fuel below. The flame exploded definitively upon contact with the ceiling, lighting the hall in a bursting orange glow.

"My ability does not only allow me to create, but it also allows me to modify… A shame, you ought to have known that." Ascan smiled, gripping his own charred, smoking shoulder. His arm hung limp at his side, still clutching the Lambdite coin.

"You removed the component that makes Taumite combustible… Ingenious." Maliard landed on the molten metal, solidifying it with the glacial winds circulating his body.

"You talk too much, and you do not have the experience to earn that right…" Maliard smiled, immediately followed by Ascan's broken laughter. Once he had finished his mixture of coughing and laughing, he drew from his pocket a dark syringe with an emerald-green needle.

"That is true, but you also failed to pay attention earlier…" Maliard felt the sweetish scent draw closer, almost as though sugar were being poured down his throat. He turned, noticing a small granular globule settling on his shoulder. A snap of the fingers, and both were devoured in an explosion. A rain of iron sheets struck the other cisterns, piercing them and flooding the hall further still.

"Do I really need to get serious?" Maliard began reconstructing his own arm, swept away by the explosion, while the rest of his body had sealed itself in stone and iron. The memories of Lance and Monica returned to his mind the moment he pressed his lips together.

"Right… Now I remember what I need to do." His arm reconstituted itself immediately, revealing greyish, strangely glossy scars. Maliard rotated his wrist slightly, cursing under his breath.

"I did not want to use it since it was a prototype… But I am not in a position to be picky." Maliard reached his hand behind his own back, feeling for the metal plate embedded in each of their suits. It was a silver plate, coated in tubes and small hatches. Beneath the surface, connected directly to the spine, a series of needles for emergency injection. With force, he pulled a small tab at his side, making the mechanism vibrate. In an instant, a cube of iron was launched into the air.

With a series of clicks, the weapon took shape: it was a series of thick, dense metal segments, with a violet tip at the far end. Maliard smiled, gripping the whip firmly and setting it spinning. He snapped it behind himself, tearing through the metal.

"Not my usual style, but so long as it keeps my Frequency in check, it will do." Behind him, Maliard heard Ascan's footsteps on the empty sheet metal of the cistern. He turned, noticing his arm, fully regenerated, wrapped in the remains of his charred coat.

"I imagine the serum gave you quite a hand?" The scientist smiled at Maliard's words, striking his hand against his own shoulder with satisfaction, unexpectedly firm.

"My ability grants me almost nothing more than an ordinary human being. But nothing stops me from compensating for that with my mind and with science." Maliard nodded, setting his chain rotating ever faster, first to the right, then to the left, hissing constantly as it cleaved the air.

"I see. A strange awakening you had. Let us see how long your little toy lasts…" His fingers began releasing more and more of that sweetish substance, until it coated his palms entirely. The two stared at one another for a single second before the wind's blade and the explosive flames began devouring each other. Ascan hovered in the air, propelled by the constant explosions beneath his soles, while Maliard kept his weapon spinning ever faster.

Blades of air sliced through everything, opening furrows in the cisterns and splitting the red liquid apart. At a certain point, that air turned to flame, sending sparks dancing throughout the entire area." Damn it… Maintaining the modification on the Taumite is wearing me down." Maliard's whip stopped, now spinning directly above his head. Ascan smiled, applauding as small explosions formed around his fingers." I have only one strategy left." He bit his lip, spitting the blood onto the constantly rotating blade.

He kept moving without stopping, trying to avoid every explosion around him." Nitron!" Dozens of small spheres approached him, lighting up before detonating with enough ferocity to tear open even the floor itself. A cloud of smoke and debris rose within that unnatural dimension. Ascan watched him from a distance, removing his glasses and smiling with every tooth bared.

"Losing to me will be what burns you most in your final moments, Maliard Turner!" He struck the ground with force, sending the metal resounding in a spectral echo. His laughter soon began to fill the hall, mixing with the crackle of the flames. Ascan drew a breath, smiling still wider. He let his coat billow and turned his back. A hiss disturbed his hearing, and within moments a sense of alarm took hold of him. He tried to dodge, but found his shoulder torn open by a blade, this time, not of air, but made of water.

"Certainly, but do try to warn me about these famous 'final moments'…" Ascan gripped his own battered shoulder as his blood mixed with the foam. Maliard walked toward him, setting his steps upon stairs of water, suspended in the air by various currents.

"So all the blood you were spilling was to transform it into water?" Maliard shook his head, raising a wall between himself and another explosion, trapping it within that aquatic prison.

"That was to draw your explosions, since I thought they operated on heat. I drew the water partly from the air, and partly from the Taumite." The staff clicked, opening again as the chains began glowing with a violet light.

"I see… I imagine that leaves me no other choice." A light flashed beneath his feet, stunning Maliard as Ascan began leaping from one cistern to the next. The moment his sight stopped being dazzled, he noticed the enormous iron gate.

"Damn it!" The air wrapped around him, accelerating him in pursuit. Several floors below, indecipherable within the complex, Jeanne wiped the red from her crimson lips. Driven into the flesh of her thigh were rocks and ice. The glacial water trickled slowly, mixing with the dense, dark blood.

"Come now, I know this is not all you have to offer me…" The ground beneath David's feet began to freeze, as dead, wooden figures branched out behind him. The tip of the ice blade caressed the ground, leaving behind a trail of pale frost." It makes me want to vomit…" All her strength was channelled into the scythe, now used simply as a support. Her legs trembled, desperately trying to knit themselves back together. Jeanne smiled, tearing the lance out of herself with a groan.

Greyish liquid began flowing in place of blood, slowly taking on the colour of muscle and nerve.

"Maliard, Lance... Are they all right?"

"Even your own body channels paint, but it is not enough." The man smiled, levelling his blade at her. Within seconds, she was surrounded by dozens of stone pikes, all aimed at her throat. An elegant, metallic hiss, and every weapon was decapitated, falling at her feet.

"Y-you will not be the one to say that…" The girl murmured, spitting blood and mire onto her own garment. With effort, she set the scythe back on her shoulder, discharging all the tension in her flesh into her hips.

"Are you certain?" The scythe crashed down onto his face, yet nothing but ice was cleaved. Jeanne's blade was pulled free of the icy mannequin before she felt her own body being struck. She bounced across the ground, kicked toward the far end of the room. David unbuttoned his jacket, revealing the numerous plates of rock embedded in his skin. With a violent stomp, the ice shifted once more, this time forming thin columns.

"I would say a little confrontation is in order." His smile reflected along the transparent ice, twisting into a horrible, glacial pincer around the suffering Jeanne.