Chapter 20 #2
It was the sound of a man clawing his way out of his own grave. He leveraged every ounce of predatory strength remaining in his ruined body. He dragged his heavy, dead left arm across the floor, the fused brass of the Weave-Gauntlet screeching against the iron.
He forced himself up onto his knees.
The world spun violently. The superheated Luminous fog swirled around him, mocking his defiance.
Blood poured freely from his nose and lips, painting the front of his torn dark linen tunic a brilliant crimson.
He was swaying dangerously, his center of gravity entirely compromised by the dead weight of his left limb.
"Moros," Nymeria breathed, her hands hovering inches from his arms, terrified to touch him but ready to catch him if he fell.
Drystan didn't look at her. He kept his head bowed, his chin resting against his chest.
The rib, his analytical mind commanded, cutting through the red haze of agony. The bone is piercing the pleural cavity. If you move, the friction will shred the lung entirely. You have to clear the airway.
There were no healing potions. There was no miraculous level-up screen to restore his health. There was only the brutal, visceral reality of the Evolutionary Slope.
Drystan raised his right hand. His fingers were slick with his own blood.
He bypassed the thick leather of his duster and dug his fingers directly into the torn fabric of his tunic, pressing his hand against the bruised, swollen flesh of his right side. He felt the unnatural, jagged lump of the broken rib protruding inward.
Nymeria gasped, realizing exactly what he was about to do. "Drystan, no. You'll go into shock."
"I am the glitch," Drystan hissed through clenched teeth, blood bubbling on his lips.
He didn't hesitate. The terrified clerk was dead.
Drystan hooked his bloody fingers around the jagged, fractured edge of his own rib beneath the skin. He squeezed his icy gray eyes shut. He braced his core, fighting the instinctual, biological urge to pull away from the pain.
With a sickening, wet crunch, Drystan physically pulled the bone outward.
The agony was indescribable. It was a blinding, white-hot supernova that completely short-circuited his nervous system. His vision flashed pure white. A raw, unearthly scream ripped itself from his vocal cords, echoing off the rusted blast doors of the Aether-Gate hub with terrifying volume.
He pulled the bone back into alignment with the rest of his ribcage. The jagged edge slid out of his punctured lung with a horrifying, squelching friction.
He collapsed forward, catching his weight on his right hand.
He violently expelled a massive, dark clot of coagulated blood from his throat, spitting it onto the iron floor.
He gasped.
Air—blistering, superheated, metallic air—rushed into his right lung. It burned like inhaling acid, but the lung expanded. The airway was clear. The drowning sensation immediately began to recede, replaced by the sheer, staggering rush of oxygen.
Drystan stayed on his hands and knees, his chest heaving with deep, ragged, agonizing breaths. He was trembling so violently his heavy leather duster shook. The pain in his chest was a constant, roaring fire, but it was a manageable fire. It was a pain he could compartmentalize.
He slowly lifted his head.
His silver-white hair was matted to his forehead with sweat and blood.
His icy gray eyes were bloodshot, surrounded by dark, bruised bags of exhaustion.
But the look in those eyes was no longer hollow.
The absolute, calculating sociopathy of the Villain's Valedictorian had returned, hardened into a diamond-sharp point of lethal intent.
Nymeria Shade stared at him. She was breathing heavily, her hands covering her mouth. She had just watched a man manually reset his own skeletal structure to deny a god his victory.
"Are you..." she started, her voice trembling.
"I'm breathing," Drystan rasped. The voice was low, terrifyingly calm, and completely devoid of surrender.
He pushed himself back, sitting on his heels. He looked down at the execution countdown on his ruined left wrist. The crimson runes were strobing rapidly, the biological lock firmly in place. Evander's system knew exactly where he was. The Vanguard was coming to collect the livestock.
Drystan reached across his chest with his bloody right hand. He didn't reach for the empty air. He grabbed the thick leather strap of his alchemical bandolier and pulled it tight.
"Evander wants my corrupted code," Drystan stated, staring into the blinding white fog of the sterilization chamber. "He thinks he can keep me alive just long enough to strap me to a table and harvest my marrow."
He looked at Nymeria. The connection between them was absolute. There were no more secrets. There was no more posturing. They were two broken outcasts standing at the bottom of the world, armed with nothing but spite and dirt.
"He needs me alive," Drystan repeated, the tactical blueprint forming instantly in his corporate mind.
"If the Vanguard kills you, the code degrades," Nymeria confirmed, catching the lethal drift of his logic. Her amber eyes narrowed. "They are under strict orders to capture, not purge."
"Then we are untouchable."
The realization was a tactical masterpiece.
Evander’s greed was his fatal flaw. By issuing the harvest directive, Evander had effectively stripped his elite executioners of their most potent weapon: lethal force.
The towering golden zealots could not use their hard-light halberds to decapitate him.
They could not use the gargoyle to crush his skull. They had to pull their punches.
Drystan Harrow grinned. It was a terrifying, bloody, jagged smile that belonged entirely to the Doomed Mid-Boss.
"They have to take us alive, Nymeria," Drystan whispered, his icy gray eyes blazing. "Which means they have to put their hands on me. And if they put their hands on me, I can break their fingers."
Nymeria let out a short, breathy laugh. It was a sound of pure, cynical defiance.
She reached down to the floor, her fingers brushing past the inert Shadow-Loom Relic, and grabbed the heavy, deactivated golden shaft of the halberd she had salvaged from the Obsidian Narrows.
She used it as a crutch, hauling her voluptuous, bruised frame up from the scorching metal plates.
She stood beside him, the heavy halberd shaft resting on her shoulder.
Drystan forced himself to his feet. He swayed, his ruined left arm hanging dead, his right hand dripping fresh blood onto the floor. He ignored the grinding protest of his newly set rib. He stood tall, projecting a shadow that seemed to swallow the blinding Luminous aether around them.
"The sterilization protocol is meant to soften us up," Drystan analyzed, looking at the sealed rusted blast doors. "But the gas is finite. Evander won't leave us in here forever. He's going to open those doors."
"And when he does?" Nymeria asked, gripping the halberd shaft tightly.
"When he does, the Vanguard will funnel through that doorway to collect their prize," Drystan said, rolling his right shoulder, mentally preparing for the brutal physical toll of the impending melee.
He didn't have his glitched kinetic magic. He didn't have the element of surprise. But he had a bottleneck, and he had an enemy that was forbidden from killing him.
"We don't surrender," Drystan commanded, his voice echoing off the iron walls with absolute, unyielding authority. "We make them bleed for every single inch of this room. We turn this transit hub into a meat-grinder."
Nymeria Shade smiled. Her dusky twilight skin glowed with the feral anticipation of a cornered beast.
"I'll take the knees," she vowed.
Drystan Harrow stood in the center of the slaughterhouse, the blood drying on his chin, the terrifying countdown ticking on his wrist. The ghost was dead.
The victim was erased. The Villain’s Valedictorian raised his shredded right fist toward the sealed iron doors, fully prepared to teach the golden gods of Kaelen-D?r exactly how much damage a broken anomaly could inflict before the timer reached zero.