Chapter One Hundred Three: ‘Ye who must hold firm...!’

Hector’s armor kept crumbling. His clothes kept burning. And he kept losing extremities to the Lady Blackburn’s very annoyingly well-placed attacks. Even Haqq’s shield couldn’t stand up to her destruction power--Hector had lost an arm, shoulder, and half his face figuring that out. She seemed particularly intent on clipping his legs, and Hector was equally intent on not allowing that to happen. If it weren’t for Asad, he definitely would’ve been dead by now.

But here he was. Still alive. Still keeping hold of Duvoss and Xuan. He really wished they’d hurry up and finish regenerating already. He knew the chaos of a fight tended to make time feel longer, but this was getting to be a bit much.

He just focused on avoiding Nere’s attacks. His shield and body could weather Ismael’s flames, if absolutely necessary. Ismael seemed to be trying to close in on him, probably for some kind of explosive attack, but Asad was keeping him at bay while also giving Nere glass javelins to worry about.

And then he saw Darktide finally snatch Dimas out of the air and snap the man in half, ripping Iziol from his body in one smooth motion.

Hector didn’t get the chance to keep watching, but knowing that Salvador was now alone against Melchor, Hector had a dreadful feeling that he was about to be seeing a whole lot of liquid mercury again.

Hector tried raising platforms beneath Nere to trip her up, but she was simply too fast; and the one time he actually succeeded, Nere just leapt off the platform as if she’d expected it to be there.

Asad, however, employed a better strategy. With a clenched fist, he raised a huge bed of powdered quartz beneath Ismael and Nere, slowing them both down as they suddenly had to go from running on stone to stomping through clumps of sand. Of course, they also had superhuman strength in their legs, so the sand only offered a brief opening as they adjusted their running motion accordingly. But that was enough for Asad.

A quartz spike gored Nere through the stomach, then spawned dozens of barbed branches in quick succession, exploding out of her torso and severing the top half of her body from the bottom. Her arms moved to destroy the quartz, but it was already too late. The glass cut cleanly up through both shoulders, stopping her movement completely before proceeding to encase her neck and head.

Hector looked on in horrified awe. He would definitely have to steal that technique, he decided.

And it had gone almost unnoticed thus far, but Asad was the main reason why none of the fallen Blackburns had been able to return to the fight. Even when he’d been fending off two or three opponents at once, Asad managed to coat the severed heads in quartz and prevent regeneration. Ismael or Melchor would sometimes break someone free, but Asad would just coat them again without losing a beat. Hector, at least, managed to provide some assistance on that front, recoating a couple with iron when Asad didn’t have the time.

Now, with Nere taken down, Hector checked on Lord Salvador again. Darktide already had him pinned and was almost finished extracting his reaper.

Only Ismael, Melchor, Asad, and Hector remained. The last four combatants. How he’d ended up in this position was entirely beyond him, but the good news was that Xuan’s head, neck, and shoulders had finished regrowing.

He heard Garovel ask the question that was already on his mind.

‘How much longer?’

‘He just needs one hand,’ said Duvoss.

In calmer circumstances, Hector might have asked why. He also might have complained about it, because that was still way too long to wait--especially now that he was watching a living metal monster barreling toward him.

Hector was getting accustomed to running in full plate armor. He glimpsed a nearby corridor and considered fleeing through it, but the narrower quarters struck him as more of a death sentence than anything. He proceeded straight ahead, bounding over a pile of rocks that used to be part of the high ceiling and trying to reach Asad.

Frozen mercury shot up around Hector, caging him in completely, but Asad was close enough now to punch through with glass-coated fists. They kept running together. Hector decided to leave a few iron walls in their wake, while Asad was busy keeping Ismael away.

The first wall was simple enough--it spanned the entire length of the foyer, but it wasn’t nearly tall enough, and Darktide just splashed right over it. The second wall, at least, was a large enough obstacle that Darktide chose to break through rather than lose time scaling it. The third was the same, not enough to buy even a moment of extra time.

The fourth, however, was not a wall at all. Instead, Hector materialized a sphere where he expected Darktide to be, but still made it massive enough to look like a wall for the brief glimpse Melchor would get of it after busting through the third. So when his liquid body slammed into it, no doubt expecting to smash it down, the sphere began rolling away instead, creating a moment of stumbling confusion as Melchor ended up rolling with it. Hector had even added a few dents in its surface, so the giant ball ended up veering off to the left and distracting Melchor for a moment more.

It was a stupid trick, Hector knew, but extra time was extra time, regardless of how he achieved it. And now he had the opportunity to work on an old scheme: a soul-empowered maze. It had hidden his presence against Karkash. Maybe it could do so against Melchor.

He set to work, creating a four-way intersection with himself and Asad at the center, then expanding each branch in three different directions. Then again. And again. All while he and Asad kept pressing through the tunnels together.

Melchor wasn’t having it, though. The same kind of explosion that had subdued Xuan shook the chamber once again. Hector’s tunnels shattered under the impact and went flying, sending him and Asad along with them. White dust filled the air just as before, but Dimas wasn’t around to clear it away this time.

Hector found himself upside down and in a corner, bundled around Duvoss, Garovel, and Xuan. He scrambled back to his feet, a bit surprised to discover that he wasn’t missing any limbs or even armor. His shoes had blown right off his feet, and his ear drums had been ruptured, but he was too concerned with present circumstances to even notice. The only thing on his mind now was that he’d lost track of Asad through all the dust.

But Garovel hadn’t. ‘Run left. Melchor is still after us.’

Hector bolted, following the scarcely visible wall. Then he stopped, but not because he wanted to. Something had a grip on his armor below the knee. He couldn’t quite see what it was, but there was no way he was going to wait around and find out. He annihilated the armor above the knee, slid his leg free, and kept running.

He came upon a sudden clearing in the dusty clouds and saw Asad. The Sandlord was already fighting Ismael yet again. Hector hadn’t been able to watch their repeated clashes very closely, but knowing all he did about Asad, it was informative enough just seeing that the Lord Blackburn had not yet fallen to him.

“Oh, hey, I’m still alive,” came Xuan’s voice, and Hector looked down to see that the man had regained consciousness. His already small body was still only half-regenerated, but at least he had lungs and elbows now.

Hector didn’t get a chance to respond. A tidal wave of mercury barreled through the fog after him. He launched himself out of its path with a slanted iron platform, but the mercury made a sharp turn and kept up the chase. Wide-eyed behind his helm, Hector launched himself again before he could even stop to regain his balance and went flipping sideways through the air.

A bed of sand softened Hector’s fall, and a massive barricade of crystalline spears shot up to defend him from another cage of frozen mercury that tried to box him in. They kept an escape route open for him while simultaneously launching daggers at Melchor, not that they did much good. Hector fled the glass shelter just as Darktide crashed through it, sending fist-sized shards in all directions.

Another iron platform shot Hector up past the second floor, all the way to the third, and his bare feet hit cold rock again. He checked on Xuan again and wanted to cry when he saw that barely any progress had been made after all that effort.

Already, tendrils of mercury had made it up to the third floor. Hector leapt away from them with the aid of more platforms, scraping the broken ceiling with the back of his breastplate and jostling another boulder loose. It fell toward Melchor, who slapped it aside like a volleyball.

Meanwhile, Xuan was busy laughing. “That Darktide sure is a tough bastard, isn’t he?”

Hector landed with a metal thud and promptly launched himself away again. “Please stop distracting me, Lord Xuan.”

Midair, a tendril caught up to him and found his shield. Hector gripped the handle with all his might and wrenched it free, but the tendril settled for his bare leg instead. And when Hector landed again, a second tendril was already there, snaking around the other leg and crushing its armor.

He was in no position to run away this time, he knew, and in a moment, the mercury would surround him again, preventing even his ability to materialize iron. So he used it while he still could. He poured everything into adding spikes to his armor. Maximum volume.

The spikes exploded out, each one thick as a tree trunk, covering his armor and his shield and creating a small pocket at the center for Hector and his three passengers. The spikes also appeared on the back of his armor, lifting him off the floor and sending his giant cluster of iron needles over the third floor’s guardrail.

They fell, though Hector could hardly feel it from inside. He couldn’t see the fruits of his concentration, either, but it didn’t matter, because he just kept pushing for more. More spikes. More iron. More defense.

Hector’s work quickly filled the length of the chamber and caught on the second floor’s porous walls and crumbling staircase. They were stuck fast now, suspended above the first floor like some kind of grisly ornament, all while the iron spikes continued to grow, touching the ground and even reaching toward the ceiling.

Hector pressed his soul into the iron, hoping the shield’s passive enhancements would be carried along as well, but unfortunately, that did not seem the case. And with no light, he couldn’t see Xuan’s progress. He could only hear the muffled crack of iron above him and feel the fierce vibrations in his metal cocoon.

And then Darktide broke through. The foyer’s dim light poured in, along with a river of living mercury, searching and grasping for Xuan.

Hector tried to stay bundled up, but too much of Xuan had regenerated. The Seadevil could no longer fit inside the small pocket of safety between Hector’s chest, arms, and shield. So the mercury seeped through the cracks, and Hector could only thrash against it.

It was like trying to fight ten opponents at once, all with invisible hands guiding the flow of mercury, pummeling Hector’s whole body, tearing at him, swarming him. A tendril wrapped around one of Xuan’s regenerating arms and tore it off. Another tendril tried to do the same to the other arm, but Hector used the point of his shield to chop it off. And he saw Xuan’s one remaining hand. It was nearly complete. The stubby fingers were all that was still needed.

And then Hector felt himself being pulled away by the legs. Only Garovel stayed with him, having somehow repositioned himself to Hector’s hand, hiding just behind the battered shield. Melchor spat the pair of them out like old chewing gum, and Hector clattered to the floor in his crushed armor.

Before even standing, he stared back up with wide eyes, wanting to know if he’d bought enough time for Xuan. And he still couldn’t tell. Chunks of shattered iron were falling all around him, crashing into the rock and making the room tremble, and Hector had to annihilate the pieces that would have otherwise fallen on him.

When he saw Darktide again, the man was a writhing mass of marbled silver. Moving, shifting. Struggling.

And then a white flame burst out of the mercury like a sword, smoldering and bright. Swirling trails of white seeped through the hole, growing as the flame did, until a plume of smoke finally spewed outward, accompanied by a booming laugh that filled the foyer.

Darktide splashed down to the first floor while the Seadevil billowed up to the second. The liquid mercury shuddered violently, almost boiling, and Hector couldn’t tell if that was the result of anger or just a dose of Xuan’s acid.

‘Hector,’ came Garovel’s strained voice, ‘stop using the shield...’

Hector let it drop to the floor and heard Garovel let out a groan of relief. He armored up his other hand so that he could pick it up again. The leather glove underneath was shredded, but he wasn’t presently concerned about the added discomfort.

‘You okay?’ Hector asked, mindful of Darktide’s bristling form.

Garovel did not answer.

‘Garovel?’

Still nothing.

He supposed there was no use worrying about it now. Melchor seemed more interested in Xuan at the moment, but Hector knew he could turn and crush him anytime. But of course, given that Melchor didn’t know about the shield’s power or the temporary nature of it, the man was probably thinking Hector would be too annoying to kill first. Hopefully.

He watched as the two monstrous Rainlords clashed again. Xuan appeared to be keeping his distance this time, letting his smoke waft around more so that he could use it to screen his attacks. Pillars of white flame flashed intermittently, lighting up the foyer each time like a very slow strobe. And Melchor’s inhuman shadow appeared during each flash, sweeping across the smoke with a boom that invoked more earthquakes.

It was quite obvious to Hector that his role in their battle was concluded. He decided to go help Asad, who was still occupied with Ismael.

Theirs was a battle of more human proportions, though only just. Asad flipped through the air on clear platforms, hurtling glass boulders and molten quartz and inconvenient mounds of sand. Ismael proved quick on his feet, however, and with pan-forma, he could pick and choose which attacks to avoid while still drawing upon a plentiful supply of flesh for his potassium-fueled volleys of lavender fire.

Hector moved to intervene, but something else stopped their battle cold.

A brown shadow appeared in thin air, and from it, a smiling man stepped forth, along with a reaper and a young woman.

And even with the horns on her face, Hector immediately recognized her from her photograph.

He saw Ismael’s sunken eyes go as big as marbles.