Chapter 301. The Final Round (Patreon)

[ i wrote 3 menocht chapters today, god bless finally getting restful sleep for the first time in soooo looooong ahhhhhh. expect more chapters later today to finish off the discardia arc! ]

I cross the sand dunes and once more find myself on the beach. The ocean smashes into far-off cliffs, merciless in its dismantling of the rugged rock face.

A flight focus and bones stream out from my void storage. A bone wyrm assembles, its bones clicking against one another and glowing with Death energy. I give it the command to fly and watch as it elevates and gradually gains speed. Soon it’s racing rapidly in circles overhead. When I give it the command to slow down, it does so easily, like a hovergloss on a track activating its brakes.

With my Beginning affinity, I focus on the flow of energy through the wyrm, ordering it to alternatingly accelerate and decelerate.

Physics demands that forces counteract one another. If I were to physically press on the wyrm, an opposite force would press back against me. Force balances force. But what about when I use my affinity to essentially pull myself up by my bones? Death energy does it without any point of leverage. It negates the opposite force–or perhaps it’s more accurate to say that the river of energy coursing through the body counteracts it.

When I control my body, I’m still limited by the forces of motion, such that too abrupt a turn could harm my body and lead to internal ruptures or broken bones. To halt myself when I’m diving from orbit is suicide. But if there’s a way to more steadily exert forces over time, rather than just controlling my body outright, I may have a solution.

I run another quick test. Socketing weak soul gems in the wyrm, I test its agility and tenacity. It has significantly more difficulty accelerating and decelerating without sustaining damage. I place prismatic soul gems in the wyrm and confirm that the construct is much sturdier.

Gulfs exist between decemantic constructs based on the power of the practitioner. It’s not news to me that my constructs become more powerful and swift based on their socketed soul gems, but I never confirmed why that was. It was somewhat irrelevant– when arisen by my will and my energy, even my weaker constructs can threaten most practitioners.

Humming, I grab the special soul gem I formed from the leviathan riftbeast, the one whose inside is filled with crackling hoarfrost and frozen lightning. It’s been a while since I’ve had cause to use it–there was no point when I trained with Ash.

I socket it in the wyrm and watch it take off. How fast can you go? I wonder.

The answer is pretty damn fast. My Beginning gives me an intuition for the improvement–it moves at 1.8 times its speed when using a normal prismatic soul gem. What’s more important is that it can brake faster as well, bleeding its velocity without sustaining damage.

I enjoy watching bone wyrms fly as much as the next person, but how will this help you survive the next round? Maria says.

I think I can make a shield of bones around myself that will help me slow down, I explain. I need a circuit to run Death energy through; it will facilitate a steady application of force and absorb recoil.

Fascinating, but where will you get bones?

Once I enter the atmosphere, from living things, of course, I reply.

You’ll be going awfully fast by the time you get close to anything alive, she retorts. Birds don’t fly at twenty thousand feet. You’ll have nothing to kill.

I grimace. She isn’t wrong, though there is a chance that I’ll be able to kill birds and mountain-dwelling creatures before I lose control and die.

Perhaps there’s a different way, I reply, my eyes narrowing.

I approach the wyrm and press my hand against its rib bones. They aren’t single bones, but rather pieces of smaller bones and shells compacted together. Under my control, they function as a single entity.

I tug the single bone amalgamation and it comes free without resistance, honoring my unvoiced desires. I run my fingers along its surface, then use my other hand to feel underneath my robes. There’s a source of bone and energy that is always with me.

A ruthless plan enters my mind. When I share it with Maria, I expect her to rebuke me. Instead, she is silent for a moment, then says, Will it hurt?

Only if I wish it to.

Good.

I nod to myself and clench the wyrm’s rib bone. I only have a few minutes to practice–I’d better make them count.

—

Red and I slide into our chairs in the classroom.

“This is the last round,” he says. “Regardless of the outcome, thanks for participating with me. Neither of us planned this originally, but it’s been… fun, in its own way.”

“Ascendants,” Holiday begins, clasping his hands together. Ebon Pearl is coiled on his head, small enough to be mistaken for a black diadem if not for her flicking tongue. “You are about to enter the last round. I won’t spoil anything about it, but just know that you’ve already done well to reach this point ahead of the other competitors.” His eyes sweep over those gathered to challenge round five, ignoring the blank faces of the competitors embroiled in other challenges. “Remember what you have learned and also what, perhaps, you have not.”

The red and white star icon on my desk beckons. I press my hand down upon it and Discardia starts up, asking the same question it always does.

“Observer Black, please select an affinity for this exercise.”

I select the familiar feline skull icon for Death.

“Selection registered. Preparing Discardia.”

Sure enough, when we enter the fifth round, Red and I find ourselves hurtling toward Bresnir’s planet. We hurriedly activate our artifacts, falling into the same pattern as before. The voice of Discardia is oddly silent; perhaps we won’t receive this round’s challenge until we get closer to the planet’s surface.

“There are no missiles,” Red says. “As far forward as I can see, there are no impediments. Maybe we won’t be forced to destroy everything this time.”

Wouldn’t that be nice?

Falling toward a planet without the threat of missiles is exhilarating in the best way. There’s no reason for us to speed up to perform evasive maneuvers, so we let the pull of gravity do most of the work. It means that my plan for survival is much more likely to work.

“I’m curious, Red, how do you think other ascendants will survive this fall? Excluding wind elementalists.”

“They would need to redirect and bleed their velocity,” Red says, his thoughts radiating displeasure. “Same as us. Dark practitioners might have an easier time of it, using incorporeality to reduce the pull of gravity, though they’d need to be careful not to sink into the earth and get stuck. The next best would be fire elementalists, assuming they have better control over their practice than you do over Maria’s wings.”

“Hey, I’m perfectly proficient at controlling them,” I say. “Anyone would have difficulty adjusting their trajectory at the speeds we were going last round.”

“How do you plan to survive this time?” Red asks.

“I’ll use Maria’s wings to decelerate. It should be fine if we only freefall to the surface.”

“I thought you went away to practice a new technique?”

“I did, and I’ll use it if I need to, though it’ll be a last resort.

“I’d be surprised if this scenario is as easy as it seems,” Red cautions. “At the very least, entering the atmosphere slower means more turbulence. Prepare yourself.”

The suits insulate me and Red from the heat of our descent. I struggle to keep myself on course, periodically blasting Maria’s wings to adjust my trajectory. Red uses the booster artifact on his back in a similar way.

“There’s a trap for us,” Red suddenly says.

I frown. “Where?” We’re thousands of feet above the ground. Even at the end of Red’s future sight, we’ll still be thousands of feet above the ground.

“It’s a loose mesh of razor-thin wires strung across the sky,” he explains. “They’re held aloft by teams of wind elementalists.”

“Can’t we just avoid it?”

“The wires cover the surroundings, boxing us in like a net. We can only escape by going up.”

I grimace. “That must be a ton of wire.”

“Not so,” he replies. “As I said, the mesh is loose. The wires are incredibly long and crisscross loosely, the strands about a foot apart from one another.” A memory enters my mind, revealing a vision of hair-thin, metallic wires glinting in the light of the sun.

This isn’t adding up. “If the wires are draped over such a distance, their tension won’t be enough to cut us through. The trap won’t work.”

“At the origins, the wires are inscribed with Dark affinity arrays. When activated, the wires disintegrate what they touch. They’re thin enough to be nearly invisible and they’re close enough together that we can’t avoid them.”

“I presume the wires cut through our suits?” I ask.

“They do.”

Suddenly, a deluge of memories comes to the forefront of my mind. It’s a stream of this very conversation taking place in a scenario, accompanied by memories of us trying different strategies.

The most obvious tactic is to have Red use his ascendant energy to insulate against the effect of the Dark-enhanced wire. That fails because there isn’t enough time for his energy to work given the speed that we approach the wire.

The next option is to send a projectile ahead to slice the mesh before we fall through. This fails because of the wind elementalists. If we cut through the mesh, the wind forces its strands back into place. Since the strands don’t rely on tension but Dark energy to kill, they work effectively even when shredded.

Y’jeni, I never realized how potent a combination Dark could be with wind elementalism, I think to Maria.

It’s possible for this to be the work of one person, technically–an End and Dark dual affinity practitioner. The wind elementalism would come from End in that case.

At least Bresnir’s only a Dark practitioner, I think. There’s more than one person working this trap; no one person’s ability to control wind should extend so far that we can’t avoid it.

In the end, there’s only one solution we can think of that’s viable, and it revolves around me.

Red and I both understand the situation. Together, we use our methods of propulsion to increase our speed. Red points out a section of the mesh between the center and one of the edges. The elementalists spread out on the periphery to avoid the range of a Remorse practitioner–quite prudent of them, given most descendants probably lack that affinity. However, I was able to ravage the mind of one wind elementalist who came too close in a scenario. The control of the mesh is decentralized, so he won’t be the only one controlling his section, but if I’m able to control him, it’ll maximize the chance of this working.

I mentally voice my understanding as I cut my ability to feel pain in my torso. Two rib bones rise, their connective tissues sloughing off. My skin parts to let them through and I feel the vibration of the suit passing through the bones and into my innards.

I shudder.

My practice sharpens the bones to be razor-thin, allowing them to cut through the relatively un-reinforced suit interior at the same spot. As they pierce the final layer of the suit, the air pressure inside it equalizes with the thin atmosphere. Exterior vibrations rock me with significantly greater force, no longer fully absorbed by the suit’s protective outer layer. The artifact providing me oxygen is thankfully separate and unaffected by the breach.

My rib bones swiftly pass through the small incision in the suit and stick to my chest, pressed into place by my rapid flight.

Without an ounce of hesitation, I shatter the sticky, flesh-specked bones into fragments. Blood flows scarlet, the vitality in my bones fading rapidly.

Meanwhile, I form a soul gem in my hands, one born from my own sacrificed vitality. I can’t donate too much energy, but I don’t need a large soul gem, just a potent one. I’m not powering a wyrm, after all–just these fragments.

It’ll have to be enough.