Chapter 307. At His Own Hand (Patreon)

Ebon Pearl

Ebon Pearl knew what was coming, but that didn’t mean she was happy about it.

The tension in the stands and classroom was palpable. When Ancient Black laughed, his cold composure cracking, Ebon Pearl knew that the time for posturing was over.

Violence was imminent.

Crimson Teeth rubbed her snout, then activated a spherical artifact by cracking it against her head like an egg. A sticky fluid coated her length in an instant, writhing against her scales and pulling her head toward her tail. Crimson Teeth lobbed her into the air, ascendant energy giving the throw greater range. The fluid tugged on her scales as it amalgamated, smoothing and hardening into a clear orb that completely encompassed the snake.

Now that the artifact stiffened, it bent the light around Ebon Pearl while muddling her heat signature. It floated like a balloon, maintaining buoyancy in the air, bobbing gently. The artifact was tiny after hardening, though—barely big enough for Ebon Pearl’s coiled body.

“I hate when you put me in the ball,” she mentally complained.

“‘The ball’ is one of the most expensive artifacts I own,” Crimson Teeth protested as he sat back down at his bureau. “Don’t complain when it’s perfectly big enough to fit you. Remember, adding a finger span to the radius would double its cost.”

Ebon Pearl leaned her nose against the ball and it swiveled slightly downward, giving her a better view of the stands where the observers waited for Ancient Black to make a move. Suddenly, the ancient pulled out a series of large, dark soul gems. They were so dense that they passively radiated energy as a dark violet sheen. Extraordinary density was necessary for Death energy to be visible to mundane eyes in such a way.

Bones followed the gems, snaking from Black’s void storage, a simple sack whose wide opening gave them plenty of space to fly clear. The bones danced among the soul gems, forming a shield of three layers. To Ebon Pearl, it didn’t look like much. How would three thin shield layers–mostly composed of empty space–defend against an ascendant onslaught?

The other ascendant observers let Black prepare himself as a courtesy. They waited for the inevitable attack, ready to activate defensive artifacts and rush into the fray.

The fight began with the assassination of fifteen ascendants, their bodies jerking and falling limp. Additionally, Black’s wings flared with powerful fire, scorching everyone nearby and forcing people to vacate the immediate area.

The time for the fifteen to revive was brief, but notable. Ascendants could do a lot with a second or two.

Black focused his attention on the thirty or so observers who remained. Their retaliation was instantaneous, reflexive. A red glow shone in the eyes of all, with varying degrees of red energy visible under people’s skin. Artifacts emerged, ranging between a ceremonial scepter to an elegant steel gorget inlaid with an iridescent ruby. One ascendant even summoned a set of bat wings with the skin on inside out, stringy muscles and blood vessels visible to the eye. The partial translucence of the skin allowed Ebon Pearl to see fuzzy, violet-brown fur surrounding the interior bones.

None would use their most valuable artifacts, and a handful of ascendants didn’t call up any. This melee wasn’t worth risking an artifact’s destruction. Besides, were artifacts necessary when the numbers were so skewed against Ancient Black?

As Crimson Teeth’s companion, Ebon Pearl’s mind was used to working quickly, but she struggled to follow what came next. In the time it would take to flick her tongue, all manner of attacks rained down on Ancient Black. A bright pillar of light and a black, smoldering boulder were the most eye-catching attacks. Ebon Pearl narrowed her eyes against the extreme brightness. Her natural ability to sense heat signatures was second only to a Sun affinity practitioner, but the conflagration of Black’s wings and the pillar of flame drowned out everything.

A blast of wind and heat buffeted the ball. The protective enclosure barely rocked, successfully dissipating the forces. Even so, Ebon Pearl’s nature called upon her to find somewhere safe. Somewhere that wasn’t exposed, perhaps somewhere deep underground.

The instinct was pointless–the ground was the domain of Mountain practitioners and earth elementalists and was just as treacherous as the sky. As though affirming her thoughts, jaws of earth erupted from the ground many feet below the observer stands. They surged upwards with incredible speed.

“Should you not intervene?” Ebon Pearl asked Crimson Teeth.

“I will,” Holiday assured her, “after his first death.”

Dark wraiths made of bone and Death energy danced around Ancient Black, obscuring the contours of his body. They looked grotesque and would probably obfuscate Black’s form in the visual spectrum, but that didn’t mean much against most ascendants. His body bent unnaturally at the last second as he whipped to the side, avoiding a slash of Dark energy that devoured all light and heat and would have torn him in two. A flurry of wind pushed him back as the Dark attack reversed its direction, coming back like a boomerang. His body moved as though shoved, avoiding the attack by a hair’s breadth.

Ebon Pearl could only see the wind gusts because of the smoke of the flames. The dark–possibly poisonous–fumes lashed out at Black from every angle, but bounced against his tri-layer shield, unable to penetrate… for now. Finally, Ebon Pearl couldn’t sense mind attacks, but she knew Black had to be enduring multiple at once. She was surprised that his fledgling Remorse affinity was sufficient to keep him conscious.

Suddenly, the earth swallowed the ancient in a single gulp, though the pillar of fire–and the massive black boulder hurtling downward–prevented the earthen creation from closing its mouth. While the earth crushed Ancient Black from the sides and below, the boulder crunched him from above, offering no escape.

Overall, many people fighting against one like this was inefficient. Unplanned, uncoordinated attacks from different affinities only got in each other’s way. The interference between different elemental attacks was strong, though a few ascendants seemed to have used them advantageously, such as the earth elementalist who dropped the boulder into the fiery pillar, giving the rock a molten edge.

At that moment, the first of the fifteen that Black killed revived.

“Why did he kill them, and not incapacitate them?” Ebon Pearl asked. “Now they revive to join the fray.”

“His ascendant energy is blue,” the ascendant mused. “I don’t think he expected them to die so easily.”

Ebon Pearl didn’t understand. “Shouldn’t he know his own strength?”

The earthen construct cracked open, white and gray steam bursting as though from a pressure cooker. The earth redoubled its efforts to contain the ancient, crushing inward and redirecting the steam under the boulder. The black rock exploded upwards, sending chunks of rock and extreme heat toward Ebon Pearl. Her protective ball took the impact easily, absorbing the force and dissipating the heat. As the rock fell away, no longer obscuring her view, she saw that Ancient Black was plastered to the boulder’s underside. His fiery wings propelled the boulder to smash through the floor of the classroom. It fragmented against the desks.

The ascendant competitors reacted in time to avoid the attack, but they weren’t the main target. Ebon Pearl hissed as the boulder headed straight for Ascendant Crimson Teeth, who remained seated behind the teacher bureau as though he hadn’t a care in the world.

Suddenly, the wings changed direction, blasting Black off the boulder. He hovered at the center of the classroom. Now that he was stationary, Ebon Pearl could see the full extent of the devastation done to his body. Half of it was missing. She realized with a start that the bottom half of his torso–from his hips down–was still on the boulder.

Good thing I’m not a squeamish snake, Ebon Pearl thought haughtily. Crimson Teeth had a penchant for violent, messy takedowns, so this didn’t faze her.

But the missing lower half wasn’t all. His body looked like several areas had been flash frozen and chipped away. Chunks were missing from his pectoral and his shoulder, and the upper right side of his face had melted away, his eye missing. Finally, she spotted several horizontal lines on his body where blood seeped, eerily red given the too-dark, inhuman color of his skin. She saw one around his throat, one diagonal across where she imagined his heart must be, and around both forearms. It looked almost like… someone had sliced him through with an extremely thin blade, and time hadn’t yet caught up with him.

The damage was ghastly, and Ebon Pearl knew that most ascendants would have long since succumbed to those wounds.

“How is he…?”

“He’s a Death practitioner,” Crimson Teeth explained. He raised a hand; energy gathered in his palm and he stood up to greet the molten boulder. “The more damage he sustains, the greater his hold over his own body–but it’s a careful balance, and if he loses concentration for a moment, it will spell his doom.”

As he finished the thought, the ascendant’s palm met hurtling rock. It shattered as the force of Crimson Teeth’s ascendant energy rippled through it, his Beginning affinity allowing him to exploit its weak points.

Pride swelled in the snake’s chest as chunks of rock blasted past Crimson Teeth, leaving the ascendant unscathed.

Following the chaos of Black’s arrival, Ascendant Meng clenched his fist and the classroom descended into darkness. Ascendant energy wafted at the edges of the flower-shaped Dark energy attack, limning the petals red. Just as quickly as it came, the fathomless darkness disappeared. The desks were mostly unscathed, which wasn’t surprising as they’d survived a multitude of attacks earlier, when the competitor’s fought to write their names on Ascendant Red’s first-place packet. What did surprise Ebon Pearl was Ancient Black.

He was alive. She just didn’t know how.

His rugged skin looked like it had been drenched in powerful acid, but he’d managed to hold on, even when the darkness should have disintegrated him as it did the competitors who stood against Meng. Black’s hair was gone, as was his left eye. His left forearm suddenly dropped to the ground, separating cleanly along the bloody line that Ebon Pearl had seen before, confirming that something had indeed sliced Black’s body into pieces and that he was holding himself together by force of will.

Most disturbing of all was Black’s smile. He looked like a man enraptured, like a religious man just before meeting god. It was a peaceful expression, and yet still promised danger.

Meng frowned and the darkness descended again, its red-limned petals twisting, slicing. When the light returned to that section of the world, more of Black was missing–everything below his ribs now gone, along with his left shoulder–and yet… something was different.

His one remaining wing–the one attached to his right shoulder–draped over his back like a cloak. As it shimmered with heat, distorting the air, Ebon Pearl’s attention fell on an eye cut into Black’s forehead, as though he’d carved it himself with a dagger. Her eyes then focused on the crown of fire above his head–or rather, what had become of it. Where before, a few embers burned above his head, now there was only one black, sinister flame. The crown was remarkably resilient to withstand so many attacks, but maybe it had been damaged?

“He used the cover of darkness to activate his crown and carve the eye,” Crimson Teeth mentally remarked. “Most would only worry about staying alive, yet he used the situation to gain an advantage.”

Ancient Black didn’t breathe–Ebon Pearl doubted he could breathe at this point, much like she doubted he retained a functional heart–so his chest was eerily still and silent as he flung himself forward. He had no eyes and she doubted his ears were in working condition, so she figured he must be using his vital vision to see.

“Why aren’t the other competitors attacking him?” Ebon Pearl asked. In fact, many of them were leaving the classroom, retreating for the stands.

“They must know something,” Crimson Teeth replied calmly. “Look at Ascendant Red. He hasn’t made a single move; he watches and waits. What must he see that stills his hand?”

“But–”

“I know, little pearl. It doesn’t make sense.”

“And why don’t the observers attack while Black is weakened?” The events in the classroom thus far had transpired in five or so seconds, which was plenty of time for others to join the fray.

“Because–they wish to see, as you will soon see.”

Suddenly, a new string of bones surrounded Ancient Black.

His own.

Along with a soul gem that shined darker than black, shimmering violet like an iridescent oil slick. The eye on his forehead suddenly became more real, like an actual eye. Its pupil was ringed by a rainbow iris, and it glowed with neon violet light.

Black looked like he wanted to laugh, though his body wouldn’t permit the movement of air through his sundered lungs.

The bone chain wasn’t only around Black, though. It connected to multiple bones strewn throughout the room, small tendons and sinews connecting them together like rope.

One of them was touching Ascendant Meng. All his allies in the Void Forge had left, so he didn’t have a Regret practitioner to feed him intelligence about the future. He noted the retreat of the others, but he held his ground. Since the Dark blossom failed to kill the man the past two times, he manifested hundreds of petals, each the size of his fist. They attacked Black from all sides while Meng turned himself half incorporeal in anticipation of a counterattack.

But the bones nearest Meng’s body constricted around his foot anyway, somehow gaining purchase, as though the man weren’t incorporeal at all. Meng’s body flared red with ascendant energy as he sought to fend off whatever devious attack Black prepared.

Then, Meng’s Dark attack halted, his sinister petals left to hang around Black like little pockmarks in reality.

Then Meng became corporeal, his body solid, opaque.

And finally, his own petals bore down upon him, boring holes through his body. Blood frothed from his mouth and onto the ground before the ascendant disappeared.

Meng died at his own hand… just as Ancient Black finally succumbed to his own wounds, his body falling apart at innumerable seams, far more than Ebon Pearl originally noticed.