(TLO) Chapter 170: Carnage (Patreon)

The pain in Seth’s hands would be bloody if he gave it any of his attention, but he didn’t. Pain was merely information. Information he left his brain to deal with since he had other things to deal with.

His actions sent everyone into chaos. His brothers charged forward and their enemies closed in on them.

Seth stepped to the side and a bar of fire the breadth of a finger shot past where he’d stood. He ducked low as a silver mage swung a massive blade at him, missing him by the skin of his hair. He stepped past the mage whose gender proved irrelevant, closing in behind whoever it was to strike when he smelled rain in the air and doubled away from the person. In the next moment, the air around them lit up in sparks of lightning, but Seth was already gone, charging after the next silver mage.

He darted forward, having no need of [Quick Step].

When he arrived in front of the mage who’d just finished activating a skill that ignited his sword in a blaze of flame, he turned his body to the side so that the man’s downward swing cut the air to dig the ground. Then he struck once, drove the heel of his palm into the man’s jaw. The blow staggered the mage, and one hand left his broadsword as he activated another skill. This time his whole body was set ablaze. The heat seared Seth where he stood and he struck the man again. The flame burnt his hand and the man smirked, turning to him. Seth shrugged and struck him again. Each blow seared his hand and staggered the mage further.

Seth cocked his head to the side in study of a mage that would not fall, then ducked. A greatsword cut the air where his torso had been and Timi cleaved the man in half in one swing. Seth spared his large brother a brief glance before charging forward.

The only way the weak was capable of defeating the strong was with skills that far outclassed the strong. It would not be easy, but time would play its part in ensuring victory. But as he moved and his brother followed behind him, he knew he didn’t need time to play a part. He had Timi for that.

Colors filled the air as mages clashed and skills erupted in a concerto of colors green and blue and pink and orange and red. It was like watching a display put up in veneration of a visiting emperor. It was a deadly rondo for an iron mage to be caught in.

Seth continued to move, regardless.

Forlorn surrounded himself in a mist of noxious gas of deep green, yet his enemies continued to fight him in it. Barnabas teleported from place to place, shrouding himself in darkness that made his enemies miss each strike they made.

Fin moved like a battering ram through the fight, taking attacks head on, crushing limbs and shattering skills. He was no Timi, but he was the next best thing.

Jason was like a man wielding a gun and a knife. He would cut down an enemy and shoot down another from across a distance only to summon the wind around him and entrap himself in a barrier of it.

Nosam fought with the controlled discipline of someone unwilling to die. He didn’t necessarily run from his fights but he stepped away anytime it grew too dangerous, leaving his colleagues to charge head first into danger.

In this way, blood spilled and the stench of metal filled the air. And off in a distance so detached from them that they could hear no sounds of it, golds waged war against each other.

Seth maneuvered in his sprint and vaulted over a blast of force reia that came at him horizontally. He landed with the grace of a ballerina and kept moving. His next target was the woman that had attacked him. She was an unarmed mage, clad in leather armor and a smile that would’ve lit up the world if she used it. As he ran at her, the number of his enemies dwindling at the hands of his brothers, he could feel his reia reserves dropping to nothing.

It left him with one irrefutable truth: He needed more reia.

When he met her, she threw a vicious kick with so much power the air parted for her. Seth ducked it easily only for her grounded leg to leave the floor in something of a spin. His mind did no calculations and his body acted on its own. He stepped into her and drove his shoulder into her airborne body with enough force to displace whatever she intended. The force of him knocked her out of the air and he pivoted so that he stepped around the next mage that came at him. Arms tucked into his chest, and rising behind the man, he drove his back into him, bodied him so that he stumbled, then turned and slashed the air behind him with a swinging club.

Seth was already gone from there, moving low so that the club passed him and he drove the heel of his less burnt palm into the man’s jaw in an uppercut strong enough to lift him off the ground. Unfortunately, at iron he wasn’t strong enough to send the man flying and he ignored the man for the woman as he landed on his feet.

He tackled the woman as she picked herself from the ground. Driving his shoulder into her and picking her from the back of her knees, he sent her back sprawling to the ground then drove two blows into her, both of which she blocked, before rolling away without looking as the man with the club took another sing at him.

An uncomfortable frown marred his face as he went after the clubbed mage and was forced to abandon him as he activated a reinforcement skill. His authority was too weak for a lot of things. It made him easy pickings and dragged down the efficiency of how skilled he was.

Constantly on the move, he returned to the lady who conjured a force of reia around her fists that sent a ripple in the air around them in the activation of her skill. Her shoulder twitched mildly and he evaded her attack before it came, telegraphing its path. With [Heart of Winter] and [Fractured Mind] active, every place he stepped was his domain. He knew all that happened within twenty-five feet of him and matched each action with an equal and opposite reaction of his own.

Evading her strike, he stepped away from her and brought himself to the ground and braced himself for the impact that would come. Its arrival was immediate. The other mage tripped over him, and with his reinforced body, the impact of his leg cracked one of Seth’s ribs.

He forced himself to his feet as the man collided into the woman and coughed up blood as he took in a breath. He frowned again, his mind interpreting his pain to inform him his broken rib had punctured a lung. Reia he didn’t have redirected itself from healing his burnt hands to mend his lungs and his frown proved a sign of the dying effects of [Heart of Winter].

He caught sight of Timi crushing a mage’s head with a single hand and rushed forward. His duty now was to hold down two mages while his brothers brought down the countless others. He knew now that he couldn’t kill any of them, didn’t possess the strength to, not without a weapon, so he chose to hold them occupied until someone arrived who could. Besides, he was his deadliest when unarmed. His arms and fists simply moved, trailing paths in the air he didn’t understand to meet targets he set for them.

He mounted the reinforced mage and found his body no longer as sturdy as when he’d tripped over him. It was more than enough proof that his skill had run its course. So he wrapped his arm around the man’s neck and squeezed. In the space of two heartbeats the man displayed his need for air and began flailing. The mage beneath him struggled to get them off her and Seth refused to oblige. She would’ve gone for the arm he wrapped around her colleague’s neck if her hands weren’t trapped between her and the man

Then she activated a skill and Seth realized a moment too late that he couldn’t avoid it. A blast of force reia pierced a massive hole through his opponent and pain flooded Seth’s side. His mind tried to interpret the pain but only came away with pain.

The man rose from on top of his colleague with as much confusion as pain and fell back.

Seth only had enough time to maneuver around the man before he fell. And while he moved quickly, he wasn’t quick enough. The man fell on his legs, trapping him beneath him. With the pain in his side and the accumulated fatigue he had failed to pay much attention to, there wasn’t much strength left in him.

A moment after, Seth looked up at the woman and the scowl on her lips. Surprisingly, she bled from her lips and bruises colored her face generously. Had he done that, he wondered, knowing what would come next.

With blood leaking from his side and both skills dying, there was nothing else he could do. He understood better, now, why his minds had bid him farewell with the words they’d used.

“See you on the other side,” he smiled weakly. Then did something he hadn’t done in a long while.

He thought to himself.

Jabari’s going to be so disappointed.

Then two things happened as one. Something stabbed the lady through the back, arcing her backwards, and the air beside him cracked.

The woman fell forward, the rest of a pole ax protruding from her back, and a fissure came to life beside Seth.

[Heart of Winter] and [Fractured Mind] left him like the light had left the woman’s eyes.

Forlorn hurried up to the woman and took hold of the handle of his pole ax. He looked down at Seth and opened his mouth to speak, only to press it shut in a thin line.

Seth watched his brother’s gaze focus on the wound in his side. The part of him that had been ripped away by a bout of force reia his own reia couldn’t fix leaked blood in grave amounts and both of them knew anything would be wasted on him.

Still, despite the disagreements they’d had growing up in the seminary, Seth saw the hesitation to leave him alone to death. He doubted it was some kind of love. But it was some kind of bond. Live with someone long enough and while love might not grow, there always existed a bond, an acceptance. It made it difficult to watch them suffer; to watch them die.

But his brother had to keep on fighting. Forlorn had to help ensure his was the only death their group would have. To do so, he needed his brother to leave him, to abandon him. So he met his brother’s amber eyes and smiled softly.

He would die here, but he would die alone with no regrets. He promised his brother this in a simple smile while he worried about Timi.

The lies we tell those important to us, one of his minds thought, and he knew he was under the hold of none of his skills.

His brother’s jaw twitched in restrained emotion and his eyes grew rheumy, then someone howled in pain and Seth knew whose voice it was. Forlorn turned in its direction as the fissure beside Seth expelled a beast away from him. Forlorn’s pain and concealed guilt turned to rage in the space of a second as Seth watched Jason get impaled on two sides by two mages with massive swords.

Forlorn roared in anger and sprinted to their brother’s aid.

Seth had been wrong, he realized as he withdrew his senses from his dead brother. His was not the only death. And in a moment of sadness, as he felt reinforcements arrive in opposition of his brothers, he knew none of them would survive.

We need reia, one of his minds protested, disagreeing with his acceptance. We. Need. Reia.

Seth understood the command well enough and struggled out from under the dead mage. It took a while, pain and death holding him back, but he succeeded. When he was free, he crawled after the force mage, one clawing hand after the other, letting his minds command him until he laid beside her.

Under their request, he put his left hand on her chest and crawled his fingers into the hole Forlorn had made in her chest. He wasn’t entirely certain of what they wanted, but had an inkling of an idea. With each move he made, his hand digging deeper into the hole in the woman’s chest, they continued to think only one thought. A mantra of the desperate, the thought haunting him over and over again, a rising crescendo of the damned. A maddening repetition

We need more reia. We need more reia. We need more reia. We need more reia. We need more reia. We need more reia. We need more reia. We need more reia. We need more reia. We need more reia. We need more reia. We need more reia. We need more reia. We need more reia. We need more reia. We need more reia. We need more reia.

Slowly, it brought a new kind of pain and he was compelled to obey.

The woman groaned and coughed, proving she wasn’t dead yet. Seth closed his heart to her pain easily. He cared nothing for her suffering and hoped she suffered more. In fact, her pain spurred him on and he forced his hand into the space beneath her ribcage to grab her heart. She gasped when he took it in his hand and turned imploring eyes on him.

She begged him in the silence between them and he thought of his brothers.

Reia beasts held their core within their hearts. Soul beasts held their fragments in the same place. This was his last shot at helping his brothers, not that he hoped to survive. So he prayed to a god he did not believe in that soul mages and soul beasts held at least this in common.

“P… please,” the woman managed, pleading, fear blotting out the little life left in her eyes.

Seth tightened his hold on her heart, grinning like a villain in the darkest of tales with bloody lips and a broken smile. When he spoke, his words were simple.

“Fuck you.”

As he had done once before in a time outside the seminary in the taste of death, he thought of every single mage here trying to kill his brothers and how they would fair against Jabari. His bloody smile widened. Jabari would decimate them without thought.

Something cracked in the lady’s heart and she screamed like the demons of hell.

Reia flooded out of her like a broken dam and drowned Seth. Pain came with it, filled his mind.

… And madness reigned.

Unique Skill [Carnivore] is in Effect.

Unique Skill [Carnage] is in Effect.