Kallen's first mistake was assuming that a battle against a Corrupted Beast would be a winnable endeavor. His second mistake had been assuming he'd be able to escape like he did last time. His third was ever leaving that Spider nest to begin with.
He had stalked this creature for days now. It hadn't showcased anything particularly impressive physically. Of course, it was a monster of gargantuan proportions, but it appeared to be low on the food chain in the dark sea.
Was Kallen crazy for even tailing the thing in the first place? Probably.
A sleeper even looking in the direction of even a Fallen Beast was reckless. To stalk and hunt a Corrupted one? He must have been insane. But he needed scales. And frankly, the Awakened Titan scared him more than this Corrupted Beast, and he'd have to fight the Titan eventually.
In hindsight, this whole hunt had been a massive miscalculation. For he hadn't been following a Corrupted Beast at all. It was a Corrupted Devil. And Kallen was moments away from dying.
Move. Move! Move!
Kallen dove quickly, Wyrm's Tongue having disintegrated from his hand. He'd landed a surprise attack on what had been assumed to be the creature's weak point. The strike had almost shattered his trusty gladius.
The water around him hardened mid dash, slowing him. A tendril of condensed darkness lashed out, wrapping around his ankle and yanking him down.
Kallen hit the sand hard. The devil loomed above him, its maw dripping strands of viscous liquid, denser than the water around them. For a single beat of his heart, he felt it. Something he shouldn't be able to feel.
The weight of the depths pressed down on him, not as a force of nature, but as a crude, mindless will. The creature was bullying the water around it into submission. Much like Kallen's dormant ability, but it was just so much stronger than he was.
The next wave hit like a hammer.
Kallen's world whited out. He heard ribs crack. His spine buckled under the pressure. Life slipped from his fingers as he was pummeled into the ground.
The Corrupted creature was not physically impressive as he had noted during his research. It was not exceptionally intelligent as most Devils were—at least it hadn't seemed that way. In reality, it had somehow noticed him and patiently feigned being weak to lure him in. For days.
Move!
Kallen's aspect wouldn't obey him. His legs had gone numb… his hands had as well. Blood filled his mouth, metallic and foul.
The creature rushed forward, its body shifting with the rhythm of its own manipulation of the surrounding darkness. Kallen tried one final desperate pull on his aspect—to do something, but the sea ignored him.
That was okay, though. It was okay. Kallen heard something in the distance, he sensed something shifting around him, through the pain and ache and the crushing, he felt the sea retreating.
He felt the weight on him retreating.
Kallen was no idiot. Sure, only an idiot would challenge what was thought to be a Corrupted Beast, only to find out that they'd mistaken a Beast for a Devil. But he did have a backup plan in place.
And he was thankful that he did. The Devil, sensing what was coming, abandoned attacking Kallen and began to escape.
The world lurched.
The dark sea, ever obedient to the cruel rhythm of the Forgotten shore, recoiled like a living creature. The crushing weight of water slammed backward, dragging the Devil with it in a whirlpool of frothing black.
Kallen gasped when the pressure vanished. Everything that made him, screamed. The force of the retreating tide took him along with it, digging a hundred yard long trench by the time the upturned ground had built up enough to stop his momentum.
In the distance, tendrils flared while the current wrenched them away. Bulbous eyes full of hate locked onto him one last time before they retreated into nothingness.
For a few minutes, he lay there, half-buried in silt, sand, mud, clay, and bits of gravel strewn about him. Blood was still leaking from his lips and probably a hundred other cuts on his body.
He probably looked like he'd spent the last decade of his life tumbling down a cliff. Not that he could be sure.
"Plan B", Kallen wheezed, finding it difficult to call upon his voice. "Always have a plan B."
But then as he lay there, he realized that the all encompassing pain had lessened to some degree.
No, he thought, wincing as he still lay face down, head turned to the side so he could breathe. No… the pain hasn't lessened, it's just… gone.
A flash of panic grew. Pain to the lower extremities wasn't all he'd lost. No, no, no…
He'd lost feeling. He tried to move his arm: nothing. Legs: nothing. Hands, fingers, toes, he tried to flex any muscle he could find from the neck down. Nothing would listen to him.
"Puddle," he mumbled, "Puddle come out, I need you…"
The Veilray plopped down beside him, looking at his face with curious eyes. He was undeniably adorable.
"Hide me…" he said, expression twisting with effort. "Please."
The dormant beast chirped and began to weave a mirage. The same type that had saved him dozens of times over in that spiders nest.
It was different out in the open, but Kallen figured that the half trench his body had dug would help conceal them at least a little bit. That is, until help could find him. If it ever would.
What would happen when the sea returned?
I'll probably die when that happens. He thought with a pang of fear. Any slight movement of my position will shatter Puddle's illusion…
~~~
Kallen was still. He was also bored. He thought nothing but thoughts as there was nothing but thoughts to think, after all. He missed his high-school friends. He and two of his buddies were all meant to go to college together. They'd gotten into a pretty solid engineering school. It was basically what he'd spent most of his life working towards.
He didn't play sports after elementary school. Kallen stayed reasonably fit, but didn't have any hobbies other than cooking and watching videos about cool machines doing cool things.
That life was in the past. He'd never get to explore his dreams, not with something like Seren's flaw existing. Not with what he'd been through already.
Daylight slowly burned in the sky. He was only about a ten minute walk from the spiders nest—from safety as ironic as it sounded.
He could have been elbow deep in school-work right now, or going to a party and getting drunk with his friends. Instead, he was here, waiting to die, or waiting for Kai to return with—
A sound. Distant, but familiar, melodious even.
"... birds are evil, Seren. They're government security drones, I'm convinced."
Kallen's ears perked up. The injury—presumably to his back—that hindered his function was only limited to that below the neck. He tried to turn his head, but the problem was he was pressed against a tuft of seafloor and the ground, meaning that looking to the left was just about the only thing he could do at the moment.
Thus he couldn't see Sunny, whom he'd just heard speak.
"Wait," called a voice he was less familiar with. Effie, he believed. "Blood… somewhere."
Her voice cut off Seren's giggles. It was eerily quiet, and he could hear footsteps heading his way as he mentally called for Puddle to drop the illusion.
"Over… h-here," he tried to say, but it hardly came out as a rasping whisper. Besides, the voices of the cohort drowned him out completely.
"There's a small trench here," Caster said. "Looks like something was dragged by the retreating sea."
"Or someone got into a fight," came Sunny's observation.
A shadow fell across Kallen's vision as the illusion fully fell around him. Nephis stood inches away.
~~~
Sunny
Sunny gave Nephis a weird look as she stood over a mound of ruined sea floor. She stared at it curiously, and held up a hand to silence everyone.
That's when they heard it. A dry scratching voice trying to get their attention. He looked toward Nephis and watched as a surprised, almost horrified expression dawned on her face.
"We found Kallen. He's alive but…"
Nephis paused, then looked over to Cassie.
"Cassie," she said, then shook her head slowly. "No, Caster… cover Seren's eyes until I give the okay."
Caster nodded wordlessly. He moved over to the girl whose face grew more concerned with every passing second. She began to say something, but Caster gave her a stoney look that silenced her.
"Sunny."
"Hm?"
"Look away. Effie… Kai, you two, look away as well please."
Sunny nodded, knowing what was about to happen. Nephis was going to heal whatever had happened to Kallen, and she would have to go through unimaginable pain to do so because of her flaw.
He turned away as Nephis knelt, but his shadow remained, stretching to watch what the others couldn't.
Through it, he saw Nephis remove the obstruction covering Kallen. His body was half buried in the muck. His chest was caved in; left arm was twisted the wrong way at the elbow; shallow, wet breaths barely moved his bare chest.
Kallen was covered in blood. He must've been only hours away from bleeding out. Nephis's hands glowed white.
She started with his spine. Flame wreathed from her hands, winding and knitting Kallen's flesh, and bone, and sinew, and veins, back together. Neither of them screamed. Nephis bit down on the pain, while the Nightwalker probably couldn't feel any.
But his body arched, tendons snapping together.
He could hear Seren whimper in Caster's hands as though she'd caught a peek of the horrific sight.
A wet pop sounded as something realigned. Kallen finally made a loud enough noise for Sunny to hear—a choked gasp that dissolved into something too broken to be a laugh.
"Took you… long—"
Nephis didn't respond. Her flames burned brighter, welding shut wounds that would've killed him soon.
The tiny creature beside the both of them, Puddle, Kallen had called it, dragged itself toward Seren with small, limping steps. Its raylike wings sagged and its bioluminescent spots pulsed erratically. It must have been exhausted.
~~~
Sunny turned his shadow's vision back to Nephis, watching as Kallen's body jerked like a twisted marionette. The man's remaining fingers dug into the silt, a particularly viscous wound on his back sealed shut with a hiss, leaving angry red scar tissue that immediately faded to pink and then to a tanned skin tone.
"Almost… there…" Nephis ground out between clenched teeth. Sweat dripped from her chin, sizzling as it hit her own flaming hands. The pain she was feeling must have been excruciating, but she didn't break.
Kallen's head lifted slightly, his matted hair sticking to the half-dried blood on his face. His lips moved soundlessly for a moment before he managed to say, "Seren… is she…"
Caster's grip on the young girl tightened slightly. "She's safe," he answered before she could react.
"Focus on breathing," Nephis said.
Puddle finally reached Seren's feet. With a pitiful noise, it nested onto its side, right on top of her foot.
A final surge of white flame erupted from Nephis's hands. A sickening crack sounded and for a terrible second, Sunny thought something had went wrong, but slowly, Kallen rose to a seated position and Nephis told Caster that he could remove his hand.
Sunny turned around, as did the rest of the cohort, save for Cassie who hadn't seen anything anyways. A heavy silence lingered, interrupted only by Kallen's ragged breathing.
Then Nephis's flames flickered out of his body. His skin was whole, minus a few scars here and there that she hadn't bothered fixing. His armor was mangled, and he looked down at his fingers, testing their returned functionality.
Seren broke free from Caster and rushed forward, throwing her arms around Kallen's neck before he could even rise from where he sat. He winced, but didn't push her away. Instead, his arms wrapped around her slowly.
She tried to say something, but nothing came out. Sunny watched the exchange, observing how the nightwalker's grip tightened just a bit before he forced himself to relax.
Nephis stood by them, face pale and drawn. The healing had clearly taken its toll. She turned away without another word, walking a few paces to where the rest of them stood.
Effie was the first to break the spell of silence. "So, uh… what the hell happened to you?"
Kallen let out a weak laugh. "Turns out…" he groaned, rising to a knee, placing his hand on that knee, and pushing himself to his feet. "... I suck at taxonomy. Specifically, the Nightmare Creature kind."
Effie tilted her head in confusion. She looked to the smarter members of the group for explanation. Sunny noticed that she never glanced at him.
Caster spoke up, "I believe he miss-classified an opponent."
Kallen nodded, his breaths notably heavy. "Thought I could get the drop on a Corrupted Beast. Get some sc—some soul shards to prepare myself better. Really, though, the thing was a devil at least—pretended to be weak and mindless, then beat the piss out of me when I tried to ambush it."
The guy swayed slightly on his feet, but he put a hand on Seren's head as though using her as a walking stick.
"You're incredibly stupid," Effie said, a laid back smile on her face. "Dumber than Sunny at least, and that's even considering this one time where he—"
"Nope!" Sunny interjected, cutting off the smiling woman. "We don't need to mention that."
That damned woman!
But still… Sunny shifted perspective. Kallen wasn't actually that dumb. He must have had a good reason for challenging a Corrupted creature, even if it was just a Beast. And it couldn't have been just because he wanted soul shards.
"I take it the sea retreated," Nephis said to Kallen, changing the conversation. "That's how you survived?"
Kallen paused for a moment before he nodded, reaching the rest of the cohort with the help of Seren who seemed to dislike being used as a walking staff. Still, she didn't complain, and kept quiet to allow for the group to talk logistics.
Everyone knew the plan, they needed to get atop that statue before the sea returned. With Kai as their flyer, it should be simple, especially since Sunny had other means of reaching the top.
As they made their trek, Seren stayed close to Kallen's side, though Kai had taken the position of helping him walk. He'd thrown the Legacy's arm around his shoulder to take the weight of his limping legs.
Sunny wasn't sure what to make of Kai. Why was he helping Kallen? He wasn't one of the latter's Hunters—to his knowledge, the two barely knew each other. Had they bonded during their adventure to the dragon's lair?
Kai had told them about their journey. Of course, he had kept it mostly vague, but had explained how Kallen had somehow angered the dragon and been forced to fight it underwater. He also told them how he'd dove in there to get him out, and how it had pursued them into the air before ultimately being struck from the sky by some weird lightning ability that Kallen possessed.
Sunny frowned, walking in stride with Nephis. Kallen's Aspect had nothing to do with lightning, so either Kai was lying, or Kallen had hidden a trick up his sleeve in their fight back at the nest. Or perhaps he'd gained a new Memory?
"You okay?" Nephis asked, nearly startling him. Her tone was low, almost a whisper as they walked beside each other at the front of the group.
"I should be asking you that."
She shrugged, just like always. "I'm fine."
He knew better than to press. "Same here, just worried about… things."
Nephis didn't respond. But Sunny saw the tense in her shoulders.
~~~
Daelan
Daelan activated his dormant Aspect ability. The threads of fate unfurled before him, shimmering with possibility, some frayed, some blackened with corruption, others burning with the searing light of inevitability. He avoided ones that hissed madness at him, ones that whispered of futures that wouldn't be. Instead, he sought the greatest temptation of them all: his own. The thread that ended.
It was still there, distant and intact. A contented sigh escaped him. He wanted more than anything to dive into that thread, to divine the scene of his death.
The vision seared behind his eyelids. It was distant but undeniable. His flaw had whispered it for decades: You will die by the hand you shape. Yet the threads still refused to show him the moment itself.
Show me. He begged the cosmos. Let me see him at the zenith of his power.
Kallen. The last ember of their house. The boy who carried Ariel's blessing and the Storm's fury in his soul. Every cell in Daelan's body ached to witness what he had forged—would forge; to see those gifts erupt as they tore him apart.
Would it be by the tides of the abyss? When the lightning in Kallen's blood became a devastating storm? Or would it be his eyes—those pit-less things, gemstones cut from the void itself. Would they be the last thing Daelan saw?
He knew everything about the boy. The exact cell count of his blood at any given moment. Any malady he's ever had, ever would have. The genetic markers that proved his lineage back to the first night of mankind.
But his full power… his realized supreme potential would allude Daelan for as long as he lived. No matter how badly he wanted to see the man who would usher in the new era of the House of Night. The one chosen by both dameon and god. The Titan Slayer. Kallenir, Blessed of the Sea.
Their House would rise again. Not through Daelan's tired, old hands, but through the boy who would end him. This was the bargain written in the depths of his star-crossed flaw. Death for dynasty.
And oh, how desperately he wanted to see him.
The Heir of Dread.
King of the South.
The Second Coming of Nightwalker.
a/n sorry for being late, i forgot it was sunday :[