Undiscovered Territory
CHAPTER NINETEEN: A Tear in Dreams
Not one voice spoke, not even the earth shaking one of Porunga, as an eerie tableau took shape in front of him. There were no winds associated with a summoning, so a howling whistle and the stirring of antennae and cloth were both missing and would have been strangely odd had they been present. Nothing was here but a supreme stillness, as though time itself had been swallowed up by the dark.
He'd borne witness to battles before, had been involved despite his lack of desire to be. And it seemed to him that they all began with this stillness, this building tension to the surrounding air. Things never began quickly, as though all of this was a customary prelude to the action that was to come.
A pair of eyes – friendly eyes – flicked toward him for a second, those of the one that he recognized as Whelk, perhaps the best warrior in the village. "Dende," he spoke quietly. "Are you all right?"
Dende blinked a few times, then nodded in the affirmative. He didn't quite trust himself to speak. Even the soft words uttered by Whelk had seemed a great disturbance to the very air around them, almost an affront. He did not want to add to that disruption if he could avoid it.
Whelk silently acknowledged this response, and turned back to face Basalt once more. As was mildly uncharacteristic for him, he did not put forth the next words.
Basalt did that for him. "I thought it might be you again. I would suppose that you count yourself lucky that you made it here before I killed the brat."
"I don't often put forth in my mind the idea of taking a life, though I will do it without hesitation if necessary," Whelk returned, voice deep and strong, almost like a quieter and smoother version of Porunga's. "And considering all that you have done, and the fact that you will be unable to leave this place, I've no hesitation in this."
Dende watched in awe as he saw Whelk shift his feet, testing his footing as he took on a combat posture. By the faint light given off by the Dragonballs, rarely had he witnessed such an arresting sight.
For his own part, Basalt sounded rather unimpressed and angry. "So I see. Then it must be time to finish what the both of us started back in that village of yours." He took up a stance that mirrored that of Whelk. "Whenever you're ready, Namek."
Only now did the battle begin.
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The presence was still strong, still a heavy weight in his chest, and he felt glad of it. For the strength of the presence varied with the amount of power remaining within the dragon. That the presence remained the same was an encouraging sign, for it meant that no wishes had yet been granted. And that could only be a good thing.
Or so he hoped, at least. It wasn't a sure sign, actually, that things were going better because of this. Being able to sense ki would help him determine what was happening, but that particular skill was absent within him. So it seemed now that the most he could do was sit around his house and worry.
When had he gotten so helpless? Even back on the old planet, he had been able to do some good; he was absolutely certain of that. He had destroyed those strange eyepieces that could detect ki signatures, so that Frieza and his henchpeople would not be able to recover the remaining Dragonballs. While he had evidently gathered them all eventually, at least he had been delayed, and that delay had aided in his downfall.
Muuri liked to think that way.
But now, he was stuck doing nothing of consequence. Even when their prisoner had briefly escaped he had not really been able to involve himself. He'd come to realize that he did not particularly like the role of being a bystander; it went against all things of being an Elder. He should have been able to do more.
But he hadn't, and so consigned himself to sit here, trying to determine the happenings elsewhere through his bond with Porunga. It was rather rough going, though he wondered if he could focus the bond a little more tightly, to get a sense of what Porunga's eyes might be seeing . . .
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Oh, he very much remembered this one indeed. This was the very same native that he had gotten into an altercation with earlier, one of the engineers of his humiliation. Pumice had recognized him from the very start and had wasted no time or thought in going after him. A little redemption, a little revenge – could he be blamed for striving to take it?
And this time, it was the native who was at the disadvantage. While yes, he had a moment ago dispatched one of the other crew members, it was clear to Pumice's eyes that he had been injured. Any good hunter knew that the sick and the injured were the best and easiest prey. And now he had it all to himself. Just the way that he would have preferred things.
"I trust you remember me, slug?" he taunted slyly. This native had to know who it was that would destroy him, otherwise the whole experience would be spoiled.
The native looked up at him with eyes absent of any real expression. "That I do. From the lack of imaginative insults as well as appearance."
Pumice just chuckled a bit. In a way, he had almost missed the sarcastic banter of this opponent. It only served to make things a little more interesting, which was never a bad thing in his book. There was nothing like extra seasoning on the dish that was vengeance.
And he waited no longer for the battle to begin. He charged at the native full out, fist driving toward its stomach. As he had expected, the native lowered arms to block it, and Pumice abruptly changed his momentum into a kick to the head.
This blow connected with a satisfying crunch and he smiled while delivering a follow up punch to the side. Another successful strike, and his opponent began to drop from the sky. Ah, how very much easier this battle was than the last one had been. Already he had the native at a disadvantage. He followed it downward, preparing for another attack.
But not one that came from his enemy.
A sharp, sudden pain coursed through his chest, and he was forced to stop his descent to catch his breath. He folded one hand over the pained area, watching as the native flipped to finally right himself in the air. Blast that vile little . . . But at least the native was obviously in no better shape. It was some measure of consolation, and Pumice was the least injured of the two. He recovered first.
And so he descended again, knee curled to store energy for a potent kick that would crush his opponent's skull. Ever so quickly, his target approached, and he shot his leg downward to deliver the final blow.
Except that it did not land. Where the native had found the time and energy, Pumice did not know, but it nimbly dodged backward and drove a fist into his chest in the same motion. And this blow struck just where its last one had; this, combined with the extra force poured into the punch gave it such power that Pumice found himself flying backward, pain reeling up and down throughout every one of his ribs. While some held firm, others cracked, including one just above a lung. Only it was not above the lung anymore – rather the rib had punctured it.
The sharpness inside his chest was nothing now compared to the lack of breath. Air was by far the more important of the two, but much as his body tried to draw it in, failure was the ultimate result. Involuntarily, he began gasping, wheezing, trying to pull in something useful to his chest.
But it was all for nothing. Perhaps if he could have gotten to a regeneration tank, he would have been able to recover from this. The midst of battle, though, did not afford such things.
And things did not last much longer, in the very least. Though a few seconds always seemed like an eternity to one in as much pain as he, that was when the next attack came. The last thing that he saw was a flash of brilliant light.
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Limpet casually shot upward a few extra feet, and looked down with satisfaction to see that his two attackers had managed to punch each other in the face. It was something that was happening regularly during this fight, very much by his own design. He hadn't actually landed many blows himself; when there was a two on one situation at hand, it was always the best strategy to let at least one of the two take the other out, even if it were accidentally.
Besides, he was still a little bit roughed up from their raid on the aliens' ship. Anything that he could do to avoid physical contact in battle was all the better. After all, merely dodging attacks was a whole lot less strenuous on the body than dodging them and also making one's own.
But time was also a concern here, and so he had to help the whole procedure along a little bit. He quickly dove down behind one of his opponents and kicked him in the back, sending him flying into his partner. They both recovered with impressive speed, but spent the next few seconds insulting each other for their incompetence. Not exactly the brightest thing to be doing in the middle of a fight.
And Limpet got accused of being weak-minded. Oh well.
Once more, he attacked from behind, driving his elbow hard into the back of the same opponent, again knocking him into his partner. This time he did not stop his assault, pushing his other hand forward into a punch that kept his two assailants tangled together, and then driving another kick into them that sent them hurtling toward the ground.
A cloud of dust rose up from the impact site, an even duller brown than usual – made so by the absoluteness of the surrounding darkness. It seemed particularly lifeless, regardless of whether or not its two creators were.
And as it turned out, he didn't have to worry about that last part. From his side, he caught sight of a bright bolt of ki shooting past him and striking where the two aliens had fallen. Well, then. Survival for those two poor creatures didn't look like at all an option anymore.
He looked over his shoulder. "Nice shot."
Chiton, arms still extended from launching the blast, barely favoured him with a glance. From what Limpet could see, his companion was in a bit of rough shape; the rising and falling rhythm of his chest was a testament to that. All things considered, though, he didn't look that bad.
Smiling and shaking his head, Limpet turned once more, this time to face the somewhat distant form of Porunga. As far as he could tell, nothing untoward had happened in regards to the dragon – besides the fact that it had been summoned at all in a situation like this – but the visuals here were far from uninteresting.
Bright flashes of multicoloured light permeated even the deep black of the sky, and it hadn't really occurred to him until then that Whelk was no longer with them. Knowing Whelk, he had probably taken care of his opponents with relative ease and gone on ahead on his own. That a battle was going on ahead was not in doubt even to ones such as Limpet who could not sense ki. It didn't take a genius, either, to figure out who was fighting it.
"Feel up to it, yet?" he asked Chiton, this time gaining his companion's attention. "Though I'm sure that he would deny it, I bet that he could use a little help."
As per usual, Chiton said nothing and merely took off toward the battle without another second of hesitation. Communication had never really been a strong point of his.
"Well," Limpet sighed in amusement. "Off we go again."
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By far this was the most challenging battle that he'd had all day.
True, taking on multiple opponents at once was a difficult task to perform, but he had come out of it ultimately well. Few of those skirmishes had lasted very long at all, and he had not suffered any significant injury in the process. Oh, he had many cuts, bruises, and burn marks. And yes, there was the occasional crack in one of his bones. However, nothing was broken or giving him enough pain that he had to worry about it. All the better for him in his encounter here.
He dodged to the side quickly, away from one blow but directly into the path of another. This, too he managed to evade, if only by the slightest of margins. And he launched his own offensive from here, a series of quick, well-aimed strikes only to find them blocked at every turn. This put him back on the defence again, weaving around and blocking several attacks that came while he had lost his momentum. His opponent was quite fast, faster than he remembered him being back at the village, and deflecting all of these blows was not easy.
Still, neither of them had landed any truly effective attack as of yet. For all intents and purposes, the two of them seemed evenly matched, stalemated. Whoever made the first mistake was sure to pay for it very dearly indeed. And there were more ways for him to make a mistake than there were for his opponent.
After all, the alien would not care one whit about the prospect of harming Dende. Or, as Whelk found suddenly, he would attempt to use it to his own advantage.
Unexpectedly, the alien pointed his palm downward, sending a bright bolt of ki straight toward the ground. Whelk gasped, and quickly formed a blast into his own hand, firing it as soon as he deemed it worthy. His blast knocked away the one of his opponent, and they both flew off harmlessly into the distance.
But harm was done anyway.
The move had cost Whelk a few seconds of precious time, and a thundering blow crashed into his stomach, knocking all of the breath from his body. Something did break within him this time, and he found himself dropping from the sky. And the blows did not stop there; they continued to pummel him, more than he could count. In fact, it was quickly becoming impossible to distinguish one from another; after a while, they all just felt as though they were one continuous strike.
So much so that he did not notice at first when they had stopped. He only had the briefest of seconds to realize this before his body hit the ground, sinking into it halfway and bringing up a stifling cloud of dust.
Whelk knew that he would soon be able to move, but right now he could not manage it. All he could hope for was that his opponent would not be smart enough to follow up the brutally efficient attack that he had just unleashed. Even though Whelk's mind was a little muddled at the moment, he could determine that this was not a likely possibility, which meant that he would have to force himself to move whether his body thought it was capable or not.
And yet despite his efforts, his body would not respond. But strangely enough, that didn't seem to matter. No new attack came from above, and he could not quite bring himself to believe that his vague earlier hope had come to pass. It was simply ridiculous to think otherwise, though he did not know what else could have happened.
Perhaps he would find out soon, though. The dust cloud was clearing, and there was now a small presence at his side.
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Dende had almost thought that his heart would come tumbling out through his feet as he saw Whelk hit the ground. He'd only just barely lowered his hands from his head – instinctively, he had raised them when the ki blast had come his way – before he had witnessed this. And the instant that Whelk hit, Dende had the urge to run to his side and heal whatever injuries that he had. But he knew that there would have been no time.
Despair had been about to crush him when two shapes blurred through the sky, both taking aim at Basalt. For a moment, Dende was confused, but when he gathered his senses together he understood. Well, that was certainly good news. Whelk had been part of a proper triad after all, and the other two members had arrived at last. And all of this meant that . . .
With Basalt thus distracted, Dende hurried across the ground to Whelk's side. The dust cloud was not completely cleared yet, but he did not need to see the wounds in order to heal them. He knelt and placed his hands over the warrior's chest.
A soft chuckle reached his ears, and he started only to find Whelk looking at him with a half amused expression on a blood streaked face. That was strange; Dende would have figured him to have been unconscious. Not that this wasn't a better turn of events.
Dende smiled softly in response. "Just stay still. This should only take a moment."
With that, he closed his eyes, bowed his head in concentration. He silently probed through Whelk's body, cataloguing the severity and placement of the injuries that he had suffered. Hmm. Mostly localized in the ribs, with some hairline fractures in the legs, and a few weakened spots in the skull. It was nothing that he could not handle fairly easily.
Everything noted, he called forth his healing aura, as he'd often done over these past few days – had it really been that short a time? But this time, he found it somehow a great deal easier than when he had done it in the past. Perhaps those new manipulations of it – such as healing himself, and creating a protective shield around his body – had sharpened the skill to a whole new level. A blessing in the midst of battle, to be sure; speed was as important as anything else in this type of situation.
The healing didn't even take the moment that he had suggested. Rather, it was done in less than that, and Dende gently cut off the power feed. He opened his eyes to Whelk sitting up, flexing one hand.
After a second, Whelk glanced down at him and smiled. "A great thanks to you for this, Dende," he said. "Now, quickly find someplace safe to hide until this is over."
He didn't need to be told twice. Wordlessly, Dende nodded and rose to his feet. He carefully scanned the area, and scuttled off in the direction that he had determined was best.
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He was getting a better sense of things now, though still very much inadequate. All he could tell was that there was a battle going on. Not who the participants were, their number, or just which one of the children – if it was not both of them – was present. The only clear cut impression that he got was that this battle was being waged in very close proximity to Porunga.
It was not a very encouraging sign, but it did afford him the opportunity to better observe things.
Muuri was still alone in his house, now sitting in a meditative posture. His eyes were closed to all those sights that were around him, trying to catch a glimpse of ones afar. While his success was obviously limited at this point, it was also a relief. It meant that he really could temporarily strengthen his bond with Porunga in order to get impressions of the dragon's immediate surroundings.
Just a little extra push, and he was certain that he would find what he wanted to know.
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Even now, the battle seemed little more than a blur. What with it now being a three on one, the odds were improving, but were not at a point where they could overwhelm this creature. Strikes landed, yes, but they didn't seem to be doing the level of damage that was necessary; their opponent kept going strong.
And all three of them were forced backward when the alien brought up an intense ki flare, as bright as the sky was black. While Whelk thought that the flare was simply the end of the whole manoeuvre, he turned out to be mistaken yet again.
The flare gathered, coalesced into the alien's outstretched hands, forming a dense ball of pure white light. And the power in that ball set off a deafening alarm in Whelk's mind, so real that it almost hurt his ears.
"Get down!" he shouted reflexively, diving out of the blast's way just as it left the alien's palms.
The ball of white ki roared over him, the wind created by its passing nearly strong enough to knock him from the sky. For a moment, it seemed like all of the force was going to stay localized in that ball, that it was going to strike nothing but air . . .
But then the light exploded, and there was a roar. Even against the flash, Whelk could see what had just happened and he simply froze, mouth hanging open in an expression of pure, horrified shock.
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Pain shot through every nerve in his body; had it been less intense, then this pain would have been comparable to having been set on fire. But it was far worse than that, worse than any other agony that he had yet experienced.
Muuri fell backward against the wall, sure somewhere in the back of his mind that he had screamed. It only made sense, what with the horrible sensations coursing through his body. No doubt some of the villagers would be rushing toward his home, desperate to find out what was wrong.
What was wrong . . .
The explanation to that was a very easy one for him, though he didn't think that he would have the strength in him to relate it to anyone else. There was nothing here in the village that would have been able to cause this agony, nothing at all. And there was nothing in fact, actually wrong with his own person. The pain that he was feeling did not belong to him, though it was his fault that he was able to experience it.
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Scargo glanced up from the grave that he was helping to dig, a hideous roar ringing in his ears. In the distance, where the new battle was being waged, there was an incredibly intense flash of white light. It blinded him for a second, but when it cleared he was filled with a terrible sense of awe, and he sensed the same thing for the warriors around him.
The sight was impossible. It went against everything that he had ever been told, had ever believed. A trick – it had to be just a cruel trick of the eyes.
But the scene was not a lie to his sight. This was evidenced by the trembles that nearly tore the ground apart at their feet, even at this distance, as Porunga's body crashed to the ground.
CHAPTER NINETEEN: A Tear in Dreams
Not one voice spoke, not even the earth shaking one of Porunga, as an eerie tableau took shape in front of him. There were no winds associated with a summoning, so a howling whistle and the stirring of antennae and cloth were both missing and would have been strangely odd had they been present. Nothing was here but a supreme stillness, as though time itself had been swallowed up by the dark.
He'd borne witness to battles before, had been involved despite his lack of desire to be. And it seemed to him that they all began with this stillness, this building tension to the surrounding air. Things never began quickly, as though all of this was a customary prelude to the action that was to come.
A pair of eyes – friendly eyes – flicked toward him for a second, those of the one that he recognized as Whelk, perhaps the best warrior in the village. "Dende," he spoke quietly. "Are you all right?"
Dende blinked a few times, then nodded in the affirmative. He didn't quite trust himself to speak. Even the soft words uttered by Whelk had seemed a great disturbance to the very air around them, almost an affront. He did not want to add to that disruption if he could avoid it.
Whelk silently acknowledged this response, and turned back to face Basalt once more. As was mildly uncharacteristic for him, he did not put forth the next words.
Basalt did that for him. "I thought it might be you again. I would suppose that you count yourself lucky that you made it here before I killed the brat."
"I don't often put forth in my mind the idea of taking a life, though I will do it without hesitation if necessary," Whelk returned, voice deep and strong, almost like a quieter and smoother version of Porunga's. "And considering all that you have done, and the fact that you will be unable to leave this place, I've no hesitation in this."
Dende watched in awe as he saw Whelk shift his feet, testing his footing as he took on a combat posture. By the faint light given off by the Dragonballs, rarely had he witnessed such an arresting sight.
For his own part, Basalt sounded rather unimpressed and angry. "So I see. Then it must be time to finish what the both of us started back in that village of yours." He took up a stance that mirrored that of Whelk. "Whenever you're ready, Namek."
Only now did the battle begin.
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The presence was still strong, still a heavy weight in his chest, and he felt glad of it. For the strength of the presence varied with the amount of power remaining within the dragon. That the presence remained the same was an encouraging sign, for it meant that no wishes had yet been granted. And that could only be a good thing.
Or so he hoped, at least. It wasn't a sure sign, actually, that things were going better because of this. Being able to sense ki would help him determine what was happening, but that particular skill was absent within him. So it seemed now that the most he could do was sit around his house and worry.
When had he gotten so helpless? Even back on the old planet, he had been able to do some good; he was absolutely certain of that. He had destroyed those strange eyepieces that could detect ki signatures, so that Frieza and his henchpeople would not be able to recover the remaining Dragonballs. While he had evidently gathered them all eventually, at least he had been delayed, and that delay had aided in his downfall.
Muuri liked to think that way.
But now, he was stuck doing nothing of consequence. Even when their prisoner had briefly escaped he had not really been able to involve himself. He'd come to realize that he did not particularly like the role of being a bystander; it went against all things of being an Elder. He should have been able to do more.
But he hadn't, and so consigned himself to sit here, trying to determine the happenings elsewhere through his bond with Porunga. It was rather rough going, though he wondered if he could focus the bond a little more tightly, to get a sense of what Porunga's eyes might be seeing . . .
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Oh, he very much remembered this one indeed. This was the very same native that he had gotten into an altercation with earlier, one of the engineers of his humiliation. Pumice had recognized him from the very start and had wasted no time or thought in going after him. A little redemption, a little revenge – could he be blamed for striving to take it?
And this time, it was the native who was at the disadvantage. While yes, he had a moment ago dispatched one of the other crew members, it was clear to Pumice's eyes that he had been injured. Any good hunter knew that the sick and the injured were the best and easiest prey. And now he had it all to himself. Just the way that he would have preferred things.
"I trust you remember me, slug?" he taunted slyly. This native had to know who it was that would destroy him, otherwise the whole experience would be spoiled.
The native looked up at him with eyes absent of any real expression. "That I do. From the lack of imaginative insults as well as appearance."
Pumice just chuckled a bit. In a way, he had almost missed the sarcastic banter of this opponent. It only served to make things a little more interesting, which was never a bad thing in his book. There was nothing like extra seasoning on the dish that was vengeance.
And he waited no longer for the battle to begin. He charged at the native full out, fist driving toward its stomach. As he had expected, the native lowered arms to block it, and Pumice abruptly changed his momentum into a kick to the head.
This blow connected with a satisfying crunch and he smiled while delivering a follow up punch to the side. Another successful strike, and his opponent began to drop from the sky. Ah, how very much easier this battle was than the last one had been. Already he had the native at a disadvantage. He followed it downward, preparing for another attack.
But not one that came from his enemy.
A sharp, sudden pain coursed through his chest, and he was forced to stop his descent to catch his breath. He folded one hand over the pained area, watching as the native flipped to finally right himself in the air. Blast that vile little . . . But at least the native was obviously in no better shape. It was some measure of consolation, and Pumice was the least injured of the two. He recovered first.
And so he descended again, knee curled to store energy for a potent kick that would crush his opponent's skull. Ever so quickly, his target approached, and he shot his leg downward to deliver the final blow.
Except that it did not land. Where the native had found the time and energy, Pumice did not know, but it nimbly dodged backward and drove a fist into his chest in the same motion. And this blow struck just where its last one had; this, combined with the extra force poured into the punch gave it such power that Pumice found himself flying backward, pain reeling up and down throughout every one of his ribs. While some held firm, others cracked, including one just above a lung. Only it was not above the lung anymore – rather the rib had punctured it.
The sharpness inside his chest was nothing now compared to the lack of breath. Air was by far the more important of the two, but much as his body tried to draw it in, failure was the ultimate result. Involuntarily, he began gasping, wheezing, trying to pull in something useful to his chest.
But it was all for nothing. Perhaps if he could have gotten to a regeneration tank, he would have been able to recover from this. The midst of battle, though, did not afford such things.
And things did not last much longer, in the very least. Though a few seconds always seemed like an eternity to one in as much pain as he, that was when the next attack came. The last thing that he saw was a flash of brilliant light.
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Limpet casually shot upward a few extra feet, and looked down with satisfaction to see that his two attackers had managed to punch each other in the face. It was something that was happening regularly during this fight, very much by his own design. He hadn't actually landed many blows himself; when there was a two on one situation at hand, it was always the best strategy to let at least one of the two take the other out, even if it were accidentally.
Besides, he was still a little bit roughed up from their raid on the aliens' ship. Anything that he could do to avoid physical contact in battle was all the better. After all, merely dodging attacks was a whole lot less strenuous on the body than dodging them and also making one's own.
But time was also a concern here, and so he had to help the whole procedure along a little bit. He quickly dove down behind one of his opponents and kicked him in the back, sending him flying into his partner. They both recovered with impressive speed, but spent the next few seconds insulting each other for their incompetence. Not exactly the brightest thing to be doing in the middle of a fight.
And Limpet got accused of being weak-minded. Oh well.
Once more, he attacked from behind, driving his elbow hard into the back of the same opponent, again knocking him into his partner. This time he did not stop his assault, pushing his other hand forward into a punch that kept his two assailants tangled together, and then driving another kick into them that sent them hurtling toward the ground.
A cloud of dust rose up from the impact site, an even duller brown than usual – made so by the absoluteness of the surrounding darkness. It seemed particularly lifeless, regardless of whether or not its two creators were.
And as it turned out, he didn't have to worry about that last part. From his side, he caught sight of a bright bolt of ki shooting past him and striking where the two aliens had fallen. Well, then. Survival for those two poor creatures didn't look like at all an option anymore.
He looked over his shoulder. "Nice shot."
Chiton, arms still extended from launching the blast, barely favoured him with a glance. From what Limpet could see, his companion was in a bit of rough shape; the rising and falling rhythm of his chest was a testament to that. All things considered, though, he didn't look that bad.
Smiling and shaking his head, Limpet turned once more, this time to face the somewhat distant form of Porunga. As far as he could tell, nothing untoward had happened in regards to the dragon – besides the fact that it had been summoned at all in a situation like this – but the visuals here were far from uninteresting.
Bright flashes of multicoloured light permeated even the deep black of the sky, and it hadn't really occurred to him until then that Whelk was no longer with them. Knowing Whelk, he had probably taken care of his opponents with relative ease and gone on ahead on his own. That a battle was going on ahead was not in doubt even to ones such as Limpet who could not sense ki. It didn't take a genius, either, to figure out who was fighting it.
"Feel up to it, yet?" he asked Chiton, this time gaining his companion's attention. "Though I'm sure that he would deny it, I bet that he could use a little help."
As per usual, Chiton said nothing and merely took off toward the battle without another second of hesitation. Communication had never really been a strong point of his.
"Well," Limpet sighed in amusement. "Off we go again."
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By far this was the most challenging battle that he'd had all day.
True, taking on multiple opponents at once was a difficult task to perform, but he had come out of it ultimately well. Few of those skirmishes had lasted very long at all, and he had not suffered any significant injury in the process. Oh, he had many cuts, bruises, and burn marks. And yes, there was the occasional crack in one of his bones. However, nothing was broken or giving him enough pain that he had to worry about it. All the better for him in his encounter here.
He dodged to the side quickly, away from one blow but directly into the path of another. This, too he managed to evade, if only by the slightest of margins. And he launched his own offensive from here, a series of quick, well-aimed strikes only to find them blocked at every turn. This put him back on the defence again, weaving around and blocking several attacks that came while he had lost his momentum. His opponent was quite fast, faster than he remembered him being back at the village, and deflecting all of these blows was not easy.
Still, neither of them had landed any truly effective attack as of yet. For all intents and purposes, the two of them seemed evenly matched, stalemated. Whoever made the first mistake was sure to pay for it very dearly indeed. And there were more ways for him to make a mistake than there were for his opponent.
After all, the alien would not care one whit about the prospect of harming Dende. Or, as Whelk found suddenly, he would attempt to use it to his own advantage.
Unexpectedly, the alien pointed his palm downward, sending a bright bolt of ki straight toward the ground. Whelk gasped, and quickly formed a blast into his own hand, firing it as soon as he deemed it worthy. His blast knocked away the one of his opponent, and they both flew off harmlessly into the distance.
But harm was done anyway.
The move had cost Whelk a few seconds of precious time, and a thundering blow crashed into his stomach, knocking all of the breath from his body. Something did break within him this time, and he found himself dropping from the sky. And the blows did not stop there; they continued to pummel him, more than he could count. In fact, it was quickly becoming impossible to distinguish one from another; after a while, they all just felt as though they were one continuous strike.
So much so that he did not notice at first when they had stopped. He only had the briefest of seconds to realize this before his body hit the ground, sinking into it halfway and bringing up a stifling cloud of dust.
Whelk knew that he would soon be able to move, but right now he could not manage it. All he could hope for was that his opponent would not be smart enough to follow up the brutally efficient attack that he had just unleashed. Even though Whelk's mind was a little muddled at the moment, he could determine that this was not a likely possibility, which meant that he would have to force himself to move whether his body thought it was capable or not.
And yet despite his efforts, his body would not respond. But strangely enough, that didn't seem to matter. No new attack came from above, and he could not quite bring himself to believe that his vague earlier hope had come to pass. It was simply ridiculous to think otherwise, though he did not know what else could have happened.
Perhaps he would find out soon, though. The dust cloud was clearing, and there was now a small presence at his side.
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Dende had almost thought that his heart would come tumbling out through his feet as he saw Whelk hit the ground. He'd only just barely lowered his hands from his head – instinctively, he had raised them when the ki blast had come his way – before he had witnessed this. And the instant that Whelk hit, Dende had the urge to run to his side and heal whatever injuries that he had. But he knew that there would have been no time.
Despair had been about to crush him when two shapes blurred through the sky, both taking aim at Basalt. For a moment, Dende was confused, but when he gathered his senses together he understood. Well, that was certainly good news. Whelk had been part of a proper triad after all, and the other two members had arrived at last. And all of this meant that . . .
With Basalt thus distracted, Dende hurried across the ground to Whelk's side. The dust cloud was not completely cleared yet, but he did not need to see the wounds in order to heal them. He knelt and placed his hands over the warrior's chest.
A soft chuckle reached his ears, and he started only to find Whelk looking at him with a half amused expression on a blood streaked face. That was strange; Dende would have figured him to have been unconscious. Not that this wasn't a better turn of events.
Dende smiled softly in response. "Just stay still. This should only take a moment."
With that, he closed his eyes, bowed his head in concentration. He silently probed through Whelk's body, cataloguing the severity and placement of the injuries that he had suffered. Hmm. Mostly localized in the ribs, with some hairline fractures in the legs, and a few weakened spots in the skull. It was nothing that he could not handle fairly easily.
Everything noted, he called forth his healing aura, as he'd often done over these past few days – had it really been that short a time? But this time, he found it somehow a great deal easier than when he had done it in the past. Perhaps those new manipulations of it – such as healing himself, and creating a protective shield around his body – had sharpened the skill to a whole new level. A blessing in the midst of battle, to be sure; speed was as important as anything else in this type of situation.
The healing didn't even take the moment that he had suggested. Rather, it was done in less than that, and Dende gently cut off the power feed. He opened his eyes to Whelk sitting up, flexing one hand.
After a second, Whelk glanced down at him and smiled. "A great thanks to you for this, Dende," he said. "Now, quickly find someplace safe to hide until this is over."
He didn't need to be told twice. Wordlessly, Dende nodded and rose to his feet. He carefully scanned the area, and scuttled off in the direction that he had determined was best.
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He was getting a better sense of things now, though still very much inadequate. All he could tell was that there was a battle going on. Not who the participants were, their number, or just which one of the children – if it was not both of them – was present. The only clear cut impression that he got was that this battle was being waged in very close proximity to Porunga.
It was not a very encouraging sign, but it did afford him the opportunity to better observe things.
Muuri was still alone in his house, now sitting in a meditative posture. His eyes were closed to all those sights that were around him, trying to catch a glimpse of ones afar. While his success was obviously limited at this point, it was also a relief. It meant that he really could temporarily strengthen his bond with Porunga in order to get impressions of the dragon's immediate surroundings.
Just a little extra push, and he was certain that he would find what he wanted to know.
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Even now, the battle seemed little more than a blur. What with it now being a three on one, the odds were improving, but were not at a point where they could overwhelm this creature. Strikes landed, yes, but they didn't seem to be doing the level of damage that was necessary; their opponent kept going strong.
And all three of them were forced backward when the alien brought up an intense ki flare, as bright as the sky was black. While Whelk thought that the flare was simply the end of the whole manoeuvre, he turned out to be mistaken yet again.
The flare gathered, coalesced into the alien's outstretched hands, forming a dense ball of pure white light. And the power in that ball set off a deafening alarm in Whelk's mind, so real that it almost hurt his ears.
"Get down!" he shouted reflexively, diving out of the blast's way just as it left the alien's palms.
The ball of white ki roared over him, the wind created by its passing nearly strong enough to knock him from the sky. For a moment, it seemed like all of the force was going to stay localized in that ball, that it was going to strike nothing but air . . .
But then the light exploded, and there was a roar. Even against the flash, Whelk could see what had just happened and he simply froze, mouth hanging open in an expression of pure, horrified shock.
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Pain shot through every nerve in his body; had it been less intense, then this pain would have been comparable to having been set on fire. But it was far worse than that, worse than any other agony that he had yet experienced.
Muuri fell backward against the wall, sure somewhere in the back of his mind that he had screamed. It only made sense, what with the horrible sensations coursing through his body. No doubt some of the villagers would be rushing toward his home, desperate to find out what was wrong.
What was wrong . . .
The explanation to that was a very easy one for him, though he didn't think that he would have the strength in him to relate it to anyone else. There was nothing here in the village that would have been able to cause this agony, nothing at all. And there was nothing in fact, actually wrong with his own person. The pain that he was feeling did not belong to him, though it was his fault that he was able to experience it.
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Scargo glanced up from the grave that he was helping to dig, a hideous roar ringing in his ears. In the distance, where the new battle was being waged, there was an incredibly intense flash of white light. It blinded him for a second, but when it cleared he was filled with a terrible sense of awe, and he sensed the same thing for the warriors around him.
The sight was impossible. It went against everything that he had ever been told, had ever believed. A trick – it had to be just a cruel trick of the eyes.
But the scene was not a lie to his sight. This was evidenced by the trembles that nearly tore the ground apart at their feet, even at this distance, as Porunga's body crashed to the ground.