"We need a plan, and a good one, or we're out. Any ideas?"
Rose wiped the sweat from her forehead. 30 feet below, an elephant hellion roared and thrashed around in its attempts to get at them. A pebble dropped to its demise from the plateau on which they stood, and she just hoped the plateau was as sturdy as it looked.
The hellion wasn't very quick, but it made up for that in ferocity. That, added with its massive tusks, the glowing blue death spikes all over its body, and the fact that it weighed a bajillion tons ... once it got going, it was near unstoppable. They weren't usually ones to give in, but in this case, continuing to fight on equal ground was little more than suicidal.
It was her who answered Sorey. "Maybe we can just attack it from here—that way, it can't get to us."
"You saw its thick hide," Mikleo said. "Even at a relatively close range, our artes did next to nothing. From this far away, they truly would do nothing."
"We can't just give up!" Sorey said insistently.
"I know," Mikleo said. He peered down at the elephant as if it were a puzzle and not a vicious killing machine. "I'll admit, I can't think of anything I'm certain will work."
"Maybe if we tire it out enough ..." Rose tapped her chin. "I mean, even a hellion has to sleep sometime, right? And then, once it's conked out, we pounce."
Edna rolled her eyes. "That's the dumbest idea I've ever heard."
"Hey, at least I've thought of something! If it's so easy, why don't you try coming up with a plan?"
"Coming up with a good plan is hard," Edna said snidely. "Coming up with a hundred bad plans is the easiest thing in the world. Why don't we pelt it with poison-tipped darts in the hope it'll inhale one? Or wait until a meteor strikes it dead? Or better yet, why don't you serenade it with your beautifully dreadful singing voice? Because I'm sure that has the best chance of making it drop dead than any of the plans you've come up with so far."
She folded her arms across her chest. "My singing voice is perfectly fine."
"If by 'perfectly fine' you mean 'perfectly horrendous', then sure."
"Edna, Edna, Edna," said a deep voice from behind them, and everyone swivelled around. "Don't sass your Squire so much."
There stood Zaveid, in all his shirtless glory. Even Dezel looked surprised to see him, and Dezel noticed everything.
Sorey recovered first. "Zaveid! What are you doing here?"
"Oh, I was just passing by. Don't mind me."
"Cut the crap," Edna said. "You know something."
He smirked. "Well, I miiight just have something cooked up—that is, if Dezel wants to hear it."
"Me?"
"Are there any other Dezels here?"
Dezel looked as if he were going to retort, but before he could Lailah said, "What do you have in mind, Zaveid?"
He spread his hands out, motioning as he spoke. "You wanna defeat a big hellion like that, you gotta knock it over first, right? That way it'll lose mobility and, in this hellion's case, the use of most of its limbs."
"Don't know why you're so proud of that, considering it's obvious," Edna said.
"Ah, but I haven't reached the heart of my plan yet, dearest Enda," he said with a wink, seemingly unaffected by Edna's flat gaze. "This is where me and Dezel come in. Y'see, if we held the ends of each other's pendulums and held 'em taut, I bet the both of us could trip that big ugly hellion. Especially since I hear Mickey boy over here can cast an arte that makes us invisible." He patted Mikleo on the shoulder, which the water seraph took with a grimace.
Rose frowned, staring at the hellion below. It had given up on reaching them, apparently, and now chased after a low-flying vulture. She looked over her shoulder at Zaveid. "Okay, one, how will you get enough leverage so the hellion pushing on the line doesn't make you fall flat on your face instead, and two, even if you found a way to do that, what makes you think your pendulums won't snap with that much pressure on them?"
"Simple," he said. "We use the wind to keep it taut. And as for our pendulums breaking? Nah, not gonna happen. They're sturdier than they look."
"They're the work of Synestra, are they not?" Lailah asked.
"Of course," Zaveid said, while Dezel nodded.
Sorey looked from Zaveid to Lailah, then back to Zaveid. "Synestra?"
"She's a seraph weapon maker," Edna said. "She likes making unorthodox weapons. Last I heard, she was crafting garden shears into a formidable weapon."
Mikleo hung on to every word with rapt attention, his fascination nearly palpable. Weirdo. "Did she make your parasol?"
"How very rude, Meebo." She jabbed the end of it at him.
"Hey, I was just asking a question!"
"Children, children, let's all get along now," Zaveid said, and nimbly dodged a jab from Edna toward himself. "Let's get back to the matter at hand. Is my plan amazing, or what?"
"It might work," Mikleo said. "Emphasis on 'might'."
"How do we make sure it charges at you if you're invisible, though?" Rose asked. At Zaveid's sudden smirk she quickly added, "And don't say 'bait'."
"C'mon, Rosie, it'll be fine! All you need to do is stand around, then make it angry—"
"It already is," Edna muttered.
"—and get it to charge full speed at you. Dezel and I trip it, it goes down, we keep it down, and we beat it. Simple."
"I can think of about, oh, ten different ways that plan of yours can go wrong," she shot back. Then sighed. "But if that's the only way, then ..."
Zaveid turned to Dezel. "So, Big D? What do you think?"
Dezel wrinkled his nose at the nickname, but said, "I guess I have nothing better to do."
"Hey, you owe me! You were the one who used my last bullet, I hear."
Rose perked up. When did that happen?
"I said I'd do it, didn't I?" Dezel said gruffly. "Let's just get this over with already."
So he prepared to Windrush them off the plateau. Windrushing seemed to be a sore spot for him, since using it to transport others required physical contact and he seemed touchy about being touched. Rose could relate, really—she didn't much like touching him, either.
She'd meant everything she'd said to him, that night in Lohgrin. She didn't want the exhaustion of being angry with him forever, but that didn't mean she could forgive and forget, lock it up, throw away the key. She'd never, ever forget what he did. She'd never forget his lies.
Everyone bunched together to latch onto him, and Rose lay one fingertip—the barest contact—on his exceptionally warm palm. In a flash they stood at the foot of the plateau, on the opposite side of the hellion. With relief, she ripped her arm away.
Rose, Sorey, Lailah, and Edna all stood around Mikleo, who prepared to cast his invisibility arte on Dezel and Zaveid when given the signal. A ways away Dezel and Zaveid stood opposite of each other, each holding the end of the other's pendulum, slowly backing away from each other until the lines were taut. Dezel's was a little longer than Zaveid's (there was a joke in there that Rose didn't wanna get into), so Zaveid wrapped the end of Dezel's pendulum around his wrist until it was taut.
Zaveid looked to Mikleo and solemnly nodded. He and Dezel soon winked out of sight. A strange sight—Rose had had that arte performed on her before, but she'd never seen it done to someone else.
They waited.
The elephant hellion came out from behind the plateau, head low to the ground in a brief moment of placidity. Rose couldn't tear her eyes from it; it was beautiful, in a grotesque sort of way. White veins criss-crossed its deep turquoise hide, and large blister-like spots dotted its sides and rump. Shining spikes jutted from its back and the end of its tail; great tusks protruded on either side of its face. A multitude of jagged blue shards jumbled together in its mouth, preventing it from fully closing. That must've hurt.
Its tail swung to and fro as it tottered along, for once almost seeming like a normal elephant. But its head turned, toward them. Rose's breath caught in her throat.
Then it roared.
Now, Rose liked to think she was pretty brave. Okay, maybe not so much when it came to ghosts and spirits and the like, but when it came to physical things? She considered herself at least somewhat dauntless. Intrepid, even.
But when that massive, colossal, gargantuan elephant hellion started charging at them, it took everything in her not to run. She bit her lip till it nearly broke the skin, kept her fists by her side and her feet firmly planted, knowing that if she even made one move she wouldn't be able to prevent herself from taking off.
And then Mikleo, the only one aware of Zaveid and Dezel's location, shouted, "What are you doing? Hurry up!"
"Where are they?" Sorey asked. Keep still, keep still, Rose chanted in her head. If they didn't move soon, they'd be trampled. Keep still. Keep still. "Mikleo?"
Sweat made Mikleo's bangs stick to his forehead, which was creased in concentration. "They're going—oh, cripes, everyone move! They're not gonna make it in time!"
Everyone scattered, in all directions. Lailah, with her long skirt, stumbled in her haste to get away. Rose grabbed her hand and yanked her up, pulling her along. "After we get through this I'm gonna kill you, Zaveid!" she screamed.
The elephant braked, bringing up a cloud of dust. When Lailah regained her balance Rose let go of her, and Lailah rubbed her shoulder with her other hand. Whoops, must've tugged too hard.
The hellion lunged at Sorey. Sword out, Sorey barely dodged, and just as the elephant passed he tried to slice its side. Judging by the sound alone—like metal scraping rock—Rose guessed it did next to nothing.
"Where are they?" Sorey shouted.
"They're coming!" Staff raised, Mikleo was still in deep concentration with casting his arte.
"Thanks Mikleo, that's super helpful!" Rose regretted speaking instantly, for it brought the elephant's attention on herself. It turned to her and Lailah and, with a huff, charged at them.
They darted in opposite directions, and the hellion pursued Lailah. Before it could get anywhere near her, however, Edna sent up spikes in its path. The hellion veered to the right, skidding, but crashed shoulder-first into the rock. Lailah topped it off by bathing it in white-hot flames, but the elephant emerged unscathed, easily regaining its footing. Just how tough was this thing?!
Snorting and puffing, its gaze turned to Rose. For a moment they stared at each other, the hellion's furious eyes boring into Rose's.
"Rose, don't move!" Mikleo shouted, just as it charged. "Zaveid and Dezel are there!"
Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuckity, fuck. The moments stretched to hours. Rose backed away, unable to keep still, her eyes locked on the hellion. No guarantee, except for Mikleo's word, that Dezel and Zaveid were even there. Closer, closer, closer. Rose's heart caught in her throat. She couldn't remember how to breathe. Twenty feet away. Fifteen. Ten.
Abruptly the elephant's front legs folded, and tossed its head with a squealing roar as it fell with a sickening crunch. Rose couldn't help but wince. It tried to get up, to no avail: its legs were broken. That didn't stop it from roaring, though, and weakly thrashing around.
Dezel and Zaveid reappeared. "And that's how it's done!" Zaveid said, laughing.
"Still gonna kill you," Rose muttered. This ordeal had taken five years off her life at least.
"Oh come on, lighten up!" With his pendulum he slashed a row of spikes on the hellion's back, and they shattered into tiny pieces. Hey, that looked like fun. If she could get on the hellion's back, then—
"Get back!" Dezel suddenly bellowed. Rose turned in confusion, only for him to suddenly appear at her side. With stunning swiftness he grabbed her hand, his grip shockingly gentle. Instinctively she twisted away from him, but in a flash he Windrushed her back to Sorey and the others, and let go of her arm without so much as another glance in her direction.
Sorey's eyes were wide. "What happened?"
"Those shattered spikes on its back are emitting poison. Get too close, and you'll die almost instantly."
Zaveid, joining them, squinted at the elephant. "Yeah, I think I can sense something, but ... poison?"
"You can't reach that far?" Dezel's voice was flat, but his face beheld the hint of a smirk.
Mikleo stared at the hellion. "But the direction the wind's going ..."
"Lohgrin," Rose said dully.
"Can you do something to stop it from reaching them?" Sorey asked Dezel.
"We can disperse it with the wind so it's in tiny harmless quantities," he said.
Sorey nodded. "You do that. We'll think of how to fix this." Dezel disappeared, and Sorey turned to Zaveid. "Can I ask you to help as well?"
"Friendly reminder that you're the one who got us into this mess," Edna muttered, twirling her parasol menacingly.
"Hey, hey, watch where you point those words!" Zaveid said. "I'm on it." He dissipated as well.
Mikleo frowned, rubbing his chin, staring at the hellion. It lay limp, now, but Rose knew better than to think it had truly been defeated. "I suppose I could cast a protective bubble around us," he said. "But depending on how powerful this poison is, I may only be able to cast it on one or two people. Best be one, just to be safe. And I'll need someone to armitize with, too."
"I'll do it," Rose and Sorey said at the same time. She glanced at him, and he looked back at her, bewildered.
He said, "You don't need to push yourself—"
"It makes more sense for me to armitize with Mikleo," she said quickly. Armitizing—the first time since ... She was relieved she could keep her voice steady. "You're better at purifying hellions than I am, and that one down there's bound to be a toughie." She tried to smile at him in reassurance, but suspected her bared teeth revealed nothing but nervousness.
Sorey bowed his head. "All right."
As they prepared, Mikleo murmured, "You sure about this?"
"Absolutely." She'd have to get over her fear sooner or later, and better sooner than later. The anticipation made her jittery, but she took a few deep breaths to calm her nerves. Tried to, anyway.
Okay. She could do this. It was just Mikleo, after all—the guy couldn't even hurt a fly. He was terrified of dogs, for Maotelus's sake, even itty bitty ones.
She closed her eyes. Felt the hot sun on her face, the breeze on her back, her hair gently swaying against her cheeks. Let out a breath, let her body relax. She could do this.
She stated, loud and clear: "Luzrov Rulay."
One moment, she was entirely herself. The next, a presence pressed against her consciousness, against her very being. Nowhere to hide. No escape. She felt Mikleo's apprehension and determination, but in an instant they switched to optimism tinged with encouragement. At once she realized that he was trying to cheer her—after all, he could sense her emotions too—but she couldn't tell whether his reassurance helped or not.
But everyone was counting on her, and if she failed, they couldn't proceed. She had to focus. Merging Mikleo's powers with her own, she summoned his bow, and together they conjured an arrow of pure energy, shimmery and translucent. It wasn't a weapon they forged—it was the best damn protective barrier they could muster.
She nocked the arrow, drew, and released it to Sorey, who was already armitized with Lailah. As it connected the head exploded, covering Sorey from head to toe with translucent energy, giving him a soft glow.
He didn't waste any time getting to the hellion. Immediately he sent toward it the fires of purification, but they proved ineffective. The hellion tried to take him down with its trunk when he was within reach, but Sorey easily dodged. It roared as he pummelled it with fire, unable to move at all but wriggle a bit.
Rose regularly conjured arrows to shoot Sorey with to keep the barrier strong, and the steady routine took all her concentration. Conjure, nock, loose. Conjure, nock, loose. She lost herself in the rhythm, drenched in sweat that had little to do with the heat.
Eventually the job was done: in a flurry of bright blue flames the dread elephant hellion was purified, and malevolence's captive was finally granted back his true form. She and Mikleo shared their relief, but she quickly expelled him from her body.
He gracefully landed beside her. "Good work," he said, nodding.
"Likewise," she replied. It had gone much, much better than she'd expected, but her shoulders were still hunched, and it took more than she'd like to admit to resist the urge to hug herself. Everything was fine, but—was it?
The former elephant hellion turned out to be a wind seraph named Alken. He looked like a kind old man, with thick white eyebrows and a bald head. When he found out he'd been a hellion his head drooped. "What did I do?"
No one said anything, only staring at the ground or the sky or at anything but Alken. Rose very nearly rolled her eyes at the lot of them—telling him the truth was better than withholding it, because whatever someone's mind came up with was almost always worse than what had actually happened. She opened her mouth.
Dezel, along with Zaveid, suddenly appeared, and Dezel spoke. "You trampled over human merchant caravans. Barely any merchants have been able to visit Lohgrin because of you, and the people are suffering." He spoke simply, matter-of-factly, as if he were discussing the weather. Rose grudgingly approved.
Alken suddenly sat down on the ground, his arms dangling uselessly at his sides. "Oh, oh, I see," he breathed.
"But their faith is strong, even in these hard times," Sorey added, to soften the blow.
He peered up at Sorey. "How must I atone for what I've done?"
Sorey began, "It's not your fault—"
"Yes, yes it is," Alken said, shaking his head. "In my pride I'd thought myself immune to becoming a hellion, and in turn I let malevolence consume me. I, and I alone, am at fault."
Sorey bit his lip. "All right. If that's how you really feel, then ..."
"There's no way to truly right your wrongs," Dezel said. He had his arms folded against his chest and, as ever, his face was an unreadable mask. "But if you still want to try to atone, Lohgrin doesn't have a resident seraph."
Alken looked up at him like he was Maotelus himself. "No resident seraph, you say? Then I suppose I could ..."
"You'll need a vessel," Lailah reminded him.
"We can help find you one," Sorey said.
Alken smiled for the first time. "Ah, that may not be necessary. I may be able to use the tower as my vessel, assuming there are pure-hearted humans living there."
"Okay, that should work!" Sorey said, grinning back.
Alken then stood, and bowed his head solemnly. "Thank you for this opportunity, Shepherd, so that I may atone for my sins. I hope the next we meet, I won't be in such a sorry state."
Sorey bowed his head in reply. After Alken disappeared, he turned to Dezel and Zaveid. "Did your mission go well?"
"Of course," Zaveid said. "Thanks to us, Lohgrin is saved."
"Thanks to you, we got into that situation in the first place," Edna said.
"That's all in the past now," Zaveid said with a dismissive hand wave. "Speaking of the past, Dezel, you may not remember me, but—"
"I remember you," Dezel said flatly.
"You two know each other?" Mikleo asked.
Zaveid smirked. "Well, I did save his life when he was but a young little windboy."
Dezel, a "young little windboy"? Rose could hardly even imagine Dezel ever having been a child. Children were ... innocent.
Zaveid continued, "I suppose that's why you decided to take up using a pendulum, since you thought I looked so cool, right?"
"Whatever you say." Dezel dissipated, returning to Sorey's head, but Rose had still caught the colour on his cheeks.
"What about you, Zaveid?" Sorey asked. "Where are you off to?"
"Why do you ask? Are you so eager to see me leave?"
"No, not at all!" Sorey quickly said. "It's just, you came to help us with purifying Alken—which we're so grateful for, since we couldn't have done it without you," ignoring Edna's pointed look, "but now that that's over with ..."
"Hmm." Zaveid looked thoughtful. "Y'know what? I think I'll stick with you kids for a little while. If you'll have me, that is." He flashed a winning smile at them. Well, Rose found it winning, at least. Edna, on the other hand, made exaggerated choking sounds.
"Aren't you worried?" Mikleo asked, eyebrows raised. "You don't have a vessel. If we were to run into Heldalf again, there's no telling what could happen to you."
"I think I'll take my chances," Zaveid said lazily. "It's just so tiresome, being on my own."
"Poor you," Edna said. "Poor lonely Zaveid, all on his lonesome."
Their objective completed, they could move on to the next thing on their to-do list: go to Lhitberg Woods to find a priest they'd heard had a green iris gem in his possession. They were smack dab in the middle of Zaphgott Moor, and there was still Plitzerback Wetland between here and there, so it'd take at least half a month for them to get there. Rose hoped the priest would still be there when they arrived—they didn't have much time to lose.
They had their lunch in the shade provided by the plateau, and then after that it was back to travelling, with the seraphim riding along inside Sorey. In this strength-sapping heat, Rose lamented more than once that she didn't have a seraph's ability, to be able to shed her physical state. When they set up camp, Edna had the gall to complain about how much she and Sorey stank, so Rose did the mature thing and stuck her tongue out at the earth seraph.
Even as uncomfortable as their environment was, Rose was in a better place mentally than she'd been for weeks. She could attribute that to things looking up in the Shepherd's journey—they finally had a concrete goal in mind—but also because she was getting her full 8 hours of sleep every night. At first she'd considered throwing away the satora leaves Dezel'd given her, just to spite him and his hard work, but she was glad she hadn't. They worked far better than expected.
But that night, lying under the stars after taking her dose of satora, there was something she couldn't push out of her head. It had poked at her all afternoon and evening, but now she had time to truly dwell on it.
During the fight with the elephant hellion, after Zaveid had released the poison, Dezel had Windrushed her to safety. His approach had been swift, urgent, and unexpected, but his hold had been gentle. Light. She could feel it even now, a phantom sensation of his fingers delicately wrapped around her wrist.
She knew what she should have felt: disgust. But no matter how hard she reflected on her feelings, she couldn't find any disgust at his touch. Maybe unease, but not disgust; she probably felt more uneasy about her lack of disgust than at his touch in itself. She didn't know what it meant.
What could it MEAN?!
