Chapter 40
Author's Note: I'll update the Exsphere Saga along about when I can write what I want to happen and have it flow right. Yes, I'm talking to you, Infinite Freedom. Everyone else, give him a big thank-you for somehow kicking my Authoring Engine into gear again.
Lloyd and his team flew their Rheairds to the south side of the pit, landed, and put away the vehicles. There certainly was an uproar going on. The four went toward the noise, where a lot of dust was being raised into the air.
Moving in the crowd, they didn't have much trouble blending in with Joseph's army of varied and idiosyncratic soldiers.
"Command is holding a conference!" someone was shouting. "Everyone calm down and get into order!"
On an inspiration, Zelos yelled, "Where's command? We have to report!"
The man pointed. "That way!"
"Thanks!"
While that had earned him some hard looks, Zelos was already off in the indicated direction, and the others had no choice but to follow him. They were within a stone's throw of the tents when Ribs bumped into someone—someone who recognized him. "What're you doing he—" the man began, and then his brain caught up to his mouth and he turned and saw the trademark spikey brown hair.
"LLOYD! LLOYD IRVING IS HERE!" He yelled, right as Ribs ran him through, but the cry had already been heard and the group found themselves the increasing center of violent attention.
The four had nothing for it but to fight madly for what seemed like a brutal eternity, hacking and slashing, hitting meat with every strike. It took more than a dozen deaths before the crowd gave them some respect. When it was over, Lloyd panted. "Everyone okay?"
A chorus of affirmatives came back (a clack in Ribs' case). "Good," Lloyd said. He didn't feel like it, though. A sense of frustration had started in the back of his mind. So close, but he couldn't reach Joseph! Lloyd gritted his teeth and glared towards the tent.
His anger got a release when one of the soldiers thought he could earn an instant promotion. The man darted at Lloyd, sword coming around at head height.
What happened next is best described in slow motion.
Lloyd gave both his swords a little toss, and caught them, this time with his hands turned thumbs down.
He ducked and turned under the soldier's arm, coming up behind the man's right side.
Lloyd didn't turn around to face the man, just jabbed the sword behind him at an angle, and was rewards when Flamberge's tip crunched through metal and into the man's right lung.
Still hold the sword, Lloyd took a step over so his back was maybe a foot from the man's, and mirrored the strike with the Vorpal sword.
His arms shook as he pushed the blades in further, drawing out the sound of metal in pain. Then he dragged them out. They pulled slowly, grating horribly on the steel, until they came free with a jerk and a spray of blood.
The soldier fell.
"That was a little excessive, wasn't it?" Joseph said from the crowd.
Genis sat on a rock, well up the mountain. "What's happening?" he asked.
"The prisoners are leaving," Yuan replied. "They're going up the mountain, but there's a group of soldiers not far behind them."
"How many are there?"
"Between fifty and a hundred," the angel said. "That's not enough to capture all of them. They'll probably be making some examples and taking the rest in," he added calmly.
"What about Lloyd?"
"I lost track of them," Yuan said tersely. "No, wait…I see them."
Genis stood by him. "Where?"
Yuan pointed. "See that ring of people?"
"They must be in trouble!" Genis said immediately. "Take me there!"
"Wait," Yuan said. "I'm watching for the right moment."
Lloyd righted his grip on his swords. "I'll kill you," he promised Joseph.
Joseph didn't take his eyes off of Lloyd. "Bars! Dexley! Jan!" he bellowed.
Three lieutenants pushed there way forward. The biggest one gave something like a salute. "Yeah, boss?"
"Take 'em out."
"Yes, boss."
The three split up and spread out around the group. Bars, the biggest, was wielding a long, wide two-handed sword. He casually slung it from his back and stood in front of Lloyd. Dexley, a slim, evil-looking man, drew a short sword and a long dagger, and came to face Sheena. And Jan, the man who had scattered Ribs so long ago, was now facing the skeleton. He didn't look happy about it.
Lloyd, Sheena, and Ribs stood facing outwards, making the points of a triangle. Zelos stood in the center among them, easily able to offer support to any of them.
Dexley gave a lazy look at the watching soldiers. "Any man who doesn't help us kill these clowns, I will personally carve my dear old granny's name and address into his brain!"
The massed soldiers drew their weapons with great aclarity.
The attack came. Bars waded in with his sword, as long as he was tall, flashing and slashing and swiping, and Lloyd's blades were engaged in deflecting the massive swings while trying to find a good opening. It was made harder by the steady stream of men who came in close, forcing Lloyd to dance safely away from Bars, kill in the interloper, and then go back to trying to force Bars into a mistake. The problem is, the big man had quick hands and a long reach with that blade.
Lloyd didn't mind at all. Sometimes Zelos would dart in from behind and catch a man off guard, but that wasn't constant enough for Lloyd to count on. Still, sometime Bars would make a mistake, and Lloyd would make him pay hard.
Sheena and Dexley's battle was one of agility, and both combatants were true master acrobats. Sheena got a nasty surprise and a cut on the shoulder when Dexley changed tempo, cut a handspring and a flip, then landed with his dagger already darting for her life. The ninja twisted out of the way, and accepted the scratch for the chance to hit Dexley with a Power Seal.
The man felt his strength sap and backed away. Sheena pursued him, only to be blocked by a soldier who interposed himself between them. Her hands flashed out in a swipe of her cards, just as the Last Fencer slid into the man's side in the side. "All right?" Zelos flashed a grin, then he was gone, dashing off to take out someone coming behind Lloyd. Dexley, having had a moment to regroup, came back hard, both of them giving and taking minor hits.
On the third side of the point, Ribs needed no help. The soldiers were learning that coming near Ribs was a death sentence and Jan found himself increasing facing off against the undead fencer and his darting rapier. He'd already been stabbed deeply in the bicep, and didn't have time to worry about the large amount of blood coming through, or his tingling fingers. And any soldier who dared try to help Jan would get a swift, smooth, poke in the heart or the neck or, in a couple of cases, the eye.
Joseph watched the stalemate calmly (apart from a couple of winces when Ribs took out three soldiers in a brilliant routine of slashes and stabs that left two razored throats and the other falling clutching his chest). Lloyd and his group couldn't keep this up indefinitely—they had to get tired sometime—but Joseph wasn't feeling particularly patient that day. He began building the spell, fixing a beady eye on Zelos.
The red seed of mana drifted down. Zelos felt it coming, a hot sensation in the back of his head, and looked up. He yelled, "EXPLOSION!" and dove to the side, trying to get as far from it as he could.
But not far enough. The Explosion seed hit the ground with the softness of a marshmallow and detonated with the force of a powder keg. Zelos was caught in midair by the blast and thrown like a rag doll out past Lloyd and Ribs. Lloyd and Sheena, on the edges of the blast, were staggered and forcibly pushed outwards, forcing them to catch themselves before they could attack again. Ribs, outside of it, used Jan's momentary distraction to slide the tip of his rapier through the man's breastplate and into his heart. The warrior withdrew his rapier, and fell into spellcasting, putting together a ball of dark mana with remarkable speed (he could get used to the enhancements on his sword and shield, he thought), and throwing it into the air, where it broke into a Vengeance, ripping the ground and about a dozen troops up with the fast succession of stabbing beams.
Then Ribs was running towards the mob gathering around the reeling Zelos. The only reason the ex-Chosen hadn't yet gotten seriously stabbed was that too many soldiers were jostling for position and getting in each other's way. Then Ribs was there, Niri Vaur Laeln whistling left and right through armor and flesh with equal ease, and the dead man was trying tricks he'd only thought about recently, using the fact that his body was actually a collection of bones linked together by mana and force of habit to twist unnaturally so he could face in every direction and stab from any angle. His arm twisted around, slick black blade flashing as it cut a neat line through half of a man's neck, and then Ribs' torso swung around and he skewered someone through the side and both lung. He stepped in to stand over Zelos and tucked his arm around and under so his rapier passed through the empty space between his ribcage and his pelvis, the tip angling up so it went through a man's solar plexus. Ribs righted his arm, and let the dark mana that composed him run freer, giving him a boost in speed as he went into a controlled frenzy that he'd always thought of as Dancing Nightmare.
Five men died in three seconds, and six more died as the mob pulled back from Zelos, who was only now levering his way up off the ground.
But still the formation was broken. Lloyd and Sheena were being hard-pressed and Zelos was bleeding from a few places and he'd have to heal himself before he'd go back in the fray.
Ribs noticed Joseph was casting again, and began building his own spell, with a mind towards Bloody Lance. A sharp pang drew his attention upwards though, and almost every mana-sensitive person present looked up to see…
A silver-haired young man being held in the air by an angel. This, however, was only of brief interest compared to the swirling mana high above coalescing into meteors, which were getting rapidly larger.
"METEOR STORM!" Joseph shouted right before the deadly rain hit.
The carnage was extreme, as the meteors fell around Lloyd and his friends and instead drastically thinned out the mass of soldiers surrounding them. It was only maybe two dozen meteors, and was over in well under a minute, but it felt much, much longer to the troops.
Sheena saw Lloyd slice through two men near him, the swordsman using the their distraction to his advantage, and Joseph had to abandon his spell and hastily raise a shield to protect himself as a meteor fell dangerously close. She remembered herself, and hastily turned, feeling an ache between her shoulder blades as she expected Dexley to stab her right through the back.
He wasn't there.
Sheena saw him running towards Lloyd, who was pressing Bars hard now that he didn't have anyone else to worry about, and her anger went past its limit. She straightened, and formed a hand seal as she briefly considered who to summon. An appropriate one came to her, and she immediately poured the mana into making a gate for the entity.
"I summon the envoy from the dark abyss," she said in ringing tones. "Come, Shadow!"
Dexley was only seven feet from Lloyd when a pool of purplish-black formed on the ground in front of him and swiftly rose into the wide-shouldered, narrow-waisted, long armed silhouette of Shadow. Two blue-glowing eyes opened in the otherwise featureless, rounded head. He froze, wondering what the hell this thing was.
"Take him into the abyss," She ordered coldly.
The eyes glowed brighter, and the very air hissed, …Yesss…
Dexley realized he was in dire trouble, but the…thing…grabbed his arms with its long, three-fingered hands and then he was being dragged towards it. He made contact with the cool, moist darkness of its body, and then he was being dragged downwards into absolute blackness. The blackness burned like frostbite and blistered away his skin as he fell deeper into it. Screaming, he fell deeper into the abyss and the flesh frothed away from his bones and he felt his bones dissolve and then there was nothing but a tiny core shrieking into the uncaring void.
Forever.
Back in the material world, Joseph was stunned. In a matter of moments, the fight had turned to Lloyd and his friends having a good chance of winning. The redhead had even got up and healed himself.
Bars was still okay, now much more cautious with his attacks. The soldiers who had survived the meteor storm were rushing in on the other three. Ah, no help for it. Joseph drew his twin swords, the Seraphim Feathers, and leaned into his run as he pounded the way towards Lloyd, his Exsphere and his Cruxis crystal giving him a speed boost.
Sheena saw him coming, though, and yelled a warning to Lloyd, who spun out of Joseph's way unscathed and the leader's slash put a small cut into Bar's arm.
"Hey, watch it!" the big-bellied fighter protested.
However, they were together now, and tried to flank Lloyd. The Eternal Swordsman kept moving, keeping them both in front of him, but he, as last time, had to physically move out of the way of each attack of Joseph, forcing him to alter his style drastically and attack from positions he wouldn't have chosen otherwise, and Bars wasn't helping either.
Lloyd's battle-calm was melting away, and his sense of frustration grew and filled him. Here he was, facing his enemy, and he couldn't kill him! He was within sword's reach of his goal, knew what he had to do, but couldn't get any opportunity to do it! If he failed, the world would know the rise of Exspheres again!
In fact, Lloyd felt on fire. His adrenalin pumped, making him feel good, in fact. Stronger and faster. It was just as it had been two years ago, when he'd had to give life to the Great Seed to give the world the mana it needed. It was like last year, when he was at the last of the twenty duels against the elite of the Papal Knights to force them to give up their Exspheres and disband permanently. This upsurge felt like it could burst out of him, his Exsphere was tingling, glowing, he was surrounded by the glow…
Joseph almost fell over when Lloyd's long wings spread from his shoulders. With incredible swiftness and grace, Lloyd turned and raised a line across Bars' ample belly through the breastplate. Then the angel rounded on him.
Lloyd delivered the jumping double-cut of Tiger Blade, stabbed out repeatedly in a Sword Rain as soon as his feet hit the ground, jumped and gave the down-cross-down cuts of Tiger Rage, and again his swords flashed out in a Sword Rain, only the last stab of this one had barely been delivered when Lloyd spun to build up force and slammed a Beast into Joseph.
None of the hits were major, but Joseph was sent sailing through the air and the world spun around his brain. He managed to kick his feet out and right himself for the landing, crouching to absorb the impact and skidding with the force. He looked up to see Lloyd, wings shining, pulling his swords out of Bars, who fell.
Joseph ran towards him, sword raised. He covered the distance quickly, and leaped into the air, right hand high to deliver a fatal cut through Lloyd's body from shoulder to hip.
Lloyd whirled and Joseph had a glance of narrowed eyes. Like Joseph was standing still, Lloyd crossed his swords and brought forth the protective sphere of Guardian. This, however, went off with a sound like a thunderclap and made an opaque white sphere that exploded outward.
Joseph's blade had been only a foot from Lloyd's shoulder when the solid shell of mana had cracked into being. He felt an instantaneous hot explosion at his wrist and then he was flying head first through the air, in a tight spiral as he soared ten…twenty…thirty feet away…
The people he passed on the way didn't at first understand what splattered them, and Zelos heard a plop by him and took a moment to look down and see a severed hand.
Sobbing, Joseph pushed himself up and gave a horrified groan at the stump of his hand. Panting and tears running out of his eyes, he dropped his sword and turned hate-filled eyes on Lloyd. His left hand fumbled at his belt, and he brought forth a small bottle Lloyd recognized as an Elixir. He bit the cork out and swallowed the contents. He felt the soothing liquid flow through him, and the agony at his wrist stopped immediately and the open stump began to close.
Lloyd rose into the air, preparing for a dive, as Joseph picked up his remaining sword. He stopped at the expression on Joseph's face, and wished for the rest of his life that he'd just continued and cut the man down right then.
Joseph's face showed a slow realization, and he looked at the nearly closed end of his arm. Then he looked at the back of his left hand, at his remaining Exsphere—his Cruxis crystal, in fact. His old Exsphere had been taken off along with his hand. The realization became a slow horror and he gave a hoarse cry as grotesquely raised veins, like a web of pipes, spread through his arm from the crystal. And then his arm bulked sickeningly, elongating as the muscles shattered his bones with a sound like a huge sheet of ice breaking, healed near-instantly, and then shattered again, and again. His skin bubbled and crawled, split to show open muscle for an instant before it closed again, and turned a dark green.
The cry of horror became a shriek of agony as a network of veins crawled all through his body.