Blood
Another ray of fire slammed into Sabo’s chest, scorching his tattered clothes as he stumbled back. He barely had time to react as a second ray of fire roared through the air. Leaping backwards, Sabo stumbled, slamming the gigantic maul into the deck of the ship to right his center of gravity. The floorboards erupted into splinters and searing flames as the ray crashed into the space Sabo had been standing only a moment before.
The entire deck was now on fire. From the other side of the dancing flames, the knight’s dark silhouette loomed, distorted by wall of oppressive heat.
Sabo’s body screamed in protest, each fresh burn driving deeper exhaustion into his bones. His grip on the sentient maul was slipping, sweat mixing with the blood covering his hands.
He dodged another blast, barely, and saw a group of prisoners creeping back onto the deck, their faces pale with terror as they took in the bloody rain from above and the carnage at Sabo’s feet. Their horrified gazes turned to him, but there was no time to reassure them, no time to warn them to get below deck.
Another fireball seared the air. This time, he had nowhere to evade the attack. He jerked back, forcing the head of the maul upwards, meeting the fiery blast head on. The maul’s maw parted, closing in around the fireball as though it were a freshly-picked apple. It crunched down, gulping the flame down in billows of black smoke.
“Can’t keep . . . this up,” he muttered through gritted teeth, muscles aching with every dodge and swing. Did the knight’s supply of fire have no end? How could they keep hurling attack after attack at him? He tried to catch his breath, only to breathe in a mouthful of smoke.
As he forced out hacking coughs, the voice in his head growled, almost amused.
What is it talking about?
Sabo’s mind whirled, barely understanding. Blood? Then, it clicked. He thought about the mist of gore that filled the air. He looked up to the mortally wounded creature tethered to the airship. From the skyfin? The monstrous creature bled from hundreds of wounds, its life dripping down on them in a mist, mingling with the charred air. The acrid smell was suffocating. Sabo didn’t know how long the creature would last—but he felt the maul’s presence stir, a ravenous hunger resonating from it.
He wasn’t going to die there. If one moment was all it needed, he could do that. If I’m good at anything, it’s running and evading.
Desperation steeling his resolve, Sabo darted to the side, hoping to create as much space as possible between himself and the masked night. He dragged the maul behind him, straining to move as fast as possible despite the weapon’s weight.
The knight’s silhouette rippled and then vanished. The air right in front of him erupted—the masked figure materialized from the shimmering air. Their hand was covered in tongues of fire, cocked back and ready to strike.
Heat surrounded Sabo, flames licking around him. All of his exposed skin stung with a searing pain, and he could smell the hair on his arms and head burning. It was a blast unlike any before, an all-encompassing inferno that consumed his senses, leaving him teetering on the brink of consciousness. The knight’s flaming fist rocketed towards his face.
Then, amid the heat and pain, a notification appeared in his vision, cutting through his agony like a blade:
[Spell: Bloodstorm]
[Description: User combines the elements of fire and blood. Capable of targeting any blood that is not held in a living vessel, the user can make it explode.]
[Current Mana Cost: 55%]
[Uses Remaining: 1 of 1]
The maul in his grip seemed to pulse, and a wave of new strength shot through him. The God-Eater groaned, its maw widening with anticipation. Blood began seeping from every seam in the weapon’s metal, bubbling, pooling, until it streamed outward in torrents. The air thickened with a dense, crimson mist, twice as heavy, twice as ominous as before.
Sabo took a single step forward, and with that, the blood hanging around him shot forward, forming thousands of needle-thin daggers. The blood-daggers whistled through the air, faster than arrows, faster than a heartbeat.
The knight paused their strike, pulling back their fist and attempting to turn midair. It was too late. Their armor was shredded, body impaled by the fine points of a thousand blood-wrought blades. They pierced the knight’s arms, chest, and throat, each impact pushing them back until they finally collapsed, dead before their knees hit the deck.
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The flames around Sabo vanished, and he staggered, gasping as relief flooded his body. He could barely breathe, the world spinning, his vision clouded by exhaustion and the overwhelming scent of blood. But he had won. I did it.
Just as relief sank in, he looked over the side of the airship. Below, the ground was growing dangerously close. They were falling fast, the airship shuddering, tilting as it lost altitude. He could see the vast expanse of earth rising to meet them, jagged rocks and trees stretched out like eager hands to claim them.
“Damn it,” he whispered, clenching the maul as his heart pounded. The crash was coming, and there was no stopping it.
The world crashed down on Sabo in waves of agony. As the rush of battle faded, the power he’d pulled into his body left him, every muscle throbbing in raw, unbearable pain. His arms and legs felt like lead, twitching and burning, and even breathing felt like forcing air through iron. If the raw and burnt flesh on his forearms were any indication, he didn’t want to know what the rest of him looked like.
He barely noticed as the maul melted back into his skin, shrinking from the monstrous weapon into a small, pulsating heat in his arm. The searing of its withdrawal was nothing against the aches racking his body. His vision blurred and doubled, but Sabo forced himself to focus, pressing forward as he stumbled across the deck of the tilting ship.
The skyfin above wailed, a long low-frequency pulse that reverberated through the air as its life drained out in blood and shredded flesh. They were descending fast, lurching, skimming dangerously close to the treetops below. Sabo squinted, his mind reeling. Frigid air whipped around them as the skyfin’s protection of the deck faltered. He had to find Vitomir.
He searched the destroyed deck frantically until he spotted the old man’s body. Vitomir was sprawled against the side of the ship, his figure slumped and still. The ship must have lurched, kicking or rolling Vitomir’s form to the edge, yet somehow he had avoided being trampled in the chaos of the prisoners fleeing the cruelty of the two knights. Sabo fell to his knees beside him, fingers trembling as he inspected the old man.
There was a gaping slash across Vitomir’s chest, deep and dark with blood, stretching from his left shoulder down to his right ribcage. It was fresh, a recent wound amid the pale, webbed scars of old battles that covered his skin like a twisted, convoluted map. His chest rose in shallow, labored breaths, the lines around his mouth drawn tight with pain. Blind be! Thank the gods!
“Vitomir,” Sabo rasped, his voice raw as he gripped the old man’s shoulders. He was slipping, this man who’d survived so many horrors, who’d cared for the war orphans, who’d carried Sabo from the nightmares of Solstice. Sabo had to get him help. Fast.
With a grunt, Sabo looped his arms around Vitomir’s torso and pulled him up. The old man’s weight, though slight, felt crushing in Sabo’s weakened state. He gritted his teeth, dragging Vitomir inch by inch toward the cockpit, the only place he could think to shield him from the inevitable crash.
The cockpit door gave way under Sabo’s weight, swinging open with a dull creak that was drowned out by the storm of wind and groaning metal around them. Inside, the warden gripped the ship’s wheel in a white-knuckled grasp, his face drawn and tense as he fought to steady the wildly careening vessel. The shrieking wood and trembling walls told Sabo all he needed to know; they were hurtling downward, fast. There was no stopping the crash. Not without the skyfin.
With a desperate heave, Sabo dragged Vitomir into the cramped room, carefully lowering the old man to the floor beside the control panels. Vitomir’s breathing was shallow, but the faint rise and fall of his chest gave Sabo a sliver of hope. He turned back to the warden, shouting to be heard over the relentless noise.
“Can we land this thing?” Sabo yelled, his voice hoarse.
The warden looked over his shoulder, his eyes hardening as they fell on Sabo. A string of curses escaped him, but he managed a tight nod. “Maybe. But not with the skyfin still dragging us down! That beast is dead weight! If we can’t cut it loose, we’re finished.”
Sabo’s stomach twisted. He knew what he had to do.
With a last look at Vitomir, he bolted out onto the open deck. The moment he stepped outside, he was hit by a wall of wind that nearly knocked him off his feet. His eyes watered, and he felt his skin sting as gusts ripped at him with merciless force. The dead skyfin—its lifeless bulk no longer channeling aether to shield them—hung from the silver tethers, dragging them further and faster into the unforgiving ground below.
Sabo staggered toward the tethers, the silvery cables thick as his arm, each bound in metal and magic. He tried to pull them loose, but the material wouldn’t budge. Desperation clawed at him. He leaned back, shouting over the roaring wind.
“I need the weapon! Give it to me—if you don’t, we’ll all die!”
A dark rumble echoed in his mind, an amused growl.
The skin of his right hand split open again, raw and tearing, and the mouth of the maul emerged from his flesh, its jaws grinding and drooling purple ichor as it grew, stretching into its monstrous form. Sabo struggled to even hold onto the weapon. He remembered the feeling of sensing the aether in the air. He tried to focus his mind, to find that feeling again. There it is! He found the familiar sensation and tapped into it. Like a sharp breath of frigid air, aether flooded his body, filling his muscles with newfound strength.
Sabo braced himself, raising the maul and aiming it at the first tether.
With a vicious swing, he brought the maul down, and its jaws snapped onto the metal cable, biting through it like paper. The tether was devoured in seconds, swallowed into the maul’s endless maw. One by one, he struck at the cables, watching as the skyfin began to lurch and sag, falling further behind the ship.
With a final swing, the last tether gave way, and the skyfin’s enormous corpse detached, separating from the space above the airship before plummeting toward the ground in a cascade of scales and blood. Freed from the burden, the ship bucked and jolted, the whole deck vibrating violently as they hurtled downward, no longer weighed down but still out of control.
Sabo felt a rush of dread, gripping the maul as tightly as he could. He raised it, letting its teeth clamp around the thick mast at the center of the deck. Every muscle in his body screamed as he braced himself, heart pounding as the ground rose rapidly to meet them.
The ship shuddered, groaned—and with a deafening crash, it hit the earth.