Under the cover of night, they struck at several more camps of the zagoths. It seemed to D’Arden that Elisa’s prowess with the sword grew steadily with each encounter, and with surprise on their side, they never suffered any wounds more serious than a scratch or shallow cut.
As the night grew to its darkest and the Deadmoon began to set over the western sky, D’Arden knew that it would soon be dawn. There was little to be gained by striking in the bright light, and the demons were nocturnal creatures, living their lives at night and crawling back into their holes by day.
They stood on the edge of the Old City near the dry riverbed, on the stones that had once made up the harbor district. The view of the eastern sky was clear, and he knew that the sun would be rising soon. The river itself was several yards to the bottom, but no water had flowed this way in centuries. It was hard to see in the dark, but he knew the land that stretched out before him which had once carried life-giving water to this place was now dry, cracked and parched.
“We won’t find them once dawn comes,” he told her as they picked over the remains of another slain camp of zagoths. “They’ll vanish again in the daylight. They don’t suffer from the corruption itself – these demons are entirely nature’s creation – but they don’t like the light any more than something touched by corrupted manna. The Old City will be safe for the day, and you should go and get some rest. It’s been a very long night.”
I should return to my manna font, he thought to himself. I’ve expended enough energy this night as it is. There doesn’t appear to be any real danger here in the Old City… the demons aren’t brave enough to venture out of their territory now that we’ve decimated their numbers.
She nodded. There was a cut on her cheek that had already clotted, and there was a smear of drying blood. He hoped that it wouldn’t scar and damage her lovely visage, but then again, he supposed, there were worse things than a real battle scar on a woman. “All right,” she said. “I’ll go back to the barracks. I could use some sleep anyway.” There were thick dark circles around her eyes, and though some of the haunted-ness had left her eyes, he could still see the trauma of the loss of her friends lurking there behind her green-eyed gaze.
“Good,” he said with a slight smile. “You made it through, just as I said.”
“I told you that I would,” she smirked. “You’ll make good on that promise of yours, right?”
“I will,” he promised again.
The first light of dawn began to break over the eastern horizon. Just as it did, D’Arden heard a commotion coming from behind him. He turned to look, and saw something horrific come out of the ground at them.
It was a massive spider, several times larger than a man, burrowing out of the ground. Dust and small rocks flew in all directions, and D’Arden could see the red glow surrounding it and the tiny red pinpoints in its multiple eyes indicating that it was a creature born and made of the corrupted manna. He wondered how many of these spiders there might be even as he backed up, holding one arm out to keep Elisa behind him.
“It’s a manna spinner,” D’Arden said breathlessly as it came fully into view. The huge black carapace was unmistakable – this was no ordinary spider, but a creature born to swim the underground currents of the manna, normally benevolent and non-aggressive, now twisted in its corruption as it came out of the ground near them. He wondered briefly why it might be emerging just as the light of dawn was breaking, but he had little time to wonder.
“Die, beast!” Elisa was shouting as she raised her sword high in the air and rushed at the creature.
“Elisa, no! You can’t…”
Too late.
As she swung the sword hard, it bounced off of the manna spinner’s hard body and reverberated so hard that the steel blade almost cracked. She was stunned by the sudden rebound of the sword and staggered backwards. D’Arden leapt forward to help her, but even his assisted speed could not help him as the manna spinner sank its giant, manna-tainted fangs deep into her body. She cried out and stiffened as the manna-venom coursed through her body, and collapsed like a marionette as its strings were cut as the spider withdrew its deadly bite.
“Damn you!” he cried, leaping forward and drawing the crystalline sword from his back in the same motion, bringing it slicing downward through the air. It caught one of the spider’s outstretched legs and severed it on contact. The blue manna fire devoured the severed extremity within seconds, but the beast was able to resist its effect as the azure flames attempted to creep up its extremity.
It hissed at him – a deep, terrifying sound – and struck back, stabbing at him with clawed legs. He swung at them as they came by, but the spider was too swift when it was paying attention to him, and he wasn’t able to connect with either one as they passed by. He danced forward and struck again, but the spider pulled back, moving just out of his range and lashed out at him once more, trying to push him off guard so that it might have a chance to bite at him as well.
He could hear Elisa, lying on the ground a few feet away and moaning softly. Each successive breath was getting weaker, and he could hear her heartbeat slowly draining away. Each beat took successively longer, and with the help of his manna-tuned hearing, he could hear every labored beat as the corruption began to take her over. He didn’t have long to deal with the spider if he had any hope of saving her.
What hope is there? He asked himself in despair. She’s been touched by manna, and corrupted manna at that. What hope is there for life after such a wound?
His mind provided him with the answer. The heartblade.
Could he do such a thing? Could he supply her with a tiny dose of purified manna, a boost against the corruption that now flowed in her veins, without completely killing her? Would the dose be too large and begin the manna transformation, or would it be too little to save her from the horrid fate that had befallen her?
Fighting with the idea in his head, he struck again at the spider, this time connecting solidly with its carapace. Where the steel blade had bounced, his blade sank in, and the spider let out a hideous shriek as ichor spouted forth, luminescent, like the kind that had come from the fel dog he’d fought outside Calessa’s gates. He yanked the sword free and spun away as the spider attempted to sink its fangs into his shoulder, narrowly avoiding a poisoning himself.
As the beast dripped its luminescent fluid on the ground, D’Arden could tell that it was beginning to slow. It fought with less certainty, less precision as it lashed out at him, and D’Arden knew that he’d struck a deadly point on the beast. Its attacks began to seem less and less like coordinated strikes and more like death throes.
He moved in for the kill. As he stepped closer to the spider, one of its flailing strikes caught him squarely in the chest.
D’Arden gasped. The world seemed to slow to a halt.
Slowly, he looked down. The beast’s clawed limb had hit him straight on and had punctured straight through his chest, his ribs, breaking bones and tearing through muscle and soft organs as it went. Blood and manna flowed out from him as he tried to catch a breath, but found that he was already feeling faint from a sudden lack of oxygen.
The spider yanked back its appendage and staggered backward, finally falling over the edge into the dry riverbed as it twitched frantically, trying to slow the loss of its vital fluid. It vanished into the darkness.
He fell to the ground slowly, in a motion that seemed very well to take an eternity. He hit the ground with such force that it would have driven the breath out of him, had he not already lost the ability to breathe.
D’Arden clawed at his belt, hoping that he had saved some sort of potion, some sort of alchemical substance that could save his life. His fingers closed only on the hilt of the heartblade.
The Arbiter weakly unlocked it from its specialized scabbard, and brought it up to his eyes. The thrumming of the light in the heartblade was weak. It would not be enough to inoculate Elisa against the poison running through her and also to give him the strength he needed to force the manna to repair the wound he had sustained.
There was no other choice.
He would have to let Elisa die.
With a desperate cry, he thrust the blade deep into his own chest, little caring if he sustained more damage. He was dead anyway if this didn’t work, and he had neither the time nor the strength to make a careful application.
The thin, round blade pierced his heart.
Time stood still for a long moment.
The manna in the heartblade flashed into his body. Immediately the manna took hold of his body, wrapping around him in a warming embrace and beginning to knit the flesh that had been horribly wounded by the spider’s attack. He only hoped that it would work quickly enough before his mind died of air starvation.
Black sparks began to flash in front of his eyes and he felt himself slipping away, the pull of the manna on his soul getting stronger with every second that ticked by. His heart beat weaker, and weaker. He struggled to draw a breath even as he felt the uncomfortable itch and burn of the flesh repairing itself thanks to the burst of manna. Fear gripped him; fear that it wouldn’t be enough, that it was already too late for him, that his failure would cost the world dearly.
His lungs inflated.
Desperately, he gasped for air, reveling in the taste of the sweet dawn. The pull of death faded from him, and he found the sudden strength to pull the heartblade free of his chest.
As he held it up in the light of the rising sun, it suddenly illuminated with a brilliant flash of azure manna energy. He stared at it as it pulsed in his hand to the rhythm of a heartbeat not his own, uncomprehending. He had just expended what little energy it had held contained within it, and yet here it was, glowing as though it had just been recharged.
A low, weak moan snapped him out of his daze. He scrambled to his feet, doing his best to ignore the sharp flashes of pain that he felt as new flesh that had not completely healed tore and blood flowed again. He rushed to the side of the fallen girl and knelt beside her.
Elisa’s skin already had a dusky grey tint to it, and her face was ashen. Her green eyes were a strange, almost surreal splash of color against her otherwise colorless form. They stared at him, not quite vacantly, but with so little recognition that he feared it was already too late. The blood had stopped flowing from the deep wound in her shoulder, but it mattered little. The venom had obviously spread like wildfire, and even though he had no idea how long he’d been semi-conscious, Elisa was nearing death.
He held up the glowing heartblade in front of her eyes. Her glassy gaze focused on it with a vaguely puzzled look. “This is the only thing that stands a chance of saving your life,” he told her, though he knew that she likely could not understand him. “The chance is very slim. I have never heard of such a thing working before. It is probable that you will die.”
She nodded, weakly, once.
“Do you want that chance?” he asked her.
Again, weakly, she nodded.
Needing little more of an answer than that, he unbuckled her breastplate and pulled down her shirt, just enough so that he could get access to the area above her heart and not enough to expose her to the chilled morning air. He took the pulsing heartblade and slid it carefully between her ribs.
She gasped, and the blade thrummed in his hand as it released its charge of power into her. He removed the heartblade quickly from her, leaving a trail of blood and tiny blue flames behind.
Her entire body buckled as she screamed, the sound echoing throughout the broken-down buildings that surrounded them. He gave a soft thanks to the land for the daylight that would keep the demons from pursuing them, even though it would now be clear to their entire population exactly where they were. The pure manna was coursing through her bloodstream, obliterating the corruption that had been forced into her by the spider’s bite.
Now was the moment of truth. If she survived the initial purification, she might still stand a chance. He waited, more nervously than he would have expected for a life he’d come in contact with so recently.
As her scream finally died away, her body went completely limp. Her eyes stared blankly out across the dry riverbed.
He bowed his head.
After a few long moments, he reached out and grasped her wrist. There was no pulse, no indication of life. He’d lost her to the purification.
D’Arden breathed a heavy sigh. He’d known the risks when he offered it to her, and even if she hadn’t understood them fully, she had some idea of what it might have done. It could have been much worse, he thought – she suffered none of the transformational effects that normally accompanied a direct exposure to manna energy. The regret that she hadn’t survived, though, weighed heavily on him. He’d hoped that no matter how slim the chances were, that this young girl might have survived where the young boy Mikel had fallen, that he might have had the chance to make amends for the boy’s senseless death.
The sun continued to rise over the horizon.