Everything was hazy in my mind. I had no idea why I—wait, I did. It was just then that I remembered why I was in the ER in the first place. It was because of my fight with the Filadron. I had made so many mistakes, so many unnecessary, deadly mistakes. Then I remembered another thing: Fars had warned me, but I hadn’t taken it seriously. Now I was dying in a prison’s infirmary.
When I entered the arena to meet Kernden Voon the Filadron, the audience roared in excitement. It was a very peculiar fight because both Filadron and I were the only living examples of our species in Xan and both of us had very distinct fighting styles.
I had heard about the Filadron from hearsay but my INAS had nothing on their race except for a very basic description. Their homeworld was Ugria Prime and it was nestled somewhere in the outskirts of the Partak Sector, where pirate activity was so rampant no government had ever managed to establish itself. Filadrons were one of the three major plant-based races in our galaxy, but unlike the other two who happened to be very passive races focused within their star systems, the Filadrons were, in great part due to proximity to similarly dispositioned races, expansionists. Aggressive expansionists to be precise, but rather unsuccessful ones. After centuries of war, their colonies were destroyed by the Jareet, and their entire race was reduced to their homeworld, Ugria Prime.
None of that information was particularly helpful with my fight. When Kernden Voon entered the sands of the Redemption Tomb, I was rather surprised to see how much technology was intertwined with its tree-like body. On the surface, Kernden Voon looked like a tripedal tree covered in thick bark and moss. Between the deep crevasses of the bark, however, the slick metallic tech was easily visible. Kernden was an impressive sight as he stood there, his full height of about ten feet.
He walked into the sands with a grace that seemed almost impossible with that size and weight, yet all the grace in the universe couldn’t shake off the glaring similarity between Kernden and nightmarish visions of forest monsters. The amalgamation of branches, arms, and tentacles that were seemingly made of wood, walked on three thick legs reminding me of horror stories from old Earth. The universe truly was making our dreams come true as much as our nightmares.
When the announcer finished and the Redemption bell rang to announce the start of the battle, Kernden was already on me with such speed that I didn’t even manage to use my Blade Shield. He tackled me with his full body, which smashed me into the wall of the arena with enough force for the ancient stones to rattle and dislodge.
All the air left my lungs and my eyes teared up, screwing up my vision. Kernden didn’t wait for another opportunity; he used the many appendages on his torso that served as arms, pincers, cutting tools, and what not to send a series of stabs and slashes my way.
I barely managed to summon my Ro Sword and parry some of the blows, but just as many connected with my nanite-reinforced skin, and though the layer of protection helped, his razor-sharp branches still cut open wounds into my flesh.
The H-Nans in my body immediately got to work, which meant my capacity for offensive attacks was significantly reduced. The more my H-Nans had to work on fixing up wounds the less I could use them for other things.
I entangled one of his many appendages with nanite chains and tried to saw off the appendage since I had the genius idea to treat Kernden like a tree. Big mistake. Not only did I do almost no damage, but he also pulled me by the chains and flung me across the arena like a yo-yo. I crashed into the ground with a mouth full of sand.
Kernden Voon the Filadron spoke in a deep, menacing voice that sounded more like a machine than a living thing:
“Eat, human Bloodmancer. You’ve got a long way to go until you reach my size.”
A booming laugh followed his words.
I straightened up, cleaning the sand from my gear. Kernden barely noticed as he was too busy pissing off the audience by cursing all flesh-life, Xan, the Jareet, the Greth, and the rest of the Partak Sector. It gave me several seconds of respite, seconds that I used to my utmost. When I was done doing whatever I could, I spat at the creature.
“Hey, Kernden! You done?” I yelled, catching his attention.
“Ah, Bloodmancer! Pathetic, two parts, two Bloodmancer, dead,” Kernden answered as he turned to face me. He didn’t spare a second between words and actions, rushing straight at me with the full force a 500-pound monster could muster.
I activated almost half of my nanites to rush through my skin and envelop my entire body in flowing armor. This wasn’t a Blade Shield. It was something new I had learned over the years. My Blade Shield was a versatile tool that could very effectively stop projectile attacks and had some utility in melee too, but the Filadron just had too much power in every swing for it to be of much use. His attacks easily penetrated the shield and their sheer force knocked me off my feet.
As my nanites rushed out and enshrouded my body in a red, ever-moving glow it felt as if I had turned my whole body inside out. I learned to establish a synchronous relationship with the nanites coursing tightly around my skin. They increased the speed and effectiveness of all the kinetic energy I created. It was a sort of self-made power armor where I could change the density of the shielding depending on the place of impact or empower my attack depending on whether I used my hands, legs, or even Ro Sword.
The Filadron was a being of pure mass and force. In my vanity, I wanted to counter the strength with which the fully-teched Filadron threatened me.
As the giant tree came at me, I didn’t brace for impact. Instead, I dug my feet into the sand and sprinted at him. There was the tiniest hint of reluctance in the last steps of the Filadron’s charge as he tried to guess what I was doing and going to do once I got in close. That was enough for me to have the confidence to go all out.
We connected with such utter devastating force that I virtually bore through the canopy of appendages like a bullet tearing out two of his movable branches with my bare hands.
“The Bloodmancer retaliates, my good people of Xan! He has two of the Filadron’s tentacles in his hands. What a show!” the announcer roared to a cheering audience.
I raised the two branches in the air victoriously and then dropped them in the sand to a standing ovation from the crowd. Electric discharges came from the severed limbs. I wasn’t much of a showman but the Filadron had already pissed the audience off so it made my job pretty easy.
There was another reason I turned to showmanship. I had my doubts about Warden Rinslo’s promises. Somehow, I thought that the end of our little bodyguard job would have the three of us lying dead in the dirt in some random corner of the universe once we were done. So, I thought as long as I could get into the good graces of our audience, Rinslo couldn’t afford to get rid of me that easily.
“Daughters, granddaughters, dead flowers!” the Filadron screamed in a metallic voice. “Death, flesh!” he howled.
We locked into a brawl which had me fight like a fly around a giant. I had to make full use of my nanite-enhanced abilities, ducking, rolling, jumping, and striking at his limbs when the opportunity came. Each time I managed to hit him, a piece of the bark tore off and more tech was revealed beneath it.
The Filadron seemed to slow down as the fight dragged on. His attacks were still very deadly and it took a lot of focus not to get hit by one of those disgusting tentacles, but it seemed like the tree was getting tired. I was glad because so was I. Keeping my nanites in constant shift around my body was exhausting in itself but to have to fight a Filadron while doing it drained me even quicker.
My INAS flashed red and reported that I was down to 30% of my H-Nan capacity, so I had to make this quick. I grabbed two more of his appendages that suffered the most damage and tore them out using all of my strength. The Filadron wailed in agony, stumbled, and crashed into the sand. I jumped away with his branches in my fists, holding them high. This was a done fight, I thought. The Filadron was crippled and weakened.
The crowd cheered its heart out chanting a single name: Bloodmancer.
I threw the branches in the air and as they descended, I cut them in two with my Ro Sword. This was fun, I thought. I never gave too much of a shit about the audience because they disgusted me. The sheer fact they spent their time watching prisoners maul each other to death for sport was anathema to me. Not that humans didn’t indulge in bloody sports. On the contrary, there were similar games across human space, and it’s just that with so much chaos going on in the galaxy, you just couldn’t realistically empathize with everyone.
“Soul, erase, all flesh, burn!” Kernden Voon cried as he tried to get up on his three tree-trunk-like legs. The Filadron’s language lacked the grammatical cohesion of other races which made the translator box weep. “Bloodmancer, drown, green, hell.” Nevertheless, I got much of its message anyway.
The Filadron slammed the top of his body into the ground. All the appendages burst through the sand and earth, and I immediately knew what was coming. I began running around the arena expecting the roots to burst out of the ground at any second, and I was right. That was my trick, I thought, and if anyone knew how to handle it, it was me. I couldn’t help myself laughing as I ran. As long as I kept moving, he could never match my speed. The ground in the arena was too rocky. I had tested it before with the Oolan Jan.
Finally, the appendages burst from the ground, and as they did, I cut them down with my Ro Sword causing even more damage to the Filadron. The tree monster yelped in pain as I chopped more and more of its canopy into tinder. Several wiggly branches managed to scrape my skin and spill a few drops of blood, but I hadn’t even noticed in the heat of battle.
“You threaten a lot, tree! But you prove to be dumb and weak as the rest of them,” I said almost cheerfully.
I had the fight in my pocket. Kernden was done for. I had cut him down so savagely he had lost more than half of his appendages, and now it looked like a badly trimmed hedge.
“Bloodmancer!” he screamed.
I yelled back, still evading his attacks. “You look like a sad tree, you piece of timber!”
At that point, I thought he had already put all his cards on the table and I had managed to burn down every one of them.
Invigorated by my approaching victory, I charged the Filadron with full force, stabbing and slashing furiously. I swung my Ro Sword in wide arcs trying to cover as much of the deadly foliage as possible while caring little for defense. Yet, the swings tired me out quickly, and within seconds I had lost my breath and my vision became blurry.
The Filadron parried some of my attacks but most of them still landed brutally. Sparks flew left and right as my sword connected with the metallic reinforcements on the Filadron’s body. Bark and splinters chipped off into the air with every hack, but I kept getting more exhausted by the second. It seemed like I was winning but the whole audience was completely silent.
My INAS flared up and I realized what had happened to me. I was heavily poisoned by the Filadron and my H-nans were furiously battling the infection while draining my energy as they did. This was no ordinary poison, it was partly hallucinogenic and was causing me to slow down considerably without me even noticing. I wasn’t defeating the Filadron. I wasn’t furiously hacking into its body. He was letting me drain myself with fruitless attacks against parts of his body that weren’t important.
I jumped away and fell to a knee, breathing heavily and trying to process what had just happened. My INAS told me I had barely 10% functional H-Nans left as I stuck the sword into the sand and leaned on it. I never let the Filadron out of my view, but even if I did it wouldn’t be of much use. I was weak, slow, and could barely see.
“Loud, stupid, greedy, and dead!” the Filadron roared proudly.
It slowly approached me, shaking off the bits of pieces I had been hacking at earlier. They were nothing but exterior defenses, much like armor plating for a starship. Though I had caused some damage while cutting its limbs, the true body of the Filadron was beneath the bark and encased completely in pekta-reinforced metals. That’s when the panic set in.
I had spent almost all of my resources on nothing and now I was poisoned and exhausted while Kernden, though visibly damaged, still seemed almost as fresh as when we had started.
“Poisons are for pussies!” I hissed through my teeth.
“Bloodmancer, pussy,” the tree replied, and I would have chuckled if I wasn’t dying of poison. His poison.
“I’m not done, Kernden,” I said as he stopped walking and finally towered above me. The audience was completely silent, waiting for what was about to happen. Though some had betted against me, most races hated the Filadron for their arrogance and disdain of all life that wasn’t plant-based.
He slammed me with one of his tentacles and I was too slow to dodge. I spread out on my back on the sand and the Filadron stepped on my left hand crushing it beneath his weight. I could hear bones cracking in several places, joined in with screams that came from the very depths of my soul. He had me pinched to the floor, helpless. To add insult to injury, he slammed another tentacle into my chest that caused me to cry out again as my eyes filled with blood.
My INAS was begging me to seek immediate assistance, but all I could do was look at the monstrous tree-being eclipsing the world around me.
“Plant, annihilate, flesh,” Kernden said, and I coughed out blood at the same time. Some of it spilled back down in my mouth, choking me.
“Perhaps,” I managed to mumble.
“Words,” Kernden said calmly, intrigued that I still had the power to speak. I put my right hand against his leg.
“Kernden,” I muttered, trying to buy time. “Do you like to jog?”
The tree monster was almost insulted that I asked such a thing just before I was about to die by his hands. Or tentacles. Branches. Whatever.
“Jog, words.”
“Jog means to walk at… a… steady… pace… but I guess…” I wheezed while gathering all my strength between each word. “Trees… don’t… jog…”
“Tree, Filadron, egg, human.”
I had no idea what that meant, and I couldn’t care less. I had bought enough time to do what I wanted. When I realized that the Filadron was more machine than a plant, when I became aware that beneath the flowery exterior a whole jumble of complicated tech had replaced much of the Filadron’s original body, I didn’t worry. On the contrary, I already knew what my end game could be.
“Jog, little Filadron… jog,” I said with a bloody grin.
The Filadron twitched, his body suddenly starting to suffer seizures as it turned away from me and toward the arena wall. Then the Filadron started to sprint maniacally around the arena while screaming in agony at the same time.
I had programmed his legs to work overtime and run around until every drop of energy left the Filadron. I had spent all but the last 1% of nanites on hacking its internal systems. Kernden wouldn’t run forever, but only because I programmed the rest of his body to kill itself in the next few seconds.
The appendages from his upper body craned toward his torso and then violently penetrated his insides. Kernden folded in on itself in a grotesque display of brutality and gore as what passed for its insides flooded the branches sticking out from him. Machine parts sparked and started to smoke as a white liquid oozed from numerous points of impact, and Kernden screamed in such agony that many in the audience clasped their ears.
“You have lost your arm, Richard Stavos,” Fars said as I woke from my drug-induced sleep in the infirmary. “You truly are a blessed man,” he added.
“Are… you… fucking… kidding…” I barely managed as my throat hurt every much as the rest of my body.
“No, I’m not kidding at all. It is the greatest of feats to lose one’s limb in battle and come out triumphant. You have now even more of my respect, Richard Stavos. You truly are one of a kind.”
I had nothing to add to that. I was wondering, however, why Fars was allowed in the infirmary, so I inquired about that. There were no visiting hours in the prison’s medical facili
ties, especially not for other inmates.
“The warden told me to take care of you. We are sowing the fruits of our past successes.”
“Sowing… fruit? Have you been using… snapp again?”
“Of course, I have.”
I wanted to frown but I was too tired to lecture him. The doctor came in just then, startling the Eres. He was a heavily modified Shia with numerous tech extensions that helped him perform his work much easier.
“Your arm will grow back in two to three days,” he said calmly. “You have too many nanites inside you so I can’t install any cybernetic appendages. The nanites aren’t letting me.”
He stopped for a moment and I nodded.
“That’s… good to know?”
“It is, human. You’ve also been heavily poisoned but much of it is gone from your system. Your H-Nans are working on repairing your lungs and heart right now so you won’t be out of bed in a couple of days. That’s all there is, Bloodmancer. Oh, one more thing. You will want to talk to Wavemaster Kabish as soon as you’re out of here.”
“Kabish? Why?”
“I only transfer the news. You’ll know when you get out, human. Don’t let the wavemaster wait or the Shia will make your life hell.”
I wanted to laugh at that last sentence, but I just coughed up blood. I couldn’t even fathom why Kabish wanted to see me. He was one of the four main wavemasters on Xan and he had an army of imprisoned Shia on his side. Of course, they were always plotting to make somebody’s life worse than it already was, but why me and why now? They knew I was in the third round of the Sulan Games, so I doubted I was in any real danger. Still, this didn’t sit right with me at all. For five years nobody gave a flying shit about me, and now suddenly everyone wanted a piece of the Bloodmancer. Fame was hard, those skimpily dressed pop stars always used to say.
6
I got out of the infirmary even before my arm grew back. As with so many of my decisions in life, this one too was a big mistake. It wasn’t just that I gathered attention with my floppy baby arm and made myself look vulnerable. That had been the dangerous part of the mistake, and the other part was way more annoying. Fars endlessly jabbed me with idiotic jokes and harassed me with apparently humorous nods at my looks.
Redeemer: A Military Space Opera Series (War Undying Book 2) Page 6