by Nefarious
“Finally,” Lucifer said.
“Try to drag your own weight,” Caleb said, before turning to face Kora. “Bian, stand down immediately,”
Before she could even reply, Orion struck out in rage, ice spurting out from below his enemies like a fountain, tearing through their defences before they hopped away. “Out of my way,” Orion grated in a strained voice.
Seeing as her partner had made his choice, Kora joined him. The blood sphere above her expanded, wind filling its stomach as it turned and toiled, speeding up as it grew into a tornado. The blood that outlined it sliced at anything in its proximity, and the tornado rushed towards Caleb and Lucifer.
Still, alike daughter was father as he repeated her Blood art, an even larger tornado forming and clashing into hers. The wind from the clash pushed anyone nearby off their feet and into the air, including Orion and Lucifer. This was enough for the Metole leader as he used the wind to rush forward, taking Orion by surprise as he gripped his arm with the force of a bear.
His arm would have been torn off in the next second had Orion not hastily placed his left palm on the man’s skin, tearing through the defences the Metoles were acclaimed for. The cracks propagated quickly, forcing Lucifer to vomit blood. Still, the old man managed a strike on Orion before he fell to the ground.
Before anyone could even react, Orion was blasting towards Caleb. The aged vampire had enough of a gauge of Orion’s ability from Lucifer’s misfortune to know what to do. He immediately backed off and used his Blood arts, the same way he would have dealt with Reion or Regnar, Orion’s father and uncle.
Yet, the vampire still underestimated him as ropes of ice exploded out of the ground, ten times as thick as the tendrils Orion had formed for the Metole in the Black forest. These ropes moved fast like dragons and latched around Caleb’s ankles and arms like snakes, biting into his skin hard. As he was constrained, Kora blasted into him, kicking her father and teacher in the stomach, sending the old man flying and gasping for breath.
Orion could tell she had done this as much as to disable Caleb as to save him from Orion. While Kasib had been right in his judgement of Orion at the Seeker’s Summit, he had changed a lot since then and could no longer be compared to the other Houses, after all, the Zakaris were the greatest. Either way, he didn’t care for Kora’s reason as he turned towards Eira, who had locked Yhaoli in a cage of ice and sustained it as Kasib slowly tore away the monster’s flesh.
Seeing his chance, Orion blasted several crystals at Eira, forcing her focus to him. At this moment, Yhaoli cracked his cage and smashed through, although heavily damaged. Orion wasn’t over, however, as he firmly put his arms down and felt the earth’s pulse. His used his energy to source waves through the ground, centred on Eira as the ground under her began to topple.
She must have anticipated this as her arms came down simultaneously. On her face were fear and regret, after all, she could have created earthquakes right after killing the strongest Tribe members. Yet she hadn’t as the armies had been too mixed by then, and her losses would have been just as large as her gains. But now her cousin had started, she couldn’t let him succeed. Her waves were far stronger than his and boosted the destructive nature of his, sending tremors down the land.
Cracks spread across the wet ground in milliseconds and the fragments toppled over like icebergs in water in the next moment, the entire battlefield falling to ruin as piece after piece fell and crushed. This revealed the caverns below the battlefield, and seconds after, it was the two Zakaris’ turns as they too fell, plummeting down.
Their fragment crashed and sent them sprawling across the cavern floor. Above, terrifying masses of land fell like missiles, destroying the floor.
51. An Ending
* * *
Stumbling up, Orion rubbed the dust out of his eyes. Deafening thuds surrounded him, and yet for some unexplainable reason, he was certain he would not be hit. Still, perhaps it was not so much a certainty as a hope as he desperately tried to see past the towering clouds of dust, although to no avail.
Kneeling, he put his palms to the ground and sent waves into the earth. Through this, he found Eira standing tens of metres from him. Her figure was turned towards him and it seemed she was watching him. Through the dust at that.
Practically tasting her contempt, he cackled. His insanity did little to deter her but rather the opposite as she strode towards him. So it be, he thought. Breaking into a sprint, ice crackled around him like bolts of lightning, each of them shooting towards her.
From the other side, she sensed them and slapped them out of the air with ice-gloved hands. He leapt at her like a wild dog and in turn, she caught him by the collar and tightened her grip. As he yelped in pain, she saw the bright glint in his eyes. Realising what was wrong in that split second, she released him and immediately elbowed his left hand away. It was too late, however, as his palm touched her forearm.
Her flesh parted like the ground had underneath them, skin spreading to reveal thick and thin lines of crimson. In response, she struck like a coiled snake, whipping her leg across his stomach, sending him flying and crashing into rubble. While stroking her broken skin, she realised this was a deathmatch.
She had hoped it to be a tutor teaching the student a lesson, leaving him whipped and crying to toughen him. Instead she now figured he was an equal to her: he had seemed exhausted and out of energy after using Szu to collapse the plains above, but it seemed Giah still supported his body with a steady influx of energy. Regardless, she knew his body would betray his thoughts soon enough and break down. The real question was whether she would be dead by that time…
Casting her right fist to the ground like a hammer to an anvil, her eyes gleamed a brighter white than before as she drained the ground around her. In a moment, a large spherical barrier made of pure ice sprouted around them, trapping them both in a circle with a radius a few metres wide.
She did this just in time too as Kora clashed against it in the next second, recoiling back as the ice bit at her flesh. Kora stared at barrier-cum-prison with wary eyes as she paced around it, looking for weaknesses and finding none. Seeing no other option, she steeled herself and moved against the barrier once more.
Inside, Eira sneered as she felt the force against her creation. It had been made with her lifeforce, and couldn’t be broken in just a few moments. And by the time it was, only one would come out. Flicking her black ponytail to the side, Eira eyed Orion, who similarly faced her off.
Not for long, though, as her cousin made another wild charge towards her, only this time ice spikes rising out of the ground behind her as she stepped back. Suddenly aware he had created them despite no contact with the ground, she rushed forward and grappled him, eventually releasing with flaky skin.
He came out likewise but seemed to be overcome with a primitive anger as he continued despite the burning pangs, striking her once and once more with an ice sword while a pointed rock formed below her feet to trip her up. But despite his best efforts, they proved useless as her icy suit of plate armour brushed his attempts off.
She watched him behind her armour with an odd giddiness as she saw him growing frustrated and exhausted, his leaden limbs falling like metal. The gleam from his white eyes had also dimmed, the power simmering at his fingertips disappearing by the second.
It was in that second an overpowering force pummelled against her barrier, sending her rocking across her feet. Taking advantage, he immediately placed his left palm across her plated armour and finally held on for long enough to crumble it down. It sloshed to the ground like snow.
She hastily tried to recreate her armour, and by a miraculous turn of events, he struck her into the air away from himself. As she rolled over the ground, dodging his next attack, she realised he hadn’t even attacked. Righting herself, she noticed he was focused on her with a slack jaw, drawing rapid breaths as if he was convulsing. The edges of his eyes were trembling, and his hands were balled up with blood-letting tightness.
Realising he was somehow doing this to her without contact, she turned her fangs to him, attacking with such ferocity it shook the ground. But it didn’t. Instead, she shook in pain as chains of ice slushed out, replacing the tides of thorny ice she had anticipated. It was as her power faltered, leaving her defenceless, that she noticed the strain across his face.
Nonetheless, it seemed the gods were through with her either way as she fell to the ground before he broke his focus, her arms deadweights by this point.
Then, the words she had both feared and wished for spluttered out of his mouth feebly. “Why? Why did you murder your own family?” he begged, faint sobs following.
When she didn’t answer, she felt the pain start again, only this time past her arms and into her chest. He was intent on destroying her…
“Fuck, fine. You’re Orion, right?” she asked, somehow finding calm despite the knowledge this was her deathbed. Perhaps it entirely because it was her deathbed since she had foreseen this coming months before, only then she had expected it for years in the future. “No one else has marks like that on their face,”
All she heard in response were wet but wild groans.
“You’ve got no idea, Orion, none at all. Our family is as power-hungry as they say we are, as bloodthirsty as the rumours tell. Fuck, the other Houses banded together against ours and fucking banished ours to the harshest lands for a reason,”
His groans turned into growls at this, but she gave him no time to respond, releasing the words that had drowned her heart for so long.
“Of course you don’t know. You’ve lived in the House your whole life: how could you know how we truly are when you buy into our justifications all the same,”
“Hearing that from you makes me sick,” he roared, his voice awakening Eira’s true self. She was no victim of the Zakaris.
“Why? I’m a Zakari, it flows in my blood and is ingrained in my bones to do this. They told me to open the capital to them, let the Empire be purged of inferior blood. Some upstart called Yhaoli had convinced them they could now stand up against all 3 Houses and win, and maybe they could if I let them.
So, I dealt with them the way my blood told me. I had everything to lose and nothing to gain from their betrayal, and the Empire had no reason to fall for a delusional power fetish,”
“You massacred your own family,” Orion shouted, accusing her of trivial truth.
“I’m a Zakari,” she replied, “I had my best interests at heart,”
This silenced him, and for good reason, she thought, as maybe the innumerable examples over his lifetime were finally making sense to him.
“Why di—“?
“I let you live? Because our blood is too good to lose over my interests. I had all of you taken far away from our grounds so you could grow,”
“You razed through reflections of yourself and let the rest of us live,” he replied, accusing her once more. Only, this time, she had no answer.
“I didn’t think any of you would power up so fast to take me down, especially not you,” she eventually said.
He didn’t reply.
“Well then, end the job. Prove you’re a true Zakari, not some weakblood,” she said, lowering her head and letting it rest on the ground. She faced the ice barrier above pensively.
Orion wanted to release her, prove his blood didn’t make him alike her, nor like his deceased family. And yet as he looked down at her prone figure, then deeper down at the grief and pain she caused him, at the blood she had spilt, he heard another opinion in his mind. It had always been there but too quiet to fare as resistance, and yet now it seemed so loud it faced no resistance.
Placing his right hand on the ground, he waited as the last of his teardrops rolled down his face. Then, he let his passions free, ice exploding around her body, sealing her in a transparent grave. But she wouldn’t die, he knew, with just that. Striding up to her, he placed his left hand on the cube of ice.
Shockingly, he felt energy coursing through the cube towards him. No, not energy, power. Somehow, the power from her body was leaking into his. No, not leaking. From the gentle smile on her face, he knew she had done this on purpose. He waited for the stream to end, his heart weighing down on him as she finished.
Nodding to her body, he used Szu. As the cracks spread, splitting her body, he wondered if his family had left the world similarly, knowing it was all to strengthen the Zakari line. As much as wanted to deny his blood, the power that entered him made him feel different, as if her interests and his family’s interests had suddenly intruded onto his own.
He formed ice over her shattered remains and repeated the process until the splinters of her flesh were hard to see amongst the shards of ice. As he looked down upon the woman who had ruined his life, his tears flowed out once more.
52. Final push
* * *
He mourned, for this was the last time he would so for Eira. Even though it hurt him to know his family’s true nature, it wasn’t really new information as much as it was confirming his past suspicions. He had lived in the outside world for a year now and everything he heard pointed at the Zakaris being wild, power-hungry beasts. He had just been desensitised by being too close.
Tightening his fists, Orion breathed out and let his chest fall, then walked away from Eira. He stopped at the edge of the barrier and touched it, his power breaking through the biting force of the ice.
His head was cast low as he stepped through to the battlefield, not in despair but in thought. All this time, he had imagined killing his family’s enemy to be a distant goal but still one that would fill him to the brim with joy. Even when he had figured Eira, his own cousin, to be his enemy, he had still held the expectation, after all, she had to be a monster considering what she had done. And she was a monster, only so had been the men and women he had avenged, and thinking on it, so was he.
He had started off by killing monsters but once he had transitioned to killing men, he had developed a taste for it. From Visgamar to the cold and stingy grounds he now stood on, he was sure he could be traced by the trail of bodies he left behind.
Breaking into a macabre grin, he looked up and finally faced the chaos around him. Immediately, his eyes cast to Kora, who was running towards him. Her right arm was dangling lifelessly and her body looked pocked and diseased. Looking up from her, he noticed Caleb was in a far better condition, watching his daughter run to Orion with sharp eyes. Beside him stood Lucifer who held a hand over his stomach where Orion had gifted him cracked skin and broken bones. Lucifer’s eyes were more passive, those of grudging respect.
Kora came to Orion and he welcomed her with a wide embrace, immediately feeling her fangs on his neck before he could even say a word. Regardless, he didn’t care about her impatience as his body overflowed with energy anyway. Deep down he was scared what he would do with the power Eira had graciously gifted him if it wasn’t reined back.
Eyes searching the battlefield, Orion found Yhaoli. While Kora had been pockmarked, Yhaoli looked to be half-devoured as if the monster king had fought a beast so horrible it had an ungiving taste for Yhaoli’s flesh. And to the side of Yhaoli, that was exactly what Orion found: a bald beast with bright, dangerous eyes. Kasib coolly regarded him back, yet simultaneously seemed tense enough to pounce any second.
Yhaoli’s towering figure, or at least what was left of it, was left standing, acting as a beacon on the battlefield. His eyes had dulled over with death and the rest of his body looked as if someone had just wrestled it out of the jaws of a starving hound.
As Kora finished up, Orion pushed his eyes off Yhaoli and onto the battlefield around. He couldn’t see much d
ue to the carnage and kicked up bloody mud surrounding him, but the sounds of war seemed muted to what they were before. In contrast, the smell of blood and death were stronger than ever, enveloping him, depriving him of air. Almost. For some reason, Orion felt a tingle through his heart instead of the suffocating pain he expected.
“Let’s go,” he said to Kora, his desperation leaking through.
She didn’t turn to Orion, instead to her father as they locked eyes. Eventually, with excruciating slowness, Caleb nodded but seemed a hundred years older right after, the decision ageing him to his core. She then stroked Orion’s shoulder with a familiar softness, setting him into motion as he strode across the battlefield, leaving behind his cousin’s grave.
Not a single person there tried to stop him or Kora’s exit. Orion knew for certain Kasib would have liked to and questioned him after, and yet the bald hunter didn’t. Perhaps they can sense the power oozing out of me now, Orion thought. Or maybe it’s because they know why I’m rushing away now.
Still, his VIP treatment ended as he entered the fray of the fighting where monsters and men didn’t care for his face or status. And they fell with passionless ease, crumpling up into bone-chilling forms as he passed. Either way, they both made it out of the battlefield eventually, seeking a vantage to look down upon the fighting. From here, Orion figured out the conclusion to the war.
The Tribes were all but decimated at this point, and the monsters that had come to support them were far and few between. Still, it wasn’t as if the Imperial Army was better off. Orion could only spot small clusters of them now, and he was certain had it not been for the vampires’ entrance, the Imperial Army would have broken apart ages ago.