Meek

Chapter 72: Collapsed

Eli shouted, "Payde!"

He slashed at the blood-slug with his falcona, trying to carve his way closer. A man-sized bubble formed within the red-black liquid as a mage-shield surrounded Payde. He continued to fight while inside the slug, trying to kill it from the inside and--

The bubble popped.

The shield failed.

The blood closed in around Payde.

There was a moment of motion inside the slug, then stillness.

Then nothing at all.

Riadn howled. A terrible, anguished cry.

She launched herself at the side of the creature, beyond thought, beyond caution. Hacking wildly--berserk--screaming and slashing.

Eli shouted at her to back off, back off, but she didn't hear or she didn't care. She fought with two long daggers that he hadn't seen before, blocking blood-ropes and carving holes in the gelatinous slug.

For a moment, Eli thought that Riadn could see behind herself as well as he could. She intercepted every attack before it landed, she bored into the side of the creature like a beetle into a rotten log.

So he redoubled his own assault. Pounding with his sparks, thrusting with his sword. Yet getting pushed steadily backward the whole time, up the slope toward the remaining children, who were cowering in the niche. And toward Lara, who was standing in front of them with a short blade she'd picked up somewhere.

Eli grunted as a blood-rope slammed into his falcona--then another swept his legs from under him.

He hit the slope and rolled down toward the slug. Lara yelled behind him and Riadn's daggers carved away so much of the slug's liquid flesh that she actually reached Payde.

Except she only reached what was left of Payde: a half-dissolved arm in a delk-hide bracer.

She fell silent.

Then she fell still.

She stopped there, in the cavity she'd hacked from the body of the slug.

She didn't react as the tide of blood closed in around her.

Then she was gone.

Eli heard himself whimper. The Shepherds were dead. Both of them.

He'd barely known Payde and Riadn, he'd only met them that morning. Still, he'd fought beside them, and that created a bond. A stronger one than he expected.

Grief and rage clenched his heart. He rose onto one knee as the slug loomed in front of him, five tons of jellied blood. Glossy and rippling and malicious, with the faint remains of Payde and Riadn dissolving inside. Bulges emerged here and there, moments from sprouting into lashing whips or grasping ropes.

Behind him, Lara waited, her sword steady. Determined to sell her life dearly. Eli wanted to shout at her to run, to leave him--to leave the children, too. He wanted to shout that she couldn't help them, that she couldn't achieve anything except her own death.

He knew she wouldn't listen, though. Halo, she never even stopped speaking in a low undertone, urging the kids to leave, to run.

They were beyond that, though.

Sometimes you couldn't run.

Sometimes you couldn't do anything except wait for the inevitable, because you were too weak or frightened to move.

Yet sometimes you couldn't run for the same reason that Lara couldn't. Not because of weakness or fear, but because there were people you could not leave behind. The same reason that Lady Brazinka had stayed here for so many days, without hope of victory.

So by the Angel's bloody wings, Eli wasn't going to leave either.

This was exactly where he needed to be. Fighting one of the Killweeds. Lara had been right: this was what he was for. He felt that, now, like he felt the beating of his own heart. He wasn't a mage, he was something else.

He was the man who'd kill the Killweeds.

Well, or die trying.

Did he need to get stronger? Yes. Far stronger. A hundred times stronger. But was that an excuse to back down?

Not right then. Not right there. Not with children behind him.

A blood-rope whipped at his face.

The image of the mountain cave he'd maintained in his mind collapsed.

The power of the Reach crashed into his core.

It shook him, filled him and--

Three more sparks popped into existence around him. Dense and fast.

A spark pressed into the ground behind him, which shoved him onto his feet ... and then launched him higher, helping him leap into the air to dodge the lashing blood-robe.

He sliced through it with his falcona and punched three more sparks into the slug. That time, he saw the effect. Divots appeared in the mound of blood, and the creature recoiled. He chopped through another blood-rope then missed a third.

But even as it crushed his shoulder he whipped his sparks at the slug again. The gelatinous blood trembled and paused. When the pain hit him, he almost dropped his sword. Tears sprung to his eyes but he switched the hilt to his other hand and pressed forward, driving the slug back one foot, then two, his sparks plunging into the thick blood in a circular motion like spinning a flail.

The slug shifted, terribly slowly, to one side of the rocky slope.

"Get them moving!" he screamed.

Behind him, Lara finally lost her patience with the children. Or maybe she finally had an opening. Either way, she shoved and bullied them from the niche. They fled past the slug, scrambled off the ramp, and staggered toward the boulevard.

Eli chopped through the blood-rope that fired at them--then the slug surged forward, ignoring the sparks churning inside its body.

That time, it drove Eli back.

One step, then two. Slower than before, though. He saw though five sparks now, he'd incorporated them immediately into himself. He felt them plunging into the slug, then emerging, then stabbing again, strobing in his mind and--his ankle turned on the uneven stone.

He fell backward off the sloping ramp toward the ground, eight or ten feet below him. Three of his sparks slammed down. They caught him before his arse hit rock, slowed him slightly and turned him upright so that he landed on his feet.

Well, that was handy.

He didn't have time to enjoy the moment, though: the slug poured after him like water breaking through a dam.

An explosive bulge of blood knocked him ten feet backward. He stumbled again and two sparks caught him again. Stronger than ever. They felt like having another arm. Another five arms, except they extended three yards from him and ... and they were only fists, not 'arms,' because they weren't connected to him by anything physical.

He straightened up and punched them into the slug.

Chunks of blood splashed and rippled.

The blows slowed the slug down, but didn't stop it. That was okay. He just needed to buy time for the kids to retreat.

So he kept up his assault even as the slug pushed him backward toward the boulevard. He hacked at the blood-ropes with his falcona, his body responding to the sparks' vision before he even realized what he'd seen.

Still, he couldn't block them all: he missed one that struck his thigh, hard enough to fracture the bone.

He hissed in pain and kept retreating, dragging his injured leg. Praying that he didn't trip and leave himself exposed.

He reached the boulevard a moment after Lara chased the children through. Then he felt himself smile despite the pain. That was done. The Bloodwitch couldn't get them.

Not while he still stood. He needed to keep this thing from pursuing them ... and despite the power of the Reach pulsing in his core, he felt the unsteadiness of his leg.

"I'll guide you," Lara said, behind him, and put her palm on his back.

He grunted acknowledgement, unable to speak, and focused all five sparks on slashing through the slug.

He stepped backward in the direction of Lara's hand.

Another step, and another.

The wall of blood loomed in front of him, oozing closer, then quivering away from his onslaught--then sloshing at him more quickly

Steadily driving him backward along the melted stone boulevard.

He heard Swan's voice, then Dorgo's, but couldn't make out the words.

The world became blood and stone and pressure. The pressure of the Reach, the pressure of Lara's palm, the pressure of keeping this monster from those children, the press--

"Meek, Meek!" Lara lowered her voice. "Eli!"

He grunted.

"The kids are safe, they're away."

He grunted. Did that mean he could turn and run?

"Evacuating the wounded is taking more time. Can you hold?"

He grunted.

"That's what I told them," she said.

He lost himself in a haze of blood and power.

The walls of the ruined city rose around him.

His blade blurred, his legs dragged.

Pain flared then numbed.

Rocks plummeted from the rooftops and slammed into the slug. Which occasionally bought him a precious second before the creature dissolved them.

He stumbled backward two more steps ... and the blood slug didn't follow.

It stopped.

Ten feet in front of him, quivering and sloshing.

He fell against a stone wall, his breath coming in harsh rasps. And one of his sparks showed him that he wasn't leaning against a stone wall.

He was leaning against a stone arch.

He'd reached the entrance to the Weep proper, the arch that dipped down and become two arches. And when Lara led him another few steps, the din of Reach quieted. The power surging through him ebbed and he felt himself weaken, on the verge of fainting.

Also, the blood-slug retreated. Oozing away through the melted streets back toward the quarry.

"You did it," Lara said, hugging him from behind. "You saved them. You won."