Chapter 80 - 2 vs 2

Elena hissed with two voices and swung her free hand. Esabella caught it on her forearm. The rot touched her skin and the scales there turned grey.

She ground her teeth and threw Elena off.

Elena landed on her broken leg and didn’t fall. She stood there, swaying, with her head tilted at the wrong angle.

"The Queen," the female entity said. "Your blood is very old and Good. It will taste better."

"Come and try."

Elena came. She moved fast and wrong, as if someone was pulling her strings. Black spears shot from her fingers. Esabella’s wings snapped open, and she dropped low under the first one. The second tore through the edge of her wing. She felt it burn.

She spun and snapped the whip. The barbs raked across Elena’s face and opened her cheek to the bone. The entity didn’t flinch. It reached out and grabbed the whip with its bare hand, and the rot ran up the leather.

The whip started to fall apart in Esabella’s grip.

"Damn it."

She dropped it. Her claws came out, black and long, and she drove them into Elena’s stomach.

Elena coughed black blood. Then she smiled and wrapped both arms around Esabella’s shoulders and held on.

"Got you," the entity whispered.

Rot flooded out of Elena’s skin. It crawled up Esabella’s arms and across her chest, and where it touched, her scales went dull and cracked. She screamed and slammed her horns into Elena’s face. Bone crunched. The grip loosened, and she tore herself free and kicked her away.

Elena rolled across the sand and came up on her feet again.

Esabella stood there with her chest heaving. Grey patches ran across her arms. Her wing was torn. She wiped blood from her mouth with the back of her hand.

"You’re not going to stay down," she said.

"No."

"Then I’ll keep knocking you down."

Behind the pillar, Yenna watched with both hands over her mouth. She couldn’t move her legs, so she dragged herself half a meter closer to the edge and looked around the stone. Sand blew across the arena. Esabella and Elena circled each other, both bleeding. A little farther away, Dante fought Marcus.

"No, no, i want to fight too, i want to help them. I can’t stay just laying down there.why? Why i am this useless, i don’t want to be this anymore, ughhhh, i will help–," She dragged herself up and clinched her teeth that the blood start coming from her mouth. "D–Dante, I– " .... And that was the time when her strong will to fight and don’t be useless anymore make a change –!

Her ears twitched. Something was wrong with her eyes.

The air in front of her looked strange. She saw thin lines, like threads, stretched between the fighters. A grey one tied Elena’s head to something above. A red one ran from Marcus’s shoulder up into the sky, straight as a ruler.

She blinked. They stayed.

’What is that?’ She rubbed her eyes with a shaking hand. When she looked again, the threads were still there.

Dante and Marcus traded blows in the middle of the arena. The red sword came down. Dante caught it on the sword and pushed it aside. He stepped in and slammed his elbow into Marcus’s jaw. The armor around the chin cracked, but the head barely moved.

"Weak," the male entity said.

Marcus’s knee came up into Dante’s stomach. He folded and went back three steps, gasping.

The sword swung again. He ducked, felt it go over his head, and cut at Marcus’s side. The blade bit into the red plate and stuck. Marcus grabbed his wrist.

His grip was like iron. Dante couldn’t pull free.

"Mortal bones," Marcus said, in the double voice. He squeezed.

The wrist cracked. Dante made a sound through his teeth and kicked Marcus in the knee that had already been cut. The leg buckled. Marcus let go, and Dante tore his arm away.

The decay had reached his left shoulder. He couldn’t lift it past his chest. Each breath hurt, and his ribs hurt worse.

’I’m losing,’ he thought.

He took the sphere out with his right hand.

[Ground Weight Control activated. Target: Marcus’s legs. Pressure: 100x.]

Marcus’s legs went down into the sand up to the shins. He roared and pulled, and the red aura boiled off his skin.

"Take it back," Marcus said to the sky.

The weight vanished. Dante had already moved. He ran in and drove the blade at Marcus’s right shoulder, where the red point sat.

Marcus turned his body. The invisible edge missed the seal by a hand’s width and cut across the armor instead. Sparks flew.

The red sword came around in a backswing and caught Dante across the ribs.

He felt it open him.

He fell back and hit the sand. He couldn’t breathe. When he looked down, his left side was wet and dark, and something white showed through the torn clothes.

’Ribs.’

The decay crawled up his neck. His left arm hung dead.

Marcus walked toward him, slow now, dragging one leg. The sword hung in his hand.

"You are Done," the entity said.

Dante pushed himself up with his right hand. He got one knee under him and stopped.

’Thirty seconds. I need thirty seconds.’

[Sovereign’s Mending Thread activated.]

Gold light came out of his right palm. It wrapped around his ribs like a net, then around his left arm and shoulder. The thread sank into the skin, and he felt the bones begin to move.

Click. Click. Click.

It hurt like being stitched alive.

[Mending Thread in progress. Time remaining: 30 seconds.]

Marcus’s red eyes narrowed. "A healing law.i can’t let you do this"

The sword came down. Dante rolled. The blade hit the sand where his head had been. He came up on one knee with the thread still glowing along his side and pulled the urn out of his belt.

[Mineral Fluid Extraction activated.]

He threw it open toward the ground. The black sludge left from the rot field jumped into the urn in a rope and blew a gust of cold air across the crater. Marcus’s next swing went wide. The sludge had been feeding his armor, and for a second the plates lost their shine.Dante got up.

Marcus swung. He parried with the invisible blade. The shock tore through his right arm, but he held. The thread pulled his ribs back into place with a wet crunch.

’Twenty second.’

He slammed the sphere against the sand.

[Ground Weight Control activated. Target: the sword. Pressure: 100x.]

The red sword dropped like a stone. Marcus’s arm followed it down, and he stumbled forward. Dante kicked him in the face as hard as he could.

It snapped sideways. He roared and swung his other fist.

It hit Dante in the chest and knocked him across the arena. He landed on his back, rolled, and came up gasping.

Elena’s black spear flew past his ear. On the far side, Esabella was on top of her, driving a clawed fist into the entity’s face again and again. Elena’s head lolled, then jerked back up. She laughed, and the rot came off her in waves.

Esabella’s right arm was injured to the shoulder. But She kept punching anyway.

’Ten.’

Marcus rose, dragging his sword up from the sand. The weight vanished the moment he lifted it. He came at Dante with a roar, the blade over his head.

Dante set his feet. The thread glowed along his arm and shoulder. The pain had mostly gone, and what was left was a deep, hot ache.

Marcus swung. Dante brought the invisible blade up with both hands, and the red sword came down on it. The sound was like ice breaking.

A hairline crack ran along the invisible edge. Dante felt it through his palms. His eyes went wide.

"No."

The second hit landed before he could move. The crack spread down the length of the blade, white and bright, and the whole thing burst into a thousand pieces. They scattered over the sand and vanished.

His hands were empty.

[Mending Thread complete. Left arm and ribs restored. Decay: slowed, not removed.]

Dante stood there with his fists open. He was healed, mostly, but the sword was gone.

Marcus lowered his own sword and smiled with a mouth that wasn’t his.

"Your toy is broken," the entity said. "Now we are even."

Across the arena, Yenna’s eyes went wide. The threads in front of her had all started to shake.