Chương 141: Circling

Brawl knocked aside the skeletons' spears with a heavy swipe of his flail, then bashed a skeleton with his shield. He hadn't used a skill, but he was strong and the skeletons were light. Two of them flew off their feet and crashed into a wall at the side of the alleyway, crumbling into bones. They didn't get back up. I followed, aiming for a skeleton's skull. My spear smashed through the old and weak bone with ease. It was Anchor who had the toughest time.

He fired an unenhanced arrow, and what would have been a deadly shot against a human passed right through the skeleton's ribs and clattered along the ground.

"I can hit their heads!" Anchor shouted.

"But you'll have to give me more time to aim!" We just needed to clear a way through the skeletons' ranks. I continued forward, striking and blocking with my spear, and doing my best to keep them back. A rusty sword grazed my arm, but it bounced off my scale mail harmlessly. A spear rushed toward my gut, but I trapped it between my arm and my body—long enough to snap the spearhead off—then twisted so Anchor had a clear shot. He fired a regular, unenhanced arrow, which shattered the skeleton's skull.

It had an ancient, rusty helmet, but that didn't seem to matter to Anchor. He'd lined up his shot perfectly, and it pierced the monster's eyes. Once we cut our way through the flimsy skeletons, the tower was a clear shot ahead. We took our old formation and continued on our way. Emerging from the intersecting street, we arrived in a plaza, and the tower was at the very center.

The street itself was torn up, and there were chunks of stone raised at different levels—as if some giant monster had cleaved its claws through the ground. The Labyrinth Keepers didn't seem to want to repair those, so perhaps, whatever this city had been before becoming a Labyrinth, it had fallen victim to whatever caused that. But its origin didn't matter. We just had to get to the top of the tower and live. Ledges and outcroppings dotted the tower's exterior, and skeleton archers perched on them.

They were all drawing back their bows and aiming directly at me.

"Cover!" I shouted.

"Get to cover!" I pointed at the cleaved, damaged ground, then dove behind a raised ridge of bricks and dirt. Arrows thudded into the ground or bounced ancient paving stones as the others ducked down with me.

"What's the plan?" Anchor asked.

"We have to get the flag at the top of the tower."

"Someone needs to draw their fire," I said.

"Brawl, you've got a shield. Can you use your Art to survive their arrows? Sage, I need you to stick with him and heal him as best you can—keep him moving."

"With this mothbrain? I have to trust him to shield me?"

"Yes," I said.

"I will guard you, little sister."

"Don't call me that," Sage snapped.

"Guys, focus. Do you want to get into the SAP or not?" They fell silent, so I continued my plan.

"And Anchor, I need you to clean up any stragglers. I'm going to make a break for the tower entrance. Anyone who targets me, I need you to take him out before he can hit me. Once I make it to the tower, I need you all to follow me in. If there's anything waiting for us inside, I'll clean it up—without having to worry about the archers spinning around and turning the inside of the tower into a shooting gallery."

"You would trust me to watch your back?" Anchor asked.

"I don't have much of a choice," I replied.

"But if you truly want to help Gate, if you truly want to make a difference, you're going to have to trust your brothers—even if we've just barely met."

"You're an Atoning. Don't get too presumptuous with that 'brother' talk…"

"We're doing this now? Fine, don't call me your brother, but I'm still serving alongside you, just like any other druid. If you just let me die, you're only shooting yourself in the foot. I'm taking a leap of faith on you—can you do the same for me, a dirty soulstealer?" Anchor winced, then nodded.

"I'll cover you once Brawl draws their fire."

"And Sage," I said, "Brawl is going to take hits for you. I need you to heal him. I'm not asking you to take his hits, but I am asking you to trust him. You two need to draw their arrows for as long as you can." The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

"My healing is Link Healing," Sage said.

"You were right about that."

"What?"

"It's a type of healing that makes the healer feel the pain of the injury she's healing," Anchor answered.

"The most powerful type of healing, but it comes with a severe drawback."

"It's not as bad for me, especially if it's an injury to the leg," Sage replied.

"I can't feel it that way. I try to redirect most of the pain into my legs, so that way I can't feel it. But I will still feel it." Brawl delivered a curt nod.

"I will do my best to not get hurt, little sister."

"I'm not you— Oh, fine. Whatever. Yes. Let's go."

"On my count," I said, tightening my grip on my spear. I pressed it up against the front wall, like a soldier preparing to jump out of a trench and charge across no man's land. Maybe I was ascribing a little too much importance to it, but it helped me steel myself. Arrows clacked into the stone in front of me, and there was something arcane about them, because they struck with such force that the rusty arrowheads sparked off the stone.

"Three… two… one… now!" I called. Brawl and Sage rushed to the side. Brawl held his shield up, and immediately, arrows rushed toward him. Most bounced off the ground behind him harmlessly, and a few thudded into his shield. Anchor inhaled sharply and lifted himself out of cover, then fired an arrow. It smashed a skeleton in the skull, launching it backward. Its bones collapsed and toppled off the side of the tower.

At the same time, I charged forward, setting the yawning gateway at the bottom of the tower in my sights. I rushed toward it, feet hammering on the bricks. It wasn't a smooth approach, and I vaulted over rent ground. An arrow clanged off my pauldron and another grazed my thigh, but Anchor picked off the skeletons who hadn't turned their attention to Brawl and Sage, keeping most of them off me. The moment I passed through the door, Anchor shouted, "Levi! I'm going to run out of arrows!"

I picked up a quiver from a fallen skeleton, who had tumbled down to the ground, then tossed it back toward Anchor. He caught it and gave me a nod of approval. Then I rushed into the tower. It was wider on the inside than it looked, and something about the walls made my mind twitch. It was almost as if the inside was actually slightly larger than it should have been—like space had been warped by something. A stairway wrapped around the edge of the tower.

A few of its sections had crumbled, but it was nothing I couldn't cross. Before I could begin climbing, though, a thunder of clacking bones echoed down through the hall. My gaze flicked up, only to find the massive skeleton of a dragon crashing down toward me. It was like a dinosaur fossil in a museum—and about the same height as a T-rex—but unmistakably a dragon. Bony filaments stretched out to the side where bat-like wings would've been, and it had a curved ribcage surrounding a glob of floating black liquid.

I didn't even want to know what that was. All I knew was that this dragon needed to die. There was no way it would let me climb the tower otherwise. It stood in front of me, lowering its upper body and raising its hips like a cat ready to pounce, and its eyeless skull stared right at me. The other skeletons had crumbled when I'd done enough damage to disrupt their normal bone formation. This skeleton had to be the same. I just needed to hit it hard enough, and eventually, it would die. But it wasn't that easy.

It rushed toward me, and I triggered my gravity Art, focusing on its head. I needed to pull it down closer to me. The dragon wasn't large enough to fit in my gravity-enhancing circle entirely, and its neck was strong enough to resist my pull. Judging by its size and the energy swelling off it, it was probably stronger than a Steel. It had to be a Titanium. I ran forward, deploying a second point of Presence to resonate my spear, then aimed a jab at the beast's lowered head.

My spear pierced through with an explosion of bone and marrow dust, and I let my momentum carry me through the field of gravitational enhancement. It still slammed me to the ground, but I didn't stay in it long. It felt like taking a turn in a car, but way too tight and way too fast. I rolled back to my feet. The bone dragon pulled its head out of the field of gravitational enhancement, and the extra hole I'd given it clearly hadn't been enough to kill it.

I needed to hit it harder, some place more vital than its head (it clearly didn't need that to survive, considering what I'd just done to it) and there was only one thing I could think of. While the dragon reeled back, I raced around the stairway, circling the outside of the room and gaining elevation, until I stood high above the dragon. As I ascended, its head curled up to stare at me, and its ribs clacked with an accusing bony melody.

Although it couldn't fly, it could certainly try to chase me up the stairs, and it must have had a way of climbing to the top. It raced to the side of the room, trying to follow after me, but I had other plans. As soon as the dragon got below me, I triggered my Art, creating a well of gravity where the dragon's midsection was. I set my sights where I wanted to land, like I would when flying off jumps while skiing, and I bent my knees, ready to absorb the impact.

The glob of black, oily liquid throbbing in the dragon's chest was my target. Leaping off the stairs, I jumped into my own gravity well and dragged myself down. I didn't bother using a resonance Skill—my goal was to destroy more broadly, not to pierce. My spear smashed through the dragon's spine. It was like I had attached a rubbed band to my feet and it was snapping me down to the ground—and smashing through the dragon in the way.

The beast's spine shattered, ribs flew loose, and my spear stabbed straight through the dragon's core, scattering the oily black liquid everywhere. I cut off the Art before I hit the ground, then used the slight angle I still had to convert my movement into a roll, like I'd trained to do if I failed a big jump. I tumbled along the ground, the impact bruising my shoulder, and I was pretty sure I'd just given myself the worst rugburn ever, but I was alive. And the dragon behind me crumbled into a heap of bones.