A haunting scream echoes through the walls of the Temple. One that carried the weight of pain unknown to any that heard it.
At this same moment, the two clones standing ahead of Relik convulsed as though they were being electrocuted.
Logun didn't hesitate.
In a burst of raw power and speed, he swooped in to decapitate the aggressors. Moving over over to aid Veech before the heads hit the floor. In two more slashes the clones were fully gone. Replaced by the dust they left behind when they died.
By the time the screaming had stopped the three of them were the only ones left standing in the corridors.
Relik threw a glance over his shoulders, still tense because he knew well that this was not the end.
He had seen his peers die before and none of them blew away with the wind when they were disposed of.
That meant that Vanqis was still around waiting for them to drop their guard.
"Regroup!" Logun yelled to which the boy responded to immediately. He leapt onto the banister then jumped off the edge in hopes of landing with the others.
Unfortunately, the man they were fighting had the home court advantage.
A chain unfurled with a metallic whipping sound and perfectly wrapped itself around Relik's forearm. It was then yanked with unreasonable force up to the higher floors.
Logun bit out a curse before launching himself after the boy, " Veech you're on your own."
"I always am," Veech replied dryly.
There was never a time in his life where he was ever considered the weakest link. So much so that potential threats seemed to keep him at arms length.
Even those that ignored his intimidating stature eventually learned that judging a book by it's cover was sometimes for the best.
Heck, he had no interest in being a Hand, even lesser so a Hand of Potaan. What he wanted was to own a farm far from any of the major cities. A place where he could unwind, where he could be seen as part of nature and not a sore thumb sticking out of it.
"I've been observing you and quite frankly I have no idea how to end your life."
Veech whipped around to find Vanqis walking towards him.
The Shiear sighed, "just now for instance. Anyone else with their back to me like that and they would be lying in a heap. But my attack would just bounce right off of you."
"It didn't have to go this way," Veech ignored the statement, "you could have let us leave with the boy. We'd be in Rému right now."
"My people are safe in their bunkers and your people well," Vanqis replied, "I can rebuild my city, I've done it before. However, you can't build them."
The Shiear stopped to smile at the Hurc as though both of them should be satisfied with his monologue. He held his position for another beat; the smile slowly fading from his face.
"Looks like poison gas won't work on you either," Vanqis nodded, "that means you are constantly healing as well."
Veech's eyes narrowed realising that the bastard was trying to buy time for his poisons to take effect.
"You truly are a specimen," the Shiear continued to pace, "what is your name?"
"It's Veech."
"Quintessentially Astran. Desert or Lake?"
Veech thought about ignoring the question but ultimately relented, "my father is from the lakes he moved East when he met my mother."
"So you're a Morph, Booster, and a Gainer," Vanqis murmured. He stopped pacing, his eyes fixating on the rhythmic rise and fall of Veech's massive chest.
A small chuckle escaped him, "a triple-threat of bio-etheral evolution. Why waste such a magnificence on a scavenger like Logun? Join me. You help me dispatch these... annoyances, and I will grant you any wish you can articulate. I know Hurcs love nature. I can give you an entire province of forest."
Veech didn't answer immediately. He let the silence of the corridor settle between them, and the heavy scent of scorched earth and sterile fumes.
He could feel his Morph state dragging at his vitals; like hot lead was being poured into his veins, a constant, throbbing pressure that made his vision pulse in time with his heartbeat.
He turned to face the Shiear head-on, his fraudulent smile taking forefront, as his shadow stretched along the cracked tiles.
"You don't see many Hurc Hands," Veech began, his voice a low rumble that seemed to vibrate the very marrow in the Shiear's bones, "you don't see many Hurcs working with the Temple, period. As a matter of fact, I'm one of only five allowed within the inner sanctums."
He stopped, drawing in a bellowing breath and slowly straightened his frame; his vertebrae popping with the sound of gunshots as he forced his already imposing figure to its absolute limit. The purple glow in his eyes intensified, casting a jagged, neon hue over his craggy features.
"Logun didn't just find me, Vanqis," Veech said, the words coming out slow and deliberate.
The Hurc's mind flashed back, to the suffocating heat of a burning transport ship. He could almost smell the acrid smoke again, feel the deck plates warping under his feet. He saw Logun, younger then but just as grim.
He remembered the silver thread of his father's soul being anchored to his mother's. Logun hadn't asked for a fee. He had simply shouldered the weight of a dying man and a weeping mother and walked through the fire.
"He saved my mother," Veech continued, his voice dropping an octave, "He performed a Vesselling to keep my father's spirit alive while the ship turned to ash around us. Then, he secured a job for my sister. He was there at the gate to collect us both when we passed our trials. He didn't see a specimen. He saw a family worth protecting."
The tiles beneath Veech's feet groaned. Small, spiderweb fractures bloomed outward from his heels, a physical manifestation of his Iké coiling in his legs.
"So, I'm sorry," Veech said, his lips pulling back into a hard, mirthless line, "but I'm going to have to decline."
The air in the corridor snapped, and with an inhumane burst of speed, the Hurc launched himself forward, like a mountain in motion.
Vanqis didn't flinch. He stood perfectly still, a thin, academic silhouette against the chaos. As Veech's fist a mass of hardened muscle and violet light connected, the Shiear shattered.
The clone dissolved into a blinding spray of dust and high-pressure vapor, a parting gift designed to obscure the world.
Veech's momentum was too great. As he tried to skid to a stop, his heels bit deep into the foundation. The floor, already weakened by the structural adjustments Vanqis had made as he paced.
It couldn't hold the sheer tonnage of someone Veech's size.
The sound was deafening a tectonic scream of rebar snapping and concrete turning to powder.
Veech felt the floor vanish. He plummeted through the darkness, the wind whistling past his ears until he slammed through floor after floor.
Until he met the solid ground of the lower corridor with a bone-jarring thud that sent a cloud of dust into the air.
He lay there for a moment, the silence of the sub-levels pressing in on him. He looked up at the jagged hole in the ceiling, the light from the higher stations feeling miles away.
The thought of pursuing the fight of climbing all that way back had pervaded his mind.
Yet he countered himself by recognising he would just be playing shield for people who could do well without him. It felt like the decision was already made for him and he wasn't going to fight it.
He let out a long, ragged sigh and rolled onto his side, his eyes scanning the gloom of the lower pipes. The small, sarcastic boy had mentioned someone being trapped.
A heartbeat in the machine, perhaps he could provide a head start in their rescue.
"Alone. Again," he muttered, the words disappearing into the dark.
________________________________________
A weaker man would have already retired.
A task as simple as ascending stairs had turned into an advanced lesson to navigating a building in crisis.
Every step up the Temple's marble staircase was a personal insult from the architect. His boots, felt like they were made of lead and held together by spite.
His head was spinning with the dizzying realisation that he was currently running on a digestive system that had been empty since the ferry ride.
"Twelve hours," he muttered, leaning his forehead against a cool stone pillar to stop the stairwell from rotating, "Twelve hours and not even a stale cracker. I'm going to die in a city that smells like a hospital, and my last meal was a soggy pear on a boat. Fantastic. A legendary end, they're gonna talk about this for generations."
He could already see the ballad the bards in Rému would write. The Hand who fried a clone and then perished by an empty stomach.
It was a masterpiece of tragedy. He'd be a laughingstock for at least two and half generations.
He wiped a smear of soot and blood from his cheek, his blue hair matted and sticking to his forehead in a way that felt deeply un-Alven.
"I should have stayed at home," he wheezed, hauling himself up the next flight. "I could have been halfway through a bowl of squid noodles by now. But no, 'Wyva, we need you in Salaam.' 'Wyva, catch this child.' 'Wyva, try not to get slapped into a coma by a centenarian scientist.'"
He reached the landing, his knees clicking like a bag of marbles. That's when he saw it, tucked behind a decorative urn near the observation deck was the heavy, industrial crate Logun had stashed earlier.
The markings for high-grade hormones and Iké-supplements were clear even through the haze in his vision.
Wyva stopped. He stared at the crate with the intensity of a man looking at a long-lost lover. His stomach let out a growl so loud it echoed in the empty corridor.
He looked at his shaking hands, then back at the crate, then at the stairs leading toward where the sound of clashing steel was still ringing out.
The Alven stood up a little straighter, adjusted his collar with a trembling hand, and gave the crate a firm, authoritative nod.
"What would these assholes do without me?" he whispered to the empty hallway.
He didn't have the strength to carry it, but he had just enough spite in his boot to drag it.
If he was going down, he was going down with a full inventory or at least, he was going to make sure Logun didn't get the satisfaction of saying he forgot the cargo.
"Lesson number one," Wyva grunted, gripping the handle of the crate and leaning his entire body weight into a pull. "Always bring snacks."