Chapter 120 — Seven Colors**
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Socrates had fought fire. He had fought ice. He had fought earth that moved like a living thing and a Gold Tier Boss that called meteors from the sky.
He had never fought color before.
The seven colors sat at Vrath's fingertips — not glowing, not pulsing, just present. Red. Orange. Yellow. Green. Blue. Indigo. Violet. Each one distinct, each one carrying its own quality that Socrates felt against his skin from fifteen meters away the way you feel heat before you touch flame.
"The Seven Colored Rainbow Poison." Vrath said it the way someone introduces a treasured thing. With pride. With the particular warmth of a craftsman presenting their finest work. "Each color a different poison. Each poison a different death."
"How many people have you used it on." Socrates said.
"Everyone I've used it on is dead." Vrath said simply. "So I've never had the opportunity to ask for feedback."
The first color left its fingers.
Red — moving fast, not in a straight line but finding the air currents in the chamber and riding them, the trajectory of it curving around the ice formations on the walls before angling toward Socrates from the side.
He moved.
The red passed his shoulder close enough that he felt it — not heat, cold. A specific, penetrating cold that had nothing to do with the temperature of the chamber. The kind of cold that came from inside rather than outside.
It hit the wall behind him.
The frost on that section of wall turned black.
Socrates looked at the black frost. At the wall beneath it which was already showing hairline cracks spreading outward from the contact point, the stone itself reacting to whatever the red poison carried.
'That touches me and I'm done.' He understood it immediately and completely.
He moved forward.
Not away from Vrath — toward it. Closing the distance before the next color could find the air currents and build a trajectory. Bloodsucker coming up.
Vrath watched him come without moving.
The second color left its fingers.
Orange — released directly forward this time, no curve, a straight dense cloud that filled the space between them in a single breath. Socrates went sideways — the orange passing him in a wave that caught the edge of his white robe. The fabric where it touched went stiff immediately, the fibers seizing, the affected section of robe rigid and unmoving against his arm.
He tore that section off without breaking stride.
'Close.'
Third color — yellow, released upward, hitting the vaulted ceiling and spreading downward like rain in slow motion, covering the chamber floor in a descending curtain that fell evenly across every surface.
Socrates stopped.
The yellow settled on the frost covered ground around him — and where it landed the ice melted. Not the stone beneath it. Just the ice. The frost dissolving cleanly, the stone beneath it dry, the yellow coating it in a thin film that caught the dim light of the chamber.
He looked at the floor between himself and Vrath.
Covered in yellow film.
"Contact poison." Vrath said pleasantly. "The third color works through the skin. You'd need to be touching it for approximately two seconds before the paralysis begins." A pause. "I'd suggest not touching it."
"Helpful." Socrates said.
"I find it more interesting when they last longer." Vrath said.
Socrates looked at the yellow covered floor. At the ice formations on the walls. At the enormous Asura weapons stored along the walls — the stone clubs and frost chains, their surfaces above the floor level, untouched by the yellow.
He moved to the wall.
His hands found a frost chain — the metal cold through the gauntlets, the links each the size of his fist — and pulled. It came free from its mount with the weight of something that hadn't been moved in years, the frost on it cracking and falling as he lifted it.
He swung it across the floor between himself and Vrath.
The chain landed in the yellow film and dragged — clearing a path through it, the poison coating the chain instead of the floor, the links going dark where the yellow touched them. He swung it again. Another path. Then a third — the chain moving in wide arcs that swept the floor clean in a rough corridor between himself and the shaman.
Vrath watched this with genuine interest.
"Clever." It said.
"Thank you." Socrates said — and came forward through the cleared corridor, Bloodsucker in his right hand, the chain swinging in his left.
The fourth color left Vrath's fingers.
Green — released low, hugging the floor, moving fast and purposeful toward the cleared corridor. Socrates jumped — the green passing beneath him — and landed at the edge of the corridor and kept moving.
Vrath moved for the first time.
Sideways — not fast, deliberate — putting one of the seven ice figures between itself and Socrates. The figure responded immediately — turning, its carved ice body moving with fluid wrongness, arms extending toward Socrates.
Bloodsucker went through it.
The ice figure came apart — the carved form dissolving back into fragments that scattered across the floor — and Socrates kept his momentum toward Vrath.
The shaman's hand came up — blue at its fingertips now, the fifth color building between them, the quality of it different from the others. Not a release. A sustained projection — the blue spreading outward from Vrath's hand in a slow expanding field that covered everything it touched in a fine mist.
Socrates hit the mist.
And slowed.
Not his legs — his blood. He felt it before he understood it, the specific sensation of something in his circulatory system responding to the blue mist, the rhythm of his heart changing, the warmth in his arms and hands becoming something less than warmth. Socrates panicked as something occured to him...