Chapter 18: Compassion

Chapter 18:
Compassion

 

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUU!”

This was the best Flum could approximate of a scream while her mouth was still regenerating.

She shot another finger.

“Oooooooou!” Luke wailed in annoyance and waved his hand in front of him, generating a spiral of air to catch the attack, as their respective energies canceled each other out. He used this opportunity to close in on Flum again, though she was still cloaked in complete darkness. Relying on hearing alone, she shot off a fresh round of fingers. Her shots gouged a hole in his cheek, pierced clean through his shoulder, and lodged in his throat.

He ran straight through the volley, entering point-blank range.

“Ooooouuu!”

He threw his spiral-generated left arm straight toward her face.

“Aaaaauuu!!”

She threw her fingerless left arm up in the way to take the blow.

There was another loud crack as their limbs deflected off each other. Luke made it away without injury while Flum’s left arm now ended at the wrist.

Luke quickly regained his balance and launched another spiral-powered fist at her face.

Flum threw her right arm up this time, resulting in another gruesome injury that left her with nothing to block with.

“Uuuuoooooooooo!”

If she couldn’t defend herself, then she’d just have to go on the offense. Besides, Flum currently had no fear of death. She took a step forward and swept her left arm at Luke’s side. Before it could make contact, however, it began to make sick, squelching noises as it spun. Luke had set a trap for her, stopping her from getting an attack in.

Or so he thought.

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaauuuuuuuu!!” Her scream was followed by the sound of something snapping off: Flum had centered her magic in her elbow and reversed it, causing the ligaments to explode and sending her forearm shooting off like a rocket.

“O-ooooou?!”

Her arm shot straight through Luke’s trap and embedded itself deep in his side. Blood fountained from the open wound in Flum’s arm, but she couldn’t be bothered to care. She’d lost all semblance of humanity at this point.

Flum stuck out her right arm and once again gathered her magic around her elbow.

“…Ah.”

Her brain was now completely regenerated. Returning to her senses, Flum looked down at her arm and recalled what she had done, and what she was about to do…before quickly turning around and running as fast as she could from Luke.

She’d had a chance to put an end to the fight. If she’d shot off her right arm, too, she could have dealt a great deal of damage to Luke. But she simply couldn’t allow herself to go any further.

She’d killed. She’d sacrificed her own body in the heat of battle. She could blame it on her curse all she wanted, but at the end of the day, she destroyed herself over and over in ways no human could. Even knowing how far she’d gone, breaking her own body down piecemeal for weapons was too much.

“Aaah…haaah…haah…I hate…hate this…so…gah!” Looking down at the flapping traces of her left arm as it slowly regenerated brought tears to her eyes.

Once you acknowledged the deep loathing something inspired in you, there was no unknowing it.

The Cavalier Arts and her reversal magic didn’t include ranged attacks that could be launched as needed, without setup. Flum fought with a giant sword that required room to wield. She desperately needed a ranged attack to increase her combat options. That was why the idea had come to her, and why she’d no choice but to do it.

The choice to lose yet another piece of her humanity in the process of shooting off pieces of her body was the only one left to her.

“It’s a little late to realize it now, but I guess that’s right!”

Flum slapped her newly regrown arm against the wall, hung her head, and gazed at the ground. Tears blurred her vision.

She was, after all, still an ordinary young woman thrown into extraordinary circumstances. It was too late for her to be placing limits on herself. She already lost much of her humanity a long time ago, and she knew it.

“But still, there’s something different about destroying my own body to use it as a weapon…”

Or maybe she was just too used to things being one way? When you grew too used to something, you began to overlook other options. Would she really be able to return to living a completely normal life when this was all over?

Deep within, she knew that was a pointless question, with all the battles still left to be fought. But it had always been the dream of a bright future that inspired Flum to push through adversity. She ran in the hopes of seeing the day where she lived a life of bliss, where no one was trying to kill her anymore. If she lost sight of that light at the end of the tunnel, she couldn’t push on.

But if she didn’t, that would mean her death.

“Once I die, it’s all over. Even if I fight clean and fair, none of that matters if I don’t survive.” Flum said it aloud, just to make sure she couldn’t walk it back.

Let it go. Be happy. You just added another weapon to your arsenal to rip Origin’s throat out with. It still weighed on her heart, but she had to put it aside.

“It’s not going to do me any good rambling on like this. Not right now.”

She had to fight.

FWOOOOOSH!

She felt the earth tremble as a loud noise drew closer. She figured it was yet another of Luke’s stone drills, probing for her position.

SMAAAASH!

The drill crashed through the house behind her, closing in fast. Flum leaped straight up, waiting for her mark to pass beneath her before summoning her sword.

“Hyaaaaaaaaaaah!” She launched a Prana Shaker at the end of a vicious overhead swipe.

Just as she finished, Luke shot off another spiral blast from his fist, anticipating her assault. The attacks crashed and exploded in a powerful shock wave.

Flum, buffeted by the shock wave, landed safely and slammed her sword into the earth. She immediately followed up with a Prana Storm, suffused with her reversal magic. Though it had a wide area of effect, it was also a short-range attack and failed to reach Luke.

But Flum already knew that.

She wasn’t trying to hit him, no. She was looking for his traps. As the wave of her reversal-charged prana rolled past, it threw up sparks where they lay. As long as she knew where they were, she had nothing to fear.

Flum charged Luke.

“Oooooooouu!!”

Fist against sword. Spiral blast against Prana Shaker. Their attacks canceled each other out again and again in the flurry of blows, the two slowly closing in on each other.

Flum lunged, her sword coming down in a two-handed strike meant to neatly bisect Luke.

FWISH!

Her blade caught the empty air as Luke narrowly sidestepped the blow before throwing a counter-punch. His spiral-covered fist clashed with her sword, the force of the blow knocking them both backward.

Flum stumbled, finding that her head had fallen into another trap. Her skull began to wrench to the side before she ducked low to the ground and launched herself forward. Luke met her advance with another swipe from his invisible right arm.

Flum flipped over Luke, landing behind his back. She swept at her target, but he spun to catch it with his left arm. Before her sword could make contact, the blade vanished in a bright flash, followed by the familiar glow of the rune on the back of her hand. Now no longer weighed down by the heavy blade, she thrust her hand at Luke’s stomach while he was still off balance and defenseless.

Obviously, her hand would be blown away by the protective barrier surrounding him if she made direct contact; she had a plan for that.

“Blast off! Reversion!!”

VOOOOSH!

All five of her digits discharged straight into his body. His face contorted as the pain caught up with him. Luke threw his hand over his stomach and stumbled backward, howling in pain all the while.

He tried to fend her off with his free right arm, and she threw up her left in response—not intending to take the blow directly.

“Eruption! Reversion!” She focused her magic into her arm and detonated it at the last possible moment before the spiral could begin to tear into her flesh. Unlike the projectile attacks she’d used previously, this time, she blew her entire arm up in order to create a powerful pressure wave, throwing them both back and creating some distance between her and Luke.

Luke was the first to regain his balance; he wasted no time in stretching both arms out in front of him, letting loose with a series of spiral blasts. Flum dove and tumbled out of the way until her fingers regenerated. She summoned her Souleater again and ran at Luke, the sword scraping along behind her as she went.

She swung the blade in a gut-unzipping arc…only to find herself in yet another trap as her wrist twisted hard.

“Gya…another one?!”

Luke turned the tables and pressed the attack as he threw out a right hook.

Flum focused her magic into her feet, distorting the ground beneath Luke and causing him to lose balance, if only for a moment. He focused his rotational powers beneath him, shredding the ground below—just the opening she needed.

“I’m gonna regenerate anyway, so here goooooooooooooooooooes!”

Flum turned her still-crumpling hand toward Luke and shot it off at the wrist. Her hand, covered in frozen flesh to harden it up further, shattered into dozens of fragments before shooting straight into Luke’s mutated body.

Each successful hit resulted in another shudder and cry of pain.

Flum drew her blade with her recovered left hand and thrust forward. “You’re done!”

Luke tried to throw his arm up to block the blow, but he was too late. The black blade pierced his flesh and made contact with the crystal within.

“Reversion!!”

Her reversal magic transferred into the crystal, causing Origin’s spiral to reverse and create negative energy in its place.

Pushed beyond its limits, the crystal snapped cleanly in two.

“Oooooooooooouuu! Oooou!”

Flum withdrew her sword and watched as the red musculature started to fade away. Luke raised his arm toward Flum momentarily before it fell limply to his side.

She’d won.

Half of Luke’s face had returned to its original form.

“It’s not over yet!!!” There was a perverse pleasure in his scream.

“What?! No way!!”

He somehow managed to muster enough strength to throw his damaged body at Flum. One way or another, he was hell-bent on beating her—and not because Origin or Mother told him to either. This was a goal he had set personally for himself.

“Watch my arm spin, spin, spiiiiin!” His left arm twisted in its socket, gathering speed until it became a shapeless blur.

Though he was clearly much weaker with one less core, he was still more than strong enough to cause Flum genuine harm. He punched straight at Flum’s left shoulder while her guard was still down, mutilating her arm and causing her to drop her sword.

“Next, your heart!”

He threw another punch at her chest.

“Think again!”

Flum threw her still-regenerating left arm in the way, catching his spinning fist in the palm of her hand while she focused her reversal magic on it. Both of their hands were slowly stripped of flesh and muscle until there was little more than exposed bone, though neither party retreated.

“I can feel it! I can feel it, Flum! I can feel that desire to win burning in my heart! Is this what it’s like to be alive?! Is this what it’s like for normal humans?? This is amazing! Once I win, I can go to hell a happy man!!”

“If all you wanted was a battle of wills, there was no need for us to kill each other like this!”

“I couldn’t let that happen. My fate was chosen for me eight years ago, when I was picked up and taken to that place. You get it, don’t you?? That’s why you’re here battling me to the death, isn’t it?!”

Luke increased his speed, intent on using every last bit of his strength to finish this task. Flum grimaced as he ground away at her bones.

“Nng… I’ve accepted that this is what has to be done!” she said. “But if it were up to me, I wouldn’t want to kill you for such stupid reasons! It’d be great if we could just wipe away all our sins and punishments whenever we pleased, but that’s not the world we live in! Life just isn’t that convenient!!”

“You’re right, it doesn’t exist! Yet Nekt keeps telling everyone that they have to live anyway. We’ve no past, no future, so how in the hell are we supposed to live a normal life?! Ending my life here is the best thing I could possibly do!”

Flum understood where he was coming from, though she also saw Nekt’s side as well. Nekt could hardly accept that death was the best choice. They were family, after all; it only made sense. But would Nekt take a different stance if they chose to die in the face of a life of misery? Could anyone really be satisfied with choosing to live, knowing that nothing but suffering lay ahead?

No one knew the answer to that question. There was no such thing as a right answer or a sure thing in any of their lives. They were reduced to arguing on the basis of emotion and principles.

“So c’mon! Just let me win and have my happy ending!”

“That is not what happiness is about!!”

The rotational forces grew stronger and stronger as they wrapped around Flum’s hand, twisting it out of shape. But even robbed of her flesh, Flum refused to give in to Luke.

Both fighters were putting in everything they had, and neither planned on giving up.

But with one of his cores shattered, Luke was only able to fully use half of his body, while the other half wasted away. While his spirit was still in it, his body approached its breaking point. Finally, Flum broke through the stalemate with her reversal magic.

Luke stumbled back, his arm slumping to his side. “Haaah. I should’ve realized it’d come to this. Ah, well. I can’t believe I spent so much time rambling on about my feelings toward this world.”

Flum knelt down next to the fallen boy and pulled him into a gentle embrace.

Luke had no desire to fight—he accepted his defeat.

“Nekt looked hurt when she came to find Mute,” said Flum. “Do you know what that was about?”

“Aah, yeah, that was Fwiss an’ me. Nekt just would not give up about her stupid plan to save us, so we decided to put a stop to it.”

“What did Nekt say?”

“‘There’s no point in just saving myself. But what I can’t do alone, I know we can all do together. We can start over.’ Nekt even talked about carrying me, if need be. What an idiot, huh?”

Nothing could erase the sins they’d committed. Nekt had to realize that, which was probably why she was so intent on not shouldering the burden alone. She wanted all the Children to live together and share a common future.

“Ya know, for a moment there, I even felt a glimmer of hope. Deep down I must have known that it was hopeless, but for just a bit, I considered what it’d be like for us all to go on living together.”

“Then I’ll take you to Nekt, and…”

Luke shook his head. “Why would someone with their life ahead of them waste their time on me?”

While Nekt was trying to save her family, Luke wanted to save Nekt.

“It’s not just about murder, ya know. We…I can’t let Nekt bear the burden of what I’ve done. Nope, no thanks. It’s pathetic, for starters, and it’d be pretty tacky to boot. I’d rather just do it on my own, whether that’s becoming a human or something else entirely. Nekt should just forget about stupid people like me.”

There wasn’t much more Flum could say. Nekt and Luke both had the same end in mind but chose different roads to get there. It was hardly her place to interfere.

She watched Luke’s consciousness slowly slip away. His eyes drooped closed, and his body began to unravel.

When she fought Satils just a short time ago, she had used her power to string together the cores. But this so-called double drive used by the Children was something different entirely. Once the second core entered their body, the two cores worked in concert to grant them new powers and vastly increase their raw strength. Perhaps they could only be so proficient with them because they lived with the Origin cores for much of their lives. The burden it put on their bodies must have been immense.

Left to her own devices, Flum had little doubt that Mute would have eventually died from malnutrition. The same went for Luke.

“Y-you really are an idiot, N-Nekt. If…if you just got here a little sooner, you…you…you woulda made it in time. F-F-Fwiss…has…with Mother…” Luke’s body went limp, and he lost consciousness.

Suddenly, Flum sensed a presence behind her. She quickly jerked around to look.

“Ottilie?” she said, taken aback. She’d been sure Nekt would be showing up any moment now.

“Nekt’s got her hands full, so I was sent in her place.” Ottilie walked over to Flum and scooped up Luke’s body.

“Ottilie…are you, uh, are you working with Satuhkie and Nekt?”

“I am, yes. Satuhkie has put me to work behind the scenes along with…”

“Along with…?”

“Actually, never mind. But you can rest assured that I’m on your side.”

She changed the subject quickly to cover up her slip. It was best to keep the subject of Milkit under wraps for now, to keep Flum focused on the task at hand.

“I don’t know what he’d have you do,” Flum said, “but do you really think Mute and Luke can be saved, even in this condition? This is pretty different from the time we saved Ink.”

“I don’t know much about the theoretical side of things, but I doubt they’d have bothered to secure the Children if it weren’t possible.”

“So we know it’s not impossible, I guess.”

Ottilie averted her gaze in silent agreement.

The fact that their operation on Ink succeeded at all was nothing short of a miracle. Repeating it—getting it down to a science—was mind-boggling.

To Flum, it felt cruel to hand over the Children’s bodies after they’d stated their will to die, with the full knowledge of what awaited them. She reminded herself that it was Nekt’s feelings that mattered now. Nekt was their family, after all.

“Take care of Luke for me.”

“Funny you’d say that, considering you two were trying to kill each other moments ago.”

“I can’t argue with that. Maybe I’m just not strong enough to fully commit to killing them.”

“I suppose some would call that kindness.” Ottilie smiled warmly at Flum before making her exit.

Flum sighed heavily and looked out at the scene before her. Her strategy to keep Luke away from the guild during the battle had paid off: there wasn’t a scratch on it. She could still hear fighting in the distance, but she was completely spent, inside and out.

Flum made her way back to the guild so she could finally call her mission finished.

 

***

 

Luke woke to the feeling of lying on something soft.

Am I still not dead? I’m really bad at this, aren’t I?

As he slowly became more aware of his body, he realized that he couldn’t move his limbs. He ventured a quick peek and saw a woman watching over him.

“Oh, I see you finally woke up. I was worried about you. That would have been an awful way to go.”

Luke opened and closed his mouth, but no sound came out.

“Where are you? Satuhkie operates this facility. You were brought here for an operation.”

He shook his head fiercely at the news.

“Not interested? Well, the decision to undergo surgery is up to you; we won’t make you if you don’t want to. But you know, I hear Mute’s going through with it.”

Luke stared at Ottilie, his mouth agape. She grimaced and sighed in response.

“Her surgery is complete. She’s under observation now. Oh, you want to know whether it was a success? Well, I don’t know the answer to that question. But I do know that she’s alive.” She conveniently glossed over the most important part, as Luke continued to eye her with suspicion. “And you’re still against it, I take it?”

Obviously, he wasn’t going to be agreeing to anything any time soon.

“I guess I’m not surprised, in light of all you’ve done. It’s not like you’d just up and decide that you want to live. But…I think I have something that may make you reconsider.”

Ottilie leaned in close and whispered in Luke’s ear. There was a look of sadness on her face as she drew back. For his part, Luke glared at her with contempt.

That witch… How am I supposed to refuse after she tells me something like that?

Mute had likely been put in the same situation, left with little choice but to accept after being given the same information.

“Hey, don’t look at me like that. Satuhkie’s the one who decided it.” Ottilie was just playing messenger for the busy cardinal—though she was most certainly being paid for the trouble. “Listen, I don’t love the way we’re going about this either.”

She knew they’d be forever stuck at an impasse if they didn’t do it, though she still couldn’t help but feel bad for these young children, being used like pawns by the adults in their lives.