Slightly ahead of the flyer, which Eik could now see had a physique that quite resembled the third tier drakes. Two differences stood out.

Where the drake was dense and bulky, bursting with the representation of muscle, this one was slender and aerodynamic, perfectly proportioned for airborne maneuvers. The second difference was the lack of forelimbs. Or rather, the forelimbs seem to have evolved into the wings that now carried it on the winds.

It was a freaking wyvern. Was this the tier four Profound Toxic beast?

Just before he and the titanic serpent collided, he shaped a set of claws along his fingers and barely managed to catch himself on the monster's snout as it tried to eat him up. Pulled along at speed, Eik saw the wyvern swerve and dive in for the kill, its well-formed eyes honing in on him with the clarity of a hunting hawk.

Yeah, no, that shit wasn't going to happen. He didn't mind going out now — in fact, it was about time — but he would go out swinging. Or, he would go out exploding, to be precise.

Waiting for the perfect moment, he watched the wyvern as it constantly adjusted its course to the erratic thrashing of the snake in its attempt to shake Eik off its snout.

Suddenly Eik's unwilling mount whipped up and then went straight for the ground. He was already having trouble hanging on and a full blown body slam like that would throw him off without a doubt.

Along the tips of his fingers and up his arms Backflow sprung to life, the accompanying pain erupting like so many knives piercing and slicing into his flesh. Better secured by the increased strength, he turned over to get his back against the serpent, held fast only by his fingers digging into the gelatinous outer membrane.

Seeing its opportunity to attack dwindle as the serpent aimed to smash Eik into the ground, the wyvern tucked its wings in flat against its body and shot toward him at terrifying speed.

Thinking quickly, his hand whipped up, a Living Manifestation plopping into his palm only to be sent hurtling at the blue creature. Just as his middle finger snapped it into a spin, he triggered Accelerant.

Unfortunately, the little guy was too quick to detonate, and while it certainly served to startle the monster, the small size did nothing to actually damage or even stun it. If there was a way to work in a delay in the ability then he might be able to really make use of it, if not to injury, then at least to create openings.

With no more time to consider, Eik triggered Accelerant throughout the entirety of the serpent's body.

His organs felt like they were being forcibly rearranged inside of him just from the sonic boom alone as the detonation practically set the titanic length of the Profound Toxic beast ablaze with blinding blue light.

The wyvern was a mere handful of paces from Eik when the primary shock wave erupted in all directions like a tsunami, thrusting Eik bodily outward and straight into the path of the flying monster.

An unbelievable combined momentum brought them together in a devastating collision.

Eik both felt and heard every bone in his body turn to dust upon impact. Such was the power of it. Face first, the skin was torn from his nose, cheeks, and forehead as he ripped through the beast like a dart through a water balloon.

Pain barely made itself known before his vision blackened and the world faded.

***

He woke to something squeezing his hand. Groggily, he opened his eyes and looked up into the ceiling through a shell of eye crust. This was not his house. It also wasn't his suite in the alliance headquarters.

What the hell had happened?

An abhorrent, sour taste had invaded his mouth and sprouted roots deep in his tongue, corrupting his taste buds. It was like he had thrown up a hundred times and gone to bed without washing it out. He made a face.

"Mr. Eik," a tiny voice whispered into his ear. "Mr. Eik, are you awake yet?"

"… Bin?" he asked through what felt like thirty kilos of roasted sand. "What are you doing here?" There was barely any pain in his body as he ran his fingers through her unruly hair, the strands sticking together in clumps.

"He took me to see you," Eik follower her finger with his eyes and saw Mikla's face peeking through the gap between two curtains.

"How are you feeling?" the fracture specialist asked, stepping all the way inside the little space which presumably separated him from other patients in whatever clinic he had ended up in.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

"Spent," he sighed, squeezing Bin's little hand. She clambered up into the cot and snuggled up to him. "And my mouth tastes like fifty year old cheese."

"After you passed out, you did throw up that worm he made you swallow."

"Really?" he asked with a shiver.

"Yeah, you should have seen Molanda's face. She was totally worried. She thinks it might have failed to implant itself for some reason."

"I thought it usually killed the host when the bug comes back up."

"Not if it doesn't have time to get settled, so to speak. It hadn't been that long, luckily."

"Huh," he said and paused as another reality dawned. "What about Sonja? Did she really…?"

Mikla nodded. "I'm sorry. There was nothing to be done in the end."

As seemed to have become a rather common occurrence recently, rage flooded his mind. Only Bin's fragile body in his embrace allowed him to refrain from letting a wave of Profound Toxin surge out and into the enclosed space.

That fucking cult. They had taken so many. People had been ripped away from their loved ones and it wasn't something that could be ignored.

"What about my sister? And Heath and Michael?"

"They're all just fine, Eik. They made it out in considerably better condition than you did."

"I need to… go and see Heath. He just lost Sonja. He must be a wreck."

Mikla winced. "We actually haven't been able to find him for a while. He disappeared a little after you were put to sleep."

"Put to sleep?"

"Molanda Dayarunar is an extremely skilled A-rank healer. She thought it was the best thing for you at the time."

"And why did Heath disappear?"

"Do you remember the official alliance forces that showed up after the troops of house Dayarunar?"

"Of course."

"Atla was among them and she came to see us when it was all over, ordering a search of the city for any stragglers from the cult. Heath completely flipped out on her when she showed up."

"He flipped out? What do you mean?"

"He went off on her about being late. That if the alliance had been quicker to respond, Sonja, as well as all the other Earthlings who were lost, might have been saved."

Eik chewed on those words. "Yeah, well, he wasn't wrong about that. We were defenseless."

"The raid on headquarters delayed a proper response and the cult's efforts to block the flow of information also meant we didn't even realize their intentions until their operation was well under way."

"That just sounds like excuses for a major blunder to me," Eik muttered.

Mikla sighed. "I can't really say anything to that. This whole debacle is certainly not going to improve our reputation…"

"Is Michael looking for Heath now, then?"

"Yeah, and your sister is as well, I think, along with a few others."

"What the hell happened anyway?"

"The raid on headquarters was a smoke screen to cover their invasions of several fresh worlds that had recently joined the alliance. Based on what happened here and on the other worlds, we're quite sure they wanted to recruit as many new initiates as they could before the alliance could properly establish their influence in the societies."

Thoughts swirled around Eik's head.

"Managing to increase their own forces while weakening us was their ultimate goal, and it worked. What about all those who were forced through the fractures after the volunteers? Why not just kill them instead of all that hassle?"

Mikla hesitated. "We're not… really sure about that. We have spies within the cult trying to figure it out as we speak."

"Great. That's just great. So the cult got one over on you guys, basically."

Mikla just bit his lip.

"So what's going to happen now then?" Eik asked.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean what's the alliance going to do about this shit?"

"Oh," Mikla said sheepishly. "I can't personally promise anything since it's not up to me, but now that there is a real and proven threat to the newest and freshest worlds of the Nidafjeld Alliance, I imagine there will soon be a decision to station permanent troops here."

Eik regarded the man with tired eyes. "I don't know whether to be angry that it's assumed that we would be okay with that or angry that a tragedy like this is what it took for our so called new friends to actually give two dry shits about us."

Mikla couldn't answer.

Holding Bin tightly against his chest, he sat up with a grunt and put his feet on the floor. It was cool. She kept her face buried in his shirt. "How are you feeling, little Bin?" he asked, caressing her hair.

She looked up at him, eyes bloodshot but dry. She must have been crying. "I'm okay," she said with neither any particular cheer nor sadness.

"Do you understand what happened?"

"My mommy and daddy died." The way she spoke always sounded a little off, as if it wasn't the words of someone as little as her. Most likely it was a flaw or features of the translation ability that attempted to turn simple speech into something more coherent. Not that it mattered what it was.

"Yeah, that's right, they did die. Do you understand what that means?"

"I can't see them anymore or talk to them anymore."

"Yeah… And do you know what we do when someone dies?" he asked tentatively. He had no clue how to approach the topic of their funerals, and had actually intended to wait to have that conversation, but decided to simply go straight for it.

"We eat and say goodbye."

"Right… Eat what?"

"Leg? Like my daddy did."

"Did your daddy do that before?"

"Yeah, when my grandpa died."

"Right. And is that what you want?" What a dumb ass question to ask a five-year old. She shouldn't have to deal with this crap yet and he regretted saying it the moment the words left his mouth.

She nodded. "I don't want them to go away."

"Alright, then that's what we will do," he said with a glance at Mikla who offered a slight nod. "And now," he continued and stood up properly, Bin's little feet tapping on the floor as she waited for him to pull on a pair of pants folded up next to the bed. "let's go find out where my big friend has gone off to. Do you want to come along for the search, little Bin? You can help me with my levels as well."

"Yeah!" she exclaimed, suddenly full of energy as she hopped circles around him.

Eik reported his departure to a nurse as they left. As it turned out, the clinic was the very same one where Michael worked. He had gotten a bed there so his friend could personally monitor his condition, although Molanda Dayarunar had already signed off on his recovery.

He stopped outside. "Listen," he began, a hand on Mikla's shoulder. "I've been putting this off, but now I don't see how I can make any more excuses. And I need your help."

"What is it?"

"As soon as I find Heath and make sure he's alright, I need you to port me home."

"Home? Why don't you just walk?"

"Not to my house, dude. Now that the cult has made it clear that we're a target, there's no time to waste. I need to go back to my home country."

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