59. Mud Wrestling


    All four combatants stopped what they were doing at the same time—out of need rather than want. Each of them took a precious moment to recover their Poise, Stamina, presence of mind, and what have you—the better to go right back to tearing at each other’s throats.


    Yet, before any of them could move again, the room acted first. Or rather, the [Ossify] cloud shrank as a whole, with its dust particles wrapping around the combatants like an extra layer of skin.


    Serac’s first instinct was to brush it away, convinced that it’d been some new spell cast by a Maiden. Except she couldn’t. Her arms—even the free one—refused to move, weighed down as they were by the thickened air all around.


    It wasn’t just her arms. Her whole body felt stuck in suspended animation—or at the very least in hyper slow motion. It was as if she’d been fully submerged in a tarry substance—the result of bone dust coming together and clumping into bone mud.


    Then the mass of bone mud suddenly spoke, with individual clumps rubbing against each other to produce barely intelligible ‘words’.


    “You’ve all been so brave and so brilliant,” the voice said, somehow carrying a sweet singsong quality despite the coarseness of its instrument. “It pains me to know that some of you will fall here.”


    Serac tried to pinpoint the source of the voice, to no avail. For one thing, she could barely keep her eyes open amidst the gathering mud. For another, the voice had no pinpoint source, as the entire mass transmitted its message and its magic as one amorphous entity.


    “But I also know that to end this trial prematurely would be an affront to every one of you,” the voice continued, far too sweet for the occasion. “For what is war if not commitment? What is victory if not built upon the sacrifice of our allies? Which is why I offer myself to you now. I offer power the likes of which you’ve never held within those flimsy vessels you call bodies. Bleed, my friends! Bleed, break down, and grow anew… that you yourselves may yet become the most fearsome beasts hell has ever unleashed!”


    With that ominous pronouncement, the whole mass of bone mud pulsed—as a beating heart would upon a deluge of adrenaline.


    Serac felt this [Osseous] heartbeat pulse through her own body—her own vessel—and fill its every crevice, starting from her sternum and pumping its way through to the very tips of her fingers and toes.


    Across from her, the same spasm seized the pair of Bone Maidens, their open wounds widening and spewing fresh blood as the spiny projections of their onyx skeleton shuddered and splintered into an ever more nightmarish shape.


    Serac felt the heartbeat as an injection of power. But at the same time, her own heart surged with terror. By now, she’d become something of an expert at identifying the presence of another entity within her self. And this was invasion and effacement like nothing before it—her very bones laying down the substrate to nurture a soul far stronger and far more ancient than her own.


    As if in emphatic confirmation of Serac’s fears, Pathsight flashed its warning, in the form of an [Ossify] bar that accelerated towards completion. Soon, the bar would fill, and Serac somehow knew that what awaited her was a fate far worse than dying as a Bone Husk. She could see—as clear as mud—a future in which her own body was riven by Bone and her own soul irrevocably bound to the Bone Lord’s will.


    No!


    She thought she’d screamed, but her voice drowned within the churning mud, producing nothing more than a guttural echo. She tried to claw at her own chest, as if by pulling out her breastbone, she could stop the deformation before it took her completely. Before she lost everything to the—


    “Serac, catch!”


    A faint blue light streaked into Serac’s periphery, right before she managed to catch it in her trembling hand. The light turned out to be a solid object—a bloodstone cameo, to be precise. She understood the assignment and flung the chain around her neck haphazardly, fashion be damned.


    [Trinket equipped: HIS SISTER’S KEEPER]


    [Burden: 29/31 (Heavy) -> 46/31 (Overburdened)]


    [Poise: 52 (Penalty) -> 15 (Penalty)]


    [Wayfarer Status Effect: OVERBURDENED]


    There it was. Through no real intent on her part, she’d shot past that [Overburdened] threshold Trippy had warned her about. The severe penalty to Stamina expenditure meant she could ill afford to waste a single action. Whereas the Poise penalty meant a single unmitigated hit would likely bring her to her knees.


    The trade-off was far from ideal. But it was necessary. With the danger of [Ossify] build-up momentarily postponed, Serac turned her attention back onto her enemies.


    And not a moment too soon. For Sundara had recovered from her Poise-break, and Meetra too had come to terms with the new rules of the game. Even now, the latter raised her sword, no doubt to cut through the mud with her resurgent strength.


    A diagonal slash. Serac read the attack’s trajectory and readied her PULVERIZER shield. Except Meetra’s sword never emitted the expected wave of energy—at least not one Serac could see front on.


    Instead, the attack flew in from behind her—and she sensed the approaching blade just barely in time to spin away from its expansive edge.This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.


    “Ugh!”


    The cry of surprise and pain had issued from Zacko. The NINEFOLD master, ever the more agile and battle-tested of the two Wayfarers, had nevertheless reacted too late to Meetra’s trickery, taking a hit that thudded against his trailing Huskbound arm.


    Within the space of a vanishing Ksana, Serac processed and understood what had happened—and what needed to happen next.


    First, Meetra’s blade had teleported rather than taking a direct flight, emerging from the far side of the mudpile before beaming towards the Wayfarers’ backs. This was the form the Maidens’ ‘upgrade’ had taken: attacks that could be conjured from anywhere while retaining their devastating effect.


    Second, Serac had reacted more sharply than Zacko… because her senses were sharper. Just as [Enlisted] had affected them differently, so too had the Bone Lord’s latest intervention empowered one of them while impairing the other.


    Was it because she was a Rakshasa and he a Manusya? A natural boon for those native to hell, or perhaps simply the Bone Lord playing favorites? The reason didn’t matter, and neither did Serac much care. All that mattered was she take what she was given and make the most of it.


    Third, and most importantly, if the Wayfarers had any hope of victory, this fight must end within the next few Ksanas. Regardless of how the Bone Lord might dress up the facts, this was not and never would be a level playing field.


    The Maidens had embraced the Bone Lord’s magic far too intimately and thoroughly for the Wayfarers to match. The fact that the [Ossify] clock ticked for only one team was proof enough of that.


    Yes. Victory and survival would come down to the next few Ksanas, and Serac had neither the opportunity nor the resources on hand to try anything cute.


    Exactly two bullets remained in REVOLVER’s cylinder, with neither seated in Chamber One. No spell. No help. Just a gunslinger and her two bullets, both of which must find their target.


    But just because Serac couldn’t match the Maidens in pure power, it didn’t mean she couldn’t surpass them in trickery.


    She raised REVOLVER, loosely aiming at the space between the two Maidens, where their bony projections overlapped one another. The Maidens were already on the move, weapons readied in concert, and both with the same target in sight. But just as their blades were about to come down, Serac holstered REVOLVER and used her free hand to grab the Trinket around her neck.


    She held it out against the mud, as far as the chain would let her. Then, for one fleeting Ksana, [His Sister’s Keeper] gave off a blinding flash of blue, as if determined to keep its wearer safe from the Blight that raged all around.


    It was an indefinable ‘action’ that didn’t count against Serac’s Stamina reserves. And though the light had been blinding, her intention wasn’t to blind. She didn’t break stride as she veered off to one side and dodged into Meetra, trusting fully in her own gamble.


    Sundara’s daggers flew in from all sides—six distinct points of origin for six parts of a combo. But they were all aimed at one destination: a space Serac had already vacated, leaving behind only the unwieldy heft of her Huskbound PULVERIZER.


    [25!], [26!], [28!], [29!], [30!], [32!] -> [170!]


    The combo brought Serac’s HP down to its last chunk, but the mitigation had kept the Poise damage to a minimum. She could still move, with just enough Stamina left to finish what she’d started.


    Most importantly, Meetra had checked her swing, allowing Serac free passage to get right up in the younger Maiden’s grill.


    Up close, Serac could see that even a Bone-riven face had retained some of Meetra’s natural beauty—especially when it’d been softened by surprise, as it was now. And before that surprise could morph back into all-consuming rage, a gunslinger unholstered her gun and shoved it against the roof of her enemy’s open mouth.


    [252!], [252!] -> [504!]


    In the end, both bullets found their target—and to spectacular effect.


    Serac’s own mud-borne upgrade had taken a most direct route: a straight 100% AV buff. For all Meetra’s skill with Bone magic, she couldn’t conjure a shield inside her own mouth. And as such, she ate the whole damage, unmitigated.


    Serac felt her opponent go limp, then immediately turned her attention onto the second target. REVOLVER’s cylinder was now empty, and Serac knew that Sundara wouldn’t give her the time nor space to reload.


    But she also knew that she and her partner had finally gotten what they’d been after all fight long. For what had started as a 2v2 had, at last, become a 2v1.


    Sundara pivoted and drew back her daggers. But before she could unleash her next combo, something tall and muscular barged into her, Huskbound-shoulder-against-spiny-Bone.


    [THE FIFTH DAO—PAULDRON]


    [Pauldron] was one of Zacko’s least damaging Daos, but it was unmatched in its ability to knock an opponent off-balance. On this occasion, it sent Sundara tumbling back onto the floor, as her daggers popped up from everywhere and went nowhere.


    Serac gave herself a moment’s breather. Then she dashed forward to finish the job.


    Zacko put his back into it and wrestled Sundara’s Bone-riven frame (ouch!), pinning her down as he transitioned into a downward punch—[Cestus]. The Maiden, even as she struggled to push the Manusya off her, blocked with an onyx shield.


    This was the chance Serac had been waiting for. She dove for the ground—gunslinger turned pugilist—with PULVERIZER aimed and locked onto the center of Sundara’s shield.


    Zacko shifted into another attack. The shield shifted with him, leaving the door open for—


    [Auxiliary Technique: THE GRIND]


    “Arrggghhhh…!!”


    Even through a Huskbound layer, Serac felt the Bone-riven roughness of Sundara’s chest. She gritted her teeth and held firm, through pain so intense as to be paralyzing—pain both her own and her enemy’s.


    [503!]


    This time, Serac could afford to keep her eyes on an opponent’s HP bar as it drained away to nothing. Sundara’s expression remained frozen in a scream of bitter agony, even as her voice cut off and her physical being faded into Souldust.


    Then and only then did Serac let out a sigh of exhausted relief.


    “Is… is it over?”


    But something wasn’t right. For one thing, Pathsight kept its silence despite the Wayfarers having smited a [Greater Aberrant]. No congratulatory message. No Karma pop-up.


    And for another, the storm of bone mud continued to rage on—a clear indication that, at least in the eyes of the Bone Lord, this ‘trial’ had yet to run its course.


    Somewhere behind the Wayfarers, the mud shifted again. And from its midst rose the slim, smooth figure of a Rakshasa woman.