JaceVAmor
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Chapter 175: Fading Sun
🕑 Added 2023-12-25 16:11:01 +0000 UTCJuliana was lost in thought. She stared into the flickering flames of the tiny campfire with a gaze full of smoldering intensity. Her face was a portrait of exhaustion that somehow managed to hide her internal despair, but her eyes told the whole story. They focused on the fire as if the embers could give her the unasked answers that dominated her inner monologue. The wet twigs they had used to start the fire quietly popped and crackled as they burned, but she didn’t receive any words of wisdom as she listened. There were no hidden messages being relayed to her, no matter how badly she wished for one.
The little fire sent wisps of white smoke up through the trees that she found herself tracing as she gave up on finding an unconsidered strategy buried within the campfire. It felt like the last vestiges of hope she had were drifting along with the fumes as the flames failed to answer her silent plea.
She had been reconsidering how they would approach their prey over and over, but a hopeful solution evaded her ruminations. No matter what angle her thoughts took, she could only conclude they needed to abandon the effort and move on. The bottom line was that they were outclassed in this match, but that knowledge did nothing to assuage the grief of potentially leaving innocent people behind.
As time went on, the difficulties continued to rise, and they would inevitably run into insurmountable challenges more and more frequently. At least this time, it could be chalked up to a mismatch in abilities rather than a simple overwhelming power gap. They were the rock trying to defeat paper in a predetermined game of rock, paper, scissors. Taking that angle left a tiny sliver of hope for later battles, but in the future they might not even find that much solace. The Priests of Chakyum were gaining too much power.
The loss gave her time to really think for a bit while they waited for debuffs to fade. The results of such an endeavor were never good, especially because she had come to some hard realizations that she had happily ignored for as long as possible. Ultimately, it amounted to the fact that they were doomed from the start.
“Damn.” She whispered at the fire, cursing their luck or the higher power that had written their fate in this way. It didn’t matter which.
In order for people to survive in this new world they needed several different elements to come together. That was just the way the assimilation went, indifferent in its casual cruelty. Unfortunately for her and the companions she met along the way, they started without a key ingredient for success: a civilization shard. Despite the disadvantage, it wasn’t like they hadn’t tried to earn the right to live on. Juliana wouldn’t disparage those who had died before her, struggling until the last second to carve out a place in the future, but they were all only in the introductory period of a much more extensive gauntlet. There was no way they could keep up the struggle for the years coming, or the decades and beyond.
“Maybe it’s time we hunker down.” She quietly suggested. They could definitely survive longer if they focused on defending themselves only, but vocalizing her doubts cemented them on her heart more than she expected. She already expected to die. The time would come and there wasn’t much she could do about it.
Her companion’s nostrils flared before he responded, but his expression remained the same. “I won’t.” He refused in a voice that was hoarse, but steady. His eyes didn’t leave the fire. “Never.”
Juliana felt pity for him. He was driven by something she didn’t exactly understand, like he was called specifically to fight for those he considered brothers, actual relations be damned. It would almost certainly be the end of him. There were too many people who couldn’t fight for themselves, and no one could shoulder all of that responsibility themselves. He wasn’t thinking about years or decades. Only the present mattered. Looking at him, she didn’t feel reassured by his stubbornness, but she still didn’t want to quit first.
She sighed, not looking forward to another round in the Butterfly Cave. It was a famous destination in the pre-mana days, attracting adventurous nature lovers and field scientists alike. She and her companion would have to recover until the next morning before making another attempt to visit the enticing habitat, but that was obviously the plan. The longer it took, the less likely they would even save anyone. Then again, just killing a priest was a worthy endeavor, one that they willingly undertook when they could, and this was no ordinary priest.
They had several more hours of daylight, having abandoned their infiltration in the morning after barely making progress through the entrance of the priest’s enclave. She and her partner were both content to let Felix stand guard while they waited for their skills to cooldown and resources to rejuvenate. That just left Juliana to her thoughts. Nothing good ever came from letting her mind race, but she couldn’t switch it off.
Rather than sit in silence, listening to the flame, she concentrated her senses on Felix. He was her Soulbeast: the defining characteristic of her class and a manifestation of herself combined with a wild animal’s essence. The fact that he had allowed her to connect to him was the entire reason for her personal survival. It was a strange union that she couldn’t have imagined before mana came, but now she couldn’t imagine living without him.
He was meticulously padding through the jungle with impossible Agility, making sure they weren’t disturbed by anything. Monsters, animals, or priests would all end up on his menu if they stumbled upon their camp. She let herself be swept along as he bounded across branches in a never ending patrol, tireless as he was. So long as they had their connection, he was unlimited. When it came down to a straight duel, there was no existence that would lead her to bet against Felix. He used all of his senses to monitor the area, keeping track all the way down to the insects that buzzed through his perimeter.
One second she was enjoying the mental stroll with her Soulbeast, admiring the early yellow blooms of an out of season cortez tree that Felix was climbing, and the next he was screaming a warning into her subconscious, detecting something she had not. Her eyes snapped into focus and darted all around, searching for whatever had surprised Felix so much, to the point where he was actually terrified. He had jumped into her soul, and she was immediately empowered for a fight with the combined power of them both. Nature energy leaked from her pores as translucent claws engulfed her arms like gauntlets and a dark pelt protected her back.
“Excuse me? I heard you guys might need some help? I’m Coop.” A friendly voice came from above them and her head snapped up. Her adrenaline surged, and she felt Felix recoil with caution, but her human companion reacted first.
She witnessed Tzultacaj’s leaping assault on the young man that managed to make it past Felix’s protective guard, his ancient oversized axe held above and behind his head as he prepared to split his target’s skull. Purple sparks were already dancing between the spikes on the back of the blade and a deep blood-red haze covered the forward edge. Tzultacaj let out a battle cry as he raced through the air. She felt Felix start to relax as they both trusted the fight to be over before she could get involved.
Juliana’s eyes bugged out when the intruder stopped the massive overhand chop by slipping beneath the axehead and grabbing the haft, right beneath the heavy blade, with a single bare hand. Holding onto the axe, the man planted a casual seeming straight low kick into Tzultacaj’s abdomen, almost like he was pushing him away as much as he was counter attacking.
An explosion of red and purple energy erupted from the axe as Tzultacaj’s fingers lost their grip, and Juliana was sent flying backwards, deeper into the forest, until she snapped the trunk of a huge mahogany tree and slowed to a rest with the tree falling behind her. If it wasn’t for Felix, she would have been killed by the magical eruption from two dozen feet away. Instead she simply bounced through the branches as she was cradled by the fluffy spirit. The intruder must have been vaporized. Tzultacaj’s power was not a joke.
“What in the world was that? Another High Priest?” She coughed as she pulled herself from the splintered wood and falling branches. “There can’t be so many.” That would be strange news. Their first experience with a High Priest had already managed to halt their efforts to clear the Butterfly Cave without directly meeting them. Finding another one so soon would indicate that the Cult of Chakyum was advancing at unprecedented speed. The rest of humanity would be in deep trouble if that was the case. It was a scenario even worse than what she had imagined in the first place, and she had already been despairing.
She spat dirt from her mouth and moved forward, pulling leaves and twigs from her dark hair absently as her mind raced. If a High Priest had found them, at least they could confirm that they were still mortal. Tzultacaj’s attack would have deleted him from the face of the Earth. His bloodlust was such that he never held back against the cultists. Even the scent of death had his hackles rising. Maybe being found in the open could be considered good fortune as they didn’t need to deal with any of the High Priest’s tricks that they might use to protect their enclave.
The explosion disintegrated the rock they had used to shelter their camp, and as the dust settled, she expected to find nothing but a crater. She stumbled forward, squinting through the smoke to see a single figure still standing. Just as she suspected, Tzultacaj had certainly eliminated the threat.
“Wait, what?” She mumbled as her enhanced senses, thanks to Felix, allowed her to interpret what she was seeing through the haze. The lone figure was the intruder. He stood alone, holding Tzultacaj’s axe in the center of a perfect circle of downed trees, all facing away from the blast. She held her breath, as Felix warned her to retreat.
She spun, desperately searching the area with her eyes until she spotted Tzultacaj, slowly picking himself up from his own blast crater. He had dug a long trench with his back as he slid. Multiple trees toppled over until he was buried beneath trunks and branches. When she looked back at the intruder, he stood calmly with Tzultacaj’s axe for a moment, tilting it side to side, as if he was admiring a sculpture instead of an unprecedented weapon. After a few seconds he nodded to himself and casually walked through the blast zone that had been their camp and the surrounding rainforest.
“That’s a heavy axe. Can’t believe someone can swing it around.” He mumbled as he himself waved it like it was weightless. In his hand it could have been an oversized toy made from plastic, fit for a child rather than the warrior she knew.
Juliana had never seen anyone else touch Tzultacaj’s axe, unless they were being chopped to pieces. In fact, she had never seen him separated from it, even when he wasn’t fighting. Before these moments, she would have believed it was directly tied to him. They were as directly connected as she was to her Soulbeast.
“What are you?!” She shouted, unable to control herself any longer. She was keeping enough distance that she felt confident in her ability to run away with Felix, though she felt his concern. “What did you do?” She added, taking another step back as her confidence waned under the attention of the stranger. The least she could do was try to keep him distracted from a safe distance while Tzultacaj recovered. She could count on him to not give up, at a minimum.
“Hm?’ The man paused for a second as if he was really contemplating her questions. “I’m just some guy.” He shrugged, answering her question with more sincerity than necessary.
“Huh?” She couldn’t help herself. The contrast between the violent eruption of violence followed by the nonchalance of the intruder was all wrong.
He continued talking as if they were having a quick chat in a grocery store. “Those dudes at The Crossroads suggested I meet up with the Jaguar Sun since we could help each other. They pointed me to you guys. Unless they got it wrong?” He scratched his ear, like he was feeling shy. “And I just disarmed him. The magic explosion was all him.” He turned toward Tzultacaj and put his hand in front of the side of his mouth before raising his voice. “You alright over there?”
Juliana checked on Tzultacaj and gasped. The muscular warrior that had been the thorn in the side of the Cult of Chakyum had transformed into someone completely different. Rather than a hulking axeman, imposing enough to fill his opponents with dread with his mere presence, he was more of a lithe hunter, skinny and unintimidating. He was at least a hundred pounds of muscle lighter than he had been just a moment before. Did he expend that much energy? He strode up to the intruder with a familiar scowl on his face, scraped up but otherwise unharmed.
“Don’t worry.” The intruder started casually, even though the pair of them had just displayed more power than Juliana had ever seen before. “No hard feelings. It was my bad just jumping in like that. I had just run through the jungle for like eight hours with those other guys and was a bit too eager to get the show on the road.” He scratched the back of his head. “Didn’t mean to surprise you that much.” He raised Tzultacaj’s axe in front of him with a single arm, offering it back. “Maybe we can start over?”
Tzultacaj grasped the axe with both hands and a haze of crimson mana surrounded him before he transformed back into the brawny man Juliana recognized. “Who are you? You smell like the dead.” Tzultacaj stated with a hint of disgust. She could tell he was guarded and doing his best not to show it.
“That bad?” The strange man frowned, and tried to give himself a subtle sniff.
“I meant your mana.” Tzultacaj clarified, interrupting the man’s investigation.
“Ah.” The stranger nodded. “That makes sense.”
“I am Tzultacaj, Leader of what is left of the Fading Jaguar Sun.” He nodded toward where she had stationed herself, some distance away as if she would flee at any moment. “That is Juliana, one of the few Great Warriors left.”
“Nice to meet you!” The stranger stated with a genuine smile, something she felt like she hadn’t seen in months. “Sooltaco…?” He did his best pronouncing Tzultacaj the way he had heard it. It wasn’t that close. She expected her partner to correct him immediately.
“Close enough.” Tzultacaj conceded to her continued surprise.
“Alright.” The stranger smiled, as if he was proud of himself. “I’m Coop. Champion of Ghost Reef. I’m here to formally tell Chakyum that he isn’t welcome on my island.” Coop introduced himself again. “I heard I’d have to go through his priests first and that you guys would know where to find some. I’d appreciate it if you could point me in the right direction.”
Tzultacaj nodded solemnly at the explanation. “Please tell him he isn’t welcome in our jungle either.” He requested, and Juliana noticed the corners of his mouth twitch upwards as if he almost smiled himself. Everything that had happened was completely absurd to her.
She shook her head with an involuntary spasm of confusion. “Wait.” She startled herself as what the stranger had said finally registered above her addled thoughts. “Coop from the leaderboards?”
“Ah…” Coop looked at his feet. “That’s me.”
“What is with this guy?” She mumbled, mirroring her Soulbeast’s confusion with her own.
Comments
Azgaroth
Damn love the chapter. With mention of Coop's mana smelling of death and of Chakyum being a "Death God", i am waiting for the confrontation, and because of death god/sacrifice thing, chakyum has a skill that allow a domain of the dead/sacrified to appear to instill fear on anyone seeing them, and perhaps giving a debuff on anyone in the domain.... Until, Coop enter the domain, and "break" it, because of his Title and Affinity, making him "summon" all the phantom of Ghost Reef, and even any phantom/ghost he "used" from his 2 "Of the Mist" skills....
