Epsilon Twilight
patreon
22. Viciousness
🕑 Added 2024-10-09 13:30:29 +0000 UTCShe didn't outright die from the breakneck-speed collision as she was able to shift to toughness, but that didn't matter when a heartbeat later she was falling to her death.
In a panic, she grabbed the rock walls of the chasm. That didn't do much to stop her fall, she mostly hurt her fingers as they started bleeding profusely from the friction even if she was wielding toughness.
It did slow her fall, though.
Crack.
She heard the snap before she felt it, most likely because her pain was already dulled by the defense stance and her bleeding fingers.
"AAAHHH!" Aloe let out a primordial hurl and the femur of her left leg snapped like a twig, the full force of the fall concentrated in a single point. Or at least that was the only fracture she could feel.
What followed was a series of sobs and moans as she slowly moved her body across a near-dark environment to sit down. She bit her lips hard enough to draw blood until the Blossomflame made an act of presence to do its magic.
She almost passed away from the itches.
The pain of healing wounds that would have taken months, if not more, to heal by themselves in a handful of seconds was way worse than what the infliction of said wounds had been. At least her femur had broken in an instant, the same couldn't be said for the agonizing long healing process.
Her howls echoed through the chasm, more monstrous than human.
As a matter of fact, she did indeed pass out. But her heightened toughness internal infusion – which was now at sevice the potency of a normal person – kept her waking up. Her consciousness lapsed for only blinks but did so without end.
She was feeling the pain of the fall, of the impact against the wall, and the healing at all the same time. Toughness or not, it was maddening.
Aloe stopped screaming, not because the pain finally soothed, but because her lungs gave out. She was growing dizzy by hurling grunts, so she just limited herself to weak whimpers.
The cultivator gritted her teeth to overcome any and every feeling ebbing and flowing through her body. Like a tide, it wasn't constant, but that only made it worse.
With much difficulty and slowness, the petite woman slumped on the humid darkness of the chasm reached for a waterskin, and took a sip.
The water was still cold since she had gotten it from the inn's well this same morning, and it cleared her muddied thoughts. A touch of cold against her hot pain was what she had needed.
Someone has pushed me down, she thought. I didn't trip over anything or lost my footing; something pushed my backpack down. What, or rather who had pushed her was beyond her, but she knew it hadn't been an accident.
Aloe closed her eyes in expectation of the pain, and she stepped on the ground with her broken leg. She bit her lips as a jolt of pain wildly shot up her spine, but it wasn't bad. The leg was no longer broken, just sore.
Sore enough to make her cry, but only sore.
The Blossomflame stopped emitting flames so that presented her with two options. Either it had run out of magical juice, or she had been completely healed. Aloe pushed her butt away from the wall to remove her backpack and picked up the Blossomflame.
This time her backpack hadn't become a bonfire, but that wasn't what she cared about this moment.
The petals of the evolved flower were partially wilted, but the Blossomflame was still far from withered. So Aloe started planning.
Whoever had pushed her might come to check if the job was done, and she knew for a fact that assassins could disappear and appear on a whim, so perhaps the culprit was already around but out of her sight.
To test it, Aloe lay on the ground as if she had fallen in that position and switched to acuity with one ear on the floor.
Suddenly, she became aware of the many sounds of the chasm. They had been always there, but she had mostly ignored them as her ears had been ringing all this time from the first concussion against the wall and then the pain. What she heard now was the flowing of water, a clear indication of the Tehen River. But it was somewhat far away from her position, so she guessed she hadn't fallen to the bottom of the chasm but was instead on a ledge-slash-ridge.
Thanks to the anxiety and overall paranoia that she was afflicted with by staying on the court of Sadina and staying alert for any sultanzade that may take her with the guard down, Aloe had become used to distinguishing sounds. Even when she was forced to keep her vitality at thrice of a normal person, half of what she currently had, she was able to distinguish heartbeats and breathing patterns coming from the corridor outside her office.
There were many noises in the chasm, but also an underlying echo, so any trace of human life would be exacerbated by it. Yet no matter how much she tried, she couldn't hear anyone.
Either they are very good at hiding – which considering they are assassins it's not that farfetched – or they aren't here. Yet. She was making a lot of suppositions, but she couldn't know if what had pushed her had been an assassin, so she chose to be better safe than sorry.
It would have been easy to start walking away after the first few minutes, but she didn't. For better or worse, nobody would find her in this hole, so she had all the time in the world. She just had to wait.
And wait she did.
It took half an hour before she noticed something. It was a swoop of air, but then it was accompanied by low and steady breathing.
Above me, she realized.
Aloe maintained her eyes closed, acuity would most likely let her see in this dim environment, but for now her hearing was enough. She kept her grasp of her inner flow of vitality at hand in case she would need to switch to toughness at any moment.
The practically-confirmed assassin stood on top of her perched on some part of the many ridges of the chasm's walls for a long time. Or that was what it felt to Aloe.
They are cautious, she uttered in her own thoughts, but it was more of a curse than a statement. That's bad. The previous assassins had died because they were either careless or too emotional, but this one kept themselves at range and observed her supposed corpse calmly. Aloe did her best to hold her breath, but as she was donning a stance that wasn't regeneration, that meant she would need more breath than usual.
Yet as the assassin didn't make any moves, she guessed it was fine.
It took the lurking figure another half an hour before making another movement.
The air shifted again next to her, and as the assassin knelt down to personally inspect her, Aloe bolted into action with the help of the potency internal infusion.
She kicked the figure in the shin with all her might, and as she shifted her body for another strike, the assassin disappeared into an explosion of shadows.
"I knew you were still alive." The whispers came from everywhere.
"Then that highlights how much of a dimwit you are if you fell for it." Aloe retorted back, but in reality, she was confused to not find pain in their voice. That kick should have shattered their leg.
As much as she wanted to curse at the assassin, she needed the time to change her stance. Instead of the speed stance that she had used to… stop the other assassins, Aloe donned the sense stance. Not only haste was useless here, but acuity would allow her to know where the assassin was before they attacked her.
It took a few seconds which she spent full of anxiety as she was defenseless without toughness, but soon the darkness vanished to her eyes. It was still dark, but her enhanced eyes absorbed more of the scamp light there was around.
She was unaware of what arcane techniques the assassin had, so it was more than possible that they could see her, but at the same time, so could she.
Enhanced sight and hearing, sevice of a normal person, were able of many things in tandem. She acted as if she had no idea where the assassin was by swaying her head around frenetically, but she had seen their position since the very start on a ledge atop her.
"Come out!" She expressed with feigned nervousness.
The assassin didn't respond, not that she expected them to.
Aloe tried to think how to get to them, but truth was, she didn't have many alternatives. As powerful as the Blossomflame was, its range was severely lacking, and she wasn't sure if she could command it to attack in a general direction.
Her only real way to get to the assassin was either jumping or climbing, but the latter was too slow and the former… she had enough jumping for a day. Her best bet was to wait for the assassin to come to her and let the Blossomflame do the job.
"Hey!" She shouted again to signalize growing stress.
Whether she wanted it or not, she was in control of the situation. Her face-offs with the assassins had shown her that whilst they were slippery bastards, they couldn't hurt her. A normal person would have no chance, but with toughness she could hold her ground, let alone taking the Blossomflame into account.
For some reason, perhaps as an involuntary reflex, the assassin turned into shadows and vanished again. But as Aloe noticed that there wasn't any puff of wind near her, she kept acuity on. It took her a handful of seconds to find their new position.
This time, they were higher up. Nince-damned hells! She cursed in her mind, but the movement did give her an idea. If they keep shifting around, then maybe one of these times they will be under me…Going up was difficult, but down? Not so much.
What followed was the utmost boring game of tag of all time, where Aloe would shout from time to time alongside throwing pebbles at random to get the assassin to move.
Not everything was futile as she became aware that the assassin's eyesight was affected by the darkness of the chasm unlike her after throwing multiple rocks and somewhat close to them and they failed to notice them until they were very close.
Blind yet lethal. Bird-sighted yet useless. As dull as the situation was, the cultivator knew she couldn't let her guard down. One of the assassins had already shown they had throwing knives, so a well-positioned throw without enough time to switch to toughness could spell her end.
But from dullness and repetition, she was clued in a greater factor that the assassin's blindness.
Their movement.
The puff of shadows she had seen this and all the other assassins do were a mystery to her, but thanks to the reiterated jumps of her stalker she had found out that it was based on vision. The assassin had only turned into shadows once they were looking at the spot where they would materialize at.
This key detail was now the foundation of her plan.
One strike. One strike was all she needed to put an end to this fight.
Another half an hour passed by.
Aloe was getting tired of just standing up and tried to climb up. This was of course a rouse, but the failed attempts as she hit the ground with her butt were very much real. The light was slowly dimming, it was afternoon now, if not later. She was also growing hungry, but so was the assassin. The temptation to switch to recovery was real if just to last longer, but she held acuity up.
She started throwing rocks nonstop above her to encourage the assassin to move downwards. Not the most glamorous fight, if it could even be called a fight, but whatever led to her survival.
Then it happened.
The assassin moved on a lower ledge than her.
"Come out!" She shouted like all the previous times, still throwing rocks upwards. But now, those throws had a new intention behind them.
To muffle her steps as she crept to the ledge.
The cultivator visualized the position of the assassin and the distance between her and them. Aloe touched her inner flow of vitality and switched it to a boisterous one instead of the sleek one of acuity. Her body was reinforced with potency a moment later.
"Where are you?" Her scream hid her jump.
The assassin didn't see her jump coming. Nor did they see anymore. Aloe wasn't heavy but dropping a few meters on someone's head did stun them for at least a heartbeat, enough time for her to block their eyes.
"Burn!" She ordered zealously to the Blossomflame, and the evolved plant replied in kind with a colorful conflagration.
Screams filled her ears as the assassin writhed in pain, but no matter how hard they struggled, Aloe was stronger. She doubted that even an imperial soldier could go against someone of her strength, even if it was sevice the strength of a weakened petite woman instead of an adult man.
They thrashed around brutally, enough so to tear her clothes and draw blood, but Aloe didn't care. She wouldn't die from these wounds; the pain didn't matter if she was able to keep a lock on the assassin and their eyes until they stopped moving. Forever.
"Hahaha…" The assassin busted laughing out of nowhere. Flames poured into their mouth, but the assassin didn't seem to her. "Now I see how you killed the others and Jafar."
At the mention of her first kill, Aloe faltered. That was the only murder she didn't want to get reminded of. But she held strong.
"You truly are a monster beyond human comprehension." The words hurt her heart, but she continued fighting – not only against the assassin but also herself – to keep her grip on. "But no matter how much you struggle, how much you run, there will be no respite waiting for you. No good ending."
Against her better interests, Aloe asked him. "What are you talking about?"
"You are a fool, Aloe Ayad," the assassin started and only now noticed it was a man. She blamed her slow realization on her exhaustion and dulled senses from the strength stance. "You intend to run to Loyata, but you forget Kyra's and Aaliyah's purge. Most of the assassins in Khaffat aren't in Ydaz, but Loyata!"
The words infused fear into her heart, but she remained steadfast.
"There will be no salvation for you in Loyata! Mark my words! In less than a day, you will already be captured!"
More assassins? The thought paralyzed her. No more, please…
She opened her mouth to refute, and that was when the man took his chance and threw her to the side, the exact moment her will faltered enough for him to shove her away. But even then, Aloe's grip was lodged in the assassin's skull by now. She maintained her hand on top of his eyes, even if she had been removed from on top of him.
Then, as the assassin tried to stand up, she felt it again. The exact same feeling when she confronted that old assassin in the nameless town. A viciousness inside of her, bolstered by the fire of the potency internal infusion. The fear of death, but something else, more twisted. She couldn't let the assassin escape.
Subconsciously, Aloe reached for the knife in her satchel.
She took a look at the blade as the assassin fought against her grip, and in a very conscious act, Aloe plunged the knife into his throat.
One strike wasn't enough. She had never wielded a blade, and no matter how strong she was, skill mattered more than brute force with such weapons.
So she stabbed again.
And again.
And again.
And again. And again. And again.
And-again-and-again-and-again-and-again-and-again…
Her viciousness only ended when the fire of the Blossomflame embraced her. Not the blood, not the lack of movement, not the tiredness of her arm, but the itching of her palm.
Aloe opened her fist – the knife clattering to the ground – to find her nails deeply embedded into her flesh. She removed her fingers and blood started pouring from her pink flesh, only for the wounds to be promptly closed by the arcane flames of the evolved flower.
"Ha, ha, ha…" Aloe slowly chuckled as she saw the body before her.
There was no excuse here. It hadn't been the Blossomflame that had extinguished the man's life.
No.
It had been her.
She had murdered the man.
Vitality, blood, and breath coursed through her body as she inhaled. The rage and the viciousness were still there, but somehow, she felt clearheaded like never before.
Aloe laughed, cried, and screamed. She killed another person, and she didn't feel bad about it.
And that scared her.
She was scared of herself.
Comments
Zachary Patterson
Thank you for the chapter!
The3rd
Infinite cookies are here 🍪♾️
