Discordant Note | TBATE

Chapter 128: Putrid

Toren Daen

I spun on my feet, my heartbeat flaring in my chest. Suddenly, the looming dread from facing the final resting place of an asura was inconsequential. Mardeth's mana signature surged with malice barely a hundred feet away.

Fire and telekinetic force bloomed under my feet, the flare of orange light fighting the unnatural darkness. An explosion of sound, one I didn't care to mute, accompanied me blurring toward the terrifying blankness of Sevren's mana signature.

I didn't remember drawing Oath from its sheath. My heart thundered in my chest, the pulse of my own heartfire threatening to escape my ribcage.

The first thing I saw was a whirling cage of glowing green liquid churning around the basilisk blood crystal and blithe depository. A familiar putrid mana rippled in a domelike shape, shielding the inside from any harm.

But the second thing I saw...

Mardeth floated in the air, his head tilted and a vicious grin on his face. He held Sevren's body aloft by his right arm, putrid green decay spreading across his grip. Green sludge ate through different parts of the limp Denoir heir's body, worming their way deeper.

I couldn't sense his mana signature.

"Ah, little mage," Mardeth purred, turning midair to look at me. I barely noticed that the vicar's onyx horns, which once thrust nearly a foot from his head, had been severed near the base, leaving two neat black stumps. Sevren's head lolled, his white hair seeming a mute silver in the darkness. "I was wondering when you'd make your way to me."

The words went in one ear and out the other. I froze as memories flashed in my mind. Of a nameless unadorned melting under the onslaught of the acidbeam hornet's wave. Of a man speared through the gut, his stomach evaporating before I could save him.

An old, dark memory replayed as I stared at the hand Mardeth used to hold Sevren's own wrist. Kaelan Joan's dagger descended toward Norgan's sternum in terrifyingly slow motion. I remembered the steel drawing my brother's life's blood like a grim harvest.

The hand holding Oath shook. The vicar above noticed. "Oh, this one is your friend, isn't he?" the vicar said, shaking Sevren's body like a doll. Green lines slowly crept past the Denoir heir's elbow, tracing their way along his veins. "You remember what I promised you, didn't I?" he hissed with contained glee. "If you tried to stop me before I was ready, those you cared for would face the consequences."

The vicar raised a disjointed, spindly hand, shifting his gnarled digits into the shape of a knife. As he did so, I could almost see his fingers become sharp stilettos. Kaelan Joan's broken dagger seemed to overlap Mardeth's hand, poised to reap the blood of another brother.

I pushed myself out of my frozen terror, feeling anger swell through my worry. Aurora's mind burned away my remaining indecision. I needed to save Sevren. I'd pulled him into this, and he was going to die.

"I'm sorry, Sevren," I whispered shakily, preparing to try anything to save the young man.

Something dark blurred past me with the force of a typhoon. I stumbled as the wind disrupted my stance lightly.

Mawar rocketed toward the Vicar of Plague, her pale skin shifting to that of midnight black. She seemed to absorb the darkness of the room into herself as eddies of void wind carried her toward Mardeth. Her normally scarlet eyes bled to deep yellow, but the rage in them overwhelmed anything else. Her change in form amped her mana even further.

"Mardeth!" she yelled, "I've come for what was promised!"

No, I thought, engaging my Acquire Phase. I felt my heartbeat slow slightly as the familiar warmth seeped from my core, but it immediately sped up once more as Mawar charged the vicar, uncaring of the hostage in his hands.