Before he moved any further, I shouted, "You need to convince me to go to Malanthe!" I stepped back, pointing my sword at him. "You can't kill me."
"We have never killed one Phoenix Auxiliary," Augite said, frowning. "You think we're just slaughterers? When I was about to convince them into giving their powers to Malanthe, they would always kill themselves. Added to all the shit ash around here. If you're not going to cooperate, I'm afraid I have to find a way for you to."
"Force me?" I asked. "How? You need me to go willingly."
He bared his teeth. "Your Phluid is not invincible to pressure. That's the beauty of humans. They are resilient, but they are vulnerable in their core."
A moment passed between Augite and I, and I knew he was going to strike me before he even did. With one fast movement, he picked himself off the floor and swiped a hand, automatically calling a sword in his hand. Another movement and he was on me, pinning me to the ground.
My shoulder blades slammed on the cracked tiles and I felt a tile scrape the fabric of my shirt and my bare shoulders. The breath was knocked out of me as he pushed his hands against my ribs. I yelled. He grunted, bulging his eyes out in front of me. I breathed and coughed, making some kind of sound of desperation to relieve the tightness of air away.
Out of nowhere, a hound emerged, the size of a truck. It came out from behind one of the columns, snarling as it did so. I would have flinched if it hadn't been for Augite preventing me to.
The wolf-like creature pawed across the hallway and now that it was closer, I could tell that it was made of shadows and trailing wisps of black smoke. Its red eyes were beacons, glowing like light bulbs in the dark room. The teeth were transparent but the black outline indicated that it was still lethal all the same. Augite's symbol was his teeth.
I couldn't watch the hound anymore when Augite hissed sharply and pulled back, swinging his sword behind him and rolling his red uniform's sleeves to his elbows. Thick veins bulged underneath his arms as he tightened his fists around his swords. I craned my neck and felt the weight on my ribs alleviate. I heaved a huge breath, kneeling on the floor and watching Nix tear Augite's sword away from him. Always Nix had to save me or else I would have been dead a long time ago.
I heaved with a breath and propped my hands out in front of me for help. I cried out in alarm at the amount of pressure he had pushed onto my lungs. I was trying to get used to the pain of fighting but I didn't think I was fast enough or strong enough to resist it.
The hound was about to race to Augite's aid when Logan and Veronica intercepted. As Veronica shot an arrow, Logan stayed behind, but just as she was moving her hand back to ready another arrow, Logan would come forward, fast, to strike at the hound.
But no matter how many times Logan struck, the sword would pass right through its transparent fur. Arrows plunged past its intangible fur.
Augite whipped his sword at Nix, rebounded back and watched Nix fall back with a sneer. He turned his attention on Logan and Veronica's animals and pinned each of them on one of the columns with stray swords all littered under the tiles. He was so fast that I couldn't do anything to stop him from pinning the animals useless. All our animals were immovable and freeing them would be impossible with Augite and his hound guarding our every movement.
I didn't know where Ace was but I needed to move before Augite moved first. I quickly hoisted myself from my slouch and ran to trip the man off his feet. I remembered that much from Aaron's training but my movements were too slow to his quick gaze and he knew exactly what I was doing, counter-attacking by lifting his feet up and kicking me in the neck.
"Ah!" He screamed. "Did they really send you all to represent the Phoenix Auxiliary? The others previously were legendary compared to you."
I clutched my neck. It was bruised and painful to the touch. I straightened my back and faced the man but even that small movement caused bursts of numbness all around the tender parts of my neck. No one had done anything to severely hurt him, but his lips still bled, dripping slowly to his chin. Probably from biting at his own lips.
While holding on to my neck, I lost balance and fell back while he turned to strike again. I yelled, covering my face from the blow. My legs were shaking from just looking at his sword. I scrambled backwards, dodging a lazy strike.
"You've barely even unlocked your powers," he yelled.
He swung his sword and for display, he sliced through his own finger, severing it away from his hand. He didn't wince. Didn't blink. The finger slid to the tile floor, blood squirting from the wound.
His hellhound stopped abruptly and turned to its owner. Its eyes slowly went to the finger on the floor. It howled and bounded forward. As it did, tendrils of shadows followed it but when the hound stopped in front of Augite, the shadows continued to move, surrounding the finger on the floor. The shadows kept swirling then dissipated. I thought the finger on the floor would be gone but it was still there, the blood almost already drying up.
But Augite's finger was anew as if he never sliced it before. He moved it freely, cracking his fingers for emphasis. Every single word dried up in my throat. I knew it was not just the hound's power that allowed him to do that. Their Phluid contributed to it as well. A very strong Phluid.
"Can we spare any more blood between us?" Augite teased.
I forgot about his words, seeing crumbs of broken tiles that were piled into a small heap of rubbish near my feet and near the cut-off finger. He needed to get hurt not by weapon but by something else. It was the oldest trick, but I had no more ideas. He had fighting experience that I would never dream of beating.
I held my sword in one hand and hastily picked up a handful of crumbs. I feigned a strike with my sword, but he had already seen my feint and got ready to strike. As he sliced his sword across my forehead, I released the crumbs at his face.
It was perfect. He backed out, screaming and falling down. Dust grimed around his eyes, creating a small almond shape. When he started to rub the dust with his hands, his face turned puffy and the crumbs scratched against his fair skin, leaving lines of blood. His hands broke away from his face and revealed bloodshot eyes and water pouring down from them.
I almost laughed. It was this easy to kill someone. The relish of true victory was intoxicating, filling me up with more confidence and an unfamiliar feeling, lust for more.
But it soon died down and instead of cutting him, I swiveled the sword to hit him in the stomach with the hilt. My heart pumped faster. This was it. However, his symbol came up just in time. He caught the handle of the sword with his teeth, grinding it until I pulled the sword out.
His teeth snapped for the sword again but I had already brought it back far away from his face. He smiled and massaged his jaw with his fingers. I had the advantage, I realized as I heaved with lack of breath. Nevertheless, I could not follow up with it and I was essentially back to square one. Blood trickled down to my eyes from the cut on my forehead.
Death. I was going to die. Augite was too powerful and he would eventually find a way to convince me to give up. I didn't even make it to Searill and already I felt like a failure. I clutched my sword firmly. What would happen if I said the words: I concede. I give up. I will-
Ace skidded behind me, conjuring two fire blasts. The fire would have stopped just as it made contact with Augite's skin, but the magic fire produced from Ace's staff engulfed the dust covering his eyes and began to lick the surface of his skin, relentless and wild. The fire deepened, covering his whole head and then spreading out to his whole body.
Augite made no sound, only collapsed and lost consciousness. The fire ceased as soon as he hit the floor. Where there were expected burn marks and raw flesh, he looked perfectly fine, as if the fire had only knocked him out. The only injuries he had were the bruises and the cut lip he made himself.
I closed my eyes and clutched my head from dizziness. The hideous vision of his body igniting replayed in my head. I gagged, spitting out saliva. I fell down and hit my head on the cold stone floor. It felt relaxing for a few seconds before I saw blood on my hands from Augite's sword. The world felt like it was spinning before me.
Then, Ace was at my side, crouched, his voice stern but considerate, "Iridian."
"I need to rest," I said, covering my mouth from throwing up.
His Garvyn was by his side, pecking at my arm sheepishly. Ace scolded, "No time to rest."
I shook my head. He continued, "No one's going to wait for you to recover."
"Then," I said in between breaths. "Can...you...wait? For me?"
"I'm not going to cover your sorry ass."
"I...shouldn't...have...asked," I mustered.
Then, I pushed myself from the tiles and lumbered to a standing position, wiping carelessly at the dust on my clothes and purposely covering the scar on my forehead. After gazing at one spot for about thirty seconds more, I almost felt delirious, but then the spinning sensation stopped and I could finally think of cohesive sentences.
"Weren't we supposed to kill Augite? We can't go to Delensaysia if we don't."
Ace rushed on before I could say more, "There's another option, maybe we can-"
His voice was drained by the shriek of the hound. I turned my head backward to see Veronica knocked back by the hound's paw. Logan was too concentrated on Veronica to notice anything around him. His bottom lip curled behind his front row of teeth in frustration and his nails gripped on Veronica's collar of her shirt, turning his knuckles white.
Nix and Ember had somehow peeled themselves away from Augite's weapons and both intercepted the hound before it could get any closer to Veronica and Logan.
The hound snapped fiercely and bounded past the two birds, colliding with Veronica and Logan and separating them apart. Its teeth gnashed so close to Logan that it was able to rip off one of the cufflinks. As an unconscious decision, Logan jerked back his arm, letting the cufflinks tear off with the hound.
Logan's eyes bulged as if slapped. There was a stumble of legs but then he righted himself up. Veronica shot a perfect arc of her arrows right at the hound's eyes, but they went through and clanked on the marble tiles on the other side. Saliva expectorated from its mouth in all directions. And along with saliva, Logan's cufflink.
There was a short series of bursts of Logan's feet as he raced toward the hound. He swiped his sword up toward the core of the hound's stomach but the smoke whistled past the surface of the metal and rebounded back to form the hound's body again.
The hound lengthened its smoky claws and attempted to rake Logan, but Logan slipped past and moved back to attack again. After a few attempts, Logan should have figured out by now that his sword and Veronica's weapons had no chance against it, but still Logan forced himself to fight.
And because of that, he made his first mistake. He surged to plunge his sword in the hound's paw but the hound had anticipated it and pushed it up to knock Logan away. Logan's eyes registered it but his body would not comply.
But, Veronica was there, shoving Logan to safety. My eyes traveled up and saw Zoey flying back and forth across the hound's vision to block its attention on the battlefield below. Ember backed up Veronica in protecting Logan.
The ground felt like it was still tilting, but I clutched my sword in my hand and managed to make my way to the hound without falling over.
"I'm going to risk it," I whispered to myself.
Ace paused from twirling his staff. "What was that?"
"Pray for me."
He seemed to get what I was saying. "If you die, it's not my fault. It's not my job to watch over you."
I ran and grabbed a bunch of crumbs in my hands, while sifting the excess off with my thumbs. A wave of nausea swept past me as I threw the dust at the hound. If it had worked with Augite, it should work with his animal as well.
Just as expected, the dust stuck onto the incorporeal body. The creature bared its teeth and tried to shake off the dust just like how a domestic dog would do, but the dust stuck on. I continued to throw until something flashed underneath. A red beating heart. Fragile and vulnerable under the mess of dust and smoke. There were no muscles, no bones to cover the delicate organ.
Veronica aimed with her arrow while Logan huffed under his breath and advanced in comfort toward the beast. Just as Logan sliced at the heart, Veronica's arrow rang true at the apex of the heart.
Through my dazed eyes, I saw ash and steam rise from the hound. It was dissolving, fast. In a few more seconds, the hound was completely gone as if just a figment of imagination. The only thing left of it was its heart, now gray and unmoving on the ground.
I was still staring at the heart until Veronica reeled me back to reality with her question, "Where did Augite go?"
My head turned toward the rest of the group and then to the ground where Ace and I had left Augite. There was no sign of his body.
Ace's voice echoed boldly across the room as he walked from behind a pillar, "He ran off."
"Then I have to track him down again," I said, my heart sinking ever so slightly. "We can't leave this place without him."
"He's gone," Ace interrupted before I could move. "You can proceed to Delensaysia."
Veronica's nose scrunched in denial. "I would be happy if we could just leave it like that, but I'm sure we would have had to sever his tie to this place with his Phluid."
"I took care of it," Ace retorted back immediately.
"That easily?" I asked. "He didn't need to die or anything like that?"
Ace huffed, rolling his eyes. "Death doesn't always solve everything. Stop asking me questions and leave it like that."
Logan walked up, the heel of his shoes clicking steadily on the tile floor. "It's because you're expecting us to believe we went through all of this only for you to say you've sorted it out by yourself."
"Maybe he knows we're not going to Volvanic Acropolis to give up your powers," Veronica mentioned. "He was only used as a test for us. See what our intentions were."
"Great," Ace said, clapping his hands. "Thank you, Veronica. Now was that so hard?"
He called out to his Garvyn and exited the citadel with large steps. I caught Logan and Veronica casting a wary glance at one another, but was quickly scolded by Ace who called out, "Instead of looking at each other like sore shits, let's go."
My legs were still shaking from the recent battle and my hand throbbed with pain from carrying my sword for so long. I hurriedly sheathed back my sword with a swipe of a hand and felt another strain on my wrist. My only focus was getting out of this citadel without collapsing.
I didn't even realize that I had stepped out of the citadel when I felt my lungs desire fresh air again, but there was no reward for me once Daer Necropis welcomed me again. My hair didn't flow across my face as it usually did and everything was quiet with not even a whistle of air.
And so we kept on walking.