novelODS Chapter 426: Fight!
Chapter 426: Fight!
Bruce decided it was time.
He had awakened his soul talent perhaps an hour ago. He had read the imprint, felt the power bloom, named the thing privately. But he had not yet used it. He had not yet held it in his hands and made it do something.
There would be no better moment than this one.
"Let’s go," he said.
He and Kael rushed forward together.
As he ran, Bruce reached inward, and here his old life served him. He had spent decades in the physical realm learning to manipulate mana, to draw it, shape it, condense it, push it out through his body in the exact form he wanted. Soul energy was not mana. It moved differently, felt different, answered to different rules.
But the motion of controlling it, the inner gesture of taking a formless power and giving it a shape, that was the same. His instincts knew this work even if the material was new.
He drew the soul energy up out of his core and pushed it out through his hand.
It came out as something he had not expected.
A dark substance. Thick, glistening, fluid, it pooled and gathered in the air in front of his palm like ink, black and wet, holding its own shape against nothing.
Bruce looked at it for half a heartbeat, and somewhere underneath his surface thoughts, the meaning of his talent told him what to do with it.
This was his first time. But he already had an idea of how it worked. It was indeed surprising to see it like this, this soul realm sure was interesting... His stay here was going to be really fun... He had to get strong and fast, the faster he strengthens his soul the better...
’Bullets,’ he thought.
The ink-like energy responded to his will. It pulled together, dividing itself, condensing, and where there had been a single shapeless pool, there were now a dozen small dense spheres, hanging in the air, gleaming black and ready.
Bruce flicked his hand forward.
The bullets shot.
They tore across the grey expanse at a speed that surprised even him, a dozen black streaks closing the gap to the chasing hollows in an instant. They struck the front of the cloud.
The hollows that took a hit reacted in two different ways. The stronger ones, the ones whose forms were still mostly whole, staggered, lurched, kept moving.
But the weaker ones, the hollows whose souls were already laced with cracks and barely holding together, simply came apart. The bullets passed through them and they shattered, bursting into loose pale soul-energy mist that drifted away into the grey.
Beside Bruce, Kael punched the air.
Thick energy gathered at his fist as he moved, a dense, hot mass, and when his arm extended, two balls of flame leapt off his knuckles and flew at the horde.
They hit, and there were two small sharp explosions, bright orange in the grey, and the hollows caught in the blasts were thrown back and scattered.
"Not bad, Writer," Kael called, already drawing back for another punch. "Ink huh...not bad..."
Bruce did not answer. He was already shaping the next volley.
They settled into a rhythm.
Bruce found that his ink did not need to be reloaded the way a weapon was reloaded, he simply drew more soul energy, pushed it out, and let the meaning of his talent give it form. Bullets, again.
Then, when a knot of hollows clustered too close together for bullets to be efficient, he tried something else.
He spread his fingers and thought a shape, and the ink poured out into a wide black sheet, a wall of the stuff, and he swept it sideways through the cluster like a blade. Hollows fell apart along the edge of it.
It was working. More than working. The talent answered his intent almost before he finished forming it, the way a hand answers a thought. It’s crazy but that’s just how it is..
Kael, beside him, fought differently. Where Bruce’s ink was precise and quiet, Kael’s flame was loud and broad. He threw fireballs in long arcs at the back of the horde, then, when hollows pressed in close, let the flame wrap his fists and arms so that every punch he threw landed with a burst of heat. He was grinning the entire time. He was, enjoying this, enjoying every minute of this...
Ahead of them, the young man with the scythe was still running, still screaming, and the gap between him and the hollows, which had been closing, stopped closing.
That was the goal. Every bullet, every fireball, every sweep of ink chewed into the front of the chasing cloud and slowed it down, and slowing it down was the same as protecting the runner. The hollows that fell to Bruce and Kael were hollows that did not catch the young man. They were buying him distance with every strike.
Bruce drew more energy, shaped more bullets, fired. The volley tore another hole in the horde. He shaped a sheet, swept it, scattered another knot. He was learning his talent in real time, in real danger, and he could feel himself getting faster, the gap between intent and result narrowing with each thing he tried.
He shaped the ink into something new. Not a bullet, not a sheet. A long thin spike, hardened, and he hurled it like a javelin. It punched clean through three hollows in a line before it lost its shape.
"Tch," Kael said, watching that. "Show-off."
He cupped both hands and a fireball the size of a head formed between them. He flung it overhand into the densest part of the cloud, and the explosion knocked a dozen hollows flat.
The young man with the scythe was getting closer to them now, the chase had bent his path toward Bruce and Kael, exactly as Bruce had predicted it would. The runner was glancing back over his shoulder as he sprinted, and the panic on his face had not eased even though the horde behind him had stopped gaining.
When the young man got within shouting range, Kael started asking questions. He did it without slowing his fists for even a moment, flame, punch, flame, question.
"Are you a harvester?" Kael called out.
"No," the young man shouted back. He twisted his head around mid-stride to look at them, then snapped his eyes forward again. "Please, please keep killing them, they’ve almost caught up, they just keep coming at me."
Bruce shaped another volley and fired it past the young man’s shoulder, into the front rank of the horde. Hollows shattered. The runner flinched as the bullets streaked by him but did not break pace.
"You’re not a harvester," Kael said. He threw another fireball. "Then what’s with the scythe?"
He had known the answer already, more or less. Bruce could tell. The young man did not have the cold grey aura the older woman had described, did not have the bearing of the carriage-riders. Kael had clearly decided long before he asked that this was no harvester. But he asked anyway, Kael, Bruce was learning, liked to ask things even when he had already guessed, just to hear them confirmed out loud.
"This?" The young man hefted the scythe slightly as he ran. "I awakened it. Not long after I found myself in this place. It’s my talent, my soul talent, I think. I used it to kill some of them for a while. But they just keep coming. No matter how many I cut down, more of them get up and chase me."
Kael frowned at that.
It was a real frown, not a performance. Bruce noticed it and added it to the list of things he was filing away. No matter how many I cut down, more get up. Something about that bothered Kael, and Bruce had learned, in this short hour, that when something bothered Kael it was worth paying attention to.
There was no time to ask. The young man covered the last stretch of ground and reached them, stumbling, gasping, scythe still clutched in white-knuckled hands, and the cloud of hollows came with him, spreading out, beginning to curl around the three of them on every side.
They were about to be surrounded.
"Formation," Bruce said sharply. "Backs together. Now."
The young man was too frightened to argue. Kael was already moving. The three of them pulled in close and set themselves into a tight triangle, each man facing outward, each man’s back covered by the other two. The hollows closed the ring. Within seconds the three of them stood in the center of a slowly tightening circle of dim glowing dead things, and the warbling shrieks rose up all around them, layered, awful.
"Good thinking, Bruce," Kael said over his shoulder. Flame bloomed along his arms. "I’ll take this third. You take yours. Scythe, try not to die in the first minute."
"I’ll try," the young man snapped back, and swung.