Book 2: Chapter 47: Failure

  The pain was what woke him first. A familiar, full-bodied throb that didn’t seem to have a source so much as a general ambition to make existence hurt.

  Then came light. A white canvas into view above him. Whispered voices met his ears, and he vaguely recognized them as his friends. Which meant either he was out of danger, or everyone else was dead and now he was in the afterlife alongside them.

  The smell of antiseptic herbs and a subtle medicinal funk hit his nose like smack to the face. He crinkled his face in disgust and coughed weakly.

  “Medic tent,” he croaked, blinking.

  “Correct,” came Cole’s steady voice nearby. “Very astute of you.”

  Allie leaned over him with an exhausted frown. “He’s back. Damn it, I owe Zach ten gold.”

  “...What happened?”

  “You happened,” Allie muttered, her fingers brushing over the last of his bruised ribs with practiced efficiency. “Collapsed like a heroic idiot and nearly bled out like one too.”

  Cole sat beside her, wrapping a cloth around some tools, tucking them into a backpack. “You were out cold when Holly reached you.” He explained.

  “Right before you hit the rocks,” Allie continued. “Good thing she found some kind of item next to you on the ground and used it.”

  Alex blinked again. “That’s the Ashen Phoenix Feather, I managed to pull it out then?”

  “Was.” Cole lifted a now-empty golden feather shaft, just the stem of the item remained, the iridescent edges crumbling. “It lit up like a flare when she used it. Burned straight into your chest. Did a clean sweep, bones, muscles, internal tears, everything. The works.”

  “Everything?” Alex shifted and winced. “No leftover organ damage? Hidden ruptures? Lingering curses?”

  “Just a mild scrapes and bruises,” Allie deadpanned. “And a god complex, but that was pre-existing.”

  He smirked. Then immediately wished he hadn’t. While the feather might have healed his physical body, it was still exhausted. The energy he expended in the fight had left his muscles and tissues starving for any source of aether. He still could barely move his head or limbs. But, he could feel his legs again, meaning his spine was no longer kindling.

  “I told you that item would be worth it, didn’t I tell you? I was right! I’m always right.” Obby’s large single eye slid down into his blurry vision.

  You said it would fix me up all the way through Adept Tier. How the hell does the way I’m feeling prove you were right? Still even had some cuts apparently.

  “Well, you did have some extensive damage. And I might have underestimated the amount of energy your body ate up thanks to your aether attuned tissue. Not to mention, that Wyrm-heart thing gobbled up a lot of the item’s energy as well.”

  Well, it earned it, damned dragon organ saved my life once again.

  “Probably did. You got you ass whooped out there.” Obby floated a bit above him, spinning lazily as he ‘talked’.

  Thanks for the confidence in me, as always.

  “Alright,” he said quietly, glancing at the flap of the tent. “Anyone around?”

  “Just us,” Cole replied, catching the shift in his tone.

  Alex nodded. “Good.”

  He let his head fall back to the pillow, eyes closed. He looked like he just let himself pass out again, but inwardly, his focus dropped like a stone into the depths of his soulspace.

  The inside of his soul realm glowed faintly, residue from what he now understood wasn’t just survival instinct, but the Wyrm-heart’s intervention. His constitution had acted without conscious command, just like it had before. However it decided the criteria for making itself known, it looked like his fight with the Aeralith Prince fit the bill. He still wished he could understand more about the strange Draconic ability tied to it, maybe he could find a way to activate it manually in the future.

  But that wasn’t what he cared about right now.

  Inside the echoing calm of the soulspace, Obby’s presence shimmered beside him. “You want a breakdown?”

  “Yes.”

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  “Even when you can’t stand up straight, and energy exhausted to the point you might still die?”

  “Especially then.”

  The space in front of him warped, illusions shifting until the recreation of the cliffside swallowed his vision. The scene replayed in silence between them. A mental projection of Alex’s battle down to every last detail his senses had managed to take in.

  The Prince’s sword arcs, the way his footwork shifted with the wind, the aether loops around his palm during spellcasting, like hooked cursive, elegant but lethal. It was all there for him to go back an relive, like some sort of masochistic 3D movie.

  “That third step, his inside draw,” Alex muttered as he stepped up to the projection, pausing it to point out a detail he noticed. “It’s not just a flashy flourish of some kind, he’s feeding aether into the ambient air, making his movements faster by removing any sort of wind resistance.”

  “Correct. And his shadow aether isn’t just concealing him, the energy is lingering in the space, connected to him so he can draw on it and activate his illusions later. It makes his casting incredibly fast as long as he prepared correctly.”

  “How the hell do we counter that?”

  “Stop being so readable? Change your rhythm, or create false openings. Get good?”

  Alex exhaled through his nose, and waved his hand to rewind the projection back to the beginning. He watched it all multiple times, making mental notes of anything that looked like a mistake. Pointing out nuances in his casting style, and speculating on how is manages the intent and will behind the spells.

  All of it was preparation, training. He had no delusions that this would be his only run-in with The Soaring Heir. The prince and he would face off with each other again some time in the future, and next time, he wouldn't walk away.

  A shuffle outside the soulspace dragged his attention back. To the real world. He lifted his head in time to see Garret peek into the tent, followed closely by Peter.

  “You look like shit,” Garret said brightly. “So, y’know… normal.”

  Peter shot him a look, then turned to Alex. “Field's quiet. Aeralith’s pulled back for now. And… there’s talk.”

  Alex didn’t like Peter’s tone. “Talk?” he asked.

  “Rumors,” Garret offered. “You’re battle with the Prince. Many saw some of it from the lower cliffs. A few squads on both sides caught part of your duel.”

  Alex closed his eyes. “Of course they did.”

  Peter crossed his arms. “Some are saying… he let you live. That you’re claimed. Marked.”

  Garret nodded and lifted his hand, holding up three fingers. “Three versions floating around: ‘He let him live,’ ‘He’s marked by the Soaring Prince,’ and, my personal favorite, ‘Death walks beside the Demon of Terraxum.’ Very poetic.”

  Alex stared at the tent ceiling again. “Wonderful,” he muttered.

  “Not all bad,” Cole added. “Morale’s sky-high on our side. A few battalions are already calling you ‘Unkillable’. Think you’ve earned some fear points.”

  “Great,” he muttered. “The man who gets half-murdered and then maybe claimed by a royal sadist gets a nickname. Lovely.”

  Allie leaned over again, poking him gently on the forehead. “You’re lucky you’re cute when you’re half-dead.”

  Cole snorted and shrugged when Alex gave him questioning look. “She’s not wrong.”

  “Whoa,” Garret raised his voice in a mocking tone, “don’t let Holly be hearing either of you say that now.”

  Alex didn’t respond. He just rolled his eyes and stared at the top of the tent, his body aching, his mind already replaying the duel again. He still thought about every strike, every failure. He lay there, ignoring his friend’s banter and antics until the hours flowed by and they left him to himself. By nightfall, it was just Alex alone with self-loathing, and a murderous sentient rocks.

  “You going to just sit there and pout? You know what will cheer you up? Increasing your wisdom score!”

  Alex just ignored the enchanted pebble, not in the mood for its little antics. There were still questions in his head that danced about, living freely in his mind, and he had no intention of ever charging rent. The tent ceiling didn’t have answers, but Alex stared at it anyway.

  Outside, the camp was restless. He could hear soldiers murmur in their sleep, some drinking too much, trying to chase away the day's horrors with cheap rotgut and dice games. A few wept when they thought no one could hear. The scent of alchemical poultices clung to the air like gunsmoke, cut only by the cold bite of mountain wind through the canvas seams.

  Inside the medic tent, it was quiet.

  He sat alone on his cot, legs dangling, a blanket half-draped across his shoulders as if it had tried, and subsequently failed, to comfort him. His fingers ran along the edge of his notebook where he wrote his musing after reading Sylvaris’ scroll. He wasn’t writing then, it was a habit, a soothing rhythmic motion like he was trying to remember something he hadn’t yet written.

  His thoughts wandered. To Adam, of course, they always did.

  The way his brother always moved just a little faster, picked things up a little quicker. The golden child, the benchmark. Even here, across dimensions, inside a death-world RPG wrapped in a political prison wrapped in a magical war, Alex still felt like he was behind him. The shadow had followed him across worlds.

  He thought of his parents. Of Sunday mornings and coffee that tasted like burnt toast. His dad yelling at the dog for barking at the microwave. His mom’s constant, warm reminders to call more often. They probably thought he was dead.

  And maybe… maybe part of him was.

  Alex glanced to the side. The faint blue glow of his System interface still pulsed in the edge of his vision.

  A ticking countdown to something undefined. Probably death, possibly even worse than that. A fate of being thrust into a system dungeon to be used as re-spawning death fodder for Worldstriders of the future to cut their teeth on? Who knew.

  He didn’t need reminding that his mage core was still shattered, that House Terraxum still owned them, that every so-called ally only helped them because it benefited their faction, or gave them a new weapon to throw into someone else's war. He didn’t need reminding, but his thoughts eventually went to those oh-so-helpful topics as well.

  And then there was the Soaring Heir, Aeralith Prince Irieth. A young, masked monster with aether more potent than fluorosulfuric acid and movements like poetry written in the blood of murder victims. He hadn’t just outmatched Alex, he’d dismantled him. He was outmatched in every way, skill, speed, strength, sheer combat experience. Everything that made a warrior dangerous, he had it in spades. And not just as some prodigy. He was trained, a carefully crafted masterpiece of a killing machine.

  Alex had lost, badly. But…he sat up straighter, slowly.

  "...he's faster. Stronger. Better trained," he whispered into the dark. His fingers curled around the notebook in his hands and, for the first time all day, he opened it, just to close it again. “But he made one mistake.”

  He ran his thumb along the page’s edge and stared forward.

  "He didn’t finish it."