ROD - Chapter 105

Chapter One-Hundred-Five – Thunder – Part Two

Words sometimes fail to describe feelings, especially on shitty days where people just… it doesn’t matter. On those days, I yell at the rain.

-WHA Front Desk Manager Milo-

My pulse is quick, time feels slowed even though it isn’t. There’s no time to think, no time to backpedal. They all know who I am, and they’ve all seen the item that’s allegedly so powerful it helped me slay a god.

There is nothing in the world more valuable in this moment to them, I can feel it in their stares. It’s no longer a hypothetical item to be bargained… its become real to them now. They want the ring for themselves.

“Just relax!” the scarlet dressed woman yells over the gusts of wind. She doesn’t need to yell, the wind isn’t even that loud anymore, “Everyone take a deep breath and relax!”

She holds up her hands and takes a step backward. Clayton is spinning his blades and activating his core class skill, I can feel it stirring the mana in the air.

“Look,” she says, waving the guards to step back, “I understand why you would want to hide your identity, in fact, I respect you more for doing that, but right now, I am not your enemy, the WHA is not…”

Suddenly the air ruptures with an explosion that sends us all flying, a plume of flame crashes through the halls originating from the boardroom. Heat scorches my arm and leg, burning fabric into it. Everywhere hurts as I realize what’s just happened. I need to move, I need to go…

My ears are ringing as I try to stand in the rubble, I’m stumbling through debris… Barlow, Tran… Clayton… shit… shit… shit.

Smoke is everywhere, the power is coming back on and alarms are blaring everywhere creating a dull throb in my head.

“My leg!” I hear Tran yelling.

I rush through the smoke towards his voice, there’s a shard of metal lodged in his leg, it’s deep and I don’t have time to heal him, we need to get the fuck out of here, there might be a secondary explosion. I grab his arm and sling it over my shoulder, adrenaline fueling me as I heft him through what’s left of the hall.

“Barlow!” we yell, then, “Clayton!”

“Fuck me,” Clayton curses, brushing himself off, his arm is bleeding heavily from shrapnel. He doesn’t even skip a beat as he tears off his belt and tourniquets himself, “We need to move,” he says with a grunt as he pulls the belt one notch tighter.

“We need to find Barlow first, he was standing to my…” I stop, looking back in the smoke where I came, he was standing between me and the boardroom, he moved there to block the guards if they came. Which means he must have taken the brunt of the blast and shielded me with his body.

I pass Tran off to Clayton who’s yelling something, but I can’t hear him anymore over the screams.

I lost Barlow once before, I’m not losing him again… please not again.

Images flash through my mind, seeing him and Tran die. Fuck… fuck… fuck…

I see his boots under sheetrock and a metal paneling. I tear it off of him electrocuting myself in the process, but I barely feel the vibrating sting as I heft him from the ground. He’s wet, soaking wet… blood… lots of blood… oh no… no… no… please no…

“Healing…”

My eyes dilate fully and everything slows, I pulse my mana into threads, weaving around his body rapidly, this would have been so much faster with Triage. I spindle and turn like the veins in his body. His blood pressure is very low… too low.

His face is cut to hell, some of his fingers are mangled and he has shards of metal sticking out of his torso. It only takes me a moment in the thick smoke to feel the flow of the blood, it takes me one more moment to realize that I can’t save him, healing is not enough for the extent of damage. He’s bleeding all over, multiple arteries. He’s… he’s going to die… he’s going to fucking die…

“Ulana!”

Nothing. Damnit, I can’t keep enough pressure on the wounds, there’s too many. He’s choking on blood. Fuck.  

“Abyss! Sage! Terra! Someone… please someone…”

No. No, I can… I can call her. My Runic Paladin skill. There’s no choice, I’m not letting him die.

“Sera!”

Time instantly slows to a crawl and this time, I know it really is slowed. She strides slowly through the smoke like a phantom, tilting her head at Barlow then looking at me and smiling. She doesn’t bother speaking in my mind.

“What a predicament you’re in my dear Marauder.”

I can’t talk in the slowed time, she knows that, so she traces around me instead. Her smile fades and she looks me in the eyes, the crimson of hers shimmers with a faint glow. There’s some kind of apprehension in her… I don’t need fucking apprehension. I need goddamn miracles.

“I… I don’t want to be your last choice anymore,” she pauses, biting her lip for a moment without looking me in the eyes, “I don’t want to be the one you call when you have no one else. I want to be your first choice. My actions in the past do not speak that truth and until recently, I couldn’t care less if you failed. Now, I think… I think I want you to win,” she traces around me still, pushing her white hair behind her ear, it’s slightly pointed like Ulana’s. She looks down, “I’m not good at being… good. But my father was a believer that actions speak louder than words. If you…” she sighs, “If you understand that, activate your blessing.”

Time rips into full swing, blood pours past my fingers, there’s no time to think about what the fuck she’s on about.

I channel mana into the runes that I received when I Respec’d into this class.

Clayton and Tran make it to me as the runes activate. My head bows as I place my hands over Barlow.

“Fuck… heal him, save him, Jimmy, what are you waiting for!” Tran yells, pushing Clayton off of him and collapsing to the ground, he desperately tries to stop the flow of blood, but he can’t, it’s pointless, he’s already lost too much, soon his cells will realize they lack oxygen… only magic can save him now.

Blinding light ruptures from my hands, I feel Sera grab my hands and guide them to trace patterns over his skin. She whispers in a tongue that I don’t understand, I feel it on the edge of my mind, grating it, like I was never meant to hear the words.

Blood spills backwards flowing back into the wound like time itself is rewinding. The skin on his face pushes back together and rolls flat… I can feel her magic rushing through the connection… it’s intoxicating, like raw fucking power being injected into my soul.

Barlow’s lungs drag for air as he breathes. He’s unconscious, but he’s alive, he’s going to live. I turn to look at Sera, she isn’t smiling or frowning, she turns and looks through the smoke, then turns back and leans toward me and whispers in my ear.

“I would not linger. Be wary, one of the heroes is not who they seem.”

What the fuck does that even mean? I sling Barlow over my shoulder and follow after Clayton who’s limping with Tran. Fucking hell. We scramble into the stairwell, nearly falling down it. My hands are covered in blood, but I thought Barlow’s blood went back in? Is he still bleeding? Shit.

I hear Sera’s voice in my mind.

And Marauder, you should probably tend to yourself as well. You’re leaking.

Leaking? I look down, my shirt is wet and there’s a hole in it around my abdomen. Fuck.

“Hold,” I say to them, “I need to deal with this.”

“Can it wait?” Clayton asks, shifting toward the doorway, there’s people stumbling after us.

“Probably,” I breathe out as I tear my shirt to look at the wound. It’s a slow seeping wound in my belly. I can wrap it and heal it later.

So many people are wounded, I turn to look at Sera, she’s leaning against the railing watching me patiently. She never acts like this.

“Can… can we help them?” I ask, thinking back, the scarlet woman, she might be Vella, we can’t afford to lose any heroes.

You may grow to regret it.

“Can it be done?”

She nods.

“Then help me, please.”

“Godslayer, if you’re talking to who I think you’re talking to, stop, it’s not worth the risk, no one here is,” Clayton says with a wheeze.

Is he injured too? Shit.

My knees fall to the ground and I place my hands like the skill requires, towards the sky with my head bowed.

“Goddess of Fate, Seraphine, I call upon thy blessing and ask for your Runic Pact so that I may do your will.”

[ Skill Runic Pact Activated ]

Runes of healing burn into my flesh, twelve of them. I look up at her, surprised that she gave me so many, there is blood coming from one of her eyes. She looks down and wipes her cheek slowly, her head tilts as she stares at it like it is foreign to her.

There’s no time to process, my priority is Vella, shit and Starman if he’s still around. I activate my Soul Mark skill and I feel the wisp I left on him. He’s two floors below us, moving quickly… he seems fine. I brush off the thought.

“Novak,” Clayton growls, “Do not go back in there.”

I do not answer, I move past the groaning people in the stairwell. The smoke is clearing with the fresh air from outside, it’s a horror scene. I need to get Vella, there’s no telling what will happen next. More explosions is a possibility... secondary explosions from gas lines… I push the worried thoughts and focus.

I didn’t get a chance to mark her, so I search those who are in the rubble. Aides who were made to wait outside mostly. They weren’t important enough to merit even the side rows inside the boardroom, the irony is not lost on me. One glance to the boardroom tells me there will be no survivors. It’s a miracle there are any at all…

The building rumbles violently like there’s another explosion downstairs, then another and a third. I hear the metal groaning, but it holds. Who the fuck is trying to take this building down?

“Help me, please!” someone screams, I recognize the voice. It’s that woman that doesn’t like Clayton, I think her name was Jamie, “Please… don’t fucking leave me!”

She’s pinned by some kind of… my eyes trace her, she has the leg of a desk sticking out of her abdomen, I’ll need to pull it out if I want to help her…

I need to find Vella first she is my priority.

“Please for the love of god, please don’t leave me…” she sobs.

I have twelve runes that I can give. That’s twelve miracles.

“If I help you, you need to help me find Vella and get her out of here,” I say, examining the table, if I pull it, I can save her with a rune.

“Anything, please… please help me… I swear I’ll do anything… I don’t want to die… I’m too young to die.”

I don’t have time to count to three, so I yank the table leg from her abdomen. Her eyes widen and she scratches at me like a feral cat thinking I’ve tried to kill her.

The rune burns down my arm and transfers to her flesh with my intention to heal her. She stops clawing when she sees the light. She stares at her belly, touching it. I turn while she processes, looking for Vella.

“You go this way, and I’ll go that way.”

When I turn back… she’s already halfway down the hallway toward the stairwell…

Whatever. I move with haste, until I find Vella, she’s under a broken water pipe unconscious. She doesn’t look wounded besides a bump on her head, she must be a decent level to have not taken more injuries. I sling her on my back and move toward the stairs.

“Get out of my way!” I hear Clayton roaring at the people descending, he looks at me, “What the fuck took you so long?”

“Never mind that,” I say pushing him and Tran toward the door again. Clayton nearly stumbles with Barlow on his shoulder. How wounded is he?

I touch his shoulder and say, “Healing…”

A pulse ricochets through his body and I see his liver is perforated. He’s bleeding internally and has a collapsed lung. How the fuck is he even standing… I slide a rune onto him. Before it even finishes I rip the shrapnel from Tran’s leg and slide a rune onto him too.

“What the fu… oh… oh damn, that feels good,” Tran says, doing a strange wiggle movement.

“Move,” I say.

They grab Barlow and rush down the stairs with me. On the way down, I place marks on those that I know will die otherwise. I can’t use the marks on myself, so I keep three just in case something bad happens on the way down.

“Wait,” Clayton says, grabbing my shoulder, “We need to go to the roof.”

“The roof? You want us to climb back up into that shithole?” Tran protests, shifting Barlow on his shoulder.  

He swipes something in his interface, “Our ride is going to pick us up there.”

Another series of rumbles come from below, up it is then.

“You heard him, let’s move,” I say.

With the scarlet dressed woman still slung over my shoulder it makes moving through the debris an arduous task, but we manage, stepping through the doorway to the roof, there’s a sizeable hole where the blast went out the top of the building, it’s basically an inferno of heat coming from it blowing ashes and thick plumes of deep black smoke.

There’s a helicopter moving through the sky toward us… thank fuck.

“Alright, get ready to mount quickly, there’s no telling what…” his words never finish being spoken.

An explosion sends us all to the ground as it rips the helicopter in half sending it directly into the lower structure of the building… fuck.

“Goddamnit,” Clayton grits.