XCVIII. | 'Tread not upon the Pride...'

Garovel moved behind Hector. 'Nine servants with nine reapers.'

"Stay close to me," said Asad.

Hector intended to.

The Blackburns all wore brown-and-green raincoats that made them blend into the murky background of Luzo. He'd heard some of the other Rainlords referring to these people as the "Mudlords"--an unofficial title according to Garovel and from the sound of it, meant more as a slur than anything, but Hector was beginning to see where it had come from.

With their faces concealed beneath their hoods, Hector couldn't tell who they were. And weirdly, they did not seem interested in stopping to introduce themselves.

A massive copper boulder materialized before them, already hurtling their way.

Hector was about to dive out of its path when Asad simply raised a glass platform from beneath it, catching the hulking mass in mid-flight and smacking it away as if it had been nothing more than a kickball. The thing crashed down into a murky stream and tossed up a cloud of mud, blanketing a small footbridge entirely.

That seemed to give the Blackburns pause. They slowed their approach, and several of their reapers went underground.

"What is a Sandlord doing here?!" someone called out in a booming voice. It belonged to the man on their left. He pulled back his hood as he and two others stepped closer, all with their reapers still present. The remaining six servants in their party hung back.

Hector recognized the man's face from his file. Fidel Blackburn. And he was much more imposing than he was on paper, visibly muscular even through his raincoat. After a moment, the two others were revealed to be Silvia and Sabas Blackburn.

Hector's gauntleted grip on his shield tightened. Already, they'd encountered three of the people whom Lady Amaya had warned them about.

"You have no investment in this fight, amergo!" said Fidel, stopped now. "Begone! And no harm shall come to you! You have my word!"

"Very kind of you!" said Asad, shifting his feet and looking between them. "I have an even kinder counteroffer!"

"Is that so?! Go on, then!"

"Tell me why you have abducted the Elroy children! In exchange, I will do my best to avoid killing any of your reapers!"

"Aha!" said Fidel. "Very kind, indeed! Would you believe me if I said I do not know?!"

"I would, yes! As long as you bring me someone who does know!"

Rather than responding, Fidel merely let the heavy atmosphere linger. Only the occasional booms of distant thunder and battle above broke the oppressive stillness.

'Guess he's not going to bring anyone,' observed Garovel.

Hector could see a wall of rain approaching from the other end of the street, could hear its noisy patter growing quickly louder.

Asad decided to strike first. With a mere flick of the wrist, the six rear Blackburns had glassy spikes bursting out the top of their skulls. They dropped immediately, all dead.

Fidel, Sabas, and Silvia attacked in unison, all gunning for Asad.

'Don't let them gang up on him,' said Garovel, touching Hector's bare hand.

That familiar vigor burned through him, awakening every muscle in his body and rendering his armor no heavier than a blanket. Garovel retreated halfway underground in order to observe the fight a bit more safely, while Hector bolted forward, armor clinking with each rapid step he took toward the closest opponent.

Silvia Blackburn, it turned out to be--a lanky woman with big green eyes and short black hair. Her file had mentioned her explosive ability. Cesium materialization. Dangerous even in a novice's hands due to its violent reaction with water and tendency to spontaneously ignite in air. And Silvia had already been a servant for twenty-five years.

She noticed Hector's approach right away and doused him completely in her silvery-gold liquid metal, which instantly set itself ablaze and engulfed Hector in blue flames. This, of course, was not enough to stop him from charging, so Hector just powered through.

And then she clobbered him with a block of frozen cesium the size of a bus.

Hector went flying, toppling, bouncing, and scraping across the open road. And that was also the unfortunate moment when the curtain of rain caught up with him. Each raindrop popped with the force of a firecracker when it touched him, reacting to the still-flaming cesium. On the one hand, it put out the fire; on the other, it caused a chain of explosions from every direction at once, pummeling his plate armor and rattling him so furiously that he could only flail like a fish on dry ground.

When the explosions finally subsided, his fist slammed against the pavement, and he struggled angrily back to his feet. The armor had done its job, even if it now bore so many dents as to look like he'd crafted it out of crumpled paper. Haqq's shield still looked pristine and untouched.

Hector looked up to see that he was being ignored. And for good reason, too.

Asad was no longer on the ground. Rather, he seemed to be running on thin air, and it took Hector a second to notice the barely visible platforms beneath him. They didn't even touch the ground. The platforms were already moving in midair when Asad stepped on them, pushing him upward or outward or any which way he desired while the Lord Najir showered his opponents with an endless storm of glassy spears. So many at once, Hector saw, crashing down through the heavy rain and sticking into the pavement or shattering against each other.

It was all the Blackburns could do to weather the attack. Fidel's copper cage could hardly keep up with all the holes Asad was carving into it; Silvia had to focus on exploding the spears before they reached and skewered her; and Sabas appeared to have turned his whole body into a metal statue, sealing his own movement in exchange for making the quartz blades break ineffectually against his body.

Titanium transfiguration, Hector recalled from Sabas' file. Not the deadliest power but one that made him particularly difficult to kill, and if he was allowed to provide cover or a distraction for the other two, then it could be very problematic.

At the moment, however, Asad seemed to have the situation rather well in hand.

Jada had moved away from the battle and was now standing by behind a madega, busying herself with her firearms. Plural, Hector realized. He'd only seen the one handgun before, but she'd apparently been keeping a whole armory beneath her robe. The grenades especially caught his attention.

Hector still wasn't sure what her power was. Garovel had asked, but for whatever reason, the Najirs had kept that information to themselves. The reliance on firearms perhaps suggested destruction type, but now was not the time to be giving the matter more thought.

Soon, the Blackburns were buried in a mound of shattered quartz. But they were certainly not dead yet, and now Asad's own glass was in his way, so he let up on his attack and began dematerializing his work.

The Blackburns, of course, saw this as their opportunity to counterattack, and likewise, Asad seemed to predict as much. He leapt off his platform and grabbed a glassy handle that was already in motion, and for a brief moment, the man was flying--pulled quickly forward via the handle's momentum.

Hector could only watch the Lord Najir in awe. The one glass handle could only sustain Asad's movement for a few seconds, but Asad created more on the fly, alternating between handles and platforms as he pleased, striding and soaring through the open air with such apparent ease and swiftness that Hector could hardly believe he and Asad shared the same ability type.

The Blackburns kept him busy, bombarding him with fleets of copper and cesium that he had to deflect while also keeping Sabas pinned down. They seemed to have regrouped very quickly, somehow.

'Careful, they're all using pan-forma,' said Garovel, and Hector understood why their three reapers had vanished from sight all of a sudden. 'Even headshots won't kill them now. You'd have to obliterate their entire bodies or tear their reapers away from them--neither of which you're capable of doing.'

Had the circumstances been less dangerous, Hector might have taken issue with how ridiculous that all sounded, but here and now, doubt was a luxury that he could not afford. He took Garovel at his word, and instead simply asked, 'What should I do, then?'

'Same as before. Asad needs space to breathe. Provide it for him.'

Jada was doing precisely that, Hector saw. She'd lobbed a cooked grenade at Silvia, which exploded before even hitting the ground and blew a chunk out of the woman's face. Silvia dropped but didn't stop moving, and Hector could see her head regenerating just as Garovel had said--and with a speed he'd never seen before, even. Combined with unrelenting gunfire, Jada had certainly earned the woman's attention and would doubtless be receiving an overabundance of cesium momentarily.

Hector was already sprinting by this point. And because he had the distinct impression that trying to coat Silvia Blackburn in iron would be about as effective as attacking with a feather pillow, he instead decided to materialize an iron chain in his free hand, broad and strong as he could make it. When he drew close enough, he chucked it at her with all his strength, and it caught her around the torso, huge links wrapping around her but still not stopping her.

A hail of exploding cesium came for Jada, and the young woman only managed to dive partially out of its path, losing her left arm, shoulder, and ear in the process. It did, however, buy precious time for Hector.

Hector used the opportunity to accomplish two things simultaneously. First was simply adding to the chain around Silvia. The links grew thicker and more numerous, now carrying enough mass to actually weigh the woman down and give her a reason to break them--which Hector anticipated would not be a problem for her. Hence, the purpose of his second task. An iron meteor. It had served fairly well against Karkash, so he hoped it would do even better against someone without magnetic control.

He was quickly disappointed.

In spite of creating it faster than he could against Karkash, he still only managed to make about half the mass he wanted before Silvia noticed and decided that it was her turn to multitask. A cesium spear shot straight up and punched a hole through the iron like tissue paper, splitting it, exploding it, and knocking it off course. And simultaneously, she fired a second spear directly at Hector.

Shield raised, he braced himself.

The cesium exploded upon contact. Whether it was due to the impact or merely the rain, Hector could not tell, but he was quite surprised to find that the shield absorbed the blow very well, only pushing him back about a meter or so when he'd been expecting to be sent through a building. He glanced at the broadside of the shield another time and saw that it was scuffed but not at all structurally compromised.

Silvia seemed surprised as well, but she didn't get the chance to attack him again. A wave of molten quartz fell upon her, glowing harshly orange and yellow. It boiled the flesh off her bones in a matter of seconds, offering a faint hiss of steam with each drop of rain that fell upon it.

A vest provided Silvia with some protection, but Hector could see actual bone through the melted skin and muscle of her arms and skull. The quartz left her slowed, and Jada and Hector both capitalized--Jada with bullets, Hector with a materialized broadsword.

'Go for the limbs,' said Garovel while Hector was mid-sprint. 'Decapitation won't work.'

Hector went for her left arm and got it, severing it at the shoulder. One of Jada's bullets caught Silvia right in the forehead, splattering brain matter out the back of her skull.

Yet it was not enough. Silvia was still moving, still regenerating; and she still managed to swirl up and dropkick Hector square in the chest.

Hector flew into the side of a car, which did not survive the impact nearly as well as he did. His weight collapsed the cabin like tin foil, but Hector certainly appreciated the softened landing. He could feel a few bones snapping back into place as he stepped back onto pavement, parts of the vehicle's shattered frame clinging briefly to his armor.

Already, Silvia had completely regenerated. It couldn't have been more than thirty seconds since he took his eyes off her, but all that melted flesh, even the missing arm, had returned. Only her shredded raincoat and still-smoldering vest remained as evidence of the attack she'd endured.

Jada was on the move now, bounding over fences and behind vehicles in search of fresh cover while cesium erupted in her wake. Hector helped her out, materializing a half-dozen iron logs above Silvia's head, granting them spikes for good measure. That bought Jada some space, while Hector thundered headlong into the breach for the third time.

A spear of frozen cesium shot toward him and broke upon his shield, causing him to miss a step and stagger to his right before finding his feet again. Silvia doused him in liquid cesium another time, but Hector was prepared. He stopped moving as soon as he heard the splash against his metal and added a much thicker layer of iron to the armor. The iron popped out all at once, shaking off most of the cesium before the rain could cause it to explode. A few splotches remained, but it was only enough for Hector to hear a handful of light pops from within his now brick-like iron shell. The cesium all around his feet was busy going off like a ring of fireworks as he annihilated his extra layer of iron so that he could move again.

Silvia seemed ready to receive him when a pyramid of solid quartz materialized all around her, sealing her movement.

And Hector stopped, abruptly unsure what he should do. Silvia Blackburn merely stood there, eyes moving while the rest of her was stuck fast, as if she were being preserved for posterity.

Hector looked toward Asad, who did not seem to be having very much trouble on his end. Fidel was suspended in the air, impaled on a huge glass spike while his melted arms and legs all struggled to regenerate; and Sabas was locked in hand-to-hand combat with Asad.

Sabas was certainly getting his share of hits in, but Asad was hardly budging at all. Even when a titanium fist--no doubt with enhanced strength behind it--connected with his bare skull, the Lord Najir barely even flinched. But it also made something else happen.

With each blow that Asad received, his tattoos flashed golden yellow, lighting up for an instant and then returning to black just as quickly. Hector wasn't sure what he was seeing, but he didn't get the chance for further observation.

'She's breaking out,' warned Garovel, accompanied by the sound of cracking glass.

Hector went to work on a gigantic slab of iron high above Silvia's head. He could see that Silvia had coated herself in cesium, which seemed to be reacting with and corroding the glass; and after a few more moments, the cracks grew, and she was finally able to break herself out of Asad's glass, at the cost of having melted much of her skin via her own cesium.

At the very second she was free, the iron slab was right there to greet her. Having started its fall at only about eighty meters above the ground, Hector knew from his own practical studies that it didn't have nearly enough altitude to achieve its terminal velocity.

But that didn't mean it wouldn't hurt.

The slab crushed her into the pavement. The impact force kicked up chunks of road all around the slab and sent them reeling into vehicles and buildings, even right past Hector.

'Nicely done,' said Garovel.

And Hector waited, wondering if that was really enough to keep the woman down. He seriously doubted it, though it did seem to have bought them some more time.

Jada walked up from behind. She didn't say anything and instead offered him a nod of approval.

Asad seemed to be finishing up. He carried a helpless reaper in one hand while in the midst of extracting the other from Sabas' glass-encased body. Fidel had been skewered in a dozen different places and no longer seemed to be regenerating, perhaps because his pan-forma had been forcibly ended. Hector was immensely curious how Asad had accomplished that and so paid close attention to him trying to extract Sabas' reaper, but Sabas appeared to be making it impossible. Even Asad couldn't pierce the man's titanium flesh, which Hector intuited to be a necessary step in the procedure.

At length, Asad simply gave up, instead choosing to add several more layers of glass to the pyramid around Sabas. Then he raised a platform beneath the prison and pushed it along behind him while he ventured over to collect Fidel's severed head.

Hector annihilated his own work, revealing Silvia's flattened corpse, splattered against the pavement in gruesome enough fashion that it actually made Hector grimace a little beneath his helm. He'd seen plenty of carnage before, of course, but it usually involved people who were still moving and regenerating. This brought back some of the more horrible things he'd witnessed. He had to remind himself that Silvia wasn't actually dead.

Garovel floated up behind Hector. 'Her reaper fled underground. We will be seeing Silvia Blackburn again, it seems.'

'Oh well,' said Qorvass. 'Two out of three isn't bad.'

'I see you've decided to spare their reapers after all,' said Garovel.

'You disapprove?' said Qorvass.

'Quite the contrary, in fact. It's nice to see a bit of mercy on the battlefield for a change, and I'm sure they'll make valuable hostages.'

'Indeed.'

They started back for the tunnel together with their captives in tow. Hector queried Garovel about Asad's tattoos, but the reaper didn't seem certain and so posed the question to Qorvass.

'By the way, why were Asad's tattoos flashing yellow?'

'Trade secret, I'm afraid.'

'Ah.'