Chp.36: The final blow
Carried along by the shock wave, Carrion was hurled away with a speed greater than that of an arrow shot from a fully drawn bow. His armor cracked slightly in contact with the immense force, but it held. All he had to do now was use his divine power to keep that speed steady and get as far away as possible. He had little left, but it was enough. He was no longer in danger of being pursued by the dragons: he was already far away now, but even from that distance he could see that they were still getting up and recovering after Sutekh's shock wave had hit them full force and sent them flying. soil. By the time they could get airborne, he'd be too far away to chase, and they'd have no choice but to let him go.
As he flew away, Carrion felt the bitter taste of defeat in his mouth. Weeks of preparation, studies, planning; it wasn't enough, nothing had helped. Haku had defeated him again and this time he had almost succeeded in killing him; if it weren't for Sutekh's finishing move, his demise would have been guaranteed. Carrion was furious with himself: he had thought he had thought of everything, and instead Haku once again had been several moves ahead of him. Not only had he defeated it, but he had also used it to gain something; Carrion still didn't know what it was, but the dragon's words had been very easy to understand. And so, now he was on the run again, one arm missing, with wounds all over his body, his divine power almost exhausted, and a great humiliation behind him. His pride burned with anger at the thought that for the second time he had been beaten by what was really just a kid.
Haku had beaten him again and this time in a much worse way: he hadn't used a trick, or at least not completely, only the strength he had built up. He was just a kid, still lacking any power aside from physical strength, yet he was able to build something capable of bringing legendary level and even greater spirit to his knees. Carrion didn't dare to imagine what Haku would be able to do when he truly gained the enormous power of dragons.
What a monster.
Haku was definitely a monster among monsters. The pure embodiment of evil, in comparison with which all other harbingers of destruction pale.
Carrion shook his head. He mustn't lose his confidence and let such feelings take hold in his heart. He was a righteous servant of the goddess Heloisa, and as such he mustn't allow fear to control him. As long as he was alive there was still hope. He nodded to himself; yes, it was exactly like that. He had suffered a defeat, but it was just a minor mishap in a big operation. Haku had beaten him, but now Carrion knew much more about the strength he could bring against him and could therefore prepare accordingly. He would learn from his mistakes and try again. He could bear to suffer that little humiliation if the end result would still be the death of that evil dragon.
Yes, he would have done exactly that. As soon as he was far enough, he would hide in a safe place and recover from his wounds. He would rebuild the lost limb, heal all damaged body parts, and wait until his divine power was restored. Once that was done and he was back to full strength, he would take stock of all the new information he had and then formulate a new plan. After that he would track down Haku and attack him again. Surely, however, he would have been much more careful in guaranteeing himself an escape route: this time he had concentrated more on the attack, because he had been convinced that he was in control of the situation, but in the future he would not have made the same mistake. That experience had taught him that the possibility of dying was a real risk, so he would be careful about it. This way, even if the next attempt failed, he would simply flee again and try again and again. Sooner or later he would be able to find the dragon's weak point and eliminate him once and for all.
While Carrion was thinking this, the dragons on the ground were picking themselves up and looking carefully in the sky they could see a dot moving at great speed. "The coward is running away" Darbi growled.
"It doesn't matter" Haku said, then he turned to Rhaegal: "He won't go far, will he, brother?"
Rhaegal chuckled in response. "Yeah. He'll have a little surprise soon"
Haku nodded satisfied, then he spread his wings. "Come on, let's go! We don't want to miss the moment when he falls to the ground, right?" The other two dragons laughed and flew up with him.
Carrion noticed that the dragons were pursuing him, but he wasn't worried: they were far too slow to catch him. By now, with no more obstacles in front of him, he could have escaped peacefully. At least he could have taken that little revenge against Haku, since surely the dragon would have been very frustrated to have lost him. It was satisfying in a way. Now he just had to…
Suddenly a gush of blood exploded from his mouth; Carrion put a hand to his chest, feeling his heart stop suddenly. What looked like purulent, purple blisters began to appear on the skin above his breastbone. The man gasped and could no longer control his trajectory, starting to move randomly and decelerate. Very quickly he used his divine power to restart his heart, but to do so he lost the strength that kept him flying and fell to the ground generating a cloud of sand. He crawled with difficulty out of the hole that had formed where he landed, but continued to suffer tremendous pain: it was as if something were forming in his chest that crushed the organs, and if it weren't for him that with the His divine power kept moving his heart, lungs and diaphragm, he would be dead within minutes. His entire torso was now covered in purple pustules and other parts of his body were forming as well. A horrendous tumor mass was growing inside him. He immediately used his divine power to identify it and then severed all connection with the rest of the body, and finally the tumor seemed to slow down a bit; paying as much attention as possible, he opened his chest and extracted the tumor mass, to then sew everything up and put the organs back in their place. It was an almost impossible operation, and if it hadn't been for the divine power that kept him alive and allowed him to control his body so well he would have surely died. He did the same with the tumor masses that appeared in the rest of his body, and while performing those surgical operations he realized that there was something inside the original tumor mass. A strange earthworm-like creature, no more than a few inches long.
That was Haku's trump card, which he had created based on that strange tumor-causing snake that Rhaegal and his team had found underground. Once they understood how it caused the horrendous tumor mass, then he asked himself: why not use it as a weapon? In view of his fight with Carrion, he'd thought it might be a great way to keep the man from escaping. Haku was confident he could defeat Carrion, but wasn't sure if he could hold him back. Therefore, he needed a guarantee to ensure that the desert would become his grave. That guarantee had taken shape in the body of a tiny earthworm, thin enough to even enter and move inside the largest blood vessels of a human being. Isaac had enchanted that earthworm to have properties similar to those of the tumor-causing snake, then surrounding its body with mana and allowing the earthworm to direct it. It wasn't quite the same, but it worked the same way. At that point it was enough for Haku to transform that earthworm into an avatar and entrust it to Kialandì, who had gladly accepted to perform that task. His sister, inspired by the frog-lizards, had hidden under Rhaegal's lips, and as soon as the latter had detached Carrion's arm she had taken the opportunity to enter the largest blood vessels and there she had hidden. Since the arm hadn't been reconstructed, she'd been able to know what was happening outside through that opening; the worm had no eyes, but when Kialandì felt a huge wind beat against her, she knew that Carrion was running away. So she had directed herself near the heart and there she had released her power, generating the tumor mass and thus blocking the man's escape. She could have done it from the beginning technically, but Haku had asked her to wait because if Carrion died immediately the lesser spirit that Serengal and Corgorin had to capture would also vanish, and he wanted to gain as much as possible from that battle, therefore she should have only take action when it was obvious that Carrion was running away.
Sure enough, Carrion was down now. He had managed to get rid of the tumor mass that was devouring him from within, but not only had he lost even more divine power, but above all he had wasted a lot of time. And now, Haku, Rhaegal and Darbi had reached him again and were looking at him with satisfied eyes. "What are your last words, human?" Haku asked him.
Carrion blanched. He knew he had just lost his last chance to escape. "Shit!" he exclaimed raising his hands to erect as many protections as possible with the little power he had left.
"If you want my opinion, it's a bad choice as a last word. But then again, it's certainly not the worst decision you've made in your life, much less the one you made today" Darbi scoffed him, then he slithered on Haku's shoulder. "Come on, let's end this!"
"That's right, brother! We are ready, you have the honor of kicking his ass!" Rhaegal said climbing in turn on his brother's shoulder, positioning himself in the same point where until recently he was attached as if he were just a head.
Haku smiled mischievously. "NOW, BROTHERS!" he roared as his jaws opened wide, and a violet and blue light appeared in his throat. Darbi and Rhaegal spat out an abnormal amount of venom, far more than they had ever spat, and Haku finished it off by erupting a torrent of bluish flame from his mouth. The flames struck the venom while it was still in midair and set it in fire, generating a single blaze of continental proportions.
Carrion had just time to see the light of the blue flames appear in front of him before the immense heat engulfed him. His last shells cracked one by one and his skin quickly caught fire. Under his shocked gaze, the last hand he had left charred and disintegrated, followed by the arm and then the rest of the body. With a last, soft moan of pain, Carrion let go of all resistance and was completely engulfed in the torrent of flames. When things calmed down, a very long channel of glass and molten sand had appeared in front of Haku, and there was no longer any trace of Carrion. "It's over" Haku simply declared with a great sense of triumph in his heart.
In the far distance, on a dune far away from the battlefield, the beastmen leaders had gathered and were watching the fight with some telescopes, to make sure that this time the man they hated really died. When they saw Carrion engulfed by that huge torrent of blue flames they felt a sense of exhilaration, which was however overshadowed by a slight fear. "Damn. Good thing they are on our side" Gord muttered as he lowered his scope.
"Yeah" Zamor replied lowering his own, revealing an indecipherable gaze. "For now..."