Chapter 169: Rain Falls

Chapter 169: Rain Falls

Berthorn instantly shifted his Skill over to Trinya. The beast had not shown any signs of escaping, firmly trapped within his prison of acid and poison. Instead, when he shifted his attention onto the genuinely, fully grown and fully realized dragon in front of him, the warning bells rang in his head.

<Paranoid > was the loudest among them. There was only one thing it said.

It told him to run.

Not a moment later, Berthorn dove aside as fast as he could, throwing his body over and rolling across the rock, even as it entirely exploded behind him. Instantly, he found himself covered in pieces of stone, and surrounded by a giant cloud of dust.

The place where he'd just stood was replaced by a crater in the shape of a dragon's claw.

His eyes slowly trailed up, catching the furious glint in his mother's eyes. But mostly, rather than fury, he still saw fear. Terror, even. She should have died, and she knew it, the fact that she was able to trigger her manifestation was lucky. And it wouldn't last forever.

Berthorn slowly found himself smiling again. <Paranoid > rang in his head, warning him of the ways his mother could suddenly kill him, but he knew she could not. It was Trinyakorie, after all; a woman who would do anything for power, because she never wanted others to hold it over her.

Now? Berthorn just needed to wait her out. If she truly were trying to kill him, could she do it? Certainly. But she knew he was desperate. Berthorn smiled, because he was a rat driven into a corner. He had nowhere to go but forward, set on a path he couldn't return from.

Right now, if she truly were to try and kill him as best as she could, wouldn't he just manifest his own true shape? What then? His form was weaker than hers, sure. Smaller. Less raw power. With a less destructive breath attack, too, and softer scales.

But.

Could she kill him if he shifted?

Kill him before her own true shape ran out?

He smiled. She couldn't. Not even <Paranoid > could find a way.

Hastily, her claws swiped for him again, but he was able to avoid them and dodge backwards, the swipe only grazing him. It tore open three long lines across his chest, each of them spilling blood, as the attack was intended.

Right now, Trinya was the one in control of the fight. She could harm him however she wanted. But he was in control of the situation, truly.

If he shifted, it was over for them.

Zyl could not shift into his true shape. He lacked his spark. If he tried, perhaps he could manage half a transformation. Berthorn mentally scoffed at the thought, even as he dodged another attack. Certainly, his brother could do so, but he would also most likely die afterwards.

Unless Irrithuriel was there to help him. Which meant she could not shift. Suddenly, Zyl and the healer, so reliant on each other, became obstacles. Only one of them could truly threaten him at a time.

Once more, Trinya lashed out, with her tail this time, whipping him across the face and tearing open his cheek as though a violent slap. He grinned throughout it all, stopping the momentum and standing straight again.

"Come on, mother! Hit me! Is this all you can do?!" he taunted, laughing at her face.

Berthorn saw the fury in her eyes light more, flames spilling from the edges of her maw, but she didn't reply. Instead, a fist struck the side of his face, coated in unbelievably hot plasma, burning away his skin where it touched. It sent Berthorn flying, smashing into the rock of the plateau, and a new cloud of dust settled on him.

From within, his laughter rang out. "Jihihihahahaha! Come, brother! Show me your fury! Watch as I extinguish thy meagre pet!"

Once more, his brother's face was overcome with pain and anger, as he slowly raised himself from the stony prison. But neither of them killed him.

Berthorn stood still, smiling calmly, his arm fully extended outwards from himself, holding the sphere. The weapon that had let him take all this power, all this freedom.

"Come on, brother, please! Come closer and let me burn a hole into your chest. I would love to see you despair like our mother has!!"

His eyes gazed at her gigantic form again. Red scales glistening majestically in the sun, multiple sets of wings, large enough to blot out the sky if she wished. And yet she just stood there, waiting.

The mana here was simply too thin. She was burning through her own, unable to absorb enough to maintain her shape. Even as she drew it in from miles around, turning the landscapes to a husk without magic, she could barely get enough to manifest.

Given her enormous form, her upkeep was similarly enormous. Perhaps, if Berthorn shifted now, he could last even longer than her. His form was small, lithe, slippery, and venomous. It was death given form, his shape of death.

The thoughts gave rise to a momentary pause on the battlefield. Trinyakorie stood, drawing in power and expending as little as possible. Zyl stood shakily, his feet ever close to giving out. Irrithuriel stood at the side, and he saw she was the only one truly taking action.

Around her, there were dozens of magic circles. He hadn't noticed them before. How hadn't he noticed them before?

He considered the snow witch perhaps the most dangerous of his foes today. Her spells were devastating, if she could cast them, and it was his utmost priority to stop her.

The smile vanished for a faint moment as he turned the sphere towards her, using it without a shred of hesitation.

The world went quiet.

All colour disappeared, everything cast in shades of grey.

Then, reality ripped apart with a horrible screech, and a bolt of power struck forth from the weapon.

Irrithuriel was old, wise, and had seen the attack before. How could she not have expected it? When she saw Berthorn turn towards her, she had already prematurely activated all the spells she had.

Ice flooded forth from underneath her. The rocks became covered in frost even as the sun shone onto them, and within moments, the mountain was turned into glacier. Then, a moment later, that glacier was entirely torn into pieces by a single blast.

The energy rocketed through the ice, annihilating it within an instant, barely slowing down. It reached Irrithuriel almost as soon as Berthorn used the weapon, but the old lady had begun turning when she activated her spells.

With supernatural agility, she barely managed to stop the bean from piercing through her chest.

Instead, it impacted her shoulder, tearing a hole through muscle, bone and cartilage. At its entrance she felt herself become compressed, her entire chest squished down, hard enough to fracture the bones in her shoulder that hadn't been destroyed by the beam itself.

Feeling it exit was even worse. Her wound wasn't nearly as clean as that of Trinya, instead, her skin was torn at the exit, and a square foot of it entirely disintegrated. It looked more like a cannonball had left her body, and every inch of it was agony.

Irrithuriel fell over, her face a grimace of pain.

"Kneel, snow-witch," Berthorn said, disdain clear in his voice. "Know your place."

Trinya's claws raked across him again, coming from above this time. He didn't even bother to dodge. They created long gashes on his chest once more, crossing the previous wounds.

Blood dripped down his body, hissing and turning to purple-green smoke when it touched the ground. "Mother, please. Stop playing around. If you wish to kill me, do-"

He was interrupted by Zyl. The red haired man had suddenly appeared to smash him in the face again. And he'd, somehow, hit the exact same spot for about the third time now. Berthorn's face was seriously beginning to hurt.

"You can't kill me brother."

"Shut! Up!" Zyl roared, leaping again. This time, all his patience was gone. His fists rained on Berthorn, who dodged, weaved, and occasionally struck back.

Blow after blow landed on his face, but the coward didn't care. He smiled. Shrugged off every wound he received, taking them in stride. He would not die so easily, not to these people. Even as his bones cracked, he knew a simple bit of shapeshifting would put them back into place.

But at least he fulfilled one of Zyl's wishes. He remained quiet.

There was no more reason to taunt. The snow-witch was on her knees. If she shifted, he could react still, and escape. His mother was on a timer, slowly ticking down to her doom. And his brother could barely even stand anymore.

Sure, each strike of his could harm Berthorn. They hurt, of course, but Berthorn thrived in the hail of blows.

He healed fast, and each time his blood splattered onto Zyl, the other man would grow more unsteady. He would die a slow, cruel death.

They exchanged a hundred hits in a few seconds, before Trinya lashed out at Berthorn again, interrupting the exchange. But there was no point. After all, Ber himself had already landed a couple brutal hits on Zyl.

His hands had shifted into claws, tearing chunks of skin and flesh from the red haired dragon.

The minutes ticked by just the same. The mountaintop became more ruined with each exchange. In a corner, there was a prison of acid, eroding away the stone. Another part was covered in thick sheets of ice, some of it shredded and destroyed, turned into snow. Even more of the rock was melted and scorched, burn marks visible through it all.

Zyl panted heavily, hardly enough mana in the air for him to even keep his fire magic up. The plasma would flare to life on his fists when he struck, then fizzle out again.

The snow-witch spent a good chunk of her mana healing herself, then decided to half-shift. Her entire body grew covered in icy blue scales, wings sprouted from her back, and she took on a draconian yet humanoid shape.

In response, Berthorn had done the same. Then overwhelmed her in close combat, the wound on her shoulder still there despite the shift. Of course it was, it had been inflicted by dragonfire, after all. It would not heal so easily.

Trinya moved little, a sluggish behemoth. She would strike at him, sometimes breathe fire, but since he partially shifted, those attempts had slowed down, too. Trinya knew that she was his target. That if she were to turn back into her human shape because she ran out of mana, he would come and kill her without hesitation.

And so, after ten minutes, the fight was all but done.

Berthorn stood, bathed in his own blood.

Zyl laid on the floor, his chest heaving. He could not stand anymore.

Irrithuriel, too, looked poor for the wear. Her scales were cracked, her spells shattered. She had received another wound from the weapon, the blast going through her knee on her right leg. After it, she had received a one sided beating, and the poison was accumulating faster for her than it had Zyl.

Trinya stood still as a statue. She knew her death was imminent. The fear in her eyes betrayed her. She was clinging to every moment of life she had, desperately drawing in mana to maintain her shape.

Berthorn smiled. "Finally. To think I'd see the three of you like this before me."

But Berthorn was a coward.

Despite having just taken down three dragons on his own, he turned to look upon the prison of noxious gas he'd created. The beast was trapped in there. Dead, by now, he expected.

Still he used <Paranoid > on it. The Skill whispered to him. And he listened. His eyes widened.

The thing was alive. How. How! HOW?!

Then, as if it had smelled his fear, there was a noise.

Slow, methodical clacking. Footsteps, coated in metal, against the stone of the mountaintop.

A moment later, he could hear rain fall. Dozens of drops striking against the floor. Pit, pat, pit pat.

It sounded like his nightmares.

- - - - - -

Mercury found himself trapped within a cage of noxious, unbreathable air. The fog was so thick that he could only barely see through it, a couple meters if that. The floor underneath it bubbled and roiled, the gas heavy and sinking. Parts of it were probably spilling off the side of the mountaintop by now.

And, quite frankly, Mercury was quite out of ideas on what to do. He couldn't truly walk through the fog. It'd get into his nostrils and choke him to death, if not just entirely burn his lungs.

Already parts of the fog seemed to crawl forward, lapping at his paws. He felt a strong, stinging pain set in as his skin began to hiss.

It hurt.

<Still Mirror> swallowed the pain and let him return to be calm. His mind began working as fast as it could, seconds stretching out longer as he thought.

He wasn't truly scared, really. Well, he should be. He knew this was kind of how people died. Tackling a problem that was far above their paygrade. But he'd faced death that the thing messing with his thinking had been the pain, rather than fear.

Mercury took a deep breath and closed his eyes, trying to ignore the loud noises around him. He didn't want the acid poison mix to hurt his retinas if he could avoid it. It would probably get there still, but his eyelids were a better barrier than nothing.

Already, he could feel <Adaptable > working. Changing his skin to become thicker, with fewer pores to let the fog in. It was also helping him regenerate at a reasonable pace, same as <Survivor >. Despite it, he could feel his body slowly disintegrating as his mind worked.

Against the fog, <Combat Sense> seemed helpless, not providing him a way out when he activated it. He activated <Thread > to try and spin a cocoon, but the thin substance was eroded away before he could get properly started. For a moment, he tried <Mana Expansion>, but even the usually ever present essence of magic was devoured by the acidic fog.

He was, by then, fully surrounded, all his Skills receiving help from <Unrestrained >, but he could still feel himself slowly withering away. The worst part was the dizziness, though. After only a few seconds, he could barely stand anymore, his legs wobbling and giving out underneath him.

It must've looked peaceful. Folding his legs in and laying down on them, but really it was more of a fall, knocking a tiny yet precious gasp of air out of his lungs.

Mercury tried to call up the <Wind >, but it didn't answer. In fact, the entire fog had grown almost entirely still. Wisps of it still swirled over the floor, spilling further out, but most of it remained a noxious cage for Mercury.

He tried every Skill he had. Tried to figure out a solution with <Intuition > and <Seeker of Secrets>, but there just wasn't an easy way out. He was entirely stuck, an ability so much higher level trapping him that he couldn't do anything about it.

<Unfatigued > had activated since. It fueled all his Skills further. When his body wanted to run out of material to replace the dead skin, <Nutritional Preservation> drew from the extradimensional storage the Skill provided. <Adaptable > stitched him back together over and over again. <Survivor > worked desperately to keep his organs from failing.

But neither of them could stop what would eventually happen.

Mercury was holding his breath.

He didn't breathe in, not even once.

Because it would spell death, of course. But he was running out of air.

There were many things his Skills offset. Heck, they even allowed him to survive longer without breathing. But eventually, it would mean his end. He'd run out of oxygen in his blood, and he would gasp for breath, and he would die.

<Still Mirror> proved its worth. It shoved the panic away, and let Mercury watch it all through a detached perspective. His skin grew more hardened, then got eaten away by the acid again. Then, next to that, he felt the desperate urge to breathe.

The carbon detectors in his blood had begun seeing red a bit ago, and with each moment, grew more desperate. Soon, though, he also felt himself truly running out of oxygen. The edges of his vision darkened and he felt his mind slow down.

At the end of the day, he hadn't found a solution to his problem.

All of his stats, all of his Skills, chaining together in a desperate attempt to survive.

They levelled, even. But it just wasn't enough. Slowly, but surely, Mercury felt his vision go black.

<Still Mirror> still worked, and he was calm.

In ihn'ar, even, ever since that first moment he'd breathed in. When the darkness around his eyes crept in, it felt somewhat familiar. In more than one way.

Maybe it was just his life flashing in front of his eyes. He felt his brain desperately flick through his memory. The darkness reminded him of <Nothingness >, of the things that weren't. Of sleep and the gentle embrace of death, and it reminded him of the Caretaker. Of the thousand quiet gravestones in the fog, of his story being listened to.

Had he… held his breath there? He didn't remember.

In the ashen wastes, he'd been chased by monsters in the night. He'd felt death creep in multiple times. He'd once choked on a fry, where his consciousness faded by a quick slam onto the floor. He'd felt his blood pour from his new, four-legged body and he'd felt himself break into pieces.

And he'd survived.

Something stirred. Mercury recognized the <Nothingness >. He recognized the familiarity of death and the emptiness it brought. He felt hollowed out, even by <Still Mirror>, at the fact that even when he was dying he willed the Skill to suppress his fear, holding on for a way out.

He felt the emptiness in himself. The lack of things.

Felt that his heart pumped pointlessly. That his mana coursed meaninglessly. His stamina ebbed and flowed without a single ounce of purpose.

He felt the gaping hole in his lungs where his <Breath > should have been.

And he got it.

He'd figured out many things about his own <Breath >. When he was first taught it by old Uunrahzil. When he used it, over and over, to pump energy through his body, to resist. He understood it dearly. Knew its rhythm, knew its purpose.

And now, he was left with a hollow, empty <Breath >.

The last puzzle piece fit.

There was no point in figuring out the depth of his <Breath >, because at the end of breathing laid <Nothingness >. And in that bit of void lay a dream.

From within empty lungs, Mercury wove himself a bit of air.

Without breathing in, he breathed out.

[Your understanding of <Breath > has reached its limit! <Breath (high) -> (pinnacle)>]

[<Breath (pinnacle)> resonates with you.]

[<Breath (pinnacle)> becomes <Rainfall (lowest)>.]

He did not need to read the description to know what the Skill meant.

After all, it was a part of him. Part of who he was.

He was Mercury <Rainfall > Starlight.

As inevitably as rain fell from dark clouds, Mercury breathed out.

There was no longer a need for him to take in air. Maybe not even water, really. He could simply will the energy to power his Skills into existence, weave it forth from inside himself.

Somehow, his breath only spilled out faster. More and more air left his body, faster and faster, even. He barely needed to ask it to shape into a breeze. He was the father of this <Wind >, after all, and it was a better friend than most of it.

A storm began to rage around Mercury.

His skin was in tatters, his fur matted, yet suddenly, his Skills worked at their full force. <Adaptable > had already changed his body so much, the noxious gas now slipping off him as it was supplied with more power than it could ever need. <Survivor > knitted all his torn skin back together, refusing to let him die.

<Unfatigued > was powered by <Rainfall >, the two working in tandem. Any tiredness Mercury felt was washed away, and suddenly, it felt as though he was standing in a spring rainstorm. He felt downright refreshed.

There was a dome of air around him. The darkness at the edges of his vision faded, and Mercury felt his mind clear up. It smelled like rain around him. Like <Water > and <Wind > and <Grass >, each scent woven into the air he breathed out, because he understood them. He was like each one of those.

Around him, the fog was carved away at by <Nothingness >. Because that's what it was at the end of the day. An ability meant to eat away, so why would it not eat away at itself? A shift of perspective and the ability destroyed itself, guided in that process by <Itinerant > and <Unrestrained >, both opening a path for him.

Mercury raised himself up on his legs again. Though they were thin and ragged from the constant cycle of being disintegrated and regenerated, he still felt more secure on them than he had in a while.

A small cloud of raindrops swirled, permanently falling around him. Tiny clouds hovered around Mercury as he walked forward. The drops themselves were made from water, yes, but also from mana and stamina, shimmering in their iridescence. They pattered onto the smoothened, worn-down stone, each leaving a tiny sparkle as it shattered.

Accompanying it was the click of the Dream of Starvation against the rock, the metal sending a message to anyone who listened closely enough. Mercury Rainfall Starlight would not be done in by a simple poisonous cloud.

"You! You should be dead?!" Berthorn cried.

"Then start doing a better fucking job at killing me."