Water Kanin: Chapter 46 - Ascension

Yedzaquib screams and writhes as magic crackles over his skin, pulsing off his body in haphazard waves. The wound in his chest stitches itself back together.

“What’s going on?” Zyneth asks, backing up.

“I don’t know,” I say. “But something’s happening with the System. I think—I think he’s trying to fuse with the remnant. He has a Role now.” Even if it isn’t populated yet.

Zyneth looks at me, horrified. “Why on earth would he want that?”

I have no idea. For power? Ink undeniably has that. But at what cost? The remnant could easily be more powerful than him, like the predator had been with me before part of it got ripped away. Not to mention, my Role made me a slave to someone else. I’m lucky that’s no longer the case, but why risk it? Does he even know the risk? It seems like he understands more about this than me, but this still seems like a horrible choice.

Yedzaquib’s stats flicker and start to stabilize.

“Uh, oh,” I say. As the numbers stop blinking, they settle much higher than before.

“Uh oh, what?” Zyneth says.

[Name: Yedzaquib]

[Title: <Processing>]

[Species: Arachnoid]

[Class: Mind Weaver]

[Level: 68]

[HP: 3000/3000]

[Mana: 5000/5000]

[Role: <Processing>]

“Well, he just got a whole lot more beefy,” I say. “His HP is about ten times what it was before.” I start to edge back.

“Ah,” Zyneth agrees, also retreating. “Shit.”

The magic crackling over his body fades away. His screams have stopped. Now he’s just breathing heavily, head down, legs and arms limp.

I’m starting to think our goal is about to shift from “retrieve the imprisoned soul” to “escape from Yedzaquib with our lives.”

Yedzaquib lifts his head. His eyes are glowing with purple light. He smiles.

“Ahhhh.” The arachnoid picks himself up, swaying as his eight limbs stagger him to his feet. Zyneth and I continue to back away. “Is this what it feels like for you?” He examines one of his hands, turning it over, then clenches it into a fist. “This intoxicating power?”

Ink is nervous, and Ink is almost never nervous. It presses against my mind, urging us to merge. This is dangerous. We need all our strength.

I agree, but I still hold it back. Let me keep him talking first, I say. Might buy us some time.

Ink waits, hovering over my mind, tense and anxious.

“I think whatever you’re doing is nothing like what I experienced,” I say. “I certainly wouldn’t stick one of those remnants in me willingly.”

Ink scoffs.

“Of course,” Yedzaquib says. “You didn’t have a refiner. You’re doing remarkably well without it.”

He looks at me, or more accurately, he turns his head in my direction. I can’t really tell where his eyes are looking given all the unsettling glowing light. I guess this is how people feel talking to me.

Yedzaquib raises an amused eyebrow. “Arcane Attendant? Interesting.”

Nerves creep through me. He can see my stats. He does have access to the System.

Oh, we’re so fucked.

“Homunculus, hm?” Yedzaquib continues.

He leisurely begins to stride my way, and I continue to back up. At least he can’t head after both Zyneth and I at once. Options, options! I’m not sure if my void or glass would be strong enough to pierce his skin now that he’s like this. Think a laser beam to the eyes would work a second time?

“Quite a strange Role,” he says. “I wonder if our nature impacts the—” He cuts off with a wince, putting a hand to his temple. “What?”

I Check him again. Two of his stats have finished processing. Well, kind of.

[Title: <ERROR>]

[Role: <ERROR>]

“Impossible.” Yedzaquib’s face twists into a snarl. “No. You’re wrong!”

I don’t know what the hell’s happening, but I do know one thing: he’s distracted.

It’s time to bounce.

I dash one way, and Zyneth dashes the other. Yedzaquib roars. The sound isn’t something normal vocal cords should be able to make. It’s deep and inhuman. Like the sound the fire remnant had made.

Yedzaquib moves in a blur of white, closing the gap between us in an instant. I throw myself to the side, but one of his legs still manages to stab through a glass limb and pin me down. Pain shoots through me; I turn off my sense of touch in that limb and Unchain the glass, abandoning it so I can roll away.

“This is your fault,” Yedzaquib snarls. “It must be something you did.”

“I don’t even know what’s going on!” I cry, continuing to scramble back. Yedzaquib starts to follow, but stumbles, grabbing his head. I use the opportunity to expedite my retreat.

But those Errors are bothering me. The words are flickering, like they might still resolve into something sensible. I haven’t seen anything like this before. Echo what do those Error stats mean? I ask her.

[Variable population failed,] Echo says. [Synthesis rejected. Required parameters out of bounds.]

Which parameters?

[<Access Denied>]

What do you mean by synthesis?

[<Access Denied>]

I race out of the warehouse; Zyneth is already in the streets. Yedzaquib hasn’t followed. He’s clutching his head with both hands. Licks of fire flicker over his form.

“No,” Yedzaquib growls. “No, you answer to me!”

Zyneth and I don’t stick around to see what happens next.

“I don’t suppose you have any insight into what we’re dealing with?” Zyneth asks as we run.

“Whatever he was trying to do didn’t completely work,” I say. “I think his passenger is fighting back.”

“That’s good, right?” Zyneth glances behind us. “Should keep him distracted.”

“For a little bit.” Without even discussing it, we’re running toward the edge of town rather than toward the city center. The unspoken consensus leaves me feeling both relieved and grim. “But I’m not sure it’s a good thing. If it wins, then we’re just dealing with another predator but in a body that’s ten times as powerful as the old Yedzaquib.”

Zyneth snorts. “Oh, is that all?”

The ground shivers from an explosion and a faint boom echoes from behind us. A line of smoke snakes into the air.

Ink is done waiting; we need to protect ourself.

And Zyneth, I remind it. But it’s right. There’s no more talking to be had, now. I let it step in.

Not a moment later, we feel it coming. It’s not as strong as the sense we got from the remnant before. The pull is barely perceptible. But it’s enough for us to track, which means the reverse is likely also true.

“Watch out,” we tell Zyneth, stopping to spin and face our foe. “He’s coming.” The power boost from Arcane Guardian takes effect, flooding through our magic. Good: we’re going to need it.

We drop to the ground as we pull all our void off our body, no longer stable enough to support ourself on two legs, then throw the void into the air before us. We split the magic into two orbs and pull, stretching them as wide and thin as possible.

He’s moving so fast, we barely have enough time to react. We raise our disks of void, holding them before us like two great shields, but there’s enough Yedzaquib still in there that he doesn’t crash straight through to get to us. He cuts around them at the last moment, dodging our void, and blasts into us from the side. We throw ourself away.

Even with every Durability spell active, half of our limbs shatter as he crashes through us. A leg and arm are gone, as if they were never there to begin with, and two of our limbs are smashed to frit. We put our other hand on our chest as we stagger to the street, frantically checking that our core is still safe. Zyneth shouts at us from ahead, only now realizing we’d dropped back. We hurl one of our void disks toward him, dragging ourself away as Yedzaquib rounds on us.

There’s something very wrong with him. His skin is splitting apart to reveal an internal glow, as if a furnace is trying to burn its way out. His face is twisted in pain, and he’s panting through clenched teeth.

“It’s not supposed to be like this,” he forces out. “What did you do?”

We don’t know. We didn’t do anything.

“It’s supposed to be contained,” he hisses, stalking toward us. Pieces of glass break under his feet in sparks of faint pain. Steam is rising off of him, and flames lick through the cracks in his skin.

“How,” he says, haltingly. “How did you manage to control it, while I…” He steps over us, bending down with a pained, disdainful grimace. “...I am so much stronger—”

Now. We fling a cluster of glass before us and pour our mana into it. The Lightbeam fires off pointblank.

Yedzaquib’s hand flashes forward, and he catches the energy in his palm. He struggles against the attack for a moment, then pushes back, bearing down on us. We throw our hand back, reaching for our void. Yedzaquib spears a leg through our chest, and our body shatters.

We toss our core into the disk of void as we activate Displace. Darkness swallows us up. It twists around us. Then space unfolds once more, and we fall out the other half of our void.

Zyneth catches us the second we appear. He doesn’t even blink, he just keeps running, twisting between dilapidated buildings and narrow alleyways. Somewhere behind us, Yedzaquib screams.

“Will that trick him?” he asks.

The void we came through floats next to Zyneth as he runs. Meanwhile, the void we left behind snatches up our translator and all the loose glass it can carry before darting down a side street. We Displace these through our void, too. It’s not much, but it’s more than nothing.

“Maybe,” we say.

We don’t send the rest of the void directly to us, in case Yedzaquib is tracking it, but we still keep it within our range, dashing through abandoned buildings and hiding in the shadows. At the same time, we try to sense Yedzaquib—or more accurately, the remnant that’s inside him. It had been faint even when he was right on top of us. Now, we don’t sense it at all. Hopefully that means he can’t sense us, either.

“How’s your mana looking?” Zyneth asks, vaulting over a short wall.

We mentally force our way to our Interface. [Mana: 26/475]

“Bad.”

“Well,” Zyneth says, catching his breath. “We’ve been in tighter spots than this.”

That might be debatable.

The street in front of us craters. Zyneth stumbles back, shielding our core from rocks and pebbles that zing past us. Dust swirls around Yedzaquib’s form, which glows from within the cloud as if his skin was patterned with a lightning-strike. When he steps forward, it’s with none of his usual grace. His legs move with stiff jerks, as if he doesn’t know how to use them properly, and his torso sways precariously. He hisses at us, but doesn’t speak.

From experience, that’s not a good sign.

We pry ourself from Zyneth’s grasp, freeing up his hands for the imminent fight, and move up to his shoulder instead. We don’t have enough glass to reform much of a body, so clinging to his cloak is the least worst option available. The rest of our glass and void hang about his shoulders like a cowl. Well, like a cowl if cowls were amorphous, floating, and a portion of it looked vaguely wolfish.

Despite the very different circumstances, we’re briefly reminded of when we first met. Zyneth let us ride on his shoulder while we traveled to Harrowood. He talked about his adventures around the world, all the places he’d seen and monsters he’d fought. We hadn’t known why he went on such adventures, then. He hadn’t known we contained a monster.

It feels like an eternity ago.

Zyneth is holding our obsidian knife. The other was lost somewhere in the fight. He sinks into a defensive stance as Yedzaquib—or what used to be Yedzaquib—approaches. We form one Void Scythe. It’s all we can make with what we have left.

“Kanin,” Zyneth says.

We squeeze his shoulders.

He doesn’t continue. He doesn’t need to.

We face Yedzaquib with grim determination. Whatever happens, we’re in this together, and we’re not going down without a fight.

The arachnoid blurs toward us.

“That’s enough.”

Everything goes white.