BleedingTears
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Arcanist - Chapter 23
🕑 Added 2025-03-09 11:58:00 +0000 UTCValens stumbled back, mind reeling, fingers of his right hand prickling, dust and gravel choking him down. He made for a sweep of his hand to clear some air, blinked round at the chaos, the dust, the fog, breath catching in his throat. He pulled at Nomad and Celme with both hands, dragging them forcefully away from the tip that had cleaved halfway into the solid ground.
The giant pulled the enormous weapon back with slow deliberation, as if he wanted to get a good look at all the mess he’d made, blood streaking across its tip. It took a heavy moment for the lane to get rid of the terrible thing, after which the dust of the cloud parted to reveal the aftermath.
Men screaming. Men shouting. Broken bones squelching in puddles of blood that had half parts of limbs in them. A Skeleton Soldier flailed on a pair of dented knees, scrambling forward with one hand to the wall, the other clasped weakly round a rusted spear that tried to poke at an armored man who had his eyes fixed on his non-existent legs.
All the blood and the pain reflected in the Resonance dinned in Valens’s ears. It was a Healer’s nightmare out in front of him. A number of men tattering dangerously on the line that separated life from death. Help one of them, then he’d be risking losing the other. Help none, then they’d be all dead, which felt like a more just way of doing things.
He sent a Lifeward circling into the undead’s body before moving onto the Berserker. Nothing broken. A touch of blood and some bruises round their bones, but the last-second Gale saved them from a terrible fate, and Valens a great deal of extra work. So he tapped them on the backs, seeing them eye to eye, making sure they had their brains in place before moving over to the screaming line.
A Fireball sprawled over to the stubborn Skeleton Warrior and flashed crimson round its yellowish bones. The tongues of it bit, scratched and scorched every speck of that foul mana until the creature was no more.
Ding You have managed to defeat [Skeleton Soldier - lvl 65]! For killing a creature above your own level, you are granted bonus experience.
You have leveled up! 5 Stat Points granted!
“Thanks,” Valens acknowledged the present and leaned over the legless man as he wheezed pitifully through clenched teeth. Behind them other men thrashed in pain. Cried in wails. Sent prayers to whatever gods they believed in, knowing they couldn’t escape the death creeping in. The man with the spear wound…
Oh?
Was right here in Valens’s hands.
A Lifeward painted the patient’s picture in his mind. As expected, there was nothing about the legs in the frequencies. Hardly a surprise, considering the man was holding onto his bloody knobs with incredulity. Upper body was interestingly in a good condition. It seemed the sword had been too sharp to affect the other areas. A heavier weapon wouldn’t have left him alive, however half he might be now.
“Bite into this like your mother’s life depends on it,” Valens said, ripping a piece from his robe and stuffing it hard into the man’s bloody mouth, watching him gawk at his face and give him a reassuring nod. This was no time for formalities.
“And you!” he turned, finger pointed at a man belching out with his back to the wall, a pair of bloody legs lying in a bloody puddle underneath his feet. The man snapped suddenly like a soldier called out for a terrible crime, then blanked when Valens gestured at the legs. “Get me those legs. Be careful not to break them!”
There was a reaction to those words in the man’s face, as if he wasn’t sure how he could further break something so cleanly severed and bloodied in the first place. Still, under Valens’s urging gaze, he rose to the job and carried the legs wincing across the way. He laid them near the wounded man, blinked at the separated stubs of bones revealed in the bloodied waist, gave a weary sigh and clunked down at his back, eyes rolling white.
“Weak willed man,” Valens muttered, they were a terrible bunch.
He pulled the legs near the man’s waist, mind focused sharply on the Resonance. A set of weakening frequencies bloomed in his mind, Lifeward letting him know the man was about to be off.
Lifesurge eased into the waist-area a moment after. Now, the bleeding was a bastard of a problem on its own, but re-attaching the legs was moreso. With one hand he pushed the tip of the right leg into the waist-line, Lifesurge threads converging round the area and focusing on the severed veins. He stitched each one back with smooth precision, hardly blinking, hardly sweating, knowing too well this was just another operation.
He was soon reminded of the circumstances, though. A snarling, hissing grunt of a voice dinned in his ears. He was scarcely big enough to bloat the patient’s chest with his own shadow, but slowly everything around him fell in a sprawling dark that sent a shiver down his back.
Up he looked, and there he saw the sword making for a second round. The face behind it, or rather the skull of it, had a frown of a smile that seemed eerily disappointed. Perhaps the creature thought a single sweep would’ve been enough to crush the wall. Indeed it was, but by some freak of an accident a large piece of the back wall had patched the stretch that the giant managed to crush.
It was pure luck on their side, as otherwise the Necromancer’s horde would’ve filled the lane.
But now it was coming back again, and it seemed to Valens that expecting a second streak of luck wasn’t all that sensible. He got up, knees aching, hands wet with blood, and started dragging the man away from where the creature aimed its sword. An armored hand reached out from beside, agleam with green fog, and pulled at the man’s lusterless armor before nearly hurtling him back.
“I’m trying to save this man!” Valens jabbed a strong hand into Nomad’s face. “Try to be more gentle, will you?”
“Oh…” Nomad scowled in confusion, then gave a hesitant nod. “Saving lives, right.”
“Right,” Valens said, stumbling back over the bodies of rotless Skeletons and nearly falling on his arse, before managing to forcibly plant his feet on the ground.
“What do we do?” Celme’s voice was weary and yet furious. Her crimson eyes stared up at the giant sword, the side of her lips curled in a tight frown. She seemed to be cursing the fact that she hadn’t anything against that bastard of a sword.
Valens didn’t blame her.
“It's aiming for the wall,” Nomad said, voice rasping. “They’re not gonna let us get away with it. Look at those fuckers. Sheep trembling before a fucking dog!” He hollered at the jostling line of men ahead who seemed to be caught in an argument whether they should move forward or get back from the lane, hesitation in their eyes as some of them gazed at the patient in Valens’s hands. “Get your arms up, men! That piece of shit’s not going after us. I reckon it's aiming for the wall. They’ll come storming, those fools, in a moment. Be ready!”
Some grumbles and curses about the Undead Legion in general, but they all quieted down when the sword came screaming down with brutal force. Men tensed back. Men sprinted across the distance to stand beside Nomad for some reason. Men looked in nervous expectation as this time the sword slowed before it bit into the wall, eased sideways across and then up in a smooth line, cutting a great square of it like one might cut butter with a blazing knife.
As he was busy stitching the legs back into the man’s waist, Valens hesitated for a second if he should try for another Gravitating Earth to patch the hole. But that thought proved painfully innocent as the wall came down with a loud thump and dozens of Skeleton Warriors filed in through the opened hole.
“Shit,” Nomad cursed, and he and the others beside him rushed to meet the new lines of animated corpses.
It was a clash of bodies and bones, armors screeching, blood spurting, men screaming and roaring with battle fury. Being in the thick of it made the job in Valens’s hand feel a touch pointless. Back in his old world, back in the tent that would be planted near a skirmish or a true battle, he’d often only have to deal with people who had a chance at making it.
Nobody would try to bring in a man about to kiss the death in the face into a Healer’s Tent. Got a bullet in your heart? Then chances are you didn’t make it into the hands of the famous Healers of the Empire.
Yet here, when men fell in blood-curdling shrieks and painful cries, or when they staggered back with some rusted weapon caught round their sides, Valens’s hands jerked up as a reflex, mind reeling as he considered the choices he could make, or he should make.
He could fix a shattered heart now, he could regrow the lost limbs with enough lifemana and a good deal of Lifesurges in such close proximity. He could, in theory, help each of those wounded men, but he only got two hands, and the limitation of them sent a ghostly pain down his chest whenever one of the men died bleeding.
It was during these times Apathy proved its worth. Ever the relieving web, now stretched across his emotions and pressed over them like ice on a burnt skin. It ripped out all the unnecessary notes, and Valens was back at it again, focused purely on the left leg of the man who had his teeth crunching on a now-bloodied cloth.
When he was done with the leg, he poured enough lifemana into the man’s heart to strengthen the blood flow.
The man came to himself with a bleary look, eyes unfocused, searching around his body, widening when he lifted his right leg to check it. Awareness crept slowly into his face as he brought one shaking finger over to his face.
“Get up,” Valens said, and put a hand over the man’s trembling knees. “You’re all good, and fixed, and healed, soldier. It’s all about your mind, now. Either move back and find yourself a hole to rest, or get back to the din to make the battle work those things for you.”
“Er… Eh?” the man blanked at him, smooth face twisted up in a questioning scowl. He pulled himself wincing on his arse, felt his body with one free hand before giving him a look.
“T-Thank you…” he said, voice quivering, dark eyes looking up at Valens in gratitude. Then he was staring down, as if searching for something around Valens’s body, only to scowl back again with questions in his eyes. “Who do you serve, Priest?”
Valens sighed out wearily. “I serve no one, soldier. Go ahead, off with you now. I have more business to attend to. On your feet!” He tapped him on the back for good measure, then left him there to move toward where he was needed the most.
Their line in the lane did a good job at holding the breach across the wall. It was big enough to let six men pass, and Nomad was taking a good part of it all by himself. The men grumbling about the Undead Legion now seemed to appreciate the help, as they looked for any opportunity to prove their worth by helping Nomad and pressing into the chaos shoulder to shoulder with him.
But while the men tired, and Celme and Nomad rasped one breath after another, there was no end to the Necromancer’s horde. The Skeleton Soldiers were streaming in a constant line that neither tired nor feared they might lose something precious in the battle.
Valens’s eyes strayed down at the wailing men. Broken men. Men who needed immediate attention. Then up he was looking at the press where at each passing second a man stumbled back, wounded by some rusted and venomous weapon that left them breathless.
The realization came slowly. Even if he were to have four hands, he couldn’t keep up with the rate at which these people got wounded in the chaos with his healing. There was just no point in that.
Backing off, he found a large rock and climbed up to it before gazing from over the wall. Hundreds of Skeleton Soldiers and twisted creatures sprawled into an endless tide beyond it. A tide that seemed to be holding well against the human and Undead alliance.
It took him only a moment to make a decision. Stretching his hands out, he tapped into the mana pool in his chest that had renewed and was now over half-full. He felt the fiery streaks’ warmth round his fingers, tongues of flame coming alive with but a thought. More mana fed into the spell as Valens established his control over the threads. He had to make sure the lane wouldn’t be affected by the storm.
He took in a deep breath when the spell reached a saturation. It was risky, he knew, and more than likely would bring some attention to his side, but it was high time to mull over what ifs and whatnots.
He let the Inferno rage toward the sprawling tide with determination.
…..
