Chapter 159: Glimpse of Abyss

A small amount of blood came out of the wound across Scharlott’s belly.

It came slowly, in thick drops that ran down toward his belt. His regeneration was slowed, but it wasn’t zero. Somewhere under that torn skin, the flesh was still trying to knit itself back together, just slower than before.

I didn’t have time to enjoy that. He turned 180 degrees in place and swung his fist at me.

I threw a chain from my palm. It shot upward and bit into a round, lamp-like fixture on the ceiling. I pulled.

The floor left my feet. I was dragged toward the lamp at an incredible speed, and the fist passed through the space where my head had been.

I heard the air behind the swing snap like a whip, and dust rained down from the ceiling onto my face. If I had stayed where I was, my face would have been split in two. Probably.

I hung from the chain for a moment, my heart hammering against my ribs. ’That fist is faster than my eyes,’ I thought. ’I can’t count on dodging twice.’

Below me, Khan jumped into the air with a grunt, his jaw set tight. He brought his two axes forward and crossed them in front of his chest. "Die, you bastard."

In front of the crossed blades, a large opaque ball began to form. The air around it went still and cold, and the dust near it crumbled to nothing.

Particles of decay drifted inside it, slowly circling. At the center sat a beacon, and when I looked at it for even half a second, I got a glimpse of the Abyss.

My stomach turned. I looked away.

Khan swept his axes through the air. Chaos flew toward Scharlott’s whole body.

Scharlott tried to move, but the chains were still wrapped around his legs. Spectral chains don’t care how fast a man is. They held.

And at that same moment, I caught another ripple in his soul.

It was different from the regret I had pulled before. This one was cold and wrong. It was unorthodoxity.

I didn’t think. I bound my consciousness to it and pulled. The thread was slippery, and it fought me the whole way, but I held on.

Drr!

Chaos swallowed Scharlott’s entire body. A low, wet hissing came from his skin. It bubbled, darkened, and swelled in places where it shouldn’t. At the same time, I felt the unorthodoxity in his soul rise up toward the surface, answering my pull.

"He is in an unstable condition!"

When the chaos finally evaporated, I saw what I had done.

Scharlott was standing there, but he was no longer fighting us.

He was fighting himself.

His humanity and his unorthodoxity were colliding inside his soul, each one trying to take control of his body, and neither one winning. Every time one pushed forward, the other crashed into it. The threads of his soul shook like a bridge in a storm.

His body was charred black. Both of his eyes had burst.

I let go of the chain on the ceiling and dropped. I kept my emotions locked down, every one of them. Anger, fear, the tear I wanted to cry for Petra. None of it could come with me right now. There would be time for it later, if we lived.

I swung in the air, brought my sword around, and swept it through his neck.

Shhhk!

The head came off clean.

Scharlott didn’t scream. He didn’t fall right away either. He stood for a breath like a statue, because he could control neither his body nor his will. He was null. Then the body tipped over and crashed onto the floor, and the head hit the stone with a dull, heavy sound, rolled a short distance, and stopped.

For a moment, the only sound in the hall was our breathing.

I landed on one knee and breathed heavily. My hands were shaking on the hilt.

’This was no easy task,’ I thought. ’If he hadn’t lost control of his body, we would have died...’

I swallowed hard and turned my head.

Eva and Khan were already looking at me. Khan’s chest was heaving and his axes hung loose in his hands. None of us said anything. We just ran toward Petra.

She was still against the wall, exactly where she had hit it. Her back was pressed to the stone and her head hung forward. There was blood at the corner of her mouth, and one hand lay open on the floor beside her. For one terrible second I couldn’t tell if her chest was moving.

She was breathing. It was hard, and every breath rattled, but she was breathing.

A tear rolled down my cheek. I hadn’t given it permission.

I dropped to my knees next to her and found that I was afraid to touch her. I was afraid of hurting her more.

"Wait..." I said, and I summoned Sphink.

The little fox appeared on my shoulder, took one look at Petra, and understood what to do without being told. She jumped across and sat on top of Petra’s head, then began to produce her tears.

The tears fell on Petra’s skin and soaked in. I watched the color come back into her face, slowly. After a minute, her breathing eased. Her condition stabilized to some extent. She wasn’t healed, but with some rest she would be fine.

I let out a breath I had been holding for what felt like an hour.

Khan put a hand on my shoulder. Eva stood a step behind him with her flat, calm face, though her eyes were red.

"She will live," Eva said quietly.

I wanted to answer her. I wanted to say something, anything.

And then we felt it again.

My spiritual sense, which had gone quiet, spiked all at once. Sphink’s fur stood straight up, and she pressed herself flat against Petra’s hair.

Like frost creeping over a window. Like ink bleeding into pure water. Like a shadow swallowing a lantern’s light, like a sudden eclipse in a clear sky. Like a hand closing tight around a throat.

A shiver ran down my spine. Slowly, I turned my head to look behind me.

The head of Scharlott had been stitched back onto his body.

"Oh, hell no."