Chapter 167: Central Sector [4]

Zeus’s body was gone.

Leon’s eyes blew wide. He slammed three geometric defensive barriers into the air directly in front of him as fast as his hands could move.

Zeus was already there.

He appeared right in front of Leon’s face with no gap between the vanishing and the arrival. His bare hand struck the first barrier.

CRACK. It exploded into glass-like fragments.

His hand kept moving.

CRACK. The second barrier split apart.

CRACK. The third one folded like paper.

’He’s too fast.’ Leon pushed every remaining drop of focused mana he had into a point-blank geometric shockwave and released it directly into Zeus’s chest.

The force slammed into Zeus’s open palm and stopped. Like it had hit something that didn’t acknowledge physics.

Zeus pushed his arm forward.

The entire spell construct fractured.

The backfire hit Leon in the face and exploded.

"AGH!"

He was airborne before the pain registered. He tumbled hard across the rocky dirt and crashed onto his back and the world went sideways and loud and then suddenly very quiet.

His torso was screaming. His shoulders were screaming. He rolled onto his hands and knees and coughed and blood came with it and painted the dirt beneath him.

’No...’

His arms were shaking badly. He got one foot under him. Then the other.

"I’m not..." His voice came out raw. "Not done."

The shadow arrived overhead.

Leon looked up.

Zeus was already there. Already descending. He dropped like something heavy and deliberate and his boot came down directly onto Leon’s chest with all of it behind it.

BOOM.

The impact drove Leon straight into the earth. The ground beneath him cracked outward. Every drop of air evacuated his lungs at once and he lay there pinned and breathless and completely unable to move.

Zeus looked down at him from above. The indifference on his face was almost worse than cruelty would have been. At least cruelty would have acknowledged that this was a real fight.

"I see. So you are a Spire." His head tilted slightly. "One of humanity’s finest. And your magic has no spirit behind it. Just empty spheres."

He pressed his heel down.

"Humans truly are fragile things."

Leon’s blood ignited. Not from the pain but from those words. He reached up with both hands and grabbed Zeus’s ankle and pushed with everything left in him. The boot didn’t move. It might as well have been a pillar of stone.

Zeus increased the pressure.

CRACK.

The sound came from inside Leon’s chest. loud and clear and wrong in a way sounds aren’t supposed to be wrong.

"AAARGH!"

The agony detonated across his entire torso. He coughed and blood came up his throat and ran down his jaw and dripped into the dirt below him. His grip on Zeus’s ankle went slack.

"Stay right there," Zeus said calmly. "When your vanguard arrives you will serve as a perfectly functional hostage. They will trade the Helion Core for the life of a Spire without hesitation."

The dark spots were dancing in Leon’s vision now. His breath came in short hitching gasps that each cost him something. He could feel the fractured ribs moving wrong when he inhaled.

’No... That’s not going to happen.’

He clawed at the dirt. His fingers dug in. But there was nothing to push against. No leverage. No footing. No mana left to summon anything real.

The tears came without his permission.

Not from the pain. He could have handled the pain.

From the fact that he had promised. He had stood in that tunnel and listened to Alden tell him he was a Spire and he had believed it for a while. He had really believed it. And now he was pinned in the blood-soaked dirt with his ribs broken and tears running down his dirty face and he was right back to where he’d always been.

He was left waiting, helpless and weak.

’only I wasn’t this damn weak.’

And the memory that came up next was the one that lived beneath all the others. The one he never let himself touch directly because it hurt in a different way than the rest.

"Leon? Are you hurt?"

She was already hurrying toward him with her royal silk dress fluttering at her ankles and her face full of concern.

Leon sat on the cold palace corridor floor with both hands pressed over his scraped knee. He was seven years old and the scrape barely even bled but he was crying anyway because it had startled him and his dignity was in pieces.

"It hurts," he said and pulled his leg back before she could touch it. "Don’t touch it!"

Aurelia blinked. Then she sat down beside him on the floor without being asked and looked at the scrape with the serious face of someone who had decided this was a problem worth solving.

"It’s only a scratch." She reached into her pocket and pulled out a delicate handkerchief and wiped away the tiny speck of dirt and then wrapped the cloth neatly around his knee. "There. It’ll stop hurting soon."

Leon stared at the little knot she’d made. His lower lip was still trembling.

"I’m sorry," he said quietly.

Aurelia tilted her head. "For what?"

"I’m supposed to protect you." He pressed his small fists against his knees. "But I fell down and started crying. That’s really weak."

She looked at him for a moment. Then something warm and sure spread across her face and she wrapped both arms around his shoulders from the side.

"Weak? No way."

He looked at her through the tears he hadn’t quite finished crying.

"Whenever you’re beside me I feel brave," Aurelia said. "Even when something scary happens I know you’re there. So how can someone who makes me feel that brave possibly be weak?"

The scrape stopped mattering. A slow uncertain smile spread across his face. "Really?"

"Really!" She stood and held her hand out to him. "Now come on. Let’s go play."

He took her hand and she pulled him up.

Then she gave him the mischievous look she saved for when she was about to say something she knew would get a reaction. "And don’t cry like a baby next time. I don’t think I can keep taking care of you every time you fall."