Chapter 72: Collapsed

Chapter 72: Collapsed

Eli shouted, "Payde!"

He slashed at the blood-slug with his falcona, trying to carve his way closer. A man-sized bubble formed within the red-black liquid as a mage-shield surrounded Payde. He continued to fight while inside the slug, trying to kill it from the inside and--

The bubble popped.

The shield failed.

The blood closed in around Payde.

There was a moment of motion inside the slug, then stillness.

Then nothing at all.

Riadn howled. A terrible, anguished cry.

She launched herself at the side of the creature, beyond thought, beyond caution. Hacking wildly--berserk--screaming and slashing.

Eli shouted at her to back off, back off, but she didn't hear or she didn't care. She fought with two long daggers that he hadn't seen before, blocking blood-ropes and carving holes in the gelatinous slug.

For a moment, Eli thought that Riadn could see behind herself as well as he could. She intercepted every attack before it landed, she bored into the side of the creature like a beetle into a rotten log.

So he redoubled his own assault. Pounding with his sparks, thrusting with his sword. Yet getting pushed steadily backward the whole time, up the slope toward the remaining children, who were cowering in the niche. And toward Lara, who was standing in front of them with a short blade she'd picked up somewhere.

Eli grunted as a blood-rope slammed into his falcona--then another swept his legs from under him.

He hit the slope and rolled down toward the slug. Lara yelled behind him and Riadn's daggers carved away so much of the slug's liquid flesh that she actually reached Payde.

Except she only reached what was left of Payde: a half-dissolved arm in a delk-hide bracer.

She fell silent.

Then she fell still.

She stopped there, in the cavity she'd hacked from the body of the slug.

She didn't react as the tide of blood closed in around her.

Then she was gone.

Eli heard himself whimper. The Shepherds were dead. Both of them.

He'd barely known Payde and Riadn, he'd only met them that morning. Still, he'd fought beside them, and that created a bond. A stronger one than he expected.

Grief and rage clenched his heart. He rose onto one knee as the slug loomed in front of him, five tons of jellied blood. Glossy and rippling and malicious, with the faint remains of Payde and Riadn dissolving inside. Bulges emerged here and there, moments from sprouting into lashing whips or grasping ropes.

Behind him, Lara waited, her sword steady. Determined to sell her life dearly. Eli wanted to shout at her to run, to leave him--to leave the children, too. He wanted to shout that she couldn't help them, that she couldn't achieve anything except her own death.

He knew she wouldn't listen, though. Halo, she never even stopped speaking in a low undertone, urging the kids to leave, to run.

They were beyond that, though.

Sometimes you couldn't run.

Sometimes you couldn't do anything except wait for the inevitable, because you were too weak or frightened to move.

Yet sometimes you couldn't run for the same reason that Lara couldn't. Not because of weakness or fear, but because there were people you could not leave behind. The same reason that Lady Brazinka had stayed here for so many days, without hope of victory.

He reached the boulevard a moment after Lara chased the children through. Then he felt himself smile despite the pain. That was done. The Bloodwitch couldn't get them.

Not while he still stood. He needed to keep this thing from pursuing them ... and despite the power of the Reach pulsing in his core, he felt the unsteadiness of his leg.

"I'll guide you," Lara said, behind him, and put her palm on his back.

He grunted acknowledgement, unable to speak, and focused all five sparks on slashing through the slug.

He stepped backward in the direction of Lara's hand.

Another step, and another.

The wall of blood loomed in front of him, oozing closer, then quivering away from his onslaught--then sloshing at him more quickly

Steadily driving him backward along the melted stone boulevard.

He heard Swan's voice, then Dorgo's, but couldn't make out the words.

The world became blood and stone and pressure. The pressure of the Reach, the pressure of Lara's palm, the pressure of keeping this monster from those children, the press--

"Meek, Meek!" Lara lowered her voice. "Eli!"

He grunted.

"The kids are safe, they're away."

He grunted. Did that mean he could turn and run?

"Evacuating the wounded is taking more time. Can you hold?"

He grunted.

"That's what I told them," she said.

He lost himself in a haze of blood and power.

The walls of the ruined city rose around him.

His blade blurred, his legs dragged.

Pain flared then numbed.

Rocks plummeted from the rooftops and slammed into the slug. Which occasionally bought him a precious second before the creature dissolved them.

He stumbled backward two more steps ... and the blood slug didn't follow.

It stopped.

Ten feet in front of him, quivering and sloshing.

He fell against a stone wall, his breath coming in harsh rasps. And one of his sparks showed him that he wasn't leaning against a stone wall.

He was leaning against a stone arch.

He'd reached the entrance to the Weep proper, the arch that dipped down and become two arches. And when Lara led him another few steps, the din of Reach quieted. The power surging through him ebbed and he felt himself weaken, on the verge of fainting.

Also, the blood-slug retreated. Oozing away through the melted streets back toward the quarry.

"You did it," Lara said, hugging him from behind. "You saved them. You won."