.
I’ve mentioned this before, but the three big tunnels forming the cavern had many smaller cross tunnels connecting them. I headed quickly across to the central tunnel using the first crossing I reached.
Chiara was following me. Once again, I had neglected to use Command to counterbalance her drive to protect me. Chiara’s path of travel was strange, though. She seemed to be traveling by bounding along like the Hulk. It was Wind magic, but different from the flight spells that Talene and Pasrue used. And I had felt only the mana flow and not a spell form, which meant it was a skill rather than a spell.
It wasn’t as fast as my flight, but I reached my first destination before she could lose me. She was still following as I landed in the swamp where I had located Diurhimath with vampire sense.
I already knew he was cloaked, so rather than looking for him, I dove in and sank to the bottom of the murky water in order to maximize my Darkness supply. Less than a minute later, I found him using vampire sense and pulled him from underneath the lily pads of a lagoon crowded with Spirit Lotus. The flora around me made an eerie scene as I towed the half-conscious stregone between the glowing blooms.
As I pulled him onto the shore, he became more aware of his surroundings and understood who was annoying him.
“Commander, please leave me and get away from here,” he mumbled. “That Demon General could return…”
The words confirmed to me what I suspected had happened. The archfiend had caught up to Diur’s main body and Diur had lost that fight. He escaped to the swamp, and then fooled the archfiend by playing dead through a combination of Cloak, murky swamp water and the dense Dark mana infused in the Marsh Wool in the water where he hid before passing out.
He was in horrible shape, with flesh missing from multiple locations. It was torn from his face, his arms, and his exposed ribs. Maybe it isn’t necessary to say, after what I just described, but his brigandine was gone, with the exception of one scorched sleeve.
“Sorry, Observer, but I need you to survive,” I told him as I began gathering Healing mana. I was also drawing in as much Darkness as I could. I didn’t know whether I could hide with vampire cloak, but I had to try, since I was about to light up like a bonfire.
“I… need to reform my proxies,” he mumbled. “Your friends are in danger. Let me return to the bottom.”
“You had passed out already when I found you,” I told him as my wings glowed white. “Be still and let me heal you. I don’t know how you are even still alive, with all the flesh and skin that you’re missing!”
“It’s a Spiritual technique,” he muttered.
“[Healing],” I chanted. Rather than use the Writing Brush, I poured out the mana through the splayed fingers of both hands, trying to spread it out over his entire body. He had to be full of contamination and microbes right now, after laying with wide swaths of missing skin exposed to the swamp water.
He was an Elder. He could take it, so I didn’t hold back. He grimaced as the furnace heat hit him. My mind filled with the feedback of data on his health, and to my alarm, I realized that his pneuma seemed to be fading. He was already too far gone.
Inspiration, or it might have been half-remembered knowledge from Senhion told me what to do. I circulated additional Healing and chanted, “[Restoration]”, while maintaining the [Healing] spell. I don’t know how I knew how to maintain two separate circulations of Healing, but it was somehow only somewhat more difficult that circulating differing mana types. I poured the second spell into him, supporting his life as I repaired his body.
I felt Chiara approaching, headed straight toward me, and knew my Cloak wasn’t hiding anything. I gave up on it.
“How horrible,” she said as she approached. He did still look like hell, since I was concentrating more on the severe internal injuries and simply preventing him from bleeding out. His lungs were still half-full of fluids and his guts were a wreck. I would worry about surface appearance after I had dealt with the more critical things.
“I told you to return to the princess,” I told her, not hiding my displeasure at all. I was speaking from within the flames of Healing at that moment, so I was hardly in the mood to try.
“I know that, My Lady,” she answered simply. “There is too much danger to you, so I cannot obey.”
“I can use my powers to compel you,” I considered.
“Don’t,” gasped Diur. “Her bond is still fresh. Don’t force her to fight against it.”
Chiara’s hand caressed my arm and her voice filled with concern. “You sound like you’re in pain, My Lady.”
“I’m using extremely strong Healing,” I answered. The sudden contact had made me aware of my fully grown fangs and the pretty girl touching me. I pushed that awareness aside. “He was nearly dead when I found him.”
“You should leave,” Diur insisted. “You both should return to your princess.”
“Forget it! We need you and your proxies back in action!” I practically yelled at him. “My friends are getting pushed out into the cavern as we speak!”
The archfiend had returned to the demon camp after he became convinced that Diur was dead. Probably, he didn’t realize that Diur had an ally at the highway entrance, and thought his underlings had encountered another of his proxies there, rather than us.
The last of the fluid in Diur’s lungs dried up and his ruined spleen and liver flowed back into their normal shapes. I switched the mana flow to my right hand only and began concentrating on specific organs, first reconstructing his intestines so I could knit together all the torn blood vessels that continued to lose fluid into his gut. I turned my attention to his shattered ribs after that.
“Stop,” he told me through gritted teeth. “Your Healing cannot restore any more than this. I must repair the rest through my spiritual techniques.”
I hesitated to drop the spell, even though the feedback portion of the Healing magic was telling me he was right. I was making no more progress. Scrambled soft tissue could be unscrambled, but missing tissue and broken bones refused to regrow. But if I stopped here, he would have only one working arm, cracked ribs, a broken spine, and he would surely bleed out through all the flesh damage.
He scowled and said, “Trust me, Commander. Nothing is eternal in the Mortal Realm. An Elder body as old as mine has lost most of its capacity of natural growth. Holy magic only works on that which grows naturally. You are done with the work of piecing together the puzzle of ruptured vessels and organs and moving fluids to their rightful places. The rest requires other methods. I must take care of it from here.”
Reluctantly, I let the [Healing] end. He was still horribly low on pneuma, so I continued [Restoration] several more seconds. It couldn’t restore pneuma, but it could eliminate any fatigue in the pneuma he still had.
Then I basked in the relief that followed dropping the Healing magic and simply watched him warily. Even though he looked like something that should be dead or at most half-dead, he was indeed stable. The blood that should be oozing out from the torn, exposed muscles never appeared.
“Stop!” I yelped as he sat up, visibly pained by the effort. “Your back is fractured!”
“My neck is fractured,” he corrected. “My lower back is entirely broken. I am using a technique to overcome both. Fortunately, my broken femur will be easier to deal with, once I recover sufficient pneuma to transform into sea form and back.”
He then scowled over at me with his partially ruined face and his one remaining eyeball.
“You should go now. I will reform my proxies and send them to support your friends as soon as I recover the rest of my spiritual energy. I still have control of most of it, so it won’t take long to gather it back up.”
Finally, I accepted it. Despite his appearance, he appeared to be functional. I ignored his request and told Chiara, “I’m still ordering you to go back to Amelia, but if you follow me, stay low and support me from concealment. Do not expose yourself to anything stronger than an imp. That is an order, understood?”
“Yes, My Lady,” she said, sounding reluctant.
“Commander…” Diur began.
“No,” I answered. “Period. I must fight for my friends. Support me as soon as you can.”
I sprang into the air, cloaked and flew as quickly as possible in the direction of the demon camp.
An outrider appeared next to me as I flew. I frowned over at it. “Concentrate on recovering, not on me!”
“I will, but you need to know what you are flying into. Allow me to share my vision with you.”
“Share your vision?” I echoed, confused.
“This outrider will come into contact with your head and attempt to show you what a second outrider is currently observing.”
I recoiled from it as it drifted closer. “I’m flying here! I need to see where I’m going!”
“It will not replace your eyesight. But I cannot give this to you unless you accept it, so please relax.”
Vague memories told me this had been a common technique between Elders in the Elder Age. Feeling a lot less than comfortable, I slowed my flight down and let the spirit-like form settle onto the nape of my neck.
A strange second vision came to me. It didn’t overlay my eyesight, it simply appeared in a second space in my mind. I could switch my attention between it and my normal vision just like switching between the map and the main view in a game.
When I had observed the situation in the entrance tunnel from the highway tunnel, the archdemon had been slowly pushing our team the rest of the way into the cavern, but they had still been in the tunnel. The scene that I now saw sent my heart into the pit of my stomach.
Our team was in the middle of the demon camp and surrounded. Everyone was on their feet still, to my relief. And the number of dead demons outnumbered the living. But the remaining higher demons were still in the air, unharmed and at full strength.
The battle was in a lull. The demons were playing the despair card, holding back and waiting for our side to lose morale. Demons are fundamentally lazy. If they find themselves in the superior position, they will try to intimidate their opponent into surrender rather than expend the effort to defeat them. The image didn’t come with audio, but I could see the archdemon speaking, which was allowing my companions to catch their breath. The strong flow of Wind currently running within my pathways turned out to be an enormous version of Ceria’s circular [Wind Wall] surrounding our side.
As I came around the final corner, I discovered that the archdemon’s back was turned toward me, while the archfiend faced my companions from the opposite side. The female assura hovered above the sunken path back to the entrance tunnel.
Drawing Durandal, I loaded up my mana circulation with all mana types, pouring extra Darkness into my cloak, extra Wind into my flight skills, and extra Healing and Earth into my mana pathways in preparation for [Purification] and [Body Fortification]. I shifted my path to line up on both the archdemon and the archfiend, then accelerated.
