“What are you doing?” Ana hissed from beside him.
“I’m trying something,” he said, turning and smiling at her.
“You’re doing something that’s going to get you killed, is what you’re doing,” she said, staying beside him. Her claws were out as she looked between him and the garzeth, but he held a hand out to stop her.
Her eyes narrowed. He reached a hand out and took one clawed hand. He interlaced his fingers with hers. He squeezed her hand.
He didn’t mean for it to be intense enough that it hurt her, but her eyes went wide and her mouth opened. A small cry escaped from her lips, and she seemed to weaken in the knees just a little.
She turned that wide-eyed stare down to his hand. To her fingers interlaced with his.
And for a moment there was dark magic mixed with bright, glowing purple that seemed to flow between the two of them. Her eyes got even wider as she looked up at him.
“So I know I keep saying this, but… impossible,” she said.
“I don’t know what’s going on here,” he said with a shrug. “But I need to do this.”
He kept hold of her hand, but he also moved so she was behind him and he was between her and the garzeth. He’d let go of Albert’s tail, though the cat was still hissing and sputtering in his ear. Everything had happened so fast that he barely had time to keep up with all of it.
He could worry about the cat later. If he lived through this. He still wasn’t sure about that.
He wanted to make sure he was between her and the danger, though he wasn’t sure how dangerous this creature was now. The creature looked down at him and let out a growl. It cocked its head to the side, again doing that thing where all six of its eyes blinked out of sequence.
That was still weird and disconcerting, but he held the creature’s gaze. It let out a roar and swiped at his arm that he held outstretched. He felt the fury in the creature pulsing towards him. The same as what he felt coming from Ana for a moment. Their cores pulsed in time with one another.
His core was quiet now. There was none of that tempest, none of that storm. None of the sense that the infernal power inside him wanted to scour his body and remove his flesh from his bones as revenge for all the creatures he’d killed wielding his felblade.
No. It sat there within him pulling in mana from the maelstrom. It was quiet. Ready to obey. There wasn’t another Ascension coming so there was no conflict.
He reinforced his arm, pushing some of that infernal magic into his mana pathways and filling his arm to the point it almost seemed to glow. When the creature’s claws made contact they glanced off.
The thing cocked its head to the side. It looked utterly confused. It even let out a quiet growl that carried all of that confusion. Then it looked back to him. Liam felt at its core as he smiled and nodded at the creature.
“It’s okay,” he said. “I can help you.”
The thing let out a low growl that was loud enough it rumbled his chest. Only it seemed less sure of itself. Maybe. Granted, Liam didn’t have a lot of experience communicating with giant demonic grizzly bear lookalikes with four arms and two legs, a mouth full of sharp teeth, and six eyes. The creature didn’t look like it had much experience trying to communicate either.
Unless, of course, what it was trying to communicate was that someone was about to become lunch.
“It’s okay,” Liam said.
“This is a really bad idea,” Ana said. “That thing is tier two. It would be able to bite your…”
As though in time with her summoning that idea into the universe, the garzeth moved down faster than Liam would’ve thought possible and clenched its teeth around his neck. It tried to squeeze down with its teeth and separate his head from the rest of his body.
He imagined his head separating and a spurt of blood flying out. He imagined Ana screaming in terror as she watched him decapitated as the creature feasted on his body, knowing it would turn on her and do the same to her next.
But it didn’t happen. The garzeth tried to pull at him, but he stayed firmly rooted to the spot. It let out a confused grunt. It bit down on his neck a few more times.
It brought to mind some of the manor dogs in Baron Riven’s house quietly sitting in front of a fireplace chewing on a bone that cracked but refused to break open.
The thing gnawed on his neck a few more times. He felt the pinpricks of its sharp teeth pressing against his neck, but they never quite pressed into his flesh to rip and tear like the creature was no doubt expecting.
Hells, it was half of what he’d been expecting. He hadn’t had time to reinforce himself when the attack came, but then again, hadn’t that been what he was doing this entire time? Reinforcing his body and expanding those mana pathways? Feeling the pain as they were forcefully moved past the point of anything he would’ve thought possible?
He didn’t know a lot about how all of that worked. Not from the books in Baron Riven’s study. The Academy was tight-lipped about how magic worked beyond vague generalities. They wanted people to come to their towers to study that sort of thing.
Pretty much all he knew was he had a mana core that fed mana pathways, and those could be expanded to allow more mana to fill you. Core and pathways alike.
The creature finally gave up. It pulled back and stood there as tall as it could. It loomed over him, only it didn’t hold the same terror now as it had before.
The mana storm all around them also seemed to be abating finally. The winds weren’t blowing as hard. There was a glow over Isai in the distance, but that glow didn’t seem to be nearly as bright as it’d been even earlier in the evening as they looked out across the Scar and saw the city’s ruins.
Liam still stood there with his hand held out.
“How are you still alive?” Ana said, only her voice seemed to be filled with awe this time rather than surprise.
“I have a few tricks,” Liam said with a shrug.
The creature stared down at him. He could feel the pain coming through it where its limbs had been chopped off. Only the one had been restored by the infernal mana flowing all around them. Only the one, but the other stumps were still there and he could feel the pain pulsing through its body in time with the pulsing from its core as those wounds healed. Slowly, but they were healing.
He kept his hand up until the creature leaned forward and sniffed at it. Again, it reminded him of some of the barn cats at Baron Riven’s estate.
It sniffed for a long moment. Liam braced himself, wondering if the creature was going to try and bite his hand off. He wasn’t as worried about that happening now that he’d apparently gotten some armor in his skin thanks to all the mana flowing into him, but he still would rather avoid the attempt if it was at all possible.
Finally the creature rubbed its face against his hand, and it was surrounded by a bright purple glow that passed between him and the garzeth. It blinked in surprised, again doing that blinking out of sequence. It looked down at him, and he could feel a connection between the two of them. A connection that ran to him, and then to the land all around him. A connection he couldn’t begin to describe or explain, other than to say it was there.
And then the garzeth did something that surprised him almost more than anything else that’d happened up to this point, though it seemed like an evening for impossible things to be happening. So what was one more impossible thing?
That purple glow had all its limbs returning. Claws included. Liam braced, wondering if it was going to go on the attack now that it’d been restored, but there was that connection.
He’d felt it before. He felt that there was peace between them now. That this thing wouldn’t hurt him. Though there was always the possibility he was reading the situation wrong. This was completely unfamiliar territory.
But then the thing got down on all four of its arms and its two legs and started wiggling its butt. It opened its mouth, and a massive black tongue lolled out of it. Then it was leaning forward and licking Liam.
He started to laugh as he wrapped his arms around the thing’s neck and scratched at its soft fur. The thing let out a quiet growl that seemed almost like a purr. If it was a purr that was coming from a massive creature that could purr loud enough that it shook his entire body with the force of that purr. Then the thing rolled over, and he let out a surprise yelp as he went with it, rolling around and down on the stone as it fell onto its back and started moving this way and that.
It rolled over top of him for a moment. It would’ve crushed him an hour ago, but it was perfectly fine now.
Then it came back up and sat on all six of its freshly healed arms and legs, wiggling at him again. He ran his fingers through the creature’s fur, petting it and scratching it like he would a dog sitting in front of the fire idly chewing on a bone and enjoying the good life in the baron’s manor.
“Well aren’t you a good boy?” he said.
The thing let out a whine that sounded like one of the dogs that roamed Baron Riven’s property, and then it started licking him again.
Finally it sat back on its butt. That made it look more like the bears it resembled by way of demonic corruption and less like a dog at the baron’s manor house.
Only as Liam felt the power pulsing through it, he also knew that wasn’t demonic corruption. That was what the humans called it. That was what the mages at the Arcane Academy called it.
A dismissive name for something they couldn’t control, and so they tried to make it seem evil. Only this wasn’t evil.
Well, not evil in the sense that it only wanted to create death and destruction in the world for no particular reason. No, this thing needed to hunt and eat the same as anything else, and it’d chased them because of that. It wasn’t anything personal. It wasn’t because it had a malevolent desire to kill humans.
It was because it was an animal that was hungry, and it happened to be powerful enough that it was infused with infernal mana. Not to mention mana both arcane and infernal had been acting a little squirrelly tonight for some reason.
He turned and glared at the cat. Albert calmly stared back up at him with his tail swishing this way and that.
“What?” Albert said.
Liam opened his mouth to say something. He had more than a sneaking suspicion that everything that’d happened to him tonight had something to do with the cat messing with forces that shouldn’t be messed with by mere mortals. Which was pretty much the story of all of human and demonic history for the past forty years or so since this feline bastard had mashed their two worlds together.
But he didn’t get a chance to say anything. No. He heard Ana clearing her throat. He turned to look at her. She was still staring at him with eyes wide and her mouth hanging open.
“What the hells?” she said, looking between him and the garzeth that’d rolled onto its side again and presented its belly like it wanted some scratches.