N.T. Lazer
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Book 4 - The Homeseeker - Chapter 20 - Painted Black
🕑 Added 2024-12-13 17:03:00 +0000 UTCGray Zalan sprinted forward, charging at Rep. Zalan ran in to protect his friend. He slashed his sword horizontal, trying to cut his darker version in half. Gray read his moves like they were his own and deftly bent to one side. Rep blasted fire around him, but Gray dove to the side, easily avoiding the defensive wall of flame. He ran around Rep and stopped at the mouth of the mines. Zalan helped Rep to his feet.
“He has cut off our exit,” Rep pointed out.
“We won’t need it. I’m not leaving until he’s dead,” Zalan said, determined.
Both he and Rep set their packs of food on the ground, freeing themselves of the weight for the fight.
“Careful Zalan. We do not know what Level we should be to take this kind of creature on,” Rep said.
“Careful?” Gray said, as though Rep were addressing him. The fact he spoke just like Zalan made Rep cringe. “I’ll be fine. I have an Elemental Power.” Gray Zalan let out a few sparks of lightning from his fingertips for added effect.
Zalan grit his teeth. He felt a burning rage for whatever this creature was. It knew exactly what to say to get under his skin. And it was fast. He tried to look for weaknesses in the monster. He wondered if it had the same weaknesses he did. It clearly had better strengths than him.
“I sure am glad Morloch taught me everything I know,” Gray Zalan said, smirking.
“Shut up!” Zalan demanded.
“If you say so,” Gray shrugged.
Gray threw two jolts of lightning. Rep and Zalan jumped out of the way, but the morphed monster was able to redirect the attack striking both Rep and Zalan squarely in the chest. They fell down, twitching in pain. Zalan had only once been struck by lightning when fighting Morloch. It hurt just as badly now as it had then. He hadn’t realized just how debilitating it was until seeing it used against him when he was at full strength. His body stopped operating, and he had to wait for the feeling to pass before he could scramble to his feet again.
“It knows how to redirect attacks too,” Zalan said as Rep stood next to him. “Careful with your sword, he might know about conducting electricity too.”
“Electricity?” Gray asked, confused.
Zalan squinted, trying to read the joke. He quickly tried to understand in a moment why this monochrome version of himself wouldn’t know what electricity was. It seemed to know everything else about him. There must have been a limit to his knowledge. And that limit might come with a weakness.
“It doesn't matter, I know everything I need to take you down,” Gray said, a sinister smile creeping on his face. “I even know the thing about Mom that you still haven’t told Rep. About why we never visited. Why we’ll never actually go and see her face, even after everything Rep’s done for us.”
Zalan’s eyes went wide with fury and fear. He seethed, blinded by his rage.
“Shut up! You have no right to call her your Mom!” Zalan charged forward with his sword raised.
Gray smiled calmly. Rep threw out a fireball, zipping around Zalan and targeting Gray. Gray threw a bolt of lightning at it, causing it to explode between him and Zalan. The explosion didn’t harm him, but filled the dark space with enough smoke to blind Zalan. Even so, he continued running forward, slashing his blade ferociously. Without Rep’s firelight, he couldn’t see a thing in the surrounding cave.
The air wooshed as Zalan slashed viciously ahead of him. He continued to thrust forward on every step, waiting to stab into his altered self. After throwing his weight around in the dark, Zalan stopped to look around. The smoke diffused enough for Zalan to see Rep further within the cave, but nowhere did he see Gray. The short stint of blindness had already disoriented Zalan and he couldn’t see the exit of the mines. He didn’t care so long as the monster was loose.
“Where is he?” Zalan demanded.
Rep was waving smoke out of his face, trying to get a better view. As he peered, a figure snuck up behind him.
“There! On your left!” Zalan pointed urgently.
Without turning his head, Rep blasted a fireball over his shoulder in an instant. Gray leaned to the other side, getting only minorly singed by the powerful blaze.
Gray placed a hand on Rep’s neck and shocked it with a jolt of electricity. Rep fell to the ground, and Gray kicked him with a lightning infused foot. Rep’s Elemental Flame went out, leaving them in complete darkness. Zalan’s eyes grew wide as he searched for any signs of light to see Gray. He heard slight footsteps coming his way. Zalan gripped his blade tightly, realizing it was possible that the monster could see in the dark.
“How regretful that we were there to witness what happened to Fran in Castle Docrun. And Xavier in the sea,” Gray’s conceited voice echoed around the mines.
Zalan remained silent, waiting for a chance to get an advantage over Gray. He was shivering with rage. Everything he wished to forget was being thrown at his face. He slashed his blade in a blind circle, but hit nothing.
“What about Slauson? When did we first meet him?” Rep asked, groaning on the ground.
Zalan heard the footsteps come to a halt for a second. Even Zalan was confused by Rep’s question. Gray quickly recovered.
“Oh, right, Slauson. We met him at the Elemental Rage Tournament. He was the one that I beat within an inch of his life during the semifinals. I should have killed him after I told him his father died,” Gray said with a hint of pride.
Zalan hated that he sounded so joyous over the things that sent pangs into his heart. But Rep was quick to speak up.
“Zalan! We didn’t meet Slauson at the Elemental Rage Tournament,” Rep said. “This monster only knows our regrets.”
Feet ahead of Zalan shuffled as Gray spun in place.
“You’ll regret that!” Gray exploded, throwing a massive bolt of lightning at Rep.
The cave lit up slightly upon the lighting appearing, harsh jagged shadows like teeth in a wide maw stretching across the room. Zalan could see the rage on the gray version of his face. His eyebrows were thick with anger and his lips crackling with energy. Zalan saw Rep curl into a ball as he took the attack, unable to hide behind anything. Zalan charged forward, trying desperately to hit Gray just once, enough to remove a limb from his body.
Gray saw his approach and immediately stopped his lightning, shrouding them in deep darkness. Zalan slashed forward, his sword slicing air where Gray stood a second before. He breathed out in frustration and listened deeply for where the gray version of himself ran.
Rep’s ability to provoke him made Zalan confident that he was right. Gray was fueled by their regrets. His loss of Elemental Lightning, all his training with Morloch, and his dead friends all came so naturally to the gray monster. Even Zalan’s mother was on Gray’s mind. He didn’t know how he was supposed to take down someone that understood his faults so well.
A bolt of lightning appeared from behind Zalan and sent a spear of pain carving up his spine. Zalan clenched his jaw and crashed onto the floor, writhing in pain. Trying his best to recover quickly, he stood back up. While rising, he slashed his blade vertically, aiming for the last place he felt Gray strike from. His sword swung with a disappointing lack of fatal slicing. He shouted in rage at the elusive monster. He tried to think hard about the situation, trying to use the darkness as a place to gather his thoughts rather than a place of fear. He tried to convince himself he was outside the battle looking in. In pure darkness, there were no distractions.
Another bolt of lightning appeared from the other side of the cave and threw Rep back onto the ground who only just stood up. They were going to be worn down by the lightning until they were dead. The monster had no intent of coming into close quarter combat if it could strike from a distance while they were blind.
Zalan blinked suddenly, realizing exactly what he had to do. Gray didn’t know what electricity was because Zalan never regretted getting his Physics degree. His mom said she was so proud of him for graduating. Of all the things that he wished he could go back and fix, he was happy with his education. Not just for the work he put into getting it, but the real applications it had in both his world and the realm. He just needed to use his education to his advantage over Gray. He knew Gray would throw Elemental Lightning at him next. He needed to brace himself for the oncoming attack.
Or, do something better than brace himself for electricity.
Zalan raised his sword quickly, spun it around, and stabbed it as deep as he could into the ground beneath his feet. He kept his feet together, and gripped the sword on the floor tightly, gritting his teeth and preparing himself for the pain in case this didn’t go as seamlessly as planned.
Zalan planted his feet firmly on the ground and felt the static in the air intensify as Gray emitted more lightning. The bright attack flashed the area in white light when Zalan was hit. He looked upon Gray defiantly. He didn’t fall. He hardly even felt the jolt run through his body. Zalan breathed a sigh of relief. His plan worked.
“What?” Gray said in the darkness.
Zalan waited for him to follow up his attack, but he had to wait a few seconds. Zalan smiled broadly, trying to look extra confident in the face of Gray’s faltering. He didn’t feel like smiling in the middle of the fight, but he also didn’t want Gray to feel comfortable.
It occurred to Zalan that Gray didn’t have a perfect grasp of his Elemental Lightning. He could only emit it once every few seconds, like an amateur very new to having Elemental Powers. Zalan also realized that Gray wasn’t attacking with physical strikes, instead relying exclusively on lightning for the assault. He must have been a weak fighter.
Zalan was struck by two more shocks of electricity, back to back. He flexed in reaction, but held his ground. There was a slight tingling sensation in his body, but otherwise he was unharmed. He remained statuesque, his smile becoming less forced. The idea was working better than he could have hoped for the seconds of planning he put into it.
He had successfully grounded himself using his sword. With both feet planted on the floor, he had no energy potential for the electricity to travel through. And the iron in the sword was acting as a makeshift grounding rod. He had to thank Junill for creating her swords out of such pure, rich metals, otherwise this trick wouldn’t have worked.
Gray threw more lightning, the instant of light revealing that his face was in full panic.
“Why won’t you fall?” Gray demanded.
Zalan saw that Gray wasn’t moving around the cave anymore, staying in one place as he waited to consistently output lightning. Zalan took another blast of electricity, but his knowledge of the science of grounding kept him standing tall. He couldn’t rush toward his assailant, because as soon as he moved, he would open himself up to taking damage again. It only worked if both his feet were together and he gripped his makeshift grounding rod. Gray let out more lightning, screaming in frustration, and in the flash of light, Zalan saw Rep’s form creeping up behind him, sword drawn.
“Stop standing!” Gray commanded. “I’ll make you regret ever being born!”
His voice caught in his throat and Zalan heard a thump. He waited quietly. But in the intense darkness, he could only wait for about two seconds.
“Did you get him?” Zalan asked hopefully.
Rep’s body began to show up outlined in the darkness. At first Zalan thought he started a fire again, but realized his whole body was surrounded in the bright light. He had gained a Level from killing the monster. He exploded in a blinding white light, illuminating the entire cave for an instant, like a flashbang going off from Rep’s heart. Zalan tried not to shield his eyes, taking in the area at the mouth of the cave. The light from gaining the Level wasn’t eaten away like Rep’s flame and Zalan could see a clear snapshot.
The mines were hundreds of feet deep, littered with abandoned evidence of miners of the past. Far in the distance, there were shining jewels etched into the rock walls of several different colors, making Zalan wonder how so many rare earth gems could end up in the same mines. The ceiling was a little lower than Zalan expected after seeing the massive mouth of the cave when they entered, about three times his height. But the worst part was the shapes of creatures etched far into the cave. Other things that were watching them from deep within the mines. Luckily, none of them looked to Zalan like the Mind of Madness.
The light quickly diminished and Rep opened an Elemental Flame in his palm so the two could see again. Zalan moved quickly to look over the monster’s dead body.
It still had some resemblance to Zalan’s form, but it had begun to shrivel up like a deflated balloon. The two friends watched closely, making sure it was dead as it continued to wither away, Zalan’s gray face contorting into itself. Zalan hoped it wouldn’t come back in some other form of regret. He didn’t know how many other regrets he even had. He poked at it with his sword, making sure it didn’t react. It continued to deflate. Rep looked satisfied at the creature being dead and tucked his blade away.
“Level 7, right?” Zalan asked.
“Somehow, even when you have no Elemental Power, you still have one Level above me,” Rep said. Zalan smirked, amused.
“How did you take a blast of lightning head on? Did you gain a resistance when you had the power?” Rep asked.
“No, I grounded myself,” Zalan said. “I used the metal in the sword to send all the electricity into the ground.”
“You redirected it?” Rep asked.
“Kinda. The lightning redirects itself when it comes into contact with the metal,” Zalan said. “It still hurts, but not nearly as much as when the lightning hits the body without being grounded.”
“I thought you used to use the metal in the sword to strike your enemies without touching them directly? But now the metal was your ally against the lightning?” Rep asked.
“Yeah, regular conduction is different from grounding,” Zalan said confidently.
Rep scrunched his face at him.
“You studied this in your world, I presume,” Rep checked.
“Yeah.”
“I will never understand why your world spends so much time studying lightning when you can not even emit it with Elemental Power.”
Zalan had no reply. They continued to stare at the dwindling copy of Zalan. The gray color remained as it shrunk into half its size, the face shrinking to a grotesque raisin.
“Rep, what kinda monster was that?” Zalan asked, appalled.
“I do not know. But I am sorry for bringing it upon us,” Rep said sorrowfully.
“What? It’s a monster, what did you do to bring it?”
“It was born of regret. My biggest regret was bringing you into this realm. Its powers may have been your regrets, but its existence was mine,” Rep said.
Zalan reflected on this for a few seconds. Rep held up his flame and looked around them pensively.
“Let me get the torch going. I’d be more comfortable if we both had light,” Zalan said.
“Indeed.”
Zalan held out his torch for Rep to set aflame. It burned brightly for a moment, then snuffed out as though wind blew on it. Blinking, Zalan held it out again and Rep obliged. It glowed, then went out seconds later.
“What kind of wood doesn’t burn?” Zalan asked, looking it over and feeling scammed.
“Not the torch. I believe the Depths of Despair eat it away. I feel as though I need to increase my output to maintain even a smaller flame,” Rep said, frowning at the scorched wood.
Zalan looked at the stick of wood with numb eyes. Fire was eaten away. He inched closer to Rep.
“Might have been nice if he told us that before selling it to us.”
“I suspect he never entered the mines to test it himself.”
Zalan gripped the wood and stored it away, sighing in agreement.
“Are we going to see a lot of monsters we don’t recognize when we’re in here?” Zalan asked apprehensively, raising his head to look deeper into the darkness.
“The only monster we know to have passed by recently is the Mind of Madness. Otherwise, we will see what is to come,” Rep said. “Are you certain you still wish to go within and seek the Elemental?”
“I am. This is where Madam Hikma sent us. This is the beginning of the change in my life, I can feel it. I also feel like you wouldn’t want to leave Finnegan behind after what we just witnessed, either way,” Zalan said.
“I would not. I just wanted to be certain that you would join me.” Rep smiled.
With that, the two friends collected their packs of food and remained close as they proceeded into the Depths of Despair.
