Chapter 184: Blue Sky
"Welcome back," Emile forced through ragged breaths.
His body ached, his head throbbed, and a sharp pain continuously spread from his core, pulsating through his veins like a heartbeat. He rolled over, falling onto the dirt ground beside Blood.
Blood first looked at Emile, still reminiscent of his time as a phantom, struggling to discern dream from reality. He heard an explosion to his left, the ground shook and the air around him reverberated, shaking his body along with it.
Suddenly, noise began to flood Blood's ears: loud bangs and screeches, gurgling and weeping, heavy breaths and quick grunts.
He looked at the wall — the top of it no longer flat but rather a mess of chipped pieces and broken stone. A glimmer shone through one of the holes and with it another bang shook the earth.
Just as his ears were adjusting, a new sense started getting overloaded. Blood's nose convulsed. He could smell the blood and sweat, the grime of the battlefield, the smell of gold and leather, of cloth and twine.
He raised his arm, reaching forward to rustle Emile, but the wall beside him suddenly imploded. Willow's silhouette rocketed past him, bursting through the stone wall and continuing through the air before she hit the ground and tumbled some distance away.
Willow dug the tip of her hammer into the ground, slowing her descent before she slammed her hammer behind her, the acceleration launching her across the air and back into battle.
She caught sight of Blood — his clueless face frozen in place while Emile groveled underneath him.
"Take your time!" Willow bellowed, "It's not like I could use the help!"
She raised her hammer to block an incoming strike, a whip of a Mamathus' trunk, but the beast's extra limb wrapped around her hammer and ripped it from her hands.
Willow pounded her heel into the ground, creating a shockwave in the mud that rippled like it was water before her figure vanished from the ground and reappeared in the air, hovering just before the Mamathus' head.
She wound her arm back before plummeting her fist into the beast's temple, its skull shattering beneath the force, allowing Willow's fist to sink into its flesh and burrow in its brain. The beast exploded into a storm of essence, releasing Willow's hammer just before being sucked into her soul itself.
She peered into the miasma — one, three, seven — twelve beasts remained, all of them Enlightened and all of them warped by some enraged state.
Willow prepared to strike, but just as she prepared to leap into action a blurry figure exploded past her. The figure actually didn't have a figure at all, instead taking the form of red mist that swirled in the air and soared towards her opposition.
The red mist continued to climb, soaring higher into the sky, far above the incoming wave of behemoths. It condensed, crystallizing into the shape of a person.
The crystal man raised his arm while he hovered in the air and moments later that same arm returned to mist before reforming into a hurricane of glass shards. The shards swirled around the man, gaining speed until a vortex blurred the crystal man's figure.
Then, it all collapsed. The crystal shards plummeted to earth, flowing through the wind like petals on a spring day, but these glass petals ravaged the beast's body.
They ripped and tore, gouging out chunks of flesh as they embedded themselves in the beast's bodies. And once in — the petals continued to spiral, constantly ripping into flesh and bone, razing it to bone dust and organ stew.
The crystal figure snapped and the thousands of glass petals covered in blood and gore returned to the sky's embrace, swirling like a tornado as they made their way back to the crystal man.
The glass shards slammed into the man's shoulder, connecting like building blocks until a fully functional arm remained.
Blood looked down, making eye contact with Willow, he smirked but his crystal form didn't allow for such complex emotions. Parting his lips he began to mock her, "that enough help?"
Willow clicked her tongue, but ultimately decided to remain quiet. The beast tide was over — at least for now.
***
Soon after night took over, the lightless and yet lit gray sky faded into the background revealing a darker, needle black visage.
The camp had been wrecked, the wall was demolished, breached not only by Willow's crash but also by a slew of other random attacks.
The laboratory turned to rubble, its hallway collapsed and its walls slanted — whatever currently stood was most likely already on its way down.
But the camp's condition didn't matter, at least anymore, as a row of nearly thirty people walked in line. Some of them carried bags stuffed with miscellaneous items like pillows and shoes, hairbrushes and pants, but the vast majority of them walked empty handed with an overwhelming aura of hollowness surrounding them.
Emile stood at the front with Blood, the two of them leading the march into the Hollow Mountains as they retreated from the camp.
They walked a distance away from the rest of the group — maybe twenty feet — not only to separate themselves to act as bait for whatever creatures lurk around them, but also to discuss sensitive matters that other people weren't privy to hearing.
Meanwhile, Willow guarded the group's rear, walking alone at the back of the line — she too separated by a distance of about twenty feet.
"Are we stopping at the peak?" Blood asked.
"No —" Emile replied, his back to Blood as he walked slightly ahead, "we shouldn't stop until we run into Alexander."
"What if he teleports past us?"
"Can he?" Emile asked, "How does his Gift work? Does he teleport to wherever he's looking?"
"No, it's more complicated than that, I think at least. All I know is I've seen him teleport to places he couldn't see, so that guess is definitely wrong," Blood said.
"Maybe he can teleport to places he's already been?" Emile suggested.
"Then wouldn't he be here already?" Blood countered, "Surely he's been to the Black Gates before, teleporting there would get him here in only a few hours."
Emile scratched his head with his free hand, his other holding a torch that split the darkness ahead of them.
It was incredibly dark, more so thanks to the torches themselves. As they walked forward, Emile and Blood felt like they existed in their own bubble — a bubble of light and warmth that protected them from the ever encroaching vile darkness.
But they needed the torch, not to see, but so that the members of the expedition behind them could see and follow them. Willow held a torch too and depending on where they were in their ascent, Emile could see the flickering light below when he looked back.
The two torches acted as a marker of safety, almost like they were saying 'between these two beacons of light, safety prevailed.' It helped to calm and reassure the expedition members who hadn't slept in almost two days due to the beast tide and assassinations.
"Hey Spright?" Blood asked, interrupting the momentary silence that ensued while Emile gave thought to Alexander's Gift.
"Yeah?"
"I —" Blood paused, the words stuck in his throat as he suddenly developed cotton mouth, "I'm sorry about Emma."
Emile immediately tensed, but he pushed through and continued walking forward, not wanting to stall the retreat to deal with his personal matters.
"Don't you think it's a little late for apologies?" Emile replied.
"I didn't know you had a sister —" Blood's voice grew soft, a stark difference to his usual aggressive and vindictive tongue, "obviously I read through your classes files, Emma being one of them, but there was no mention of you two being siblings."
Emile didn't respond immediately, instead the sound of their boots grinding pebbles occupied their ears.
"Would it have mattered?" Emile asked.
"Well, may—"
"Because I don't think anything would have changed. The fact of the matter is that you guys needed a healer, although I haven't actually done much healing for the group, but I would have been taken regardless."
Blood looked down. He watched as his boots landed on the stone, crushing pebbles and grinding twigs.
"Why bring it up now?" Emile asked.
"Because I saw her —" Blood stopped to think of what to say, "Emma and Jay and Cookie, the blue sky…"
Emile stopped. He pivoted around. His face now clearly visible beside the torch's light.
His lips were parted, only slightly, but his eye-lids stretched wide open. He narrowed his eyebrows, pushing them together and bringing them low as he looked at Blood with an expression of bewilderment.
"How?" Was all he could make out.
Gifts
-- Gift
received Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone