章 18: [18 - A costly mistake]
[Southside]
The blue-haired woman dimly regained consciousness, groaning loudly into the cold stone pavement that was pressing into her face.
She tried to push herself up, raising her left arm for support, only to slump down after remembering that it wasn't there.
"Ugh." She moaned quietly, swallowing a mouthful of sticky, aged blood; instead using her right arm to roll herself over, now coming up to stare at the cavernous ceiling that was far, far overhead.
This wasn't how it was supposed to go.
She sniffled, moving her hand away and turning her head to state at the street around her.
A massive crater stood in the middle of it, a perfectly smooth sphere carved into the surrounding ground and walls, as if the space inside of the area had simply disappeared.
The river of dried tears trailing down the sides of her face wetted again, fresh ones streaking down her now dirty face.
Her watch was gone - and more importantly, the anomaly contained within it.
She had no way back now; that was her last Brackern crystal.
"Fuck. Fuck. Fuck." The woman battered her remaining hand into her forehead angrily.
Nothing was going to plan. She didn't even know if this was the right reality or time.
The woman tried to sit up, only for the oncoming pain to nearly lul her back into the abyssal depths of unconsciousness.
Something was wrong with her back. No - it was definitely her spine.
It hurt.
All the woman could do was lay there in utter despair, crying silently, unable to move, and finding it increasingly difficult to breathe.
What the hell was she going to do now?
—
[At sea - about a mile from Mudtown]
Callian's salgi exploded outwards, making the ever-sensitive Zeri startle, her head rearing away from his shoulder in shock.
The teen sitting in front of them turned around, noticing the green-haired girl's sudden movement out of the corner of his eye.
Arthur froze up after locking eyes with Callian, his young, immature psyche unable to effectively comprehend the violent madness emanating from the masked man opposite him.
The cold, westerly wind blew against the paralysed boy, and he teetered backwards, swinging off the railing and falling out of the crow's nest.
Zeri yelled in shock, a wave of green lightning exploding from her person as she blitzed toward the railing, intending to follow the boy downwards.
Callian just sat there, he too frozen in shock, although for a far different reason.
His perception of time sped up, with his young apprentice freezing mid-vault over the nest's railing. Even her lightning slowed to a halt, its many arcs now shifting in a sluggishly predictable manner.
Time had just rewound. He was sure of it; by exactly four seconds no less.
But that was fucking impossible.
There was no Z-drive in this time period. It didn't exist.
But it clearly did.
What was going on?
…
The man stood up, walking over to the railing and watching as Zeri slowly sped up.
No, that wasn't it. He was slowing down.
His dark blue hair spread out of its usual style, his long fringe falling forward onto the surface of his white mask.
As his blood slowly burnt itself out, the disturbed man began to brainstorm the potential outcomes of this new development.
Outcome one; Ekko had followed him back in time, and was sending him a message.
Outcome two; an alternate version of Ekko had travelled to his reality, and had been forced to use his rewind.
Outcome three: Someone was invading his reality.
The man slammed his fists down onto the railing, splintering the varnished wood into pieces.
He couldn't turn around and go back to the Twin Cities. He needed to fetch and return as many hex-crystals to Jayce as possible in preparation for the encroaching void, even if it meant hunting the Brackern to extinction.
It was brutal yes, but better than the alternative.
He could not go back to the Twin Cities yet.
It would also conflict with later events in his planned timeline.
"Fuck." He snarled aloud, grabbing what was left of the broken railing and wrenching it out of the way. The wooden fragments hung in the air, slowly edging away from his violent swing.
This wasn't something he could just decide on the spot.
Callian slicked back his hair into its resting position, closing his violet eyes and breathing in deeply. His hands shook, gripping onto the sides of his head compulsively.
He would just have to hope that it was the first option, or at the very least the second option.
Hell, maybe it was a different anomaly entirely, caused by his existence in this time period.
Fucking hell, who was he kidding? That was even more impossible than the first two prospects he had thought of.
He was just thankful that the shimmer mixed within his blood had warned him of the rewind, and that he wasn't ignorant of this new player's presence in his world.
Now that would be an absolute fucking disaster.
Callian looked down, watching as Zeri grabbed onto the mass of rigging that stretched up to the nest, slowly pushing herself down it in his bullet time.
On another, more positive note; the man had to concede his apprentice's ability to think on her feet had improved greatly, along with her becoming more accustomed to moving around in slowed time.
Speedsters like them couldn't rely on gravity to pull them downwards when they were moving faster than the law itself could apply to them.
You had to be the one to move yourself at all times. If you got stuck in the air with no momentum and nothing to push off of, you were a sitting duck, no matter how fast you were.
It was a lesson he had learnt in the arena.
A painful, costly lesson.
The man crouched down, grabbing the base of the perch with one hand and lowering himself off it. He hung in the air, using his arm to swing himself around to stand upside down on the underside of the nest's platform.
Callian's neck craned upwards, glancing down at his apprentice who was slowly racing across the unstable rigging.
He crouched down once more, before exploding away from the wooden planks underneath his metal boots, darting toward the deck at an unfathomable speed.
The man sped past Arthur's falling body.
Catching the boy at the speed he was moving at might as well be a death sentence. The sheer velocity he was travelling at would rip him apart as he was shielded by neither mutation nor aspect.
Callian reached out a hand ahead of him, his palm making contact with the deck. The man's armoured fingers dug into the wood, the man's firm grip stabilising the rest of his descent.
He steered himself back to the correct axis, his metal boots clinking onto the deck below.
Time began to speed up, and Arthur fell towards him, the boy's arms now flailing outwards in terror, freed from the effects of Callian's oppressive salgi now that their eye contact had been broken.
Zeri's yellow eyes had followed his every movement downwards, and she now came to a stop, standing next to him on the deck.
Her head tilted to the side questioningly, but said nothing as their ears could not effectively perceive sound while moving at such a fast pace. Though, the girl evidently wanted to know what had managed to trigger such an intense reaction from him.
Zeri's lightning receded back underneath her skin, all visual indication of the girl's aspect disappearing along with her shock.
Most of the deckhands were in a panic, or yelling in worry; with only one of the men standing there running toward the falling boy, aiming to either catch him or at the very least reduce the force of his impact upon landing.
Zeri darted in front of him, forcefully stopping the man's approach as he tried to barrel past her.
The teen locked her right ankle around the man's own, bringing up a hand to slam her palm into the deckhand's back as he tried to run past her, tripping him up and planting the man face-first onto the wooden planks below them.
While this was happening, the falling boy had finally gotten within arms reach of the masked Callian, his brown eyes dilating madly in terror.
The man then skillfully hooked his arm around Arthur's midriff, before spinning the two of them around akin to a ballerina before darting past the centre mast and speeding toward the helm of the ship so that he could offset the sizeable momentum which was opposing the boy's otherwise safe landing.
Callian's blood burnt out, and time resumed to its normal pace. The man skidded to a halt a few inches away from the wall opposite him, with Arthur's rag-dolled body nearly colliding with it.
The boy choked, winded by the man's forceful handling of him at such an uncomfortably fast speed.
But it could have been far, far worse.
Callian dropped Arthur, allowing the boy to fall to the ground relatively unharmed.
The boy coughed frantically into his jerking hands, falling against the wall behind him and shuddering.
His frightened gaze slowly raised to meet Callian's own, and the masked man slowly crouched down and grabbed a hold of the boy's head, pulling the juddering Arthur closer to him.
He whispered a few words into his shaking ear. "That was my honest mistake boy, I admit it. I should have retained control of my anger and in turn, my Salgi."
He glanced into Arthur's eyes, his own beginning to glow a dangerous violet.
"However, I will not be the one to take the fall for this."
His current relationship with Camille was dubious enough for him to not want to take this sort of risk. He had nearly killed her crew's lookout, accidentally or not.
"You got overconfident, hanging off the railing in a manner you definitely should not have. You would have fallen to your death had I not saved you. Do you understand?"
Callian flashed a speck of his Salgi directly into the teenager's eyes once more, making him tremble in fear.
Arthur nodded vigorously.
"And know this;" Continued the man, tilting his head to the side owlishly; a steely edge entering his previously softened tone. "I will kill you where you stand if you do not comply with the story I have just told you."
He patted the boy on the shoulder comfortingly, before standing up and turning around to face Zeri, who had downed two more of the deckhands and was now having a face-off with a furious Davros.
"Just what the fuck are you doing girl?!" He roared, glaring down at her, wholly uncaring of the difference in their abilities. "Attacking my men like that, they were trying to help damn it!"
"Their interference would have gotten Arthur killed." The girl hissed, matching the captain's enraged gaze with her own contemptful one. "Or did you not see the height he was falling from? Could they stop him from dying from that?" She jabbed a finger into his chest, somehow managing to push him backwards. "Could you?"
"That's-" The man spluttered, getting interrupted by none other than Camille herself.
"Davros." She said sharply, exiting the ship's helm and striding powerfully into the middle of the deck. "What's going on?"
While he was distracted with his superior, Zeri once again stole his hat and zipped back behind Callian, stowing it inside of her large cloak.
"Madam," He said, turning around to protest against the girl's disrespectful actions. "The girl just broke Garner's nose, and knocked out another two of the deckhands for trying to save the boy from his fall."
"He fell?" She said, turning her ice-cold gaze towards the shivering Arthur, who was still curled up against the helm's wall behind her. "How?" She asked, staring down at the boy imperiously.
The boy visibly hesitated before answering her question.
"I-I was sitting on the railing… The wind… The land…" He stuttered, still shaking after taking the full brunt of Callian's Salgi. "I got overconfident." He buried his face in his hands. "C-callian saved me. I might've died."
Camille glared at him, before turning around and muttering something about 'wasted resources', coming to face Callian, Zeri, and the rest of the crew.
"And this?" She said, gesturing at the injured deckhands in utter disbelief. "Why?"
Zeri answered her. "They were going to get in the way of my master. He needed an amount of space to cancel Arthur's momentum and return him safely to the ground."
"Madam-" Davros broke in, sounding laboriously aggrieved.
Camille however cut him off once more, silencing him with a single hand.
"Enough. I can in fact understand the necessity of such a course of action, although I am unsure as to why such a heavy-handed method was utilised." She stared at Zeri disapprovingly, re-evaluating her opinion of the girl.
Davros looked ready to protest again but thought better of it upon seeing his employer's slowly darkening face.
"And you." She continued at Zeri, looking extremely unimpressed with her blatantly childish temperament. "Give the man his hat back."
The stubborn girl ignored her request, instead looking towards Callian for his input.
He nodded, snapping his fingers at the rest of the deckhands that had remained standing. "Pick the boy up and take him to lie down. The press of death is not something that is easy to deal with, especially at such a young age."
Zeri threw Davros' hat back at him spitefully, making the throw curve midair and causing the man to nearly miss catching it. He glared at her angrily, his mutinous look promising some form of retribution.
The group of men Callian had attempted to order around glanced at Camille, who nodded curtly in agreement, gesturing them forward to pick up still panic-stricken Arthur.
They stared at each other before walking over to the trembling boy and getting him to his feet.
"Easy does it lad." One of them said soothingly, grabbing the boy by his armpit and helping him stumble into the helm.
Only after they disappeared inside the ship did Camille turn to face the masked duo once more.
"What a fucking nightmare." The woman said irritably, the curse sounding exceedingly distasteful due to her refined upper-class accent. "And I had such high hopes for that boy too."
Davros just sighed, stowing his hat back onto his head; the man's anger was forgotten as quickly as it had come. "You can only expect so much from a Zaunite. I did say bringing him instead of Stephen was a bad idea."
Zeri bristled angrily at his blatant discrimination but restrained herself from taking action against the man, instead clenching her teeth together furiously.
Camille glanced at him disinterestedly. "I have heard of your sentiments towards the boy many times in the past, Captain, and I do not need to be reminded of them again."
Davros frowned at her response but bowed his head respectfully, looking as if he wanted to say more. "My apologies Madam."
"Injuries?" She asked Callian, her ice-blue eyes now turning towards him inquiringly.
"None. Although brushing so closely to death will likely change him, for better or for worse." He replied.
The woman nodded in agreement, striding to the edge of the ship and clasping both hands behind her back. "An experience like that will either make or break you. There is no in-between, not when going through it so young."
"Well, either way," She continued, staring out at the misty ocean ahead of the ship that hung just above sea level. "It seems we're about to arrive. Captain?"
"Ready for landing!" Bellowed Davros, his words sparking the remaining four deckhands into a flurry of hasty activity.
Callian stared out into the parting mist, his dulled pink eyes scanning the sharpening shadows contained within the light fog ahead of them.
They had indeed arrived.
He would have to put off the topic of the rewind until later.
Because for now, they all had tasks to complete.
—
Larger galleon centre masts can range up to almost sixty feet tall, with most crow's nests being located right at the top of them.
—
Let me know how you guys like this new POV switching.
—
(Total word count: 2723)
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