Chapter 489 – Escape to the Vault

“That’s the one! The horrified expression I’ve waited so long to see!” Deimos exclaimed, his gleeful voice slamming into Percy along with a wave of Violet mana and ink-coloured willpower, piercing through his damaged ears like a series of needles.

Percy was sent flying back, a bloody cough escaping his lips as his opponent continued. “I have to admit, you’ve fought quite well. Far better than I could have ever expected from a Blue – let alone a Yellow. I suppose all those bounty hunters you’ve taken down weren’t as useless as I thought. If I hadn’t advanced three years ago, I would have probably died by now. Then again, I wouldn’t have stayed in the Guild waiting for you in that case.”

Hardly in a position to process the Violet’s words, Percy landed on something cold and hard, feeling it buckle under his weight. Through the connection to his companions, he could tell that it was his familiar who’d cushioned his fall, at the cost of another broken wing. The crow was already doing his best to carry him away from their dangerous opponent, relying mainly on the cold mana spiralling around him until his missing limb was done regenerating.

Percy didn’t hesitate to consume another five leaves from his tattoo, leaving less than half of his initial stash left. The potent life mana washed over his body, mending his cracked bones and restoring most of his fighting strength.

Even so, he was under no illusion that they could win against Deimos. Percy and Micky had overcome plenty of challenging situations in the past, but the current gap was simply too vast to bridge. After going all out, they’d barely forced their opponent to start using his mana. Clearly, their only option was to try and ditch him – as impossible as that seemed.

The Violet expelled a shocking amount of mana and willpower from his feet, visibly distorting the air behind him as he shot toward the fleeing bird.

“Luckily, I had the foresight to conceal my new grade, otherwise my superiors might have moved me to a different post. Sometimes, I can’t help but wonder what they even expected from me… that I would just walk away with my tail tucked between my legs after getting humiliated by you over and over again? For half a decade? Or that I would sit around waiting for you to grow strong enough to kill me too? More fodder for your ascension?!”

Deimos chuckled, but it sounded hollow.

Percy moved all his surviving phantoms in the Violet’s path, supplementing them with strips of cloth that he tore off his sleeves. Ambient mana rushed to ignite them, repairing them into a fresh wave of spectres as Percy desperately tried to slow his opponent down.

The constructs piled onto the advancing sound mage, hugging him into a massive ball of grey silk. It barely lasted an instant, before Deimos punched right through it, resuming the chase.

Percy never stopped adding to the army, buying time for his familiar to escape. Micky’s wing was done regrowing a moment later, allowing him to pick up speed.

But it wasn’t enough.

Deimos was hot on their tail, drawing nearer by the second. Once he was only a few dozen metres away, he swiped his right arm, sending a barrage of concussive blasts at Percy. Unlike the projectiles he had fired earlier, these contained a lot of mana to reinforce the dense willpower, flying faster than before. Each left holes on multiple phantoms before running out of power.

The platoon of dancing spectres that Percy had painstakingly produced got ripped apart in an instant. Still, he didn’t give up, and neither did Micky. More silk tore itself off the rest of his burning Cloak, the enchanted cloth shrinking faster than Percy could regenerate it. His scythes broke and reformed into half-baked copies, as they joined the twisted phantoms and the swirling gales of cold wind flying behind Micky.

At the same time, Percy’s mind raced to come up with a way out of their predicament – as was his heart, albeit with the instinctual understanding that there wasn’t one.

“I’m not an idiot, you know… Everyone with half a brain must’ve realized by now that the gods have your back. Of course they do! There’s never been another monster like you on our world,” Deimos’s voice boomed again, his smirk fading as his tone grew colder. “The rest of us mean nothing to them. My own father didn’t even bother to stop me from hunting you. If anything, he’s fine tossing me aside like garbage – just another target dummy for you to practice on. But he isn’t here to save you now, is he? None of them are!”

‘Is this it? Don’t tell me I have to resort to that,’ Percy thought, fear gripping his heart.

More shots continued to pierce his constructs, the barrage already about to reach Micky. Gritting his teeth, Percy grabbed the nearest pair of scythes, standing as firmly as he could on the crow’s back, ready to try his best to intercept the attacks.

The shafts rolled along his limbs, his joints bending and twisting in unnatural angles as the crescent blades turned into grey blurs. The projectiles smashed the scythes into powder, many of them having enough strength left to punch through the structural integrity enchantments on Percy’s tattered robe, leaving his flesh purple and swollen.

Still, he persisted, drawing more scythes from his surroundings – two… four… eight… fifteen… thirty!

Each construct barely withstood a single hit – most of them not even that – as Percy scrambled to minimize the damage he and his familiar received. The weapons got replaced the moment they broke, a zone of grey snakes forming around Percy, slithering to their deaths to protect him and Micky.

This was Percy’s Third Parade – the Serpents’ Den!

Under other circumstances, he would have been ecstatic to see that his enhanced physique and the lingering influence of his trollsfury tattoo had allowed him to reproduce the technique in his own body. Sadly, this wasn’t a great time for celebration.

Left with no other choice, Percy reached into the deepest recesses of his mind, willing Metatron’s Decree to activate.

Soon, the last of the phantoms barring Deimos’s path got torn to shreds, once again revealing the Violet’s cruel figure. A powerful blast shattered Percy’s remaining scythes, drilling into his barely clothed sleeve with enough force to pulverize his elbow in a burst of blood and bone fragments.

Luckily, the few leaves remaining in Percy’s tattoo had been drawn on his upper forearm, barely surviving the brutal amputation. He consumed all seven of them while he still could, though most of the life mana rushed to seal the stump, stopping the bleeding before Percy’s brain even registered the pain of his missing limb.

‘Open a second portal in front of you, just in case,’ Percy ordered the clone.

The first one was meant for Deimos to fall through. Given the man’s momentum, they might be able to send him to the Vault by himself if they got lucky. Opening the gate on Remior wasn’t something Percy had ever wanted to do, but forcing their otherwise-insurmountable opponent there was the best-case scenario under these circumstances. However, there was a good chance Deimos might dodge the portal in time, leaving them no option but to enter the second one themselves.

Percy really hoped it wouldn’t come to that.

He had no idea what surrendering his main body to Metatron might mean for him and Micky… or Nephthys, for that matter. Or Nesha, Elaine, Archibald… and the rest of his world. Hell, he didn’t even know if he’d ever get a chance to see Sol or Zoris again, or if he’d be able to free his other friends from the Vault once he joined them.

‘It doesn’t matter. Most of these people will be screwed anyway if we die here…’

The priority now was to survive. Everything else, they could worry about later.

Deimos prepared another barrage as Percy waited with bated breath for the space in front of him to twist, and the familiar colours of the artificial world to pop into existence.

‘Come on… do it faster!’ he begged, the distortion taking an awful lot longer than usual to manifest.

The Violet’s soul flared with unconcealed malice as his arm shone with raw power, yet the portal was nowhere to be found. Only then did Percy realize that something was wrong!

‘It won’t activate!’ the clone’s panicked voice said, echoing the same issue.

Some unknown influence appeared to have blocked Metatron’s Decree entirely, leaving them stranded, and at their opponent’s non-existent mercy! Even this most dreaded trump card that Percy had reserved for the worst-case scenario – the same move that had saved his ass twice in the past – had somehow been taken from him when he needed it the most!

Micky spun all the way, tossing his passenger off to protect him from the incoming missiles. Percy plummeted toward the ground, watching with horror as his familiar’s body got pelted by a rain of destruction, shattering into a dozen pieces. The crow had guarded his head and torso as best as he could, barely leaving his vitals intact. He’d lost both wings in the process, however, along with the lower half of his body – talons, tail feathers, all of it!

Drawing what little mana he had left, Percy tried to regrow enough silk to arrest his momentum, though his still landed rather painfully on the hard dirt, leaving a deep crater and raising a cloud of dust. Micky hit the ground next to him even harder, what little was left of his frame now riddled with cracks.

As for Deimos, he landed gracefully a few metres away, the colourful motes in the area illuminating the savage grin on his expression. Only now did Percy register that the sun had set at some point during the battle, the moonlit sky suffusing the battlefield with its faint glow.

The Violet walked leisurely and soundlessly toward Percy, his suffocating domain causing the ringing in his skull to intensify.

‘I’m sorry our adventure had to end so soon, Percy…’ Micky’s strained voice barely echoed in Percy’s mind, speaking words that he’d never wanted to hear. ‘I want you to know that I’m grateful for the second chance you’ve given me. It wasn’t always perfect, but it was more than most people in the universe could ask for. Even if we never got to achieve all of our goals, we had a lot of fun together! I’m glad I met you!’

‘No! We aren’t done yet! I’m sure we’ll find a way out of this! We always do!’ Percy tried to scream but the sounds still refused to leave his mouth, even as his throat ached with despair.

He tried to stand too, but his legs wobbled, a wave of weakness keeping him stuck to the ground as the trollsfury tattoo’s lingering influence finally left his muscles.

“The gods might think highly of you, but they aren’t here to save you. I’m sure they’ll be unhappy about your death – but this can’t be blamed on me. After all, I’m only doing what they’ve allowed me to do. If they wanted you alive so badly, maybe they should have paid more attention,” Deimos said, uncaring about their inner turmoil.

The Violet raised his hand toward Percy, torrents of mana gathering in his palm. “Once you’re gone, guess who will suddenly earn some overdue attention! I’d always deserved it too! I’m more talented than half the Green-borns in the Order! My strength never mattered to the gods before, because I was doomed to remain a mortal my whole life. It was supposed to be different after the Aurora Dew came along – but they were too busy gawking over you. Well… it’s going to be different, as soon as you’re yesterday’s news!”

‘Goodbye, Percy!’ the crow said, his voice sounding warm and sincere.

The rest of Remior only knew Micky as the monstrous bird that had devoured dozens of powerful mages – a statue of living ice that couldn’t be reasoned with. But Percy knew the truth about his friend.

Micky had always been a gentle soul – someone who would rather die than to give his body up to a wicked person. Even after losing his memories, the crow had chosen to suffer in Acton’s hands instead of laying a single talon on the innocents of Goldenfield town. Whether it was the gladiator or the familiar, Micky had only ever wanted to spend time with his friends and family. To free his enslaved people and travel by Percy’s side… flying… training… and laughing together.

The crow used what little mana he had left to leap in the way of the blast aimed at Percy. The latter’s blood froze in his veins, the world slowing to a standstill as he felt his friend’s skull break – the last spot in his body still hiding flesh. Ice, gore, and almost-transparent blood splattered across the dirt and all over Percy’s face, as the crow’s headless torso fell limp in front of him with a muted thud.

His eyes remained glued on his friend’s cores. The blizzard of ambient mana spinning around them didn’t show any sign of stopping. If anything, it only seemed to intensify, giving Percy hope that Micky could still recover from a missing brain.

That hope died the following instant, however, as a notification flashed before Percy’s eyes, making him curse having Phoebe’s Decree for the first time in his life…

[Your familiar has been destroyed: Mictlantecuhtli.]

__________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________

A/N: Well, RIP Micky I suppose. Not sure how Percy is going to get out of this one either, so I think I might just end the series here. It was a fun run, but I guess Percy won't be attaining divinity after all. Thank you all for reading The Lone Wanderer!

Seriously though, I was really tempted to throw you guys an extra chapter here so that I don't leave you hanging for another 24 hours, but I'm trying really hard to stockpile a few to do bonus chapters during launch week :/