Chapter 170 - In the Aftermath

Abby looked down on Zeke’s shattered body, trying her best to keep the horror dancing in her mind from infecting her expression. She had always known that Zeke was powerful. Though she didn’t admit it, even to herself, that was one of the reasons she was with him in the first place. There was just something undeniably attractive about a powerful man; even in a world where she was much stronger than most, there was a part of her that just wanted to feel safe. Zeke gave her that. And she hoped that she gave the same to him, though in a different way. However, what she had just seen was beyond anything she could have anticipated, and that display of a level of power that she couldn’t even understand terrified more than anything she had ever seen.

She glanced back the way they’d come. It had felt like being in the middle of an earthquake, but worse, because she was also forced to watch the man she loved being ripped apart by some mysterious force she couldn’t even begin to understand. The landscape had suffered irreparable damage, and the upheaval had left it pockmarked with craters and cracks. Covering it all was an inches deep pool of semi-viscous liquid – what was left of the demons unlucky enough to stand in Zeke’s way.

The black reflection of a city hadn’t fared any better, either. The walls, which she now knew were made of swirling black clouds that felt like cotton, trembled beneath the strain. And even though she had no real insight into what they were or how they were made, even Abby could tell that they weren’t far from breaking apart. When that happened, there were plenty of demons that had managed to survive Zeke’s…whatever it was that Zeke had done. She hesitated to call it an attack, because as far as she could tell, he hadn’t done much more than walk. That it was so destructive suggested otherwise, though, which made it all the more confusing.

Luckily, most of the party had been spared, shielded from the worst of it by Pudge’s presence. While Zeke was going through whatever it was he’d gone through, the infernal bear had begun to emit a red light. And though Abby felt like her insides had been pushed into all the wrong positions, she knew it would have been much, much worse if Pudge hadn’t been there. One look at the pool of liquified demons only a few yards away was evidence enough of that.

“Are there any left?” asked Zeke, his voice raw.

“Some,” said Tucker, standing off to the side and looking around. He amended his statement, saying, “A lot.”

“How many is a lot?” was Zeke’s next question.

“Don’t worry about that,” Abby said, kneeling beside him. “Just take another potion.”

“I’ve already taken two,” he said.

Abby frowned. Taking two potions in quick succession meant that taking another would have diminishing returns. It would be hours yet before he could get anything approaching the full effect again. And by that point, she felt certain that the wall surrounding the shadow city would have fallen. If that happened, it would only be a matter of time before they were overrun.

She glanced down at him, saying, “How do you feel?”

“Better,” he said, though it came out with a grimace. Given his pain tolerance, that meant he was in enough pain that anyone else would be openly weeping. He did look a little better, with most of the skin that had flaked off having regrown. The cracks in his skin, which looked something like kitsungi pottery, were still present, but they had faded a little. Perhaps, with a little time, they would heal altogether.

With a groan, he pushed himself to his feet. He wobbled, and Abby gripped his bicep to give him support. “Thanks,” he muttered, summoning some pants from his storage. They were low-quality, but given the way he went through armor, it was probably silly to invest too much in that kind of thing. As he looked down at his bare feet, he mused, “My boots are gone.”

“They lasted right up until the end,” Tucker said. “Surprising, how durable they were. Where did you get them?”

“A quest,” he said.

Abby remembered the look on his face when he’d gotten the greaves. It had been like a child opening a Christmas present and finally getting that one gift he’d spent all year begging for. Now, they were gone. Just like her axe, which she’d received at the same time. It was silly to get sentimental about things like that – they were just armor and weapons, after all – but she couldn’t help it, especially when Zeke was barely capable of holding himself upright.

“Must’ve been some quest,” Tucker acknowledged. He glanced back at the wall, adding, “You feel it, don’t you? It’s all unstable.”

“Everything is,” Zeke said. “I think I might have damaged the ritual circle, and I think it was doing more than Locky said it was doing. We need to move.”

Abby nodded, but she had to ask, “Are you in any shape?”

As Zeke pulled on a shirt, he said, “I don’t really have much choice, do I? I can rest and recover when we get back to our realm.”

“Pudge, Talia – make sure nothing’s in our way,” Abby said. “Tucker, help me with Zeke.”

“I don’t need help,” Zeke said, though his statement was immediately contradicted by a stumble. Luckily, Abby was there to catch him. “Okay, maybe I need a little help.”

As Pudge and Talia ranged ahead, the other three slowly made their way down the shadowy path. Zeke was between Abby and Tucker, his arms over their shoulders as they supported his weight. Abby caught sight of Carlos from time to time, but it was easy to forget about the stealthy man.

It was strange; most of the time, the city itself looked almost two-dimensional, and it certainly didn’t seem real. Periodically, though, Abby would catch something in her peripheral vision. Sometimes, it was a glimpse of an unfamiliar person. Other times, it was a building’s sandstone wall.

“It’s bleedthrough,” Tucker said, noticing when Abby jerked her head to the side, trying to catch a good look at something she’d seen out of the corner of her eye. “It’s not real.”

“What?”

It was Zeke who answered, “This city is a reflection, designed to forge a connection between this realm and ours. In some places, the veil dividing the two realms is…thinner. That’s what you’re seeing.”

“How do you know that?” Abby asked. Zeke was well-versed in two things: fighting and runecraft. On every other subject, he was almost laughably uninformed.

“I can feel it,” he said. “Or I can feel the echoes. I don’t know. It’s strange. When I was…well, when what happened happened, I felt this connection with everything. It left a residue of knowledge behind. This was part of it.”

“What exactly did you do?” asked Tucker, voicing the question Abby wanted to but was too afraid to ask.

“I…I don’t know,” Zeke answered, an uncharacteristic quiver in his voice. “I had this insight. At first, it felt similar to my martial path, but…but bigger. I embraced it, and…and…I just couldn’t stop. It was like I was caught in a riptide, and it kept pulling me deeper and deeper. It was powerful. I saw…I felt…things I wasn’t ready to feel or see.”

“It really looked like you were being torn apart,” Tucker said. Abby shot him a glare, but he acted like he didn’t notice. “Thought you were a goner for sure.”

“I’m still alive and kicking,” Zeke said with a laugh that became a ragged cough. Blood soon coated his chin. “Well, alive at least. Kicking might have to wait for a bit. I feel like my insides have been through a food processor.”

“That’s…a vivid image,” said Abby.

“Right? Why would you go straight to food?” asked Tucker, shifting to support a little more of Zeke’s weight. Abby was tall for a woman, but she wasn’t really tall enough to help Zeke without the whole thing getting awkward and more uncomfortable than it needed to be. Luckily, Tucker was willing and able to crouch a bit in order to help Zeke maintain his balance. Still, his steps were wobbly. “I used to make this marinade back home. All sorts of peppers and juices – kind of tasted like kimchi. Or that’s what my wife used to say, and she was Korean, so she would know.”

“Not the time, Tucker,” Abby said, though she was a little surprised at the man’s nostalgic tone. She’d known that, in his old life, Tucker had been married with children, but she’d demonized him so thoroughly that she was taken aback by such a mundane recollection. Perhaps he wasn’t the monster she’d made him out to be in her head.

“Yeah, probably not,” Tucker said, shaking his head. “You two feel that?”

“I do,” Zeke said, but Abby had to admit that she had no idea what either of them were talking about. Zeke explained it with one word, “Instability.”

“Not following,” she said, looking around as if she would be able to see some clue. Everything still looked the same to her.

“The mana,” Zeke elaborated, struggling with the words. Was he getting worse? “It’s unstable.” He glanced at Tucker, asking, “Is this going to be an issue with your bombs?”

Like most of Zeke’s plans, the plan to deal with the portal itself wasn’t complicated. Assuming that it was a similar setup to what they’d found in the cavern, they had intended to set up a series of timed demolition charges to destroy the integrity of the ritual circle. They wouldn’t go off until the group was safely on the other side, where they would endeavor to do the same to its mirror in the human realm.

“I don’t know,” Tucker admitted, cocking his head to the side. “Probably not, though. My demo charges are pretty stable.”

Zeke let out a sigh of relief.

“Unless it gets worse,” Tucker said. “If that happens, no guarantees.”

Zeke hung his head, “You know you just jinxed us, right? There’s no way this is going smoothly now.”

“You don’t really think my mentioning it is going to make any difference, do you?” asked Tucker.

“Of course it will,” he said. “It’s like when a pitcher is throwing a no-hitter. You don’t talk about it.”

“That is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” Tucker stated. He shook his head again, “Baseball players and their silly superstitions. We didn’t have that kind of thing in football. You know, a real sport.”

“If I wasn’t almost literally falling apart, I would show you a real sport,” Zeke spat. Abby laughed, thinking he was kidding. The look he gave her told her that he wasn’t. So, Abby chose that moment to change the subject.

“You’re falling apart? I thought you were getting better,” she said.

“Exaggeration,” he said. “I’m fine.”

That clearly wasn’t the case, but Abby wasn’t going to argue with him. After all, she’d seen Zeke push through things that would have killed other, lesser men a hundred times over. If he said he was okay, she had no choice but to trust him – even when her eyes told her how untrue the statement was.

“Moving along, then,” Abby said. “So, what are we going to do if your bombs don’t work?”

Tucker and Zeke both spoke at the same time. Even stranger, they said exactly the same thing, “We’ll figure it out.”

Abby sighed, and they continued through the reflection of Jariq. Every now and again, they would hear Pudge roar in the distance – evidence that there were some demons in the city – but it was an otherwise peaceful stroll. However, that peace was broken when, fifteen minutes later, a ripple passed through the buildings.

“That’s not good,” Tucker said.

“Are we still good?” Zeke asked.

Tucker shook his head, saying, “I don’t know. It’ll be close, though.”

“Jinxed it,” Zeke muttered. “I knew it. You just had to go and talk about it…”

Tucker pointedly ignored Zeke’s mumbling, and the group stoically forged ahead. Eventually, they saw a massive, stepped pyramid looming in the distance. It was comprised of five levels, with a flat top, and looked like it would be more at home in Mexico than in Egypt. Like the rest of the buildings within the shadowy city, it was comprised of black mist.

“Should’ve guessed it, after you told us how you were caught,” Tucker said, glancing back at Carlos, who’d remained silent the whole time. If Abby was honest, she would have to admit that she’d forgotten he was even there. “Safe to say that the Jaguars are under demon control, I guess.”

Abby had heard a little about how Jariq was divided between various gangs, and she’d been present when Carlos had described how he’d been abducted. They never had figured out what the demons wanted to do with him, but then again, it didn’t matter much now. The whole cavern – and probably the keep above it – had likely been destroyed.

“It’s called the Crown of the Jungle,” Carlos said, stepping out of one of the nearby shadows. “So, yeah. If that’s where the portal is, you can probably assume that the Jaguars are in on it. Especially considering that Itzli is the one who took me.”

“That’s the Aztec guy, right?” asked Tucker.

“Yeah,” Carlos answered. “He’s strong, with insane vitality. I’ve seen him lose an arm and regenerate it in only a few seconds.”

“Kind of like Zeke?” asked Abby.

Carlos shook his head. “His regeneration makes Zeke look like one of us in comparison,” he said. Then, glancing at the broken man who was still being supported by Tucker, he said, “No offense.”

Zeke tried to shrug, but the motion clearly wracked his body with pain. That, in turn, caused a coughing fit that ended with a pool of blood on the black ground. It took him a couple of minutes to recover, and when he did, he gave them all a sheepish look and said, “Well, that sucked. How do we deal with him, then? Rip him into so many pieces that he can’t grow them back? There has to be a limit, right?”

“Might be we can run him out of mana,” Tucker said, scratching his bearded chin. “It can’t just be vitality. He’s probably got a skill. Or multiple skills. Do enough damage, make him use that skill enough, and…well…he’ll go down.”

“Like a troll,” Zeke said.

“Huh?” asked Tucker. “You think he’s vulnerable to fire?”

Abby couldn’t help but laugh a little. “No, no – he’s talking about the patented Zeke method of killing trolls,” she said. Then, she described how, when Zeke had first been reborn, he’d resorted to simply bashing trolls to death with progressively better clubs. He’d been appalled to learn that he could have used their innate weakness to fire to kill them far more easily.

“I didn’t know, okay?” Zeke mumbled, careful not to raise his voice. If he put much force into his words, he’d collapse into another coughing fit.

“Fair enough,” Tucker said, still chuckling a little. “But it does give me an idea. I might have some poisons that could slow down the healing process. Maybe he’s weak to that kind of thing.”

Abby shrugged. “Worth a shot,” she said.

“Aren’t we kind of getting ahead of ourselves, though?” asked Carlos.

“The portal? The mana in the atmosphere is still stable enough to –”

Another ripple had Zeke glaring at Tucker. “You just had to say it, didn’t you? Goddamn jinx,” he spat.

“I…uh…I’m beginning to think you might be onto something,” Tucker said.

“Yeah, maybe – but I wasn’t talking about that,” Carlos said. He pointed to the top of the pyramid in the distance. “I was more concerned with whatever the hell that is.”

Abby eyes followed his pointed finger to the top of the pyramid, and at first, she didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. Then, a shadow shifted, and she gasped. “Is that…”

“Yeah,” said Zeke.

“That is one huge demon,” Tucker added.

“It has wings. None of the others had wings,” Carlos said.

“And is that a giant sword?” Tucker asked.

“I think so,” Zeke stated. “Well, nothing else to do but kill it, I guess. Because I can’t imagine that thing’s going to let us stroll on by without a fight.”

Then, he shrugged away from Tucker’s support, summoned his mace, and strode toward the pyramid in the distance.

He got three steps before he fell on his face.

“That was a bad idea,” he mumbled, still lying on his stomach. “I think I might need a little help with this one, guys.”