Inheritors VI / Eye of the Beholder

“Everett!”

Although I hadn’t noticed until he shouted my name, Kerne must have started sprinting in Mara’s direction the moment the Fragment redirected its focus onto her. Ignoring the winged beast at his back, he slammed his front foot into the dirt to slow his momentum right as he entered the range of the remaining Fragment near Mara. Orienting his shield to point toward me…

“Osnesor!”

What the hell are you doing!?

The monster was sent flying straight at me before I could even process what was happening. Or so I thought, but my body reacted with impeccable timing. Swinging laterally as if trying to hit a home run, steel and scale met with a deafening clang.

No person should be capable of deflecting a several-hundred-pound living projectile with a single sword swipe, but as it skidded to the side, I realized I had to abandon all of my assumptions about the rules of this world. If Headmaster Amund, an ordinary human as far as I knew, could move and fight as he did, then what did that make me, as an Inheritor, capable of? I didn’t have an answer to that question yet, but I knew now I would have to keep an open mind about it.

A fraction of a second later, Mara nocked and fired a point-blank shot into the newly exposed flesh of the Fragment, exploding a portion of its body where it struck. She easily possessed the raw firepower necessary to kill them in one shot; she just needed an ally to make an opening for her.

I don’t have the time to stop and analyze! I reminded myself of my priorities and bounced my gaze back to the last Fragment near the three of us. Flapping its wings to give itself the height advantage, the monstrosity twisted its body, swinging its tail down at Kerne with tremendous force. The mouth sprouting from the tip of its tail wasn’t just for decoration, a fact made evident when the jaw widened to reveal multiple sets of razor-sharp fangs that descended onto their prey.

“Ablis pelyosves!”

A bolt of ice struck the creature in the back at lightning speed, the force of the impact shoving the trajectory of its attack away from Kerne. This spell must have been slightly different from the ones earlier, as it packed enough of a punch to crack and split the armor where it hit. Mara was facing the opposite side, so she wouldn’t be able to line up a shot to capitalize on the vulnerability before it fixed itself.

But maybe I can! I kicked off the ground, closing the distance in a single leap, and swung downward into the chink. While it wasn’t as powerful as either of Mara’s finishing blows, the strike was enough to dig into the tissue and nearly rend the body in two. It splattered to the ground next to Kerne, unmoving.

Once I landed, I twisted around toward Shina without stopping to take a breath. She had been dueling a Fragment herself, so she must’ve put herself at risk by firing off that shot to assist us.

“No need for worry,” Kerne said, a fleeting hint of relief surfacing in his otherwise composed, stoic tone. “She managed to handle things just fine.”

No more than five feet from where Shina stood, an enormous pillar of ice had, at some point, erupted from the ground, a still-living Anomaly Beast Fragment imprisoned within. I must have been too preoccupied with my own fight to notice the loud sound such a spectacular spell surely made.

The beast had been stripped of most of its armor from the attack; however, though the process appeared to be slowed by the frozen chill of her ice prison, new scales were forming one by one to cover the monster’s raw skin.

“Shina, get back!” Mara called, pulling on her bowstring and taking aim.

It was almost as if I could feel the power physically gathering into her shot, moving from air to body, body to fingertips, fingertips to bowstring. It was like the atmosphere around us was being sucked into a single point from which a force of unfathomable annihilation would emerge.

The hunter’s lips curved upward the tiniest amount. “Let’s end this, shall we?”

I couldn’t begin to describe the sound that surge of calamity made when she released it, due in no small part to the intense tinnitus it induced. Its effectiveness, however, was unquestionable. In what felt like an instant, the Fragment, along with the entire bottom half of the pillar, vanished, obliterated so thoroughly that not a trace remained. What was left of the crystal tower crashed to the ground, shattering into millions of shards before disintegrating as if they were never there. Shina, having fled from the moment Mara warned her, was a safe distance away, much to my relief.

Is it… over?

The tension was beginning to drain from my body, taking every ounce of energy I had with it. I had to stick my sword into the ground like a cane to even stay standing.

But as far as I can tell, everyone is okay. Thank god.

I felt like passing out, but the wave of exhaustion crashing into me froze in an instant when I noticed Mara’s glare in my direction.

Ah. That made sense. She has every reason to be mad at me. To hate me. I almost got her killed, after all.

“Hey, you,” she said.

I deserve this. I deserve all of her ire.

“Thanks… for helping me out.”

Huh? “B-but… it was my fault…”

She looked away from me. “No, it wasn’t,” she muttered. “We needed the extra firepower. Shina doesn’t have enough mana to freeze them all like that.”

“She is correct,” Kerne added. “I do not have the offensive capacity to damage their armor, and Mara cannot fire high-powered shots fast enough to slay them alone. You, Akio, and Vandan, as front-line fighters, are our best assets against Ames Nori. It is merely an unfortunate circumstance that two of you are new, and that the third is… difficult, even when he is present.”

With nothing else to add, Mara walked off toward the carriage, her demeanor as icy as ever. I couldn’t make heads or tails of our short conversation. Her words seem to imply she had no grievances, but everything else about her screamed otherwise.

I took a deep breath. I needed to calm down and, more importantly, stem the exhaustion building up in my body. However…

“That was awesome, dude!” Akio exclaimed, bouncing toward me with excitement in his gait. “I really wasn’t sure about all of this, but holy shit! Do you think I can do stuff like that too? This is freakin’ awesome!”

On one hand, I was glad he didn’t seem to despise me for exposing our location earlier. On the other hand, I had no idea how to respond. I’d fail to match his energy on a normal day, let alone when I was on the verge of collapsing.

Despite his eagerness, all I could give him was a weak nod in return.

* * *

The Iccasius Army. Professor Seris told Akio and me about them later that night. They were a decentralized group of radicals who, driven by a range of motives, hunted Inheritors and aligned with the Anomaly Beasts each time the conflict recurred. The professor had little to add about the secretive organization, except that they were extremely dangerous. The sigils they used to summon Anomaly Beast Fragments were not well understood by regular mages and academics, which made them difficult to prepare for.

In the aftermath of the battle, Headmaster Amund returned to us with a pile of unconscious robed figures. He, Professor Seris, Kerne, and Shina used magic to repair the carriage and retrieve our horses. After sending a magical long-distance message calling for additional transport, the headmaster stayed behind to keep watch over the captured attackers, while the rest of us continued to our original destination.

I could remember little of what happened after that. Once we reached the town of Fordin, I hiked with the others to reach the academy in a state of delirium. Professor Seris then led me to my room, and I collapsed onto the bed the instant the door was shut.

My first day, and things are already a doozy, huh.

I reached for my phone to check the time and was once again reminded of my situation.

Things really are different now. It’ll take a while to get used to.

Different. Everything was different.

That would probably be scary for a lot of people. I wouldn’t blame them in the slightest. But for me, the fear I felt encroaching on my heart was something else. If anything, it was the opposite.

Everything is different, but…

“… will my life really go any differently than before?”

A terrifying thought escaped my lips before everything went dark, my body shutting off from sheer exhaustion.