Chimera Charleston (Spit that out, it’s not cooked)

Bao was stupefied by the depths of the underground. Even Harow had to admit his time away from the capital gave him a fresh perspective on how much history was buried under Forness, which the city seemed more than happy to forget about. Perhaps it was because there were things more important on the horizon.

Those things, however, seemed more than happy to camp right under the royalty’s nose, Harow grimly observed. He was certain that the local military would be having a reckoning after all was said and done with, since the Beacon, semi-retired and all, was needed to clean up.

Clean up indeed, with the way Bao groaned as he took another step in some sticky mud.

“You’re very hygiene-conscious.” Harow couldn’t help but chuckle quietly as they moved through another stone room filled with a layer of fine silt. Rainwater probably swept down the stairs and channeled through this passage every time there was a storm.

“Probably all the water in Idoy made me spoiled for choice,” Bao retorted offhandedly, though his expression firmed up with a sense of purpose as they kept moving from one buried home to the next. “So the two of us are definitely feeling Malevolence in the air with our little quirks. The question is which we’re tracking – is it His Highness’s savior, or his attacker?”

“If the Prince’s claim that Jane’s having a territorial spat with the monster is true, it may be a distinction without a difference,” Harow suggested.

Between Bao’s inherent ties to Malevolence and the Great Spirits’ various blessings on Harow, the two were able to all but taste that sour, festering feeling that drifted in the air and smeared the walls. Across one abandoned bridge and through an ancient living room, this way and that, the two began seeing physical signs that matched the growing sensation of corruption. Scratch marks in stone became ever-deepening gouges, and disturbed detritus started getting smashed outright, until the two outright halted at the sight of a large quarried stone that was now planted halfway into an old wall, as if someone had hurled it.

“What do we do if we meet them mid-fight?” Bao probed uncertainly. “Do we, uh, let them fight, or do we jump in and hope she doesn’t kill us by accident?”

Harow had already tied the blessed lantern to a metal ring on his waist, freeing up his hand so he could draw his sword, white light running across its length in diagonal bands.

“What’s the right thing to do?” He asked, old rust in his mind coming loose surprisingly easily. Despite everything, it was easier for him to choose altruism by instinct, even with all his worries. Wasn’t that the whole reason the Great Spirits had rather chosen him than any number of mighty warriors? Or even Gottfried, Lissandra, Yulien, and Sylvat?

“Well, if you say so…” Bao deferred, as he walked to the opposite end of a dark sitting room, which still had a whole wood door still fitted on, even after all this time. “But if she gets pissed that we butt in on her–”

In a heartbeat, the door came apart as it burst inwards, neatly cracking Bao across the forehead with a stray shard that sent him flying back.

Theoretically, Jane – she seemed to be “Jane” at any rate, if the two horns protruding from her head had any say – had been responsible for the injury, with the way her head had thrust through the entrance, though it took only a few seconds to see her thickened arms gripping the door’s arch, snarling and trying to push back against the giant hand wrapped around the back of her head.

Harow didn’t even think, raising his sword to give a clean one-handed stroke, tip of the blade slicing cleanly across the mangy flesh of the hand’s thumb. Hot violet blood spilled free, splashing across the ground and with it came a warbling shriek that caused the hand to wrench back – without letting go of Jane.

“That didn’t help–” The woman screamed as she was pulled out of view.

Harow offered her a mental apology as he raced for the door while shouting behind him. “Bao! She needs help!”

“I need help!” The redheaded swordsman held his face, thin rivulets of blood trailing down his forehead as he staggered to his feet. “Gosh, this world has it in for my skull.”

The duo quickly rushed out of the buried building and into another man-made cave made by toppled homes, and in the distance, two figurative behemoths were wrestling and slamming each other into the walls of a long-gone civilization.

Besides Jane, a bizarre syhee made of different animal traits, there was a rat-shaped monster pummelling her as it towered over her, nascent limbs and heads still trying to protrude from its flesh as it kept healing from every wound the chimeric woman visited upon it.

“Bao, just do whatever you need to, to fight it. I’ll come in from the other side if you distract it!”

“Oh fine-”

He complained, before Harow felt Malevolence pulse for a second, and in a moment, the talisman-wrapped sword came into Bao’s hand, and Harow swore it was the same one he had heard of years ago – a fell thing, a blood-drinker, a blade of wrath and ruin. That was impossible. It should be impossible. Unless–

Bao whistled loudly, making one of the heads on the rat-like beast turn to notice him, half-orienting its torso in his direction even as a trio of stiff, sinewy arms were keeping ahold of Jane, who was still ravaging them with a horn growing from a free forearm of her own.

The beast, having no care for either of them, simply took its hostage and began swinging her at Bao, who was forced to dance away – he nimbly acquitted himself, avoiding striking the chimera, while swirling around every other wild strike to bludgeon the monster where he could.

With it hissing impotently and scratching and stabbing at Bao with its claws in response to every flesh-warping blow the swordsman gave in turn, it barely paid Harow any mind, even with its multiple heads – perfect.

This was a new specimen, Harow surmised, and it wouldn’t know the limits of the Beacon’s abilities, as all the multitude of blessings he carried made the floes of spiritual energy still floating underground swell around and within him, nearly explaining how he was able to leap through the air and run along one of the ancient brick walls above the melee.

With everyone distracted with each other, Harow was free to drop down from above, plunging his blade down through the largest head of the beast and straight into its body from above. Landing on its shoulders, Harow used his position to give his blade a vicious twist, eliciting a sharp choke, then a churning gargle. Throwing Jane aside, it clawed above itself, trying to remove the most immediate threat, with Harow only narrowly missing each swipe.

Its pain and panic only blinded it from the fact that it was really three on one. With its largest arms raised above its head, its lower body was exposed to Bao, tightening his grip on his sheathed sword, and Jane, whose claws were growing ever longer.

Every following strike came with full force, with the monster unable to defend itself. Flesh was slashed apart, pulverised, rent asunder through sheer unyielding might, and even as the Malevolence expended itself in weaving its host back together, for a moment, a pulsing tumour hidden in the chest of the beast was exposed.

Jane was more instinct than anything else, and her head lunged into the wound, jaw widened and teeth sharp to grab ahold and pull, tearing the solid Malevolence right out.

“Woah, hold on-”

Bao’s warning died in his throat – before the dying, disintegrating rat even hit the floor, Jane’s throat bulged as she swallowed the corruption.

Jane stilled for a moment, eyes widening at the sudden infusion of power. A spasm made Harow, who had dropped to the ground, uncertainly reassess his grip on his sword. He had made a promise to hope on Jane, but that didn’t mean he would be placid…

A second shake seemed to rouse Jane from her stupor, and she licked her lips in distaste. “Bleh,” she concluded.

“Yeah, I was forced to take in a bunch a while back,” Bao glibly commiserated. “I think I straight-up passed out for a while, it was that nasty.”

“When the hell was that?”

“I passed out, didn’t I? I’ve forgotten, and I’ll keep it that way. Nice to meet you, by the way, we’ve been looking for you?” Bao said, hand extended to shake, which Jane just frowned at.

“Well, I hope it’s not to fight, because I’ll win.”

“Sorry, I’ve been hanging around Idoy folk,” Bao muttered, resting on his sword. “For a moment, I felt this urge to see you prove it. My bad.”

“What’s Idoy?”

Watching the two chat it up at the depths of the world, a bolt of morbid inspiration hit Harow, as he realized how much he recognized this byplay. Shades of wartime memories conjured themselves from the innermost recesses of his psyche, from when he watched his friends banter and become companions over long years, and like before, he had been in the company of a syhee and a swordsman with what was unmistakably the cursed Oar.

It felt right, and therefore wrong in its familiarity. They were dead – years dead – and yet these facsimiles with a hint of their cadence and jaunt made Harow blurt out:

“Yulien? Sylvat? Is that you?”

They turned, faces recognizable, but twisted in unfamiliar ways, and he heard their answer.

“Who?”

“Huh?”

Ashen-faced, Harow deflated – thankful only for the fact that neither of them could hear his heart fall from such lofty, delusional heights.