Chapter 71: The Cold Splash

I am Yogawa. I am a scholar. I am, apparently, a complete and utter idiot.

There is a moment of pure, crystallized silence. It is the single most terrifying moment of my life. The Abyss, the Spinner King, the entire chaotic, silver-lit web- all of it holds its breath.

Hachiro is on his knees, staring at the black dust that was, a second ago, his death. Kizawa is frozen mid-lunge, his blue eyes wide, his mind clearly unable to process the logic of what just happened. Erima is a statue of perfect, nocked-arrow-grace, perched on her high thread.

And the King, the mountain of shadow and malice, is a pillar of stunned, silent fury. His eight, colossal, spider-like legs are tensed. The stump where his ninth leg used to be is gushing a torrent of black, oily nothingness.

I did not just wound him. I deleted a part of him. And he has noticed.

YOU.

The word is not a sound. It is a spike of absolute, glacial cold that drives directly into the base of my skull. It is a focused, personal hatred.

I have his undivided attention. I am holding my grimoire, the page on "K'thall's Rebuke" smoking, the ink glowing a faint, angry white.

The King's amusement is gone. The boredom is gone. All that remains is rage.

He moves. He rears back, his entire, city-block-sized body rising, his remaining legs digging into the web. He is not attacking me. He is addressing me.

He opens his maw, a vertical, gaping chasm of shadow and ice, and from it vomits a beam of pure, concentrated VOID.

It is not a physical attack. It is conceptual. It is the spell of unmaking. It is aimed at ME.

"YOGAWA!" Erima shrieks.

I do not have time to think. I am a coward. A coward's only instinct is survival. I do not run. I do not dodge.

I slam my book shut.

The wave of anti-light hits me. I feel an unimaginable, soul-deep cold.

I look down. My hands, my arms, my robe- they are still there.

But my book. The grimoire, my life's work, the ancient, priceless tome of structured magic- is gone.

No. Not gone. It is flaking. The leather cover is turning to gray ash. The pages are curling, disintegrating, the ink fading into nothing.

My book. My logic. It met the King's chaos. And it sacrificed itself for me. It absorbed the spell. It saved my life.

And now, I am unarmed.

The book dissolves into a cloud of dead paper and dust, vanishing into the silver light. I am Yogawa. And I am empty.

The King hisses, furious that his attack failed.

"YOGAWA!" Kizawa's voice. "THE COCOON! MOVE!"

I look up, my mind numb. The King is turning. His rage is now focused on his true prize. He is ignoring us. He is moving toward Mizuki.

He lifts another colossal leg, preparing to strike the translucent cocoon. He is done playing. He is going to kill her.

"NO! HE IS GOING FOR MIZUKI!" Hachiro screams, scrambling to his feet.

Kizawa is already a blur, his blades a hopeless flash of steel as he races across the web to intercept. It is too late. He will never make it.

This is it.

I look at my empty hands. The book is gone. But the knowledge is in my head.

"K'thall's Rebuke," I whisper.

The King raises his leg.

I do not have the book. I do not have the paper. But I am the scholar. I AM THE LOGIC.

I lift my empty hands. I focus on the King's raised leg. I find the frequency.

"YOU- ARE- FALSE!" I roar, my voice a shattering cry of academic rage.

I push my own Will, my own understanding of STRUCTURE, at the King.

The leg wavers. It flickers. The King ROARS in fury, feeling my logic tearing at his chaotic magic.

But I am not the book. I am weak. My nose explodes in a fountain of blood. The psychic recoil is shattering me. The leg does not dissolve.

It stabilizes. The King is stronger.

He ignores my pathetic attack. He brings his leg down. This is the end.

SPLASH.

A sound. A sound that should not exist here. A sound of cold, clean water.

The King's leg hits the cocoon.

And the cocoon is EMPTY.

The leg smashes through the silken prison, impaling the web floor beneath it, but it hits nothing.

Kizawa skids to a halt, staring. Hachiro blinks. I wipe the blood from my face, my mind reeling.

Where is she?

The King raises his leg, confused. He looks at the shattered, empty cocoon.

WHERE?

His voice is a wave of pure, unadulterated panic.

I look up. Erima is still on her perch. Her bow is at her side. She is holding a coil of rope.

The rope leads down- down to a small, puckered hole in the web-floor that I had not seen. A hole filled with pitch-black, still water. The pool.

Mizuki is gone. She is in the pool.

Erima did this. She used her last arrow, her grappling arrow, to cut a hole in the cocoon while we were fighting. She let Mizuki fall into the pool of ink.

The cold splash was her gambit.

The King sees it. He sees the pool. He ROARS. He thinks she is dead. He thinks his prize is lost.

"Erima," I breathe, my voice full of awe.

"It is not ink," she calls down, her own voice shaking.

"It is a memory."

And as she says it, the pool begins to glow.