Depthless Hunger

Chapter 217: Truth in Smoke

The crystal knife must have been an expensive masterwork, because it cut deep into Kai's back. He cried out in pain and swung backward... narrowly missing Kraetius.

"Bah." The old man drew another knife and advanced on him. "Almost had you."

"Why?" Kai only managed the word before Tareth's next shout hit him from the side, binding him in place.

"I couldn't stomach the sight of these peasants tearing down Krysal and dancing on the rubble." Kraetius spat. "Half of them are dead anyway, and I took out the rest during the fighting. But Riuklina can restore my crystal cultivation, let me take my proper position again. After everything I had to endure, I'll be the strongest Diamond this city has ever seen."

While another shout staggered Kai, the two Ruby Crystalliers leapt forward and grabbed his arms. Once they had him bound in place, Kraetius stepped forward with his knife raised.

"And all I had to do was betray you. I'd say it's worth the price."

His hand came down, and Kai's teeth snapped closed.

Isulfr's Bite consumed both the dagger and Kraetius's hand. The old man staggered backward, crying out in pain, and the Ruby Crystalliers stared in horror. Kai chewed on the mouthful... the crystals stuck in his teeth, but the troubling part was how good D-rank flesh tasted.

"Take him!" Riuklina screamed. "All of you!"

"Down!" Tareth cried the word and Kai was forced to his knees. Once the Ruby Crystalliers recovered they began kicking at him, battering at his body from all sides. They weren't his equal, but with so many blows, even his Physique would begin to bruise.

When one of the crystalliers started to form an axe, Kai forced past the pain to act. He locked Tareth in place for a second with a Void Gaze, then spun on the others. One Ruby was knocked across the courtyard with a kick to the chest, while a Tyrant's Claw tore through the armor of the other and left him bloody.

"I said everyone!"

When Riuklina shouted, blue smoke flooded into the courtyard. Kai had just the barest second to look up and see Omilaena, standing on the balcony alongside the merchant. She met his gaze briefly, but the smoke pouring from her lips was overwhelming and soon the entire courtyard was so filled with smoke that it was impossible to see.

"Did you need to do that?" Riuklina complained.

"You saw how he fights," Omilaena said, "I'm not getting close. Besides, it won't kill Tareth. And do you really care about the Ruby Crystalliers?"

"Oh, I suppose they can be replaced."

Though the poison smoke was so omnipresent that he couldn't avoid breathing it in, Kai felt... surprisingly fine. At first he thought his D-rank Physique was enough to resist, but Omilaena was the very one who had given it to him. Then he thought that she might have underestimated his monstrous soul, but he had told her so much...

There was no time to think about that. Kai prowled through the smoke, hunting the others on pure hunger. One of the Ruby Crystalliers was already dying of poison, so Kai just cut him down. The other had formed a crystal mask over her face, but it did nothing to protect from Kai's bite.

He wanted to find Kraetius and kill him for his betrayal, but realized that might be a mistake. Tareth was no longer standing where he had been when the smoke poured out and there was no trace of his soul. Either he had some way to navigate without sight or his instincts were just that good. Either way, Kai couldn't assume that he could keep hunting safely. The poison might not be harming him, but the knife in the back, the point-blank Spellword shouts, and all the blows had taken their toll.

Finally the smoke began to dissipate. Kai braced himself, straining his eyes to make out the courtyard the first instant he could. Kraetius sat on one side, still cradling his stump. Tareth had retreated on the other, his lungs swelling with power.

But the most important thing was the balcony, where Riuklina was peering into the smoke. When she began to see them, she leapt to her feet.

"How did h-" Omilaena slit her throat mid-word.

The noblewoman stared in shock, clutched at the gushing blood, and slowly sank against the railing. Behind her, Omilaena pulled back the thin knife and flipped it around her fingers before making it vanish. Then she looked down and smiled.

"She tried to make me a deal," Omilaena explained, "but she doesn't really understand. I'm not going to turn on you when I can just take what I want anyway."

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"You couldn't-" Kai cut off to tug the crystal knife out of his back and threw it down, then stomped it in half. "You couldn't have said something before I got literally stabbed in the back?"

"You're a terrible liar, Kai, you couldn't have kept the secret. Riuklina had defenses almost as good as Suortril, so I needed her to reveal an opening. But I actually didn't know about Kraetius. If I'd known she paid him off too, I would have arranged a little accident."

He didn't love that Omilaena had made all those decisions without him, but he could respect the end result. If Riuklina had contacted her, she must have tempted her with everything that Krysal had to offer. And despite the fact that their revolution was outnumbered, Omilaena hadn't betrayed him.

"Well, this didn't turn out how I'd hoped." Tareth sighed and rolled his shoulders. He was still filled with mana and qi, but all the poison smoke he'd breathed seemed to be slowing him down. "That offer of changing my mind still open?"

"I doubt it," Kai said heavily. "Why'd you bet everything on the merchants? Didn't it bother you that people were being treated like animals?"

"It's the same everywhere you go, kid. In Goralia they say everyone's equal, but in practice your Class determines your tier in life except for the wealthy. They need the people with inferior Classes to really believe they're inferior, or the hierarchy of power falls apart. Can you honestly tell me that isn't how it is?"

"Maybe." Kai rolled his shoulders in the same way the taller man had. "That doesn't mean we shouldn't try to make things better."

"Wish I had your optimism. Now, we've chatted enough, so stop!" Tareth shouted the last word, striking the entire courtyard with a binding effect even stronger than before.

He leapt to retreat from the estate entirely, but Omilaena caught his leg in midair and hurled him back down. The same instant he hit the ground Kai tackled him into one of the walls, a Tyrant's Claw slashing.

Tareth Nordulind proved himself a true warrior at the end, despite being outnumbered. It should have been a victory, taking out another Diamond Crystallier. But every movement in the battle felt sorrowful to Kai, because it meant the loss of what might have been. When they'd first met, or when they'd fought Omilaena together, he'd hoped they might become friends and allies in the future. Instead they tried to kill one another, not out of hatred but because they'd fallen on opposite sides.

With the odds in their favor, Kai pressing and Omilaena wearing him down with poison, the outcome was inevitable. The only point where there was real risk was when Kraetius suddenly leapt back into the fight. He might have gotten his knife in time if Omilaena hadn't thrown a needle at him. After Kai cut across his chest, he didn't rise again.

Eventually Kai drove Tareth to exhaustion, and when he opened his mouth to shout again, one of Omilaena's needles went through his neck. Then a second and a third. No crystal defenses this time. He didn't cry out in pain, just released a slow sigh. The massive man slowly reached up to pull out the weapons, looked at them briefly, then let them drop to the ground.

"Twenty years ago..." His voice was still strong despite the holes in his neck and he turned toward Kai sadly. "If we'd met twenty years ago, maybe things would have been different."

Then he sagged to the ground and collapsed. For a moment the courtyard was silent.

If consuming flesh was solely about power, it would make sense to eat Tareth, but Kai's hunger turned him around. Kraetius was still alive, trying to crawl away with his good hand. Maybe it was the man's Physique or maybe just the fact that he had betrayed him. Either way, Kai stalked after him, then watched the man's fear as he stared into the monstrous maw before it ended his life.

A moment later Kai wavered, coming back to himself. He had been so controlled, no one suspecting his real power despite fighting in front of them, yet now he'd done something like that in a fugue state. Right in front of Omilaena, too.

When he turned back to her, she gave a polite little clap. "Very monstrous, good work."

"Just one thing I don't get." Kai swayed to his feet and wiped off his mouth, trying to put the taste behind him. "What was your plan with the poison? If it was my Physique, wouldn't Kraetius have been immune too? Or did you inject me with something special?"

"No, no, your Physique injections were exactly what I said, designed to maximize the benefit." Omilaena stepped forward and began playfully tapping her fingernails against his chest. "I've been dosing you with small quantities of poison ever since we agreed to work together. It's much more convenient to have allies immune to my most common poisons, as you just saw."

"And Zae Zin Nim?"

"She's so touchy and suspicious I haven't managed it yet."

Kai was about to say more when an explosion shook the ground. Some chaos was expected in a battle, but this was unusually large. He jumped to the roof of the estate, Omilaena just behind him, to get a good look.

The explosion had come from the docks, where half the ships were now burning with a green fire that wasn't put out by the water. He could just see a small group of his allies down there, spotting Maggle but no Nirka. They were hemmed in between the flames, the water, and now a vast spiky wall of earth.

Traelisia stood in the path of their only way out, moving in slowly to finish them off. Even though he was too far away to arrive in time, Kai began to run toward them.

Maggle swayed forward, drinking from what looked like a jug of beer. Without warning he hurled it at Traelisia, who knocked it out of the air with a spike of earth without even looking at it. Yet as the jug broke, acid splattered from within, striking her earth barrier. At practically the same instant, Maggle spewed the acid he'd held in his mouth at the same time he hurled a burst of qi.

The bolts of acidic qi shot out, a more dangerous assault than Kai would have ever believed Maggle was capable of. He didn't know if it would be enough against a Diamond Crystallier and he didn't get to find out, because at that moment Suortril stepped from behind the earth.

Acid, qi, and earth all broke against the prism around him.

That was the last thing Kai saw before he dropped to one knee. The knife wound and all the other injuries were finally catching up to him, and he'd pushed himself to the limit fighting Tareth. It was going to take him a while to catch his breath... and when he did, he had no idea what he was going to do about Suortril.

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