WHO WOULD have thought that the first star to appear was from the infamous Heritage of the Crown of Thorns? A promising Heir of Yonder, who had created a trick for himself to better harness the spiky blood thread he possessed, as one who was a Child of Sufferance. To him, pain was nothing but mere strength, and the spear was the vessel by which agony could speak of endurance.
This Heir need not read, unlike the others.
What he did during those seven days was unlike any other; he trained without falter, day and night, thinking of how he could shine above the rest.
Pain was a feeling, a sensation, a gift not meant to be wasted.
And so he used the sword, he used the bow and arrow, he used all means, until he stumbled upon the love he obsessed over now.
To always use a spear.
To channel his blood thread through the length of a spear.
To let his power speak for itself.
Such audacity, for others.
That he showed a spear could cut a massive tentacle while he hovered in the air, as the other tentacles violently shook within the area they were hovering upon. It seemed that the Eidolon had suffered a great pain, and thus, seeking a descent to the crimson swamp. Flapping its wings of ear, this Father Darkness's eyes even cried blood.
He pulled the spear back with a sharp jerk, plunging downward to intercept the weapon. He took hold of it in mid-flight before descending onto the boat where this Flower-face was currently sheltered. His back was turned against Flower-face as he spoke in a sharp and raspy note:
"I will take it from here, so begone while you still have limbs to carry you." He glanced behind, and with their height the same, this boy's uniform red, the Flower-face also had better view of his crimson eyes, which flickered with a cold, visceral glint. "I have no room for excess baggage in my wake, whoever you are." Then he looked up at the groaning Eidolon once more, which was already regrowing its lost fleshy limb. "You are far too weak to be a subordinate." Then a vicious curve appeared on his lips. "Hence, the glory would be mine alone."
Although she could not pry on what this boy was telling Flower-face . . . Athelstan had knowledge of him. As she observed how flummoxed the Flower-face became the moment the tentacle fell into the swamp, she could only tilt her head.
"Why not rest for a while, Flower-face?" she murmured, as if talking to the wind, since she was almost a hundred meters away from the battleground. "Let the stars handle it. For sure, you might have learned a lot."
There were four stars in Yonder among the sixty Fertile Children during those seven days — the genius ones who developed a strategy of their own. Just as they might be deemed trivial by some, they better executed a formula that drove them to burn and, otherwise, to shine among the others as stars.
"The spear is the vessel by which power is enduring with pain." Athelstan remembered the ideal this star bore, linked to that of his own Heritage. "Is it not right, Stavros of the Crown of Thorns?"
⠀
MAZE HAD no inkling who this boy was, nor how he managed to sever a limb of the Eidolon using only a spear, while his own sword could only offer a scratch, a mere insect's bite against the Father Darkness. Yet, the thought of being weak did not even cross his mind, and he had no need for validation in this horrifying pitfall.
Splatter, patter, drip. Some crimson liquid rained upon him, with the boat beginning to stray further from the Eidolon, steered by the momentum of the spear's retrieval, as if the weapon itself were a paddle to egress the shadow of the Father Darkness. However, the Eidolon would not allow such a retreat. As its suffering ceased and the lost limb regenerated in its entirety, the other tentacles uncoiled with a renewed, predatory speed, reaching for them both.
Maze did not hesitate. He drifted his soul and shipped a new form tenfold the meters away, landing upon a stable boat. He stood his ground, watching as the Father Darkness began its slow, heavy walk toward his new position.
Meanwhile, the boy was a blur of motion, climbing from one fleshy limb to another. He scaled the creature's reach, gripping his spear with a cold, singular focus. The Eidolon's eyes, buried within the white ear-wings, stared back at the leech upon its tentacles in a thrash, trying to shake the intruder from its limbs, but the boy had already loosed his strike.
His spear lunged toward the head of red hay, trailing spiky blood threads that looked like thorns of crimson light.
Or so he thought.
At the final moment, a tentacle sacrificed itself, throwing its bulk in front of the head to shove the spear aside. The limb was cut through in the process, but the force of the collision flung the boy back into the air. He had almost done it. But the limbs of the Eidolon were far faster than even one of the stars had anticipated.
⠀
STAVROS did not falter as he was flung back. Instead, he bit his own lip until the iron taste of blood filled his mouth, as if to trigger a hidden reservoir.
The Vicar of Anguish!
The pain of his bruised ribs and the impact of the air did not weaken him. As he descended, the spiky blood threads on the spear he now pulled back to his hand were plunged toward the central land; as they pierced the ground, his feet stood upon the spear. This was his Thorn-Lash.
The Eidolon loosed a guttural groan, its red-hay head swaying as it unleashed four tentacles at once. They snapped through the air like fleshy lightning. The boy pulled his spear, plunged it, and met them mid-flight. He planted the butt of his weapon against a floating piece of wreckage, using a burst of Sufferance to propel himself upward.
"Is that all a Tier IV can offer, huh?" Stavros rasped, his voice a little edgy. "You damn must give me all you got!"
He swung the spear in a wide, violent arc. The Thorn-Lash wrapped around the weapon's shaft erupted, extending the reach of his strike by several meters. SCHLICK! The blood-threads acted like microscopic saws, tearing into the entity's scaled hide. But the Eidolon was a relentless vessel of hunger. As soon as the threads cut, this blood-feaster of Darkness began to suck the essence from the very threads Stavros had manifested.
Another ability of the Eidolon!
The red hay on its head glowed a sickly shade of crimson.
It appeared to be healing faster than he could rend it.
Due to that, Stavros gritted his teeth.
He landed on a tilting boat, the wood slick with the Eidolon's spray. He had no way of dodging the next strike, and so he could only take it. A tentacle slammed into his shoulder, pinning him to the deck; and so even Maze, watching from the periphery, felt how painful the plunge must have been, as the sheer force was enough to crush a man's body.
But the boy loosed a hideous and yet pained laugh.
This was the trigger.
The Thorn-Shock!
All the agony he had stored from the fall, the bite, and the crushing blow of the tentacle surged outward. From the point of impact on his shoulder, a forest of scrappy but iron-like vines erupted with explosive force. They did not merely pierce the tentacle, but traveled up its length toward the Eidolon's body, seeking the beating heart within its entirety.
The Eidolon wailed. It thrashed its massive ivory ear-wings, while the wind from its struggle nearly capsizing the boats nearby. For a second, the beast was held swiftly, like it was impaled by the very pain the Child of Sufferance had harvested.
Yet, it was never enough.
The Father Darkness's immunity to physical weapons began to manifest as a dark, oily mist. The thorns of the Thorn-Shock began to melt, absorbed by the creature's quick regeneration. The Eidolon loosed its hold on Stavros and prepared a final, crushing sweep with its remaining four limbs.
A strike that could erase a Child from the map.
CLANG!
The air vibrated with a sudden, golden resonance. A massive, thick, and silver-etched great sword intercepted the blow, parrying the limb with a force that sent a heavy ripple through the swamp.
"I believe this sword is unbreakable!"
The golden light of such an Anchor flared, the decree of such a declaration settling over the battlefield like a law.
⠀
FROM AFAR, Athelstan tutted, her buggy eyes widening as she recognized the heavy countenance of the newcomer. There seemed to be a new comet descending onto the earth — not that he was literally a comet, nor was he truly descending — for this new Child who appeared had already saved the doom of the former one from Sufferance.
This one had a gold shade of uniform, with a shield on one hand and a sword on the other.
And so, the second star had finally arrived.