"YOU! If you die early, and this behemoth bastard is not yet defeated, I would feed your body to the swamp myself!"
It was the first ultimatum that Stavros spat when Maze landed on the periphery of the central land.
When the giant monster began its assault, Stavros parried with his spear, severing the limb from its bulk. Maze, cognizant that he stood within a life-and-death crisis, began to drift as he inflicted wounds upon himself. Every time he shipped a body, his sword would instantly pierce his palm to trigger the next drift; again and again, each movement exacting the cost of his shipping.
How many times had he drifted?
How much had he maimed himself?
All to reach the summit of this Eidolon.
With the prickling and biting pain, with jaws clenched tight, he no longer even blinked. He would drift and ship, a cycle that cost two leaves at most, over and over. When he reached the zenith, he raised his blade into the air and drove a full slice through the Eidolon's ear-wing, letting himself slide downward as he fell.
The wind against his hair and garments merely suffocated his breath, but his mind remained fixed on a singular motive: the only way to survive was to kill the abomination.
GROAN!
The entity trembled, perhaps from the grievance of losing an eye, an ear, and a wing all at once.
⠀
THIS STAVROS WAS bespectacled by the spectacle before him. What could his spear do except borrow speed from the chaos? To move with such velocity from one point to another, he strained himself against the thorny blood threads to become one with his weapon.
But this mere Orphan, how was he swifter?
While Stavros struggled to reach the summit, Maze ascended with a sweatless ease, carving through a giant wing as if it were a mere piece of cloth and his blade a pair of sharpened shears. What utter preposterousness. What mere deliriousness.
The weak, turning out to be a star among the others.
Stavros could feel his body shaken to the core.
Honor.
What was honor if he remained like this?
He was the damned outshined by someone who was a Child of the Towers Below.
In truth, he was not burning enough.
The Orphan, that blind Orphan, what a sheer sight . . .
⠀
WITH THE Eidolon blinded, Maze did the one thing left: he crawled back onto its limb and ascended toward the head. As the Eidolon, in its shivering, began to submerge itself into the blood swamp, Stavros cut down every limb that surfaced to attack them.
When the wing was entirely severed, he drifted and shipped upward once more, relentless, until he spotted Stavros reaching the summit of the red hay head — but the Orphan had already surpassed him. He repeated the strike. SWISH! In moments, the ear-wing on the opposite side was carved from the Eidolon's body. It triggered a greater tremble, the beast heaving in agony as if it could no longer endure the trauma of its severed vision.
Maze did not mind the chaos, for he had learned three of its weaknesses.
Its limbs were agile but lacked true strength. An ordinary sword could parry them despite their size, as if a needle could create a great severance and cut them with mere will. The tentacles were but soft, fragile blobs of flesh with teeth to feast upon the swamp. Much like how Maze borrowed from his Soul Tree, the Eidolon utilized its domain of blood to replenish its strength and even regenerate.
The next weakness was its ear-wings. Those were its vision, and so without them, it was blind. What use were limbs if it could not perceive its foe? Furthermore, without them, it struggled to rise from the swamp under its own weight, causing it to slowly sink.
Maze gripped his sword tightly as he neared the summit. Half of the beast's body was already submerged. As he almost reached the top, he severed his own hands and drifted higher as if flying.
Several meters in the air, he launched his blade.
Its third weakness was its head.
Without its vision—
Maze meditated as he fell, eyes open, the cold breeze of the night brushing his cheeks. He felt his leaves dissipate. One, then another two, then three more. He gripped his sword tightly with every passing second.
Sixty, fifty-eight, forty-five . . .
How much must he borrow?
. . . thirty-one, twenty-seven, nineteen . . .
His sword landed upon the crown of the Eidolon's head.
. . . twelve . . . ten.
—this head was but a mountain of red hay.
Before the Eidolon could fully vanish into the swamp, its body was split in two, releasing a final groan before it collapsed into the water, causing a mountainous shower of blood. A snow of blood. A rain of crimson.
Each droplet catching the dying light like a falling star.
The Orphan who was meant to fall with it was flung to the sky by a strange, strong crimson force exuded by the Eidolon.
⠀
THE FEASTING CROWS, one by one, were now dispersing from the heavens, and the moon and what was deemed to be the scars glimmering around it — the flawed heavens — had its blanket of pitch-dark be enveloped by the peaking dawn. It looked as though the moon was ashamed, and that it had reached a crestfallen state where it had to hide little by little.
A figure was falling from the sky, and all the eyes agape were speechless and stiffened from what they had witnessed. Such prowess. Such audacity.
What had played out was not from a precept, nor was it a directive given.
When all the pawns for whom death was meant to transpire watched the sky being peeled of dark, what unusual silence they must have felt.
The gust was just as cold, and the smoke from a burning land had almost extinguished from swallowing everything.
The Orphan had almost reached the swamp to sink with the Eidolon.
Almost.
But there came a voice like the calm gust.
"I believe this boat will stop the force of the fall."
And so the Orphan had landed upon the boat, steered by an Heir near-giant in stature. His body was cradled in the arms of the Child of Hope, who gazed upon him with a disbelief that faltered upon his lips. While Gareth scrutinized the face of the blind, he wondered how this man perceived the world, and by what senses he was guided. It seemed certain this one was no blind man, not in the slightest.
Held now in the Heir's care, the great choice was made.
Gareth exhaled, a breath of relief.
Was it not a finer grace to treat an Orphan with fairness?