Marek breathed out steam with each strike, his muscles burning, his blade a whirlwind of steel that maimed elbow, wrist, and shoulder to the bone.
Yet, the anchor-ghast's wrecked muscles wove back together before skin crawled to a close. It raised its bony hand, drowning the eight-legged monstrosity asleep in the glass tube in the shadows of its survival.
"YOU CAN'T!" Marek's voice came out guttural, higher-pitched than usual. It ended on a broken crack from a throat choked as much by despair as it was by hate.
Twenty years of damn sacrifice to forge a treasure on the verge of awakening, spilt in the sewer waters because of a single, discarded bastard, a living corpse incapable of understanding his place until his bitter end. And he had to swallow this loss?
He clenched his jaw, gums bleeding as the anchor-ghast's hand fell with the ineluctability of a sledgehammer.
BOOM
A tremor almost tore the ground beneath Marek's feet, dust swallowing the tube and the anchor-ghast. He backflipped high and slow, his mouth ajar. It wasn't the sound of shattered glass or bones on flesh, but blasted metal and rocks.
Before he met the ground, the dust exploded upward, slowly dissipating around the anchor-ghast's flung body. Like rubber, its chest swelled against the crater. When it crashed a dozen steps behind Marek, it had already recovered.
But it hardly mattered compared to who did it.
In a pit of his own landing, a hooded man had his fist raised in front of the glass tube. Dark gloves, crowned with diamond-shaped parts on his knuckles, radiated a soft, iridescent light.
"Brannick!" Marek let out the breath he had been holding. "Brannick's here! That fat shit's done for!"
As he lunged beside Brannick, the thugs erupted into cheers on the facility floors.
In the ruckus, Brannick turned toward Marek. The darkness of his hood obscured his face, his cloak unmoved by his chaotic arrival.
"Report this mess in a few words." His voice was not a command; it was focused on what mattered without emotional nuances.
"Poor quartermaster. You look as if you're about to cry," someone said as they leapt beside them from the first floor. She swept a dismissive glance at the lacerated stomachs of the sprawled thugs. Guts and limbs lay beside their broken shields. Should be dead, yet they celebrated with wet voices. "You'd better answer. You know, if you don't want to join them."
Silma Reed dusted her right shoulder with a smirk that made Marek tremble. She didn't address him by name. His lips quivered under the weight of his unworthiness. "One of the first three test subjects resupplied today. Bastard broke his anchor. I sent the researcher to fetch you while slowing it down. It's drawn to our creation."
"Figured as much." Silma shrugged, her brown eyes, veering to a soft red, locked on the rising anchor-ghast. "Not what we planned."
Marek didn't answer. Nothing he thought about would improve his situation. The more he added, the more likely Silma's threat would come true.
Brannick shook his head. "Keep that for later. What's his distorted truth?"
"Nothing dies around it. Don't know the range, not sure about the rest." Marek reported. "Do we contradict its definition, rewrite the meaning, or remove the context sustaining it—"
"It was just born from a weak binder. We get rid of the manifestation." Silma jerked her hand toward the anchor-ghast. A curved knife jutted out of her frilled sleeve, the white frame glistening, while the dark edge drank the light from the torches. "You keep it busy, quartermaster. Prevent it from stabilising enough to rewrite its distortion into something worse. Brannick, would you do us the honor?"
Without a glance, Brannick lunged at the lumbering anchor-ghast. He reached it in a heartbeat, the claws at the end of his gloves out. They sank into its left leg, and with an upward pull, he tore it from its waist.
The anchor-ghast tumbled back.
Before it could hit the ground, Marek was already on it. He whacked its chest, marble and organs clattering on the floor.
The bones of a new leg erupted, muscles squirming into place. Brannick didn't allow it. With a predatory strike, he punched the other leg. The shin blasted into shrapnel, flesh consumed in a dark mist of corrupted blood.
And a new one emerged from the anchor-ghast's knee!
Met with the same result, Marek screamed. "We can't target the manifestation when its truth makes it unkillable!"
"Who says so?" The length of Silma's knife grew to match a longsword, a broadsword, then something longer than the anchor ghast itself.
She swung it effortlessly as if its weight didn't increase, and when it cleaved across the facility, it carved a long gash in the several-centimetre-thick doors. The shrill cry of metal filled the facility.
Brannick gripped Marek by his shirt and leapt aside, just as the dark edge of the blade reached the anchor-ghast.
It severed its recovering legs, waist, chest, and face. For three heartbeats, Marek scowled as if the strike did nothing. Then, a dark outline formed over the anchor-ghast. Half its body slipped to the side.
But what would it change? It would recover in a second. Yet his eyes widened. Their undying foe didn't move. Flesh remained inert, and bones didn't shoot out. What?
"Keep it pinned, my dear Brannick. I'll be done in a second." With a chuckle, Silma's blade retracted, not into a knife, but into something needle-thin.
As she ran much slower than Marek, Brannick tore the remaining halves of the anchor-ghast's legs in a brutal show that made the thugs swallow dryly.
Using his back as support, she vaulted over the anchor-ghast's exposed chest, her needle-thin blade already in flight toward the fractured crystalline core.
New flesh erupted—a split second too late.
There was no sound, no brutal collision. Just a needle-sized knife piercing the fracture.
A heavy shiver overtook the anchor-ghast as she landed. The new flesh froze. The bones collapsed into dust. Wide-eyed, the anchor-ghast reasserted its flawed truth, "Survival requires no dignity, purpose, or memory," but only found the original vow of Giovanni, "I survive no matter what."
Its shiver intensified for a moment. Metal and stones faded in its vision, replaced by granaries, the sturdy houses of smiling brothers and sisters, and the temple to pray for Kraghor's graces that once were. They were gone like the owner of this fleeting memory.
Then its body began to rot away.
Brannick caught Silma mid-fall. Instead of thanks, she urged him. "It's not over."
With a nod, he dropped her gently before bolting to the ghast's chest. From a pocket at his belt, he tore out a silver box lined with sapphires. With his other hand, he dug the core out. Hunks of rotten flesh reluctantly snapped under his pull until he slid the core in the box and slammed the lid shut.
Gurgles erupted all around Brannick. The thugs who held their lives on the thread of the anchor-ghast's distorted truth breathed their last through lips pursed in nauseating grimaces.
Not those on the floors. Their bows clattered to the ground as they chanted Brannick and Silma's names.
"Not bad." Whistling, Silma rummaged through the decomposing corpse of the anchor-ghast. A moment later, she retrieved her knife in its normal size, wiped it on a dead thug's shirt, and made it vanish into her sleeve.
Marek spread his palms open. "Can someone explain why it didn't recover? I mean... congratulations..."
"Why don't you try to guess?" Silma's lips curved into a grin. "Or you can try to ask Brannick."
While Marek avoided gazing at the man, Brannick descended from the carcass. His cloak hadn't moved once, and despite the grime, it remained unsullied.
"Enough nonsense. Her knife cuts healing and erases presence." He didn't continue, as if what he had said was enough for Marek to understand. Then, he stirred the conversation to what mattered. "Report the details now."
"How do I put it... Giovanni resupplied today. We kept things as usual, but the bastard broke the glass tube. I sentenced him to death to keep my authority, but he had to insult Garrick. I had no choice but to execute him myself, or the men would have entertained weird ideas. Took some time with his truth. Before I managed to kill him, he broke his anchor himself. Mhh." Marek crossed his arms over his chest. "He shouldn't know about anchors. Did someone teach him?"
"Who?" Silma rolled her eyes. "Sewer rats? Or do you mean the Sump Dogs they killed each time they approached the facility? Anyway, you messed up big time, boy."
After a momentary silence, Marek sighed. "You're right. The bastard's smart. Has always been. He engineered this place back then, so he might have deduced things about anchors based on sensation."
"Possible. The other two?" Brannick asked.
"Alive. They didn't agree with Giovanni and escaped."
"Do you know why we kept them alive for twenty years? Not as guards. The real reason."
Marek froze. Slowly, he shook his head.
Brannick gripped him by the collar, the facility blurring in Marek's eyes. A dull ache slammed against his face, and he was pressed against the cracked tube, his gaze forced on the eight-legged nightmare.
"We kept them alive because we want their anchors to break. On what right do you sentence our tools to death?"
Silma joined them, three knives appearing between her fingers. "We wanted the first anchor-ghast to force the other two to fight it. They would have had no choice but to turn into anchor-ghasts themselves, which meant three cores to collect."
Brannick pressed Marek's face harder. "Look at what you worked on for twenty years."
With a groan, Marek looked at the nightmare's eight plated legs, pale torso, the serrated blades of the chainsaw replacing its hand, and the harpoon launcher that replaced the other. It still slept, unmoved by the battle, waiting for something to awaken it.
"It needs cores to stabilise. And because of you, we only have one."
"Who knows how long it'll take for the other two to break?" Silma pinched the bridge of his nose.
Marek forced his lips open, his voice muffled. "P-please, give me a chance to fix my mistake."
"Hahaha. Do you think we'd kill you after we helped you anchor a sanctioned truth? After we named you a quartermaster with all the benefits that come with your status? No, death is the least of your concerns until you repay Garrick. In full."
Silma exchanged a glance with Brannick, and he let Marek slide to the ground. "Fix the facility. Stabilise our weapon. Make the other two break their anchors." He slapped the box into Marek's hands and walked to the stairs with Silma.
Only after reaching the third floor did he add. "You won't die, Marek, not today. But there are other ways to pay back debts. Ways you'll regret experiencing if you fail Garrick again."
"Oh, one last thing. Don't play with the core without the researchers' permission," Silma suggested playfully as she climbed the ladder to the slums' market. "Or you can give the anchor-ghast a second round. Alone."
Minutes passed before Marke moved. How long? Did it even matter when he couldn't stop himself from trembling, his bones from clattering, and the right side of his face from burning?
But he had to move, to command, or what little authority he had left would join his pride down the sewers. Slowly, he pushed himself off the ground. He tidied his blood-stained shirt, his voice booming in the facility. "What are you slacking off for? Treat those who can be treated, and move those who can't to the burial pit. Fix the doors and the glass tube!"
"What about Riccardo and Tonio?" A thug asked from the second floor.
For a second, Marek observed the eight-legged nightmare. Then, he shook his head. "Leave them be until we've fixed everything."
As for relic 78? Marek didn't consider for a second that Giovanni was a mere distraction for Kael to steal it.