What followed was a blur of movement.
Lucid was a novice in close combat. All of this was real. Alice wasn't enhancing him in any way. He wasn't using the Chain of Heart offensively. He was just incredibly lucky.
The golem brought both fists down where Lucid stood. The impact cratered the ground.
"Lucid!" Mary screamed.
Dust and debris billowed up in a thick cloud. From the side, Lucid sidestepped out of the dust in a fluid motion. He was scanning the environment, looking for openings. The golem's vulnerable position. Its cracked stone surface. One eye shining dimmer than the other. In that moment it meant something.
It wasn't immortal.
It could bleed.
Lucid spun his spear with a backhand grip and grazed the golem's side. Stone chipped away. This was it. This was the moment. The golem staggered. Lucid dashed forward.
"Watch out!"
A massive stone hand hit his side. Lucid went flying. He crashed through the air the same way Mary had earlier. His body hit a tree. He twisted himself mid-impact, grabbed a branch, used the momentum to spin himself up. In the air, he twisted the spear in his hand, ready to focus, ready to use his Chain—
'No,' he reminded himself. This was a test. A self-inflicted trial. If he always relied on Alice, Lucid would never find his way back to Earth. He needed to overcome it. He needed to prove he wasn't a coward anymore.
He tightened his grip on the spear.
The golem was gone.
It was in the air. Right where Lucid was.
"Watch out, Lucid!" Alice yelled in his head.
Too late. Arms came down like twin sledgehammers. With a sickening.
*THUD.*
He hit dirt hard enough to bounce once. Spine flexed wrong. Something in his lower back gave with a wet crack. Blood flooded his mouth, hot and copper. Limbs twisted at angles arms and legs weren't meant to make. Left knee bent backward. Right elbow popped out of socket, bone grinding visible through torn skin. He gurgled, tried to breathe, got mostly blood.
While he hit the ground with a bone-shaking impact Alice was too late to heal. Blood gurgled from his mouth.
He had lost.
Mary limped closer to where he lay. "Lucid!" Her cry was heartfelt. Desperate.
Something shifted behind her.
The golem. Again.
She scrambled around, turning, putting her staff in motion. She pointed toward it. Gold and violet energy formed a ball at the tip, then dispersed into nothing. She was out of fate essence. And it seemed she couldn't replenish it.
The golem brought its hand sweeping toward her. She braced herself to meet the same fate as Lucid.
A quick motion. Something passed her.
She opened her eyes.
It was Lucid.
Standing there. A green glow surrounded him.
The green light flared with twice its usual potency, enveloping him completely. He had punched the golem. The spear was broken. In his left hand was just the shaft. A wooden stick.
He walked forward. Everything about him was wrong. His traveling outfit was torn. Blood covered his legs and shoulders. White outline of bone protruded from his calves. His left arm hung at an impossible angle. How was he standing? His flesh was knitting itself, stitching back together in a manner that defied logic.
The mist around his face was more potent now. Swirling with depth.
The golem had been knocked back. It continued forward. Mary looked back to where Lucid had been. He wasn't there anymore. He stood in front of the golem. A Low stance. He punched. It connected with stone, making a crack spider across the surface.
The golem countered. Its fist punched through his side, through his stomach. Blood splattered on the ground in thick ropes. Organs were visible through the hole.
He didn't fall.
He continued.
He punched again. Harder.
The golem kicked his leg. The shin bone snapped with a wet crack.
"Lucid, you are killing yourself!" Alice yelled in his mind. "Use your trait! Please!"
His leg shot out beneath him. He fell to his back.
The golem prepared to stomp on him again. To finish it.
He rolled away... barley. The golem's foot cratered where his head had been.
The leg grew back. Green light flared around the broken limb. Bone extended. Flesh wrapped around it. He was using the Chain of Heart, but only for regeneration. Only to repair. Not even for enhancement. Not to fight.
He stood up.
With a roar, he screamed. "AHHHHH!"
He lifted his hand into a punch. So hard it met the golem's stone surface. His hand shattered upon impact. His wrist shattered. His entire arm broke in the process. Bone fragments pierced through skin.
The golem was a C+ rank Unfaithful. Lucid was technically an Enlightened of Primordial rank. He was going to win. It was just a matter of time and how much damage he was willing to take. And How much pain he'd endure.
They traded blows.
Golem stabbed with a sharp hand. Sliced clean through his abdomen. Palm burst out his back clutching a loop of intestine. It yanked. Guts tore free with a long ripping sound. Blood fountained. He spat red, roared, brought both ruined hands down on the golem's stabbing arm. Shattered them. Shattered the arm too. Stone chunks flew like shrapnel. One piece took a chunk out of his cheek, exposed teeth.
The golem's arm shattered too.
Stone pieces fell to the ground.
"Lucid, why would you cause yourself so much pain!" Alice yelled. Her voice was panicked. Pleading. "Use the Chain of Heart! Use it fully!"
"Stop this! It hurts watching you!"
By now, Lucid's vision was blurry. His ears rang. Pain was constant yet numb. Everything was distant. He could barely feel his body anymore.
He stood anyway.
Mary looked at him, clutching her staff. This defied all logic. All reason. He should be dead. He should have died three times over by now.
"What... what are you?" she whispered. Her voice was shaking. "How are you still standing? This doesn't make sense. None of this makes sense!"
The golem was on its knees now. Its hands and arms lay shattered to the left and right. Its body was cracked. Broken.
Its eyes grew bright. Purple light gathered in its eye sockets.
A beam.
'Always a beam,' Lucid thought with grim humor.
He raised his one good hand. Outfit in tatters. Ribs poked through his side like broken piano keys. Flesh hung in strips, reknitting too slow. Hand open, palm out, like he meant to catch the beam. He stepped closer.
Mary watched in horror. She clutched her staff tighter. The stone embedded in its tip. She could feel fate essence there. Dormant. Waiting.
She was a now Latent. She couldn't control large amounts of fate essence. Every instructor had warned Latents from. Using too much that would hurt them. It Would damage their threads of fate whatever that meant. It Could kill them...
But Lucid was going to die.
The beam shot out from the golem's eyes. Purple and dense. It cut through the air.
Lucid stepped closer. Grabbed the beam with his bare hand. Started pushing it back.
Mary screamed. She pointed her staff at the golem. She forced her will into the stone. She pulled at the fate essence inside it.
The stone cracked.
Purple and dense violet flame erupted from the tip. It shot toward the golem. The recoil threw Mary backward. She hit the ground hard.
Pain exploded through her body. Her channels burned. It felt like fire was running through her veins. She screamed. Her vision went white.
She rolled to her side and vomited. Blood mixed with bile. Her whole body was shaking.
But the flame hit the golem.
It staggered. The beam faltered.
Lucid shoved the beam back toward its source. Back into the golem.
Inside the golem, purple light grew. It grew brighter. Bigger. The golem's chest cavity expanded. Cracks spread across its entire body.
It exploded.
The blast sent Lucid flying backward through the air. A bloody mess. He crashed into the ground and rolled several times before stopping. His body left a trail of blood on the blue moss.
Mary was still on the ground. Still vomiting. Still shaking. But she looked up through tear-blurred vision.
The golem was gone. Just scattered stone and fading purple light.
Lucid lay motionless twenty feet away. Green mixed with white light pulsed weakly around him. His wounds were closing. Slowly. Too slowly.
He won. With sheer stubbornness. With willingness to embrace pain. With refusing to take the easy way.
"You are utterly foolish, Lucid," Alice said within him. Her voice was relieved. Exhausted. "Utterly, completely foolish."
Mary crawled toward him. She couldn't stand. Her legs wouldn't work. Blood was still dripping from her mouth. Her channels felt like they'd been scraped raw with broken glass.
"Lucid," she gasped. "Lucid, are you alive?"
He didn't respond. His chest was moving. Barely. The green light continued its slow work.
She reached him and collapsed next to his body. Her hand found his. It was cold. Covered in blood. But she held it anyway.
"Why?" she whispered. "Why would you do that? You could have died. You should have died."
No answer.
Just the slow pulse of green light. The quiet sound of flesh knitting back together. The distant sounds of the blue forest.
Mary closed her eyes. She was so tired. Her whole body hurt. She could taste blood. Could feel her threads of fate still burning.
But they were alive.
Somehow, impossibly, they were alive.