pappabearbooks Ch.52— A Battle of Attrition: Final Part
Ch.52— A Battle of Attrition: Final Part
The thirty seconds Zayd promised to give her were all she needed.Guided less by conscious thought and more by a golden thread from her ability at the edge of her vision, Amy stumbled through the hall; after using the last of her mana, she couldn't even run.
She reached her objective in five of her thirty seconds.
The girl was still on the floor where Lyra had left her, propped slightly against the base of the wall. Her breathing was even and her eyes were closed.
Amy crouched beside her. "Lain," she called.
There was no response.
Amy reached out and lightly slapped her cheek, but there was still nothing. So she did it again and again, slightly less gently.
Lain's brow furrowed. "...two more minutes," she muttered.
Amy stared at her silently for a moment. Then she slapped her again, this time a bit more strongly.
Lain's eyes flew open. She blinked repeatedly while staring at the girl in front of her with an expression somewhere between confusion and offense.
Then she seemed to register whose face it was. Her posture went rigid, her jaw clicked shut, and color crept into her cheeks. Despite the current predicament, Amy couldn't help but find this very unusual sight funny.
A short, loaded silence followed. Lain stared at the ceiling, then eventually lowered her gaze back to Amy.
"...The situation," Lain said finally, in a very composed voice. "What is it?"
Amy decided, charitably, to pretend she didn't notice the girl's obvious embarrassment. "We're fighting Abaddon, and we are about to lose."
Lain looked across the room. Amy watched her take it in: Crow and Iris pressing Abaddon from two sides, both bleeding; Ash barely upright near the far wall; Lyra sitting completely still with her hands flat on the floor and her eyes half-closed; and finally Zayd pale and breathing hard while dark aura flickered around his hands.
Lain, now fully awake, immediately began pushing herself off the floor, ready to run into the fight. However, Amy caught her hand.
Lain stopped, looking down at Amy's fingers around her wrist, and tilted her head.
"I'd rather you stayed here," Amy said. "There is something I want you to do."
Lain stared at Amy's glowing yellow eyes for a second, then nodded with slight delay and an unreadable expression.
"I need you to prepare to create a wall as thick and big as you possibly can." Amy said.
"Where?"
"You'll know. Just make sure to make it seem like you are preparing a big attack."
Lain frowned, looking clearly not happy with the non-response, and Amy couldn't blame her; she herself wished she could ask her ability why. She only knew the result after all, not the way to get there.
Leaving Lain to prepare to cast her ability, Amy straightened, turned toward the fight, and filled her lungs.
"Zayd!" She suddenly screamed at the top of her lungs.
Zayd looked back immediately.
"Do it now!" she called.
There was a pause following her words.
Zayd looked at her with a frown, clearly wondering what her words were about, but to his credit he played it remarkably well as he masked his expression into one of understanding, and then nodded once, before turning to face Abaddon.
Abaddon had retreated half a pace from Crow and Iris after hearing Amy's words. His eyes had turned to watch Zayd carefully while his blade was angled down and slightly to the side, ready to move in almost any direction.
He was ready for any attack that might come at him. However, the attack did not come.
Confused, Abaddon's posture became more guarded. His gaze slid to Amy, probably expecting something from her—
But she was not there.
He looked at the space where Amy had been standing—where now Lain stood alone casting some type of spell—and his expression shifted into a deep scowl.
While avoiding Crow's and Iris's attacks, he began looking everywhere: at the barricaded corridor entrance, then the doors, then the ceiling, briefly, as if she might somehow be on the ceiling.
His gaze swept the room a second time, faster than the first, and then the confusion in his face transformed into panic.
Across the room, Zayd also frowned at Amy's disappearance, clearly deeply confused as well.
He had not known what Amy meant when she said "do it." He probably still did not know, precisely, what she had done or where she had gone. But as he watched Abaddon's eyes scan the room a third time with urgency, a realization seemed to settle into him and the corner of his lips moved into a smile.
Abaddon caught the expression and his jaw set. For a short time he appeared to have given up on attacking entirely as he focused completely on defense. But somewhere after fifteen seconds since Amy's disappearance, he seemed to be done with being careful.
The cracks running across his body shone brighter, making his expression twist in pain, but he soon smoothed over it. His whole atmosphere had changed in less than a second.
Everybody seemed to sense it, as they began putting some space between themselves and him.
With Amy now gone, he shifted his entire attention to dealing with the protagonist party.
He came at Crow first because Crow was closest and still armed. The exchange that followed was brutal and short. Crow blocked twice and then couldn't as Abaddon's elbow connected with his collarbone hard enough to send him staggering sideways into Iris, who had been coming in from the left.
Iris caught Crow with one arm and shoved him out of Abaddon’s range, which meant she took the follow-up herself. Abaddon's palm struck her injured shoulder, and Iris dropped to one knee with an expression of pain.
While he had been dealing with Iris, Ash had come in from behind.
Abaddon didn't even look. He stepped to the side and Ash's momentum carried him past, and then Abaddon caught him by the back of his collar and threw him forward into the ground hard enough that the floor cracked under the impact.
It was as he was about to kill Ash with his sword that Zayd's dark flame burst forward.
Abaddon turned into it and took it across the forearm rather than let it reach his face. The cracks on his skin widened further—making it so it was hard to say if they were cracks at all or just his skin—and he made a low, sharp sound through his teeth, but he stayed upright.
He then pressed forward towards Zayd.
Without Amy feeding him information, Zayd's abilities were very limited in what they could do; still, he tried. He gave ground and kept giving it, throwing dark flame and sometimes even shifting into shadow to another location, making his breathing beyond ragged.
Meanwhile Crow had pushed himself back onto his feet despite the way his remaining arm was shaking. He once again took Bloodedge and pressed Abaddon from the right while Iris, still on one knee, also got back to both feet with pure willpower and came from the left with her working arm raised.
They landed hits. Some of them even landed cleanly. Abaddon's cracks continued spreading, climbing his throat now, reaching toward his jaw.
But despite everything he was still winning in a quiet way; in increments. Slowly and methodically he was not only exhausting them, but also breaking them apart.
Iris went down first. A kick to her already-injured knee and she hit the floor and stayed there, breathing hard, unable to find the angle to rise.
Crow followed ten seconds later. Abaddon caught Bloodedge on the flat of his dark blade, twisted, and the force wrenched Crow's wrist past its limit. Crow's grip broke and he went sideways, fell, and the sword skittered across the floor.
The sounds of fighting in the room finally fell quiet, but the battle had not ended yet as both Zayd and Lain were still standing, both of them looking with hard expressions at their companions who had been beaten mercilessly.
Abaddon looked back at them. Despite his clearly dominant position, his expression hadn't relaxed one bit.
Then he looked at Lain, who was still gathering her mana. Then at Lyra, Crow, Ash, and Iris, who were now incapacitated. His gaze moved across all of them.
Instead of going for the weakened attackers, or the incapacitated ones, he turned.
He turned to face the far wall of the hall, where the ice barricade still groaned under the weight of the chaos creatures pushing against it from the other side; the muffled shrieking had never stopped and more cracks had developed along the surface in the time the fight had taken.
Abaddon took a deep breath as if hardening his resolve, then raised his remaining hand—the one which hadn't transformed into a blade—towards the ice barricade, all without taking his eyes off Zayd.
Energy gathered into a darkness that was somehow darker than the obsidian around the hall. The pressure coming from it was so vast that it was hard to even breathe.
But although powerful, the magic clearly took a lot from Abaddon as groans of pain kept coming from his lips, and the cracks had now fully extended to his face, completely covering him.
Zayd tried to stop the casting by releasing bursts of flame, but Abaddon just ate them all up without stopping, his skin now charred as he continued casting.
Seeing that nothing was working, Zayd took one step back and his leg gave out; he caught himself against the wall. Crow was on his hands and knees with his head down. Iris had her jaw set and her eyes open but her body was categorically refusing further instructions. Ash had not yet risen from the floor, and neither had Lyra.
Without meaningful resistance from anyone, Abaddon released it.
The dark energy crossed the hall in an instant and hit the ice barricade. The sound it made was enormous and brief, and a great quantity of either dust or steam rose from it.
Yet despite everything, the barricade held, almost to the point of cracking, but it still held.
The dumbfounded and utterly idiotic expression that the now barely-standing Abaddon made in that moment was simply unforgettable.
It wasn't just him; everyone in that moment was utterly shocked—everyone except for tired Lain, of course.
Abaddon had been watching Zayd all this time, so he hadn't noticed how his attack, in the last second, had connected not only with the barricade, but also with a newly created ice barrier. If he had been at his best, there was no way that simple barrier would have stopped that attack, but alas, he, like everyone else, was also on his last legs.
Lain, having once again exhausted most of her mana, fell to the ground, still conscious, but no longer with any strength left.
The silence that followed, despite the growls of the creatures behind, was the loudest Amy had ever heard. However, contrary to the usual silences, this one didn't feel awkward to her; if anything, she wanted to laugh out loud.
Abaddon barely stood with his arm still raised and his palm open and empty and the cracks on his body shining so brightly along the edges that it was hard to look at him directly. He was breathing in long, shaking increments and his knees had a tremor in them that he was visibly working to suppress.
He took one step—clearly willing to give even his life if it meant killing the teenagers—then stopped.
One step was all he could manage.
There was a sound of something hard hitting something.
If Amy had ever been curious about how a book connecting with the back of a human skull sounded, she now had the answer. It was a dense, flat, and slightly hollow thud that sounded like nothing special, but that she couldn't help but compare to sweets.
What followed it was Abaddon dropping forward onto one knee, his sword-hand dissipating into nothing and his free hand going to the back of his head.
Amy stood behind him.
From his perspective, she had probably appeared from nothing, but she herself had never left.
In her right hand was Libris with traces of blood on its corner, and on her left was Zayd's artifact that he had given her in case of an emergency right after she had completed her trial; it was still glowing and felt faintly warm from use.
Amy was breathing hard; just as before she had left, there was blood on her upper lip and her hands were not entirely steady.
Abaddon turned his head slowly and looked up at her.
Amy looked back down at him, at his expression of surprise and rage, and couldn't control the expression on her face.
The smirk arrived on its own. There was something genuinely, darkly funny about the fact that—despite Abaddon being probably a hundred times stronger than all of them, him even having escaped Libris's insane attack, and how they had spent the entirety of the nightmare trying to deal with his trashy bug monsters—they had both ended up here; in this position, in this hall, with him on his knees after being struck down by the book he had sent into a coma.
“Get him Stake. Beat that bastard!”
Amy heard faintly Iris' voice at the other side of the room, but ignored it, her attention was fully on Abaddon.
"I told you," Amy said while looking him fixedly in the eyes. "I told you I would kill you."
He opened his mouth to say something, but before he could, she hit him again.
Libris came down in an arc and connected hard, driving Abaddon's elbow into the floor with an incredibly satisfying sound.
When he tried to raise his arm, she hit him on the head again.
His arm dropped and she hit him again.
Somewhere behind her, a voice said stop.
She hit him again.
The voice said it again, louder, and she registered through her busy mind that it was a male one. Still she did not stop.
Then something closed around her arm.
The hand that touched her was shaking slightly, and the grip was nowhere near as strong as it would have been an hour ago. The owner had clearly crawled a significant distance across an obsidian floor to get here, because when Amy turned her head she found Crow on the ground beside her with one knee down, the other braced under him, and his remaining hand wrapped around her wrist.
He looked terrible—and so did everyone—yet he still looked far worse than the rest.
"Stop," he said again.
Amy looked at him, then at Abaddon, who was semiconscious on the floor, breathing in slow, wet increments, then back at Crow.
"Why?" she said with a completely emotionless voice.
Crow's jaw clenched. "We should hand him over to the authorities. Or perhaps to Headmistress Elyndra." He was looking at her fixedly, clearly trying to forcefully insert sincerity into his voice. "He said in the cabin that he had once been one of her students, didn't he? She should be the one to—"
"Crow," Amy said.
He stopped talking.
"We gave everything we had just to get him to the floor—every single one of us, including Libris, my companion artifact. And yet, he still had enough left to almost kill all of us." She looked down at Abaddon. "If we try to transport him or try to hold him, the moment he recovers even a fraction of what he's lost tonight, it's over for us."
"You don't know that."
Amy frowned, and looked back at him. "I do know that."
"You haven't used your power. Right now you are simply speculating."
"Me speculating is what made us win in the first place," Amy said, and her voice came out harder and louder than she intended, which was perhaps appropriate. "And what I'm predicting right now is that if we walk out of here with him breathing, we will regret it. That's not a guess. That's a pattern."
"We're not killing him," Crow said.
Those words made Amy's eyes go completely cold and her grip on the book tightened drastically.
"Why do you want him to live, tell me?" she asked.
Crow didn't respond, making the irritation in her chest rise.
"Did you forget how to speak or are you simply searching for another excuse?"
"I already told you—"
"Do you take me for an idiot!?" Amy involuntarily raised her voice. With a bite of her lip, she took a couple of deep breaths and spoke once again. "He is too dangerous. We can't allow him even the faintest possibility of escaping. He dies today, yes or yes."
The tension that followed her words stretched between them. Crow's hand tightened around her wrist and his eyes as well as his expression changed to one of genuine anger.
"Amy, just listen to me this one time, please," he said quietly.
"You still care about him," Amy said with a tone that made it hard to discern if it was a question or a statement.
"Amy, look, listen to me—"
"After everything he has done to you and everyone. Just because you share blood?" Amy's clenched left fist was trembling now; for some unknown reason she felt a massive feeling of discomfort while watching Crow's figure overlap with a brunette she recognized.
For a second, Amy could almost see clearly the younger version of herself staring at someone she loved and refusing to see reason where there was still attachment.
It disgusted her.
"He cut your arm," she said, quieter now. "He controlled your life, made you into what he saw fit, while trying to make it seem like it was for your own good, and yet you still stand here defending him like some slave."
"I'm not defending him," Crow said as he glared at Amy with his jaw tight.
"Then what are you doing?" Amy snapped. "Because from where I'm standing, it looks exactly like that."
"He's still useful. He is a prophet, after all. Moreover, we still have to deal with whatever happens in the future. We can't do it alone."
Amy paused, then laughed once in a sharp and humorless way.
"That's the excuse you chose?"
"It's not an excuse."
"He tortured you from the time you were a baby."
Crow looked away.
Amy stepped closer immediately, forcing him to look at her again.
"He caused you misfortune after misfortune."
He was still silent.
"He planned to kill everyone you ever loved if it made you stronger."
Crow's grip on her wrist tightened painfully, but she did not care.
"And he would kill you without hesitation if it meant getting what he had always wanted."
"I know that!"
The sudden scream echoed through the hall.
Amy froze and stared at Crow. His breathing had become uneven, and his composure from before was nowhere to be seen.
"I know exactly what he is," he hissed. "You think I don't remember every single thing he did?"
"Then why?" Amy asked once again immediately.
Crow opened his mouth—
—and closed it again.
That hesitation was enough.
Amy's stomach twisted violently, not because she did not understand—because she did—but rather because of the overwhelming amount of self-loathing and embarrassment as all the memories of her begging for her father's forgiveness returned.
Her expression hardened instantly, disgust flooding through her chest so fiercely it almost made her vomit.
"You really are that fucking weak."
For a moment, Crow simply stared at her. Then his expression changed to a scowld—nothing like before; this was real anger.
His grip around her wrist tightened further, and Amy felt a small amount of mana stir violently around him despite how exhausted he was.
"You don't get to say that to me," Crow said in a low voice.
Amy's eyes narrowed instantly. "And you don't get to stand in my way," she answered coldly.
For more than a few seconds, it genuinely seemed like one of them was about to attack.
Crow began pushing himself fully upright despite the blood running down his side, and Amy raised Libris slightly, preparing herself for anything to come.
The air between them tightened.
Then—
Their hands were separated; Ash had shoved himself directly between them before either could move further, with one arm stretched toward Amy and the other toward Crow.
"Are you two seriously doing this right now!?" he barked. “Can’t we even celebrate the victory?”
Neither answered.
Ash looked horrible himself—burned clothing, blood running from his temple, one eye barely open—yet somehow he still planted himself there like he fully intended to physically stop both of them if necessary.
Below him, Abaddon gave another wet cough.
Immediately, Amy's eyes flicked downward, and so did Crow's. And the tension somehow became even worse.
"Okay," Ash said.
Neither Amy nor Crow looked at him when he spoke.
"Okay," he said again. "We have a very messed-up man on the floor, and a wall that is not going to hold forever, and the two of you are doing this right now?"
Amy's jaw tightened. She glared at Crow while he looked at the floor. Neither of them moved.
Footsteps broke the momentary silence that had formed.
Zayd arrived first, still trying to catch his breath. Then Lyra came next with one hand pressed to her side. Iris limped in behind her. And then, last, Lain, who was upright through what appeared to be sheer stubbornness, much like everyone else.
They arranged themselves in a rough semicircle; they had not agreed to form one, but the geometry of the situation had made it inevitable.
Everyone looked between Amy and Crow, and then at Abaddon on the floor.
The silence lasted approximately four seconds.
"Let's vote," Iris said suddenly, garnering everyone's looks.
Lyra turned to look at her. "I'm sorry?"
"Vote," Iris repeated. "Kill him or don't kill him. Everyone picks."
"We are not—" Lyra started.
"Actually," Ash interrupted, gathering everyone's gazes. "A vote got us into this nightmare, and it seems only fitting to me that a vote should get us out."
Lyra pressed her lips together and did not appear to agree but also did not appear to have the energy left to mount a significant objection.
Iris raised her uninjured arm. "I'll go penultimate since I like the word. Who's first?"
Nobody volunteered, making Ash exhale through his nose. "Fine. Me first." He looked between Amy and Crow, then his expression turned sour as he settled his gaze on Amy. "I'll go with Crow," he said. "Sorry, Stake."
Amy said nothing. Instead her grip on Libris tightened.
Ash nudged Lyra's arm. Lyra looked at Amy for a moment with the exact same expression Ash had.
"Crow," she finally said quietly.
Two for Crow.
Amy bit the inside of her lip hard enough to taste blood; the unsettling taste spread across her tongue almost immediately, but she welcomed it. The sting helped steady the violent pressure building in her chest as every pair of eyes remained fixed on her and Crow alike.
Two votes for Crow already: Ash and Lyra.
Amy wished she could say she felt betrayed, but honestly she had expected this.
Crow had not reacted outwardly to either one, but Amy had noticed the slight tightening in his fist nonetheless.
Her fingers tightened around Libris until the leather grip creaked softly beneath her hand.
Ash avoided looking directly at her now and so did Lyra.
Amy inhaled once through her nose and tried her hardest not to snap.
"Zayd," Iris said, breaking the silence. "You're up."
Now everyone's attention shifted toward Zayd, who exhaled sharply through his nose before speaking.
"I'm with Miss Stake on this one."
Crow's eyes snapped toward him.
Zayd noticed and frowned immediately. "Without offense, your reasoning is insane."
Crow's stare hardened.
"You are asking us to keep alive the man who caused all this mess because he might be able to help us in the future despite his clear hostility toward us. That is an absurd decision-making process, to the point that I strongly believe it's not the real reason. Do you pity him that much?"
"It isn't about pity," Crow answered coldly.
"Then it's worse," Zayd shot back instantly. "Because that means you're gambling everyone's lives on a bet."
The tension rose again following Zayd's words.
"We don't know what happens after he dies," Ash interjected. "For all we know, a bigger and more dangerous enemy might appear. Abaddon wants the same thing we do: to save the world. If we leave him no other option but to work with us, he will work with us."
"You are assuming too much," Zayd replied. "We are talking about someone who would not hesitate to torture his son if it meant achieving his objectives. If the moment we decide to spare him and get him out of this nightmare, he somehow manages to escape, can you take responsibility?"
There was a long silence. Then Zayd shook his head while looking toward Amy.
"So yes, I'll go with Miss Stake."
Amy said nothing, just gave a sideways glance which he returned with a nod.
Despite being about to lose, something loosened slightly in her chest at Zayd's support.
Three had voted; now only two were left.
Iris raised her hand lazily and grinned. "I guess it's my turn."
Lyra glanced at her uncertainly. "Iris, although it may seem like Abaddon—"
"I trust Amy," Iris declared, interrupting Lyra and causing everyone's expressions to twist.
Amy frowned deeply; the statement had genuinely caught her off guard.
Iris trusting her? If anything she had been the one to question her the most out of everybody.
Amy and Iris crossed gazes. Amy tried to ask with her eyes why she had helped her, but Iris only winked at her.
Four votes. Two and two.
Everyone looked at Lain.
Lain stood with her arms at her sides and her face outwardly composed. Her gaze moved from Crow to Amy to Abaddon on the floor and back.
The silence extended past the point of comfort, as it had been doing again and again throughout the entire conversation.
Amy looked at Lain's face and tried to read it and found she couldn't, not this time, and so she dropped her gaze to the floor and stared at the obsidian and thought that if Lain voted against her she might just do it anyway, right now, before anyone could stop her, and absorb whatever that cost her.
This whole thing had already gone too far from her liking; the reader's affinity was guaranteed to change one way or another. But if it meant killing Abaddon…
It was just as she was thinking this that a voice seemed to rebound through the hall.
"Amy," Lain said.
Everybody went completely still, and Amy could no longer even hear the sound of growls coming from the other side of the barricade.
She looked up.
Lain was looking at the ground, avoiding everyone's gazes.
Crow exclaimed sharply. His head turned toward Lain with wide eyes and an expression of confusion and betrayal. He took a step toward her—
Both Lyra and Ash moved in front of him before the step finished. Crow looked at them, then back to Lain, then locked eyes one last time with his father, before turning and walking away to the far corner of the room.
Amy, who still couldn't believe it, looked away from Crow, back to Lain who stayed completely still, then once again back to Abaddon.
The sound of a crack coming from the ice brought her back to her senses.
There was no time to lose in useless thoughts.
She tightened her grip on Libris, then dropped down over Abaddon.
Their eyes met. Instead of begging for his life, or cursing her, Abaddon simply stared at her in silence, then closed his eyes, as if accepting his death.
This deeply annoyed Amy.
The first blow landed, and then the second and the third. Soon she was breathing hard and had lost complete track of how many times she had hit him.
As she kept going, her mind couldn't help but drift. She had thought that this would be harder. But it honestly wasn't any different from what she did during the trial. A bit more visceral maybe, but also a bit more straightforward.
It wasn't as hard as she had expected.
She stopped for a moment to look at him. Maybe it was because of the cracks, but his head was almost breaking like a mirror mixed with meat. Just like Elias' smashed head looked back on building B.
That sight also reminded her of Libris, who was now in a state of semi-coma thanks to him, meaning the soonest they would wake up was, at best, a few hours, and at worst, a week…
She once again raised the book.
Someone behind her was saying something. She didn't hear it.
She brought her companion down, helping them take their revenge, again, and again, and again.
At some point the sounds changed from a thud to a splash, but Amy kept going until she couldn't anymore.
With her breathing beyond ragged, and wiping with her sleeve the tears she didn't realize had fallen, she straightened and looked at her bloody hands while ignoring the gruesome sight below her.
The thought arrived without the relief she had imagined would accompany it.
A cracking sound came from across the hall, and a section of the ice barricade buckled inward; the chaos creatures were almost upon them.
Amy turned.
The others were looking at her, all of them except for Crow who was still in his corner, with his back still turned.
She looked at them, then silently reached into her satchel and took out the key.
She held it up, closed her hand around it, and the very next instant the hall, and the blood, and the doors, and the noise, and all of it dissolved into white.
They were gone.