Chapter 30 — The One Who Ran Toward Him
For a few strange seconds, the battlefield seemed to move around Caelan without involving him. He stood just beyond the protection of Luminel's barrier in full Azure armor, taller now, older now, the last traces of his evolution still drifting from the seams of the plates like pale fire. The world had supplied him with strength at precisely the moment it had also supplied him with the one answer he had spent weeks trying not to accept. The Resonance Linker had called him an Aetherkin from the beginning. The empty chains in his soul had warned him that something was wrong. Now his body had naturally advanced from Juvenile to Adult and, with that advancement, had come memories of Lyra, Guang Lian, friends and rivals belonging to years he had never lived. There was no sensible argument left. He was not a human cultivator who had somehow become trapped inside this world's rules. He was something this world had created from the legend of Caelan Ardyn. The realization did not send him screaming or raging. It simply left him standing there, staring at nothing, while a life he had believed completely his own rearranged itself into something much harder to understand.
Dark Network Eidon noticed.
He had been circling Ironwyrm at a careful distance, sending his black cables through the air while Haruto and Ryu answered with fire, missiles and frantic changes of direction. Neither side had managed to land anything decisive. Ironwyrm could not risk approaching; everyone had seen what happened when the cables touched matter. Nuclear warheads had vanished so completely that even their explosions had been erased. One careless swipe of a claw could cost Ryu the claw, the arm attached to it, and possibly far more. Eidon, however, had not forgotten Caelan's transformation. The newly evolved Aetherkin stood at the edge of the battlefield surrounded by an aura considerably greater than before, and to Eidon there were few things more offensive than someone else becoming interesting during his performance.
The monkey's grin widened behind his damaged glasses.
"Well, well."
His microphone crackled.
"The little knight grew up."
Haruto looked down.
"Caelan!"
There was no response.
Eidon's expression became delighted.
"Oh."
He understood something was wrong.
Naturally, this improved his mood enormously.
Dark cables shifted beneath the sphere of machinery fused to his lower body. Several had been pursuing Ironwyrm, but now they turned in perfect unison toward Caelan.
Ironwyrm reacted immediately.
"Haruto."
"I see them!"
The armored dragon banked and unleashed a torrent of fire across their path. Eidon sent dozens of additional strands upward, forcing Ironwyrm away before he could place himself between the cables and Caelan. Ryu did not attempt to block them with his body. He couldn't. Dragon Breath washed across several tendrils, buying perhaps a second as darkness chewed through the flames, but the original cables had already slipped beneath the attack and were descending toward the desert.
"CAELAN!" Haruto screamed.
Caelan did not hear him.
Raikōmaru did.
The little Voltkin stood behind Luminel's barrier with the others, staring at Caelan's back. Moments earlier he had been unable to stop grinning. Caelan had evolved. His trainer—his tamer, though Caelan still looked faintly embarrassed whenever Raikōmaru used the word in public—had become stronger right before his eyes. Raikōmaru had expected him to turn around wearing that familiar irritating smile, say something sarcastic about finally being tall enough to reach a shelf, and then go make Eidon regret existing.
Instead Caelan had simply stopped.
Raikōmaru knew very little about whatever memories had come with the evolution. He didn't need to know. He knew Caelan.
And something inside Caelan had just broken.
Then Raikōmaru saw the cables.
His eyes widened.
Luminel shouted something.
Renji moved.
Shun's hand shot toward his Linker.
None of them were close enough.
Raikōmaru ran.
He crossed the barrier before anyone could stop him, little paws hammering against scorched earth while electricity snapped across his red-and-blue body. The cables were already coming down. He knew exactly what happened if one touched him. Everyone did.
That knowledge changed nothing.
He had spent two weeks training because he was tired of being weak. He had endured Caelan's absurd exercises, been thrown around by Luminel, fought in a body Caelan had temporarily transformed into something larger, and celebrated managing a single glancing hit on an opponent he could never have defeated. He had asked Caelan to become his tamer because he wanted someone who would help him grow strong enough to protect people.
Caelan had agreed.
Caelan had taken him seriously when he was small.
He had given him a ridiculous new name, lied about what part of it meant, wrapped him in ki when their energies refused to mix, called his movements during battle, and believed that one day Raikōmaru would become something greater than the frightened little Voltkin who had once needed saving.
Now Caelan needed him.
Raikōmaru ran harder.
He knew he was too slow.
The cables were closer.
His legs were too short.
His body was too small.
For the first time since beginning his training, Raikōmaru did not want strength because he was tired of losing.
He did not want it because Luminel was stronger than him.
He did not want it because battles were exciting.
He wanted strength for exactly the reason he had claimed he wanted it from the beginning.
To protect someone.
Something inside him answered.
The change began without a Resonance Linker, without a Virtue Sigil and without anyone forcing his body beyond where it was ready to go. Light burst from Raikōmaru's small frame while he was still running. Electricity flooded across the ground beneath his feet, but instead of throwing him backward it seemed to propel him forward. His legs lengthened. His body rose. Muscle formed across shoulders and arms that had not existed seconds earlier, while his fur deepened into fiery orange-red and a wild golden mane burst around his head and neck, lightning flashing through it like a storm caught among strands of hair. His blue eyes remained exactly the same. So did the determination inside them.
This was not borrowed power.
It did not belong to a Linker.
It would not disappear when the battle ended.
Raikōmaru had naturally reached Adult stage.
The newly evolved lion warrior hit the ground at a sprint.
He was fast enough now.
Barely.
Caelan finally heard something behind him.
He began to turn.
Raikōmaru slammed into him.
The impact sent both of them crashing across the desert just as the first black cable passed through the space where Caelan's chest had been.
A second cable came lower.
Raikōmaru twisted.
Too late.
It touched his left forearm.
There was no explosion.
No flash.
No resistance.
The arm vanished.
One instant it existed from shoulder to clawed hand; the next the darkness swept across it and removed everything below the upper arm as neatly as if reality had forgotten it was supposed to be there.
Raikōmaru screamed.
Caelan's eyes snapped fully into focus.
"RAIKŌMARU!"
The lion warrior rolled with him, one remaining arm locked around Caelan's armored chest as momentum carried them away from the cables. Blood ran down his side from the abrupt edge of the wound, staining orange-red fur dark, but he somehow forced himself back onto his feet and kept moving.
Another cable descended.
Ironwyrm's Dragon Breath struck between them and Eidon.
A wall of flame forced the strand to divert.
"GO!" Haruto shouted from above.
Frost exploded across another section of sky as Renji and Alex provided covering fire from the bunker. Tesla's electricity followed from a different angle, while Emberwing filled the space between with sweeping fire. None of them tried to touch the cables. They fired from range, forcing Eidon to keep dividing his attention while Raikōmaru carried Caelan farther from the centre of danger.
Caelan barely noticed.
He could hear only Raikōmaru's breathing.
It came rough and uneven.
One step.
Another.
The newly evolved Aetherkin had gained a body powerful enough to carry Caelan even in Azure armor, but he had possessed that body for less than a minute and had already lost an arm.
Caelan stared at the wound.
This was wrong.
Raikōmaru was supposed to be the one he trained.
The one he protected until he became strong enough to protect himself.
Caelan had just gained an Adult body, more power, and abilities that had been inaccessible to him minutes earlier.
And he had stood still.
Questions had swallowed him so completely that Raikōmaru had paid the price.
"Stop."
Raikōmaru took another step.
"Raikōmaru."
The lion warrior finally halted.
He was panting heavily.
"C-Caelan?"
Caelan stepped out from beneath his remaining arm. The older body inside the Azure armor felt strange even now, but his movements were steady again. He put one gauntleted hand gently against Raikōmaru's good shoulder.
"Thank you."
Raikōmaru blinked.
"But I can stand now."
"I can still carry you."
"I know."
Caelan looked at the missing arm.
"I'm sorry."
Raikōmaru followed his gaze.
Then, despite the pain written plainly across his face, he managed a crooked smile.
"I chose to do it."
"I know."
Caelan's voice became quieter.
"That's why it hurts."
Raikōmaru didn't answer.
Behind them, another explosion shook the desert as Ironwyrm released a Fire Storm to drive Eidon farther away. The others continued firing whenever they found an opening, not trying to defeat him so much as prevent him from turning his full attention back toward Caelan and Raikōmaru.
Caelan looked toward the battle.
The uncertainty was still there.
Nothing Raikōmaru had done had answered it.
Caelan was still an Aetherkin.
The memories were still in his head.
Lyra was still someone he remembered loving despite never having met her. Guang Lian remained just as impossible. The friends and rivals beyond his thirteen remembered years had not become any less strange.
None of that had disappeared.
It simply no longer had permission to stop him.
"I know what I am now," Caelan said.
Raikōmaru watched him.
"I don't know what I'm supposed to do with that yet."
He looked down at his armored hand.
"I'll figure it out."
His gaze returned to Eidon.
"Later."
Raikōmaru smiled faintly.
Caelan touched a hand against the centre of his chest.
"Right now, they need me."
The lion warrior's blue eyes brightened.
For all his training, for all the talk about becoming stronger, that was what he had wanted to see.
Not an answer.
Caelan moving again.
"I'll fall back."
"You will."
Raikōmaru frowned.
"That sounded less like a suggestion."
"You have one arm."
"I noticed."
"And you have been an Adult for approximately one minute."
"Also noticed."
"So unless your natural evolution included the ability to grow replacement limbs on command, you're going behind Luminel's barrier."
Raikōmaru sighed.
"There he is."
Caelan raised an eyebrow.
"Who?"
"The annoying one."
Caelan almost smiled.
Raikōmaru turned toward the bunker.
Then Caelan caught his shoulder gently before he could leave.
"Raikōmaru."
He looked back.
Caelan's expression had lost its humor.
"Thank you."
Raikōmaru nodded once.
Then he ran toward safety.
Caelan turned toward the battlefield.
The Azure armor gleamed around his older body.
His lance settled into his hand.
And this time, when he looked at Dark Network Eidon, there was nothing distant in his eyes.
Caelan did not need Shun to explain what his evolution had unlocked.
The knowledge was simply there.
Not memories of relationships this time.
Abilities.
Things that had once appeared on the Resonance Linker as inaccessible names now made sense to his body in the same uncomplicated way breathing made sense. Stellar Movement. Path Killer. Lasers. He understood how to begin using them, even if understanding a technique and mastering it were very different things.
More importantly, the abilities he had always possessed felt sharper.
Wind answered faster.
Ki flowed through his Adult body with less resistance.
Eyes of Fate opened.
The battlefield changed.
Caelan saw Ironwyrm climbing sharply as six black cables tried to box him in. He saw Haruto shifting another speed enhancement through the Linker. He saw Eidon turning toward a blast from Frostfang before it arrived. He saw the dark strands spreading beneath the fused sphere around Eidon and, for an instant, every possible movement they might make unfolded before him.
He also saw what happened if he allowed one to touch him.
That future ended abruptly.
Caelan discarded it.
Dark Network Eidon noticed him approaching.
"Back for the show?"
"No."
Caelan rose from the ground on a current of wind.
Eidon tilted his head.
"No?"
"I've had enough of your show."
The monkey grinned.
Several cables shot toward him.
Caelan vanished.
A streak of pale light crossed the sky.
Eidon's grin disappeared.
Caelan reappeared far above him.
Stellar Movement.
He understood immediately why the technique had been locked away from his Juvenile body. Ordinary movement suddenly felt rather disappointing.
"That's new," Eidon muttered.
"So am I."
Wind gathered around Caelan's lance.
Not a blade.
Not a simple projectile.
He compressed it tighter and tighter until the air itself began screaming around the weapon's tip. Ki entered the rotation, stabilising it while layers of wind folded around one another into a dense sphere of violent motion.
Eidon raised his black cables.
Caelan's Eyes of Fate watched them.
One future.
Blocked.
Another.
Erased.
Another.
The attack reached Eidon.
Caelan chose that one.
Path Maker.
He threw.
The compressed storm screamed across the sky.
Dozens of cables rose to meet it.
At the last possible moment the attack curved.
Eidon's eyebrows rose.
The wind twisted between two strands, dropped beneath a third, climbed over another and threaded its way through the shifting cage with movements no ordinary projectile should have been capable of making.
"What—?"
Eidon moved his cables again.
The storm turned again.
It was not overpowering the erasure.
It was refusing to touch it.
Caelan watched the path ahead before it happened and altered the attack accordingly, guiding it through every opening as quickly as Eidon could close them.
For the first time since his transformation, Dark Network Eidon stopped smiling.
Above them, Haruto understood.
"Ryu!"
Ironwyrm's jaws opened.
Fire gathered in his throat until the inside of his mouth became white-orange.
Dragon Breath.
The blast descended.
Eidon sent more cables upward.
That was what Caelan had wanted.
The compressed wind struck from the opposite side.
It detonated.
A vast cyclone erupted around Eidon.
The initial blast alone was enough to hurl several black cables outward, but then Ironwyrm's flames reached it.
Wind caught fire.
The cyclone became an inferno.
A spiralling hurricane of dragon flame expanded across the sky, rotating so violently that the darkness could erase only pieces of it before more fire and wind folded into the gaps. Cables thrashed through the storm, devouring channels through the attack, but there were too many directions at once. Some strands vanished beneath the bombardment of cutting wind and overwhelming heat. Others retreated toward Eidon as the fused mechanical sphere beneath him disappeared behind the blazing vortex.
The desert below turned orange.
Luminel's barrier shimmered from the pressure.
Eidon screamed.
Not theatrically this time.
The burning cyclone finally broke apart.
Dark Network Eidon shot from the flames and struck the ground hard enough to carve a trench across the desert.
Silence followed.
Then smoke moved.
Eidon pushed himself upright.
His cape had nearly disappeared.
One side of his cap was burning.
His glasses had finally lost a lens.
The sphere fused beneath him was blackened and cracked in several places, while several of the dark cables hung motionless or had been severed entirely.
But he was alive.
Very alive.
He slowly looked up.
Ironwyrm hovered at a safe distance above him, wings spread and fire leaking between his teeth.
Caelan descended opposite him, Azure armor gleaming through the smoke.
Eidon's remaining visible eye twitched.
"You..."
Caelan rested the lance against one armored shoulder.
The uncertainty inside him had not vanished.
The questions had not become easier.
He simply had something more immediate to do.
Eidon rose from the crater, rage darkening the strange energy around him.
"You miserable little—"
Caelan smiled.
There was not much humor in it.
"Now I'm listening."