Chapter 8: Allies and some more action

Thomas~

'I actually did it!', he thought. 'Using Darkness to cover my legs and increase my jump. It actually works!'

He was high up in the air. The snake's head was below him, and to its right stood Jake, ready for another attack. Thomas closed his eyes, drew his breath and braced himself. One more moment and he would be on his way to the ground.

Three, two, one..and down.

He opened his eyes. They pulsated, turning yellow.

'Nothing much has changed since my last fight. But this time, I'm prepared'

In the middle of the freefall he brought out his Dark Arms; a set of arms made up of Material Darkness, which took position beneath his actual arms. Using the momentum of his fall, he slammed his right Dark Arm into the serpent's head, which had begun to move towards Jake.

Thomas' hand hit the serpent with enough force to slam it into the ground. Jake dodged nevertheless, his reflexes kicking into action. Thomas landed on the serpent's head a heartbeat later, and jumped to the left the moment his feet touched its slithery body.

The Monster recovered quickly, and it was angry. A quick turn of its body and it was onto Thomas. It opened its jaws; fangs ready to tear into Thomas' chest.

Thomas dodged backwards, but the snake was faster. Right before it could swallow Thomas whole, he threw a quick uppercut.

The attack was futile. 'Like this whole damn battle.' He thought.

The snake bit down on his Dark Arm, tearing it off in the process. Thomas grimaced. 'At least it wasn't my real arm.' The thought wasn't comforting.

He manifested some more Darkness, positioning so much of it on his legs that they looked too big for his body. The snake snarled, and pulled its head back for another attack.

Thomas waited. Right at the moment the snake decided to sink its teeth into him, Thomas jumped again, this time controlling his power so he didn't end up a hundred feet in the air.

Just as he predicted, its teeth got stuck in the concrete.

"Jake! Electrocute!", he shouted.

Jake, who had been watched the whole ordeal in disbelief, now jumped into action. He ran towards the snake's head , and slapped his hand onto its right eyeball.

Electricity erupted out of his hand. A little at first. And then it was as if he had lost control.

The snake twitched and turned, but its teeth were stuck.

Jake was straining, putting every ounce of strength he had, but it was not proving enough. Thomas was already falling towards the snake's head, and when it was about to free its mouth, a kick from Thomas knocked it back into place.

The snake thrashed violently. Its tail decimated any building it came in contact with. A few seconds later, it mouth came free.

As it shook its head contemptuously, Jake and Thomas were thrown off.

Jake fell down first. And the snake was quick to turn it head towards him. Thomas looked at Jake, down on the ground, utterly exhausted and probably wounded after that fall. Jake wasn't going to survive. And neither was he.

Jake was going to die, and he would be the reason. A thousand things ran through his mind. The cogs in his mind were turning too fast, too loudly. He won't let anyone die. He can't.

'These are my first allies. I won't let you kill them!.' his mind screamed.

"NO! I won't let you!" he screamed for real this time. He came face to face with the snake in the middle of his fall. His yellow eyes pulsated and turned green. From his position in the air, he swung his right arm below him. A formless blob of Darkness manifested, and took the shape of a dagger. Thomas swung his arm upwards.

He expected his dagger to strike the snake skin, hard and tight, but instead, whatever he struck was soft, almost....fleshly.

The snake released an ungodly roaring sound, and yanked it head upwards. The movement threw Thomas upwards, like the pendulum of a clock, but he held on to the dagger for dear life.

He was above the dagger now, as if he was doing a one-armed handstand on it. He glanced at where Jake lay, but he was gone. 'Probably rescued by Jess.', he reassured himself. 'Probably dead.' His mind muttered back. He wished his mind would shut up for just a moment.

And then his eyes fell on the cause of the commotion. His dagger had landed in the right eyeball of the snake. Blood was oozing out of the place where the dagger had stuck.

If the dagger were to come unstuck now, he was done for. The snake thrashed its head again, and Thomas had to use every ounce of strength he had just to hold on.

The snake violently moved its head towards a building. Before the snake could smash its head into it and crush Thomas, he leaped to the other side of the snake's face with one hand still on the blade.

The snake crashed its head into the building, shaking Thomas' body violently. Immense pain shot through his arm. He chose to ignore it. With his free arm, he brought out more Darkness and gave it the shape of a stake.

"All right! That's-", Thomas was cut of by another violent shaking of the snake's head. "That's enough moving for today!". He shouted and slammed the into its head.

"Huh?". The stake failed to break the snake's skin. "Shit!", he muttered, as he heaved himself onto the Monster's head. It had stopped moving so vigorously now.

"C'mon, c'mon!" He held the stake aloft with both hands and slammed it down again. No luck.

Thomas took a deep breath. ' I need something hard..' He searched his memory for something. Something he may have in his arsenal. It came up blank. Or did it?

The details of his power popped into his mind. Something along the lines of "Darkness can be turned into obsidian."

He gripped the stake tight and took a deep breath.

"Alright, this should be easy. It's my goddamn Power after all."

He searched for the ability inside him. Nothing happened. For a while, Thomas was confused. He tried again. The snake moved its head again and Thomas fought hard to maintain his balance. As he was stuck in between trying not to fall and calling upon his power, something responded to his call. It felt like the sound of water. Cold, stagnant water. He closed his eyes, tried to visualize it. He could see it now. A deep dark lake, on the verge of freezing over. Then his body shook, as if an earthquake had arrived out of no where. He opened his eyes, and the cause the movement became obvious when he saw the white face of a wall approaching him.

The snake slammed into the building with the top of its head. Thomas crashed through the massive concrete wall, and was rolling on the floor a second later until he struck a wooden bed, which cracked due to his momentum.

'What...what happened?". His head was spinning. Pain shot through his entire body like adrenaline. Blood flowed down his forehead and made it impossible for him to open his right eye.

The snake peered through the hole in the wall. Due to the height of the building, Thomas was on eye level with the snake.

It took him a while to register what had happened. Ironically, he wanted to laugh. This whole thing was too ironic. He'd found allies to survive, and he could have. He could have simply walked away and let the guilds deal with this. But he chose to fight. To fight and die instead of running away.

A few seconds ago he was planning to kill the snake, completely oblivious to the fact that his life was on the line too. Now he was sitting here, his back against a broken bed, bleeding from god-knows-how-many places, and probably broken ribs.

The Monster was looking greedily at Thomas. Like an athlete looks at a hard-earned trophy.

"So, I'm literally staring death in the eye. Guess its the end of the road for me, huh?", he said with painful breaths.

'Should I really go down without a fight', he thought. He tried to stand, but as soon as put his hand on the bed to assist his now-damaged legs, the pain that shot up his right arm confirmed his doubts. It was broken.

The snake pulled its head back. It was coming in for the kill.

Thomas let his eyes go hazel again, deactivating his power. He let his mind go blank, his world go dark. The air in the room seemed to still, and for a second the world was just him, the heart beating in his chest, the ringing in his ears, the blood trickling down his face, and the reaper standing before him with its jaws twitching.

"Whatever....I gave a good fight."

The snake opened its mouth and lunged at Thomas through the hole in the building in a way the seemed almost exultant.

But before the jaws of death could claim him, he heard the unmistakable sound of an explosion, and bright light flooded his eyes.

He thought he may have reached heaven. But when his vision cleared, he saw that the snake was gone. He heard the sounds of explosions again, but the were distant. A man appeared in the hole in the wall, and it normally would have been reassuring, but given that they were around ten storeys above the ground, it wasn't.

Thomas squinted his eyes to get a proper view. The man seemed to be floating in the air by....shooting water out of his limbs? He wasn't stable though, so Thomas assumed he wasn't that adept with his power.

The man entered, and carefully lowered himself onto the ground. Who was this guy now? And what he doing here?

On second thought, it was pretty obvious. He was here to rescue him.

'Rescue.' When Thomas said it in his mind, it sounded hilarious. He was here to fight. And here he was hoping a random man would rescue him. He might as well be here to finish the snake's job.

"It messed you up pretty bad, didn't it. Can you walk?" the man said empathetically.

"I can try." Relief flooded Thomas.

He carefully hoisted Thomas up, and slipped his arm over Thomas' shoulder to support him. Although his feet were unsteady, Thomas was able to take a few steps. The blood blocked his vision, and his arm hurt like hell. Still, wasn't willing to give up. Not yet. Not ever.

But well, he had given up a few moments ago. 'Nobody saw that.' He said in his mind, as if telling the voices in his mind not to tell on him.

"Who are you?" Thomas asked between heavy breaths.

"I'm Auden, I'm with The Hunters."

"I see." The Hunters guild was here. Now they would claim his prize. ' Not like I was gonna kill it anyway.'

They walk slowly, taking small steps. With Thomas' injuries, it'd take them a few more seconds to reach the hole in the wall.

"I can bring you down with me, the same way I came up. Or should we use the elevator instead?"

Thomas shook his head. Every step hurt. He wasn't walking all that distance. He tried to release some burden on his legs by covering them with Darkness. It worked a little.

"What's your name?"

"Thomas."

"Thomas", he said as if reassuring his mind. "You fight well. When you recover, think about joining us." There was a calm smile on his face.

'What's with people asking to join them the moment they meet you?', he thought. "Sure. What about the snake?"

"Our president is dealing with it as we speak.". They were quite close now. "Okay, this might hurt you a little since you obviously have broken bones. I'll try to lower myself gently.

Without another word he jumped out of the hole.

Thomas' stomach fell, his heart lurched and threatened to jump out of his throat.

'We're falling. Holy hell we're falling !'

Everything in his body shouted that he wasn't gonna survive this. But then his fall slowed. Auden was releasing -shooting, water out of his limbs, slowing their fall.

Gently, Auden lowered them on the ground. The moment his feet touched the ground, his entire body relaxed. For a second, he didn't even feel the pain in his arm anymore.

"That was just...."

"Eye-opening?" Auden offered.

"Yeah.." Thomas said. "Eye-opening."

"Here, I'll get you to shelter. Hunters have this Monster covered." Auden started moving Thomas away from the battlefield. The relief center was in ruins now. Thomas took a glance at the man fighting the serpent, and instantly recognized him.

The leader of the Hunters. Their 'President'. His name was unknown, but the media, they called him "Blast", a reference to his power. 'Creating explosions out of his hands.' he recalled. Thomas had seen Blast's power in action only a few times. The explosions were powerful enough to level buildings.

The media called him a terrorist, a brute, even though he was the only one who actually recognized the threat of the Anarchist-of Arthur Walsh-and tried to do something about him.

As Thomas saw Blast fight the snake, the power appeared even more formidable. The man was managing to stay airborne through the sheer force of his explosions. The reaction force of his explosions was allowing him to pull off seemingly impossible maneuvers. Seeing the way the man fought, Thomas couldn't help but stare in awe. He was graceful, fierce, almost mechanical. Each move calculated. No attack gone to waste. No move done out of impulse. He wondered how someone could control their power so well, given the fact that everyone only had theirs's for less than half a month.

With the agility and firepower the man boasted, the snake wouldn't stand a chance. It WASN'T standing a chance. Whenever the snake would try to attack, Blast would simply create an explosion in the opposite direction, which would propel him away from the path of the snake's attack.

Thomas' was spellbound. He didn't realise how long he had been staring until Auden shook him.

"C'mon man, we gotta get to safety."

"Yeah, Sorry." And he forced himself to tear his eyes away from the President of the Hunters.