Ichor Cell-Chapter 23: Rescue I

The moment Elara’s spell settled over him, Alex’s form shimmered and then faded, swallowed by the night. It was extremely disorienting to look down and see nothing but the ground where the rest of you should be.
‘Oh god, I think I’m gonna be sick.’
He stumbled back a little as he adjusted to the strange sensation.
"If we get split up, meet up by the grave?" He suddenly thought to ask.
"What?" The young woman recoiled. "Why would you wanna go
there
?"
"Because it's the only place I think I could find from here." Alex shrugged, much to Elara's exasperation.
"I..." She hesitated before giving a resigned nod. "Fine..."
“By the way.” He said quietly, now that the spell was active “When—sorry—
if
something happens to me, if I’m discovered, you don’t waste time. You go for Grenil yourselves. I can take care of myself, and I’ll make a pretty good distraction too. Anyway, peace.”
“You-!” Elara’s eyes widened, but the rest of her words were lost as Alex plummeted off the roof to the ground below.
‘Who knows, I might be able to pull this off without getting discovered.’
He thought as he ran towards the fight.
‘Yeah, right. I bet that cage is booby trapped to hell.’
The garden was chaos.
On the platform, the family head and the captain clashed again and again, their blows shaking the ground. Each strike carried more weight than an avalanche, each defense an impenetrable wall of runes.
Alex kept low, weaving through fleeing nobles and scattering servants. He could feel the ground shudder with every collision, dust drifting down like rain. Several times, a particularly heavy blow would strike the shield and send shockwaves rippling outward, ruffling his clothes and blowing his hair back.
“She’s not attacking.” He noticed as he made his way closer. “It’s almost like she’s waiting for something…”
He shook his head
‘Of course she is. She’s waiting for you, and you fell for it hook, line and sinker.’
The invisibility wrapped him tight, allowing him to skirt the fight. He darted between overturned chairs, dodging flying shards of debris until the cage loomed ahead. Grenil was slumped within, bruised and pale, but alive. His eyes fluttered weakly at the commotion, though he seemed barely conscious.
His nerves tense, Alex finally made it to the door. The bars were iron, the lock a simple latch with a keyhole.
‘Oh yeah.’
He thought as another impact reverberated through the air behind him.
‘I am so getting hurt.’
Not letting himself hesitated, he quickly reached forward, ready to jump out of the way as soon as he broke the lock.
He did not expect mere contact to be what triggered it.
His fingertip brushed metal.
The door exploded.
A roar of fire and force slammed into him, throwing him backwards. His world became heat, pain, and the copper stink of his own blood. His chest felt like it had caved in, shards of iron biting into his organs. His ears rang, deafening, and his vision fuzzed out in red static.
Grenil was thrown too, chains jerking taut before he toppled backwards onto the floor of the cage. The old man let out a hoarse groan, but mercifully he looked intact.
The explosion had ripped through Elara’s invisibility spell like paper, leaving Alex visible to everyone. He hurtled backwards through the air before crashing into one of the few intact tables, spilling food and drinks everywhere.
His entire front was shredded. Skin blackened and peeled, one side of his face was an agonising wreck, vision from that eye gone entirely. He tried to scream but only gagged when blood filled his mouth.
‘Well.’
His agony addled mind wandered.
‘I don’t really know what I was expecting.’
“Found you.” The old woman’s voice came from the side.
Alarm flared through Alex as the air between them bent. A spear of white-hot light lanced out, thicker than a ballista bolt and twice as fast.
Move.
Despite the pain, Alex threw himself sideways. The beam missed his heart, instead hitting his shoulder and taking a baseball sized chunk with it. Pain detonated across his side. He hit the ground and slid, a hoarse sound ripping from his throat.
Get up.
Another beam of light stabbed down. He kicked off, felt the spell snatch a fistful of hair as it took a divot from the stone where his head had been.
“I had doubts on whether this would work,” The family head said from where she was standing. “But you’re surprisingly compassionate for a man-eating monster.”
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“I-” Alex was interrupted by the sound of a fist hitting a barrier with the force of a truck.
“Did you forget that I was here?” The captain glanced at Alex’s smoking form. “So, you’re the target for all of this? Now that you’re here, I guess I should stop holding back.”
‘Holding back?!?’
Alex’s eye widened as a heavy, oppressive aura burst out of the other man’s body.
Violent, blood red light surged from beneath the captain’s armour as runes crawled up his face and down his arms and legs. Every inch of the man was now covered in glowing engravings, and by the sense of crisis Alex was feeling, they weren’t just for show.
Fortunately, even as he lay there, he could feel the agony throughout his body lessening as his healing worked overtime to repair all the damage.
‘At least all the blood from yesterday didn’t go to waste.’
He thought as he regenerated at a speed noticeably faster than before. With a light
pop
, the vision in his damaged eye restored itself, a large part of the pain going with it.
His ribs knit themselves back together, though pieces of shrapnel from the explosion remained inside him, cutting him up from within and sending out waves of fresh pain with every movement.
‘I’m gonna need to do something about that quickly. I don’t know how long my healing can last if I’m constantly bleeding internally.’
He groaned.
Unfortunately, the other two weren’t just going to wait around.
A shadow fell over him.
“By order of the guard,” A familiar bass rumbled. “You are under arrest.”
Alex glanced up. The captain’s silhouette loomed, power spilling from the faint lines etched into his skin. His eyes, fixed on Alex, were as warm as river rock.
“I suspect you are guilty of killing a watchman.” The captain said. “Surrender.”
“Technically,” Alex started, then decided against the joke. The man didn’t look to be in a joking mood.
A spear of light flashed past Adamantios’ shoulder. He flicked his head aside and it took a lock of his hair instead of an eye. His gaze never left Alex.
“Back away from my prey.” Lucia said, voice like frost. “Now.”
They weren’t talking to each other. They were talking through him.
Perfect, they weren’t treating him like a threat.
Alex lunged right. Adamantios stepped to cut him off—fast, much faster than a man that large had any business being. Alex duked back and the captain’s hand closed on empty air, fingers snapping shut with the crunch of a bear trap. Runes along his wrist flared, then dimmed.
“Stop.” Adamantios said.
“Hard pass.” Alex said and kicked off the edge of Grenils cage.
Lucia’s second strike arrived like a guillotine. A sheet of force slammed into the corner of the cage as Alex jumped away. The iron folded. The whole structure groaned and slid an inch. Grenil jerked, chains rattling as the floor shifted under him. The manticore on the other side shrieked and threw itself at the partition, claws screeching across metal.
Alex rolled, came up on one knee, and flung himself sideways as the captain’s fist cratered the earth where he’d been standing a second ago.
Adamantios didn’t react. He just adjusted, pivoted, drove forward. He aimed to grab instead of striking this time. Alex ducked under the clinch and slid through, a ghost of motion. The captain’s elbow grazed his ear and sent him staggering sideways, vision flashing red and yellow.
The family head did not let this opportunity go to waste.
A host of smaller lances, like a series of needles, arced through the air, split into two groups targeting the other two combatants.
Adamantios did not even pay attention to the weakened spells, his rune reinforced skin effortlessly blocking all of them.
Alex was not so lucky.
The first needle punched into his thigh, a sharp crack of pain that nearly buckled his leg. Another half a dozen followed it, lacerating his flesh and piercing his organs. He screamed, half in pain and half in fury, and threw himself into a roll to avoid the next volley. His body jerked and spasmed as the regeneration fought to keep up, knitting ragged holes as fast as new ones opened.
“You’re wasting your strength, monster.” Lucia said coldly, eyes flashing with silver runes. “The more you writhe, the slower you die.”
Alex didn’t respond, all his focus on suppressing the pain and dodging.
Adamantios stepped in then, one massive hand snapping forward with impossible speed. Alex twisted to avoid the hit, but the man wasn’t a dumb brute; he was a trained soldier in charge of defending the city.
Predicting his path of retreat, the captain pivoted on his heel and slammed his foot into Alex, the runes under his boots flaring with power.
The young man barely had time to cross his arms in protection before the blow connected with a sickening
crack
. He flew back as if shot from a canon, his shattered arms flapping in the air as fresh agony flooded him and he screamed. His back hit a pilar, the force of the mpact embedding him into it as his vision flickered.
“Yield.” Adamantios ordered, his voice a rumble that shook the air.
“I already told you; I’ll pass.” Alex rasped out through his concussion, his healing already fighting to put him back together. With every new blow, he could feel his hunger growing just that little bit stronger, his healing just that little bit slower.
Lucia’s eyes narrowed. “You see, Captain? It heals faster than we can wound it. We can’t capture this thing. We should just kill it.”
"You shut up.” Adamantios growled, striking again. His fist cracked into Alex’s ribs, lifting him off his feet and bouncing him off the ceiling. "I'll get to you when I'm done with this one."
“You two fight like a married couple.” Alex rasped, staggering up. “I’m honoured to be in the middle of your therapy session.”
Neither of them dignified that with words.
Lucia raised her palm and began sketching a pattern into the air, this one far more complex. The air around her trembled with power.
Alex lunged sideways—right into Adamantios, who caught him around the neck in a vice grip. Runes blazed across the captain’s arm, burning Alex’s skin like iron fresh from the forge.
“This has been fun.” Adamantios said. “But it’s time to end this.”
“I… don’t… wanna!” Alex gasped, baring bloodied teeth.
And then, without hesitation, he sent mana down his arm and raked his serrated nails across the captain’s forearm.
Adamantios roared, the sound rolling like thunder across the garden. He threw Alex across the Gazebo right into a pillar that disintegrated into splinters on impact.
“You should’ve held him still!” Not giving him time to rest, the other mage finally completed her large spell and pointed at Alex, the geometric structure collapsing inwards into a line that shot forward faster than he could blink.
Before he had time to react, the attack had reached him, though his trajectory meant that instead of taking his head off, it left a deep laceration at his waist, almost bisecting him.
Looking behind, Alex saw a perfectly straight, razor thin cut stretching for dozens of yards across the carefully maintained lawn before cutting into the house, its depths unseen.
“Tch.” The old woman frowned, finally turning her attention back to the captain. “Why do you keep meddling? You troublesome man.”
Adamantios ignored her and charged again, teeth bared in a rictus grin. Lucia’s runes spun into another shape, light building at her fingertips.
And Alex, broken, burning, and still half-delirious through the pain, realized his only path forward was to keep them both too busy to notice Elara and Duran moving for Grenil in the background.
‘Survive.’
He told himself.
‘Just survive.’
And so, broken, bleeding, in pain, he dove back into the fight.