Chapter 122: Magic and First Aid
“Brother Jared, run!” I shrieked, my voice a raw, ragged thing torn from my throat. The twisted, agonizing deaths of the peelers were a fresh horror seared into my mind, and I could not bear to see Jared suffer the same fate.
He heard me. He reacted instantly, throwing himself into a backward roll, but it was useless. The Drowned Dead’s magic had already been unleashed. The piece of strange, unbidden knowledge whispered through my mind: the Breath of the Abyss was a spell that locked onto its target. Once cast, it could not be dodged. Conventional defenses were all but impossible.
Jared’s expression froze. He collapsed to the ground, and a foul, black water began to pour from his mouth, a torrent of the canal’s own filth conjured inside his lungs. Even the holy light, which had kept the other drowners at bay, could not protect him from this insidious magic.
For a moment, my mind went blank, a canvas of pure white shock. Then came the rage, a black and boiling tide. Seeing Jared struggling on the ground, his body convulsing, I wanted only one thing: to kill the Drowned Dead. To kill it again, to tear it limb from limb and scatter its foul remains to the winds.
The river of heat within me, the mana, began to surge with my fury. I had been suffering under the strain of its overflowing power, but now, it had found an outlet. The magic roared, seeking a single point of release.
I stared at the Drowned Dead, at the face that had once belonged to the witch. It stared back, its blue-glowing eyes filled with a bottomless hatred. Was it the instinctual malice of the undead for the living, or the personal, burning grudge of a witch killed by our own hands?
It didn’t matter. I was sure the hatred in my own eyes was a perfect, burning mirror of its own. I had only one goal. It had to die.
Before it could even raise a hand to target me, my own magic had reached its peak, a searing concentration of power in my right forearm. The heat was unbearable. I had to let it out.
A thin, scarlet line shot from my sleeve. The ray was unleashed from the ruby Gremory had given me, a lance of crimson light that scorched the fabric of my cloak as it flew.
The scarlet ray crossed the distance in an instant, striking the Drowned Dead in the chest. A shield of churning water had materialized before it, but the beam pierced it as if it were smoke, striking true.
A moment ago, I had been in agony, my body stretched to its limit by the overflowing mana. Now, in the wake of that single blast, I felt utterly, completely empty.
The Drowned Dead looked down at its own chest. A hole had appeared, a black-red corruption eating away at its flesh, expanding with an unnatural speed. Its body was coming apart.
“Aaaahhh!” The Drowned Dead’s ruined mouth gaped open, and it let out a shriek so terrible it felt as if it were tearing the very air apart.
Banshee’s Wail. The knowledge came, unbidden. A spell to shatter the eardrums of surrounding foes, to break their will to fight. But this was no attack. It was a death cry. The hole in its chest grew, the destructive magic consuming it from within. Its entire body began to swell and distort. And when the hole reached a critical point, it exploded.
A ghastly rain of gore and black water, laced with threads of black-red light, rained down on the surrounding drowners. They, in their rotten state, would not have cared about being spattered with a bit more filth. But this was different. This was laced with a destructive magic. The moment the witch’s remains touched them, they shrieked and collapsed, their bodies convulsing, their skin charring and turning black where the ichor had touched.
I had no idea what kind of spell I had just cast. I had simply poured all my mana into the implement and fired. I had never imagined it would be so powerful, that it could kill the Drowned Dead in a single, devastating blast. But I had no time to marvel at it. I had to save Jared!
With the caster destroyed, the Breath of the Abyss should have stopped. But Jared was already incapacitated, lying on the ground, still coughing up water, the holy light around him extinguished. The drowners he had been fighting were closing in again. Only their instinctual fear of the lingering scent of holy light kept them from tearing him apart.
“Get away from him!” My eyes were bloodshot. I instinctively focused what little mana I had left into my left arm. It began to itch, a frantic, unbearable sensation, as if something were about to burst from beneath my skin.
Snap! The bandage wrapped around my brand tore apart. A thousand crimson threads, like living worms, shot out and burrowed into the bodies of the nearest drowners.
“Gak! Gaaah! Yaaaaar…!” The drowners let out a chorus of strange, strangled cries. Their bodies began to twist into impossible, unnatural shapes. And from the wounds on their rotting flesh, a tide of pale, writhing maggots began to emerge.
Plague of Maggots. A miracle of the archdemon. Implants a multitude of near-hatching fly eggs into the enemy. The eggs rapidly absorb the enemy’s mana and life force, hatching into demonic maggots from hell, which quickly devour the enemy’s body and soul.
So this was the spell the Pope had gifted me. And according to the information, it was a miracle, even one of his own creation.
Soon, the drowners were covered in a writhing carpet of fat, white maggots, pouring from their eye sockets, their mouths, from every wound and every patch of rotted flesh. It was a fitting end for them. A rotten corpse for the maggots.
I scrambled to Jared’s side and pulled him into my arms. What do I do? He was still coughing, water streaming from his mouth and nose. The spell was over, but his lungs, his airway, they had to be full of that foul, black water.
The first aid lessons from my past life… how did they go? Never mind. Try everything. I immediately stuck my fingers into his mouth, clearing out the filth, then gently tickled the back of his tongue. The gag reflex, to clear the airway.
“Retch! Cough, cough, cough!” Jared immediately vomited a great gout of black water. Seeing that it was working, I switched to another method. I got behind him, wrapped my arms around his waist, placed my fist just below his ribs, and gave a sharp, upward thrust.
The Heimlich maneuver. For a blocked windpipe. The embrace of life, they called it, to force the contents of the lungs out with a sudden pressure.
With every thrust, Jared vomited another mouthful of black water. When he could bring up no more, I gently laid him flat on the ground.
“Brother Jared! Jared, wake up!” I was frantic. I slapped his face, and felt a wave of relief when his eyes fluttered open.
But his breathing was still shallow, weak. Artificial respiration was needed. He wasn't actually unconscious, his heart was still beating. This was more about forcing the last of the water from his lungs, to help him breathe again.
Without a moment’s hesitation, I pinched his nose, pulled his mouth open, took a deep breath, and breathed into his mouth. Then I pulled back, took another breath, and did it again… Jared’s lips were cold, and soft. As for what I was thinking… I wasn’t. I was just a desperate, frantic machine, trying to save his life. I didn’t even notice, didn’t even hesitate.
It was only when I felt him take a strong, deep breath on his own that the great stone of fear in my chest finally lifted. He would be alright.
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