The Odd Dragon Out: Reckoning of the Cinder-Born

Ginger was stunned.

He secretly beat himself up for not entertaining the idea that if his current vision showed him the innards of the large Blighted, the same would happen when he looked at Alcaeus. It was common sense!

However, the tension of the situation, paired with his rage at the gall of Alcaeus to say what he had just said, had steered his mind from his usual curiosity and keen thinking.

In Alcaeus' place, Ginger saw a pile of bones with a soft, boyish outline around them; two hearts were entrusted to their care, along with a stok and vague, complex networks – the more pronounced one for blood, and the one traced along it, for Kardia.

The whole visual caught the plump dragonling off guard. Suddenly having a skull with its two large sockets staring at you wasn't at all pleasing, especially when you were least expecting it. Quite frankly, this was more daunting to Ginger when it happened with the large Blighted.

On the other hand, Alcaeus was just as stunned as he looked at Ginger.

"Your eyes!" he cried, and Ginger felt him almost loosen the grip on his Light Gear to drop him to the ground.

"My eyes? What about them?" the plump halfling asked, horrified.

But Alcaeus didn't answer.

The brash roar of the enemy tore through their interaction.

The Blighted was still sending erratic jets of flame from its mouth, the hole behind its gouged neck, and its nostrils. Ginger's head snapped back in the creatures' direction. Again, he saw its Kardia pooling in its body for some kind of last move.

'Right! All Blighted and Condemned have Totality-type Kardia!' Ginger recalled.

This recollection filled him with even more dread.

Alcaeus suddenly came to a stop.

Ginger turned with difficulty, and found that… they had reached the end of the chamber. The curve to the wall ahead dictated this fact.

Alcaeus gave Ginger a strange look. He stared straight into his eyes and then shook his head, as though dismissing the many questions he had. Ginger was twice as curious.

"Hurry! I found it. I found the pedestal. It must really only work when the two of us touch it," the Doukas boy said quickly.

Ginger's eyes bulged.

That's right!

Professor Lyall had said something about a pedestal that would make this exercise easier!

It then occurred to Ginger that this was the reason Alcaeus had seemingly vanished after the greater Blighted crushed the one he had killed with his dagger. He had started looking for the pedestal.

Come to think of it, Alcaeus' plan now made a little more sense.

It was obvious that had been intent on killing both the smaller Blighted, leaving no room for Ginger to get stronger – which was terrible since beating the last one would likely require them to combine their strength.

What completed the shaky scheme, however, was the fact that Alcaeus wanted to use the pedestal to finish off the last Blighted, possibly on his own as well.

Professor Lyall didn't really explain what would happen when a pair touched the pedestal. She only explained how to get it to work; the paired dragonlings had to place their hands overlapping on the top end of the pedestal.

Alcaeus was placing all his bets on this. That was why he had put in some mild effort in keeping Ginger 'alive'.

'Selfish idiot!' Ginger grumbled inwardly.

Alcaeus dropped him and hurried to a corner in the curved edge of the chamber. Ginger, pressed down by his immense weight again, struggled to take a look. Soon, he saw the pedestal.

It was very thin and so small that it barely reached Alcaeus' knees. It adopted a pentagonal shape and was clearly made from the same dark blue rock that formed the walls of this cavern.

It boggled Ginger's mind why such a thing was called a pedestal, but that concern of his was quickly crushed by the booming of the Blighted's feet. Ginger felt Kardia zooming like a violent spectrum from the ground.

'It's spreading out its Kardia!' Ginger realized. Alcaeus did too.

"Get over here!" Alcaeus screamed at him.

"I can't move!" the halfling shouted back.

Alcaeus clicked his tongue, his eyes staring into Ginger's again. He then rushed to his plump classmate and pulled him up.

As he turned to drag him to the pedestal, however, both dragonlings felt the great Blighted's Kardia climb from the floor and flow into their bodies. The feeling was so outlandishly disturbing that the two shook vehemently, only to pause in place in the next second.

This was possible?!

Ginger panted heavily.

The Blighted's Kardia swimming within them was as cold as ice. It truly felt like everything within him that wasn't Kardia had frozen solid. The same had happened to Alcaeus. The terror he felt was visible in his eyes.

BOOOM! BOOM!

The Blighted approached.

It had quite the volume of Kardia. Ginger could see much of it swelling within its body while the rest was coiling within its prey.

'What do we do?' Ginger wondered hastily. 'Should I try firing my Kardia again? No. I can't aim in this state!'

The Blighted arrived in front of the two. For Ginger, it felt like he was reliving the most intense moment of this exercise for a third time.

The enemy, even through hollow sockets, sent a particularly nasty glare towards him. The Kardia in its body swelled even more.

'Is it trying to…?!' Ginger panicked. No way! That was mental!

What could they do if this thing really was planning on doing this?

All of Ginger's other options had been lost long before he was paralyzed. He couldn't run with this new weight of his, make the gestures for any Kardia mechanism, and wield his dagger, which had fallen from his grip when he was flung back earlier.

The same couldn't be said for Alcaeus, however.

While he was frozen as well, with his left arm wound around Ginger's torso, his right arm was free, in its hand his saber, which had its tip facing the ground.

As a deranged set of claws dropped on them, Ginger heard Alcaeus' grunt as he shot his Alien-type Kardia out of the hand that wielded the Qin Steel weapon!

It was a curious thing, why those with Alien-type Kardia couldn't augment their weapons with it like Affixers. Qin Steel was conductive to Kardia in general, after all.

But well, there was a distinction between how Affix-type and Alien-type Kardia reacted to objects they were infused into. A simple one.

Affix-type Kardia burrowed itself into the object, while Alien-type Kardia did so too, but wasn't fond of being detained, even from Qin Steel. Thus it rushed out almost immediately!

As such, the torrent of Kardia Alcaeus sent into his saber simply flowed through the weapon, with only small bits of it clinging to the blade, as had been the case when he threw the stone that hit the large Blighted's eye moments before!

The Kardia streamed out with such force that it lifted him and Ginger off the ground right before they could be crushed to pudding… or saved.

The boys screamed and at the same, they noticed that they were free from the paralysis. Better yet they were flying towards the pedestal… or perhaps not.

There was also a chance that they would overshoot and knock into the wall.

The duo wouldn't miss their chance, however. If they fell back to the ground, the Kardia the Blighted was injecting into the it would instantly freeze them again.

Without needing to signal each other, the boys stretched out their arms right as they began to fly past the small pedestal.

Both their hands landed on top of the pedestal; Ginger's first and then Alcaeus'.

At the same time, the Blighted snapped in their direction with its mad fury, and Ginger saw its Kardia balloon outward.

His assumption… had been right. The bastard was going to blow himself up by pooling his Kardia and then releasing it at once!

Ginger turned pale.

This was a painful waste of talent!

But be that as it may, what could the pedestal do to make him and Alcaeus strong enough to withstand the incoming danger?!

The answer turned out to be odder than the prickly feeling Ginger felt at almost impaling his palm on the pedestal's thin, top end.

The two boys felt it right away.

It started where their hands met.

A scalding sensation rippled through their fingers, sprinted through the muscles of their arms and then the rest of their bodies. Once the feeling reached both their stoks, it prompted their Kardia to behave strangely.

For Ginger, it became heavy. Or rather, it seemed to collapse to the bottom of his stok and stretch it out, as though trying to rip through it and escape through his lower half.

For Alcaeus, it was the opposite. His Kardia surged, and smote the upper end of his stok, as though attempting to leave through his throat.

It went without saying that both these sensations were excruciating, but the boys didn't get to scream because what came after, astounded them.

Their Kardia suddenly gushed from their stoks and permeated from their bodies rapidly. It gathered around them as one giant mass that swelled and became so concentrated that it looked like a vivid blue water bubble.

Then…it all rolled out with whip-like intensity, creating a frightening shockwave that came with a convincing thunderclap!

Both the dragonlings and their enemy were stunned, but the latter bore worse after the initial surprise!

Ginger heard a blood-curdling screech from the Blighted as it crashed into the wall… and remained planted within its depths.

For some reason, the Kardia from him and Alcaeus did not stop shooting out. It burst once, then twice, then thrice, with each instance smiting the large Blighted with a brutal force that Ginger could have sworn turned its perfect set of ribs into crumbs!

As for the honorable suicide scheme the poor Cinder-Born had planned… Ginger didn't know if it happened or not.

No matter how strong it was, it couldn't have been more devastating than the fate his and Alcaeus' Kardia had pasted upon their opponent.