Paragon of Skills

chapter 265

Then something is wrong.

The assembly stops. One moment the power is building and the next it is frozen, suspended mid-formation, and something is pressing against it from the outside.

Nimirea's eyes snap open.

Jacob Cloud is holding a black grimoire.

The pages move on their own, fluttering in a wind that does not exist. The cover is jet black.

That is not his Rainbow Skill.

Jacob is smiling. Something softer, almost sad.

"I know you were about to activate an Twilight Skill," Jacob says, "and give your soul away to Asmodeus."

The frozen power inside her shudders.

How does he know about this? How does he know about our greatest technique?

"How," she just says.

Could it be through the Grimoire?

But something tells Nimirea it's not that.

"A Twilight Skill is just a different form of a Primordial Spell."

"My master called you 'child of Twilight' once," Jacob continues. "Then he explained to me that you belong to Asmodeus. That your contract was signed years ago and has been growing inside you ever since. Every dark deed, every corrupted kill, every piece of yourself you traded away was building toward this moment." He holds up the black grimoire. "However, it just so happens that he left me a tome with all his Primordial Spells. And, if you look hard enough into them, as he had suggested I do, you can find one that stops corruption... sort of. It's complicated."

Jacob pauses. The grimoire hums in his hand.

"It was an imperfect, flawed Primordial Spell. I tinkered with it and found out something very interesting."

Nimirea just stares at the insane revelation.

"That corruption is just a soul contract that is written in a way, or you could call it a divine language, most people can't read. To be honest, the catalyst, everything that you're doing... you know I was hoping to just beat you up the right way and that you wouldn't pull this off because it's not yet tested. I was hoping to get one of the other Dark Champions to attempt it in front of me later down the line. But, let's just finish this."

Nimirea stares at him.

"You're lying."

He must be lying. He always lies to confuse me. Let me just finish this.

Nimirea pulls harder, now trying to sacrifice her soul, but nothing happens.

"I don't lie about Primordial Spells. My master would haunt me."

Jacob begins to chant.

The words are not in any language Nimirea recognizes.

A mandala appears on the arena floor.

It blooms outward from Jacob's feet in concentric rings of light, shifting from one hue to the next without settling. It covers the arena floor in seconds and extends past the edges, climbing the walls, touching the stands.

Students in the lower rows push back from the light.

Something in Nimirea's chest shifts.

Then Jacob's eyes go wide.

The Grimoire Extraordinaire appears in front of him but there's so much light and Primordial Magic, only Nimirea and Jacob can see this happening. The object of the Rainbow Skill materializes out of nothing, pages turning on their own. It floats toward the black grimoire in his hand and the two grimoires hover in the air, facing each other.

A resonance builds between them.

Then, the grimoires begin to fuse.

The black grimoire's cover opens. The Grimoire Extraordinaire's pages tear free of their binding, one by one, and interleave with the black pages. Light and dark. Light and dark. Each page joins the other.

The mandala on the floor flares with each pulse, its concentric rings brightening and dimming in time with the pages.

The two books become one. A single grimoire, larger than either, with pages that shimmer between states. The binding pulses once, twice, and settles.

It opens in front of Jacob Cloud.

The pages settle on a spread that makes him smile. The real one. His eyes are wet, and he blinks it away before anyone but Nimirea is close enough to see.

"Well," Jacob says, looking at the page. His voice is quieter than before. "It appears my master's gifts never stop. I will have to thank the man until the day I reach him on the other side."

"What are you doing?" she says.

Jacob does not answer her.

He starts chanting again.

The syllables layer on top of each other. The mandala on the floor responds. Its concentric rings begin to rotate, each at a different speed, each in a different direction, and the light shifts to pure white.

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Nimirea feels herself being pulled apart.

It starts in her corrupted arm. Every scale is being individually loosened, pried away from the flesh beneath. Then the sensation spreads to her shoulder, her collarbone, and the dark veins that have been creeping toward her heart begin to retreat.

She screams.

The corruption has been part of her for years, but now it is being torn out at the root and every root is connected to a memory.

Every dark deed. Every kill. Every piece of herself she traded.

They are coming back. Not as memories. As sensation. She feels every one of them being pulled out of her the way you pull thorns from flesh, and each thorn leaves a hole, and each hole screams.

"Hold on," Jacob says. His voice is steady over the chanting, clear enough to reach her through the pain. "It shouldn't last too long. Any Corruption here will now be destroyed."

She is on her knees. The mandala's light is blinding. She squeezes her eyes shut but the light is inside her now, burning out everything that does not belong.

Her corrupted arm begins to change.

The black scales crack. Light presses through the fissures, white and clean, and the scales fall away in pieces. Beneath them, the flesh is raw, pink, and new.

She watches, through tears she did not know she was shedding, as the arm rebuilds itself.

Then the pain concentrates in her chest. She gags. Her body convulses and she pitches forward onto her hands, retching, and something comes up. Something solid.

A Dark Seed.

It hits the arena floor. Small, black, perfectly spherical.

It sits on the stone, inert.

Dead.

The pain stops.

The mandala fades. The arena floor returns to its broken, scarred normalcy.

Jacob Cloud stands over her. The fused grimoire is closed in his hand.

The left arm is scarred, raw, the flesh still healing, but the corruption is gone.

"You can choose who you want to become now," he says.

She looks up at him. Her face is wet. Her eyes are bloodshot.

The crowd is silent.

***

There is a cough.

It is small, wet, and comes from behind Jacob.

Jacob turns.

Baal is getting up.

His robes are torn. His hair is matted with sweat and dust and blood.

He pushes himself up.

His arms fail. He drops back to his elbows, face close to the stone, and stays there for a moment, breathing.

Then he tries again.

This time his left arm holds, but his right gives out halfway and he catches himself, tilts, corrects with a motion that costs him a sound he does not want to make.

He gets one knee under him.

"I thought you were dead," Jacob says.

Baal looks at him. His golden eyes are open and clear.

He looks at Jacob, then at himself. He notes the damage. His hands find his chest and press against his sternum.

The second pulse is gone.

He probes the channels where the Seal has been sitting for hours. There is nothing there. There's just his heart. Just his.

His fingers press harder against his sternum, as if he does not believe it.

The seal is gone.

The seal had enshrined itself into his oath channels, tangling corruption and oaths into a single structure. When Jacob's Primordial Spell burned the corruption out of Nimirea, the mandala covered the entire arena floor.

Including him.

The corruption burned out. And because the corruption had fused with the oath, the oath went with it.

His hands fall from his chest.

He is alive.

And he is kneeling on the arena floor, alive, with one heartbeat, and no chains.

His body shakes.

He gets his other knee under him. Both knees on the stone. His hands on his thighs. He is staring at his own hands.

Jacob watches him, still uncomprehending.

Baal is not paying attention to him.

If the oath's contract was corrupted as well, then the oath did not originate from the Devils. Our magic does not mix with the Evil Gods' power.

The oaths that bound him were presented as Devil's law. Every Sacrifice is born into those chains.

But the corruption mark fused with them. And when the corruption burned, the oaths burned with it.

Devil's law does not fuse with corruption. Devil's blood resists it. The oaths should have been untouched by Jacob's spell.

Unless the oaths were never Devil's law at all.

The contract didn't come from the Devils.

It came from the Evil Gods.

The Infernal Houses told every Sacrifice that their chains were forged by Devil's will. Ancient bloodright. The cost of being bred for power.

It was a lie.

The oaths were always corruption.

Then he hears it.

A voice cracking on a single word.

"BAAL!"

Cecilia.

She is in the stands.

"BAAL!"

A student in the second row picks it up. Then another. Then a cluster near the eastern stairs, and then the rows behind them.

"BAAL! BAAL! BAAL!"

Despite Jacob's great maneuver, the bolt of light lasted very little in reality. And most people were focused on the terrifying fight between Baal and Iskara.

He is kneeling on the stone, hands on his thighs, and the sound fills the arena around him.

No one trained him for this.

The chant grows.

He tries to stand.

His legs do not cooperate. The muscles in his thighs spasm and lock and he tilts sideways, his hand shooting out to catch himself on the stone.

He tries again.

One foot under him, the left one. He pushes.

He stands, but just barely.

His weight is on his left leg. His right is braced but barely holding. His arms hang at his sides.

The chant does not stop.

He just stands there.

Breathing.

Alive.

Then, through the wall of sound, one voice reaches him.

"Baal."

He turns his head.

Cecilia is crying. She is standing in the fourth row with someone's hand on her shoulder to keep her upright, her wooden leg locked against the bench, crying openly, messily, without any attempt to control it.

She is looking at him.

Baal looks at her.

His hands are shaking at his sides.

He looks at Cecilia and his mouth opens and nothing comes out.

The Sacrifice was a weapon of mass destruction that one day was meant to be decommissioned.

Baal is a seventeen year old warrior who is feelings things he's allowed himself to feel for the very first time.

That's why he can't speak and his eyes are burning.

Both emotions are something he can barely understand yet.

His legs buckle.

He catches himself. One knee hits the stone. The crowd's chant falters.

He pushes himself up again.

It takes longer this time.

He stands.

The chant comes back. Louder.

"BAAL, BAAL, BAAL!