Chapter 103

Chapter 103: 103 "Come! Show me what my son is made of!" Despite wanting to keep a cool head to best deal with the situation, Bran still found himself grinding his teeth at Arthur’s words. The man who had raised him then sold him off wasn’t a great guy, Bran would be the first to say that, but he was at least there. What right did this Arthur have to say that he was his father? It was just so beyond reason. Bran dropped into a low crouch and drew the box cutter’s blade against the platform’s surface. He didn’t know exactly what it was made of, but it had the look of marble; not a great conductor of magic, but a conductor nonetheless. Unfortunately, despite being a good deal older than Bran, the man Arthur was highly nimble on his feet and he easily dodged the plume of flame that ripped across the surface of the tower. "Very good," he commented with a toothy grin. Bran rolled his eyes and dodged another swing of the chain. He had a decision to make, or rather, there were two goals he could aim for in this situation and, while not exactly mutually exclusive, they did tend to go off in opposite directions. One was to fight and beat Arthur, and the other was to make a run for it. Now, the obvious answer was to make a run for it (whatever was going on with Bran’s qi was starting to freak him out) but it wasn’t really so simple. If Bran immediately tried to escape, then, assuming he made it, they would be no closer to stopping The Unity’s plans and Arthur would just find some other power source, or he’d figure out another way to break the seal on the Nameless Beast. This was difficult, but given all the resources at the man’s disposal and his general lack of conscience, Bran was pretty sure he’d figure out a way and that made this serious. Would Whale Toes, or any other organisation for that matter, ever get another shot like this at going head to head with the lynchpin of The Unity? Bran thought it unlikely and it was this thought that made him hesitate and choose to stick around, trading blows. But he’d soon grow to regret it. After a long sweep sideways, that Bran easily got away from, Arthur let go of his end of the chain and made a twisting motion. The chain followed suit and made an impossible angle to strike again at Bran who barely managed to deflect it with the box cutter. Uncontrolled energy from the blow backfired up his arm and made him wince. If he could just get closer, then... Then the chain duplicated, splitting into two orbiting rings, and Bran realised, stomach sinking, that all this time, Arthur had just been playing with him. There was no choice. He had no choice. It was over. "Thank you for your cooperation," said Arthur in a kindly voice and brought his hands together. Around the tower were a series of six other towers floating in the clouds, all arranged in a circle around the main tower, mirroring the hexagonal platform. A second passed then a deluge of energy shot up the towers and into the sky, piercing the heavens. The clouds scattered revealing the evening sky and a giant array floating in the sky. This array glowed with power as the spiraling chains came together around Bran and the sheer force of it flattened him to the ground. Arthur raised a hand and a blade materialised in it. From Bran’s vantage point on the ground, the blade looked impossibly familiar - it was the ornate, western sword his own sword had often taken, but that was impossible... Arthur readied the sword to run Bran through and Bran fought the urge to close his eyes. He wouldn’t give the man the satisfaction of besting his will. Then the air behind Arthur ripped open and the teeth and maw and fury of a loong emerged, speeding out and aiming for the man’s head. But Misha was too late. Even before Arthur’s head was ripped from his body, the sword in his hand had plunged through Bran’s prone body. Misha felt the cracking then breaking of the seal on the Nameless Beast reverberate through the air. It was startling like your ears popping at a high altitude except it hurt like hell and went through your whole body. But that didn’t matter, and neither did the blood dripping from his jaws and the decapitated head at his feet. No, no no! Misha stumbled forward, transforming into a human, and fell down by Bran’s side. "Bran! Oh, please..." He took him in his arms and desperately tried to feel for a pulse, first at his wrist then at his neck. His fingers trembled but he eventually found it. "Oh thank God..." he breathed. Finally he took a moment to look over the rests of Bran, to see what damage had been done, and it was then that he realised that there wasn’t even a speck of blood on him. He felt Bran’s chest right where he’d seen the sword go in but there was no wound and when he pulled his hand away neither was there blood. "What...?" He looked around for the sword but all he found was a thin metal chain laying on the marble floor. Had it just been an illusion? "Bran? Bran, wake up." Misha gently shook Bran’s shoulders and patted his cheek. "Hey." "Ha... Ha... Ha ha ha!" Misha froze then slowly turned to find Arthur’s disembodied head laughing as it lay on the marble platform. Just... laughing. How could it-? Then Arthur’s slumped body twitched and straightened and rose unsteadily to its feet, hands out reached as it felt for his head, fingers pushing through blood. Blood that was now running backwards, streaming up through the air back into the man’s quickly reforming body. Misha watched in horror as the bald man placed his head back on his shoulders and clicked his neck back into place. "Close, but no cigar," he said with a grin. Misha had killed him, bitten off his head and then the man had just come back to life. Misha’s instincts finally kicked in and he roughly grabbed Bran in his arms, dragged him to the edge of the building, then jumped. -- The computers hummed quietly in the darkened room, echoing off the slick cave walls. Zhan lay a hand lightly on the table beside him, just to see if he could feel the vibration too. He could. "This is weird..." mumbled Yidi beside him, tapping away at his laptop. The pair of them had returned to Cloud Flame Manor after the meeting in the Under City to help out the group ready to provide technical backup to the Whale Toes and SSD teams deploying out to Pearl Island. So far, things had gone well with Misha’s team even locating and freeing the missing loong and another had started sending back information pivotal to building an internal map of The Unity’s headquarters. "What’s weird?" asked Zhan. He stood and walked the few steps over to where Yidi sat and leaned over his shoulder. Zhan wasn’t, yet, very tall but fortunately Yidi wasn’t tall to begin with and tended to hunch when he sat so Zhan got a clear view of the screen. Not that it mattered. It was all programming gobbledygook to him. "I... I don’t know... It’s like..." Zhan waited to hear what ’it’ was like, but Yidi was not forthcoming. "It’s like what?" he prompted, then he felt it, though he wasn’t quite sure what ’it’ was. A strange whooshing sound grabbed both Zhan and Yidi’s attention and they looked up to find the central column of the cave now glowing. It was a circular glass tank with apparently Bran’s mother inside it, though Zhan was skeptical given the woman’s fish tail, and usually it existed there silently and just provided another light source to anyone working in the lab. But this time, it was different. A woman in traditional robes stood and ran over to the tank to check the readings on the screen embedded in the foot of the column and another researcher checked another. "There was something like a wave of energy that just spilled out from The Unity’s building. They must be trying to override any other system that’s online," said Yidi as he typed more furiously on his laptop. Zhan didn’t reply and instead walked closer to the tank while taking care to not get in anyone’s way. Yidi was not exactly wrong in his assessment, but his focus was not in the right place. Zhan raised a hand and touched the glass. On the other side of it, Bran’s mother looked just as she had moments earlier but to anyone, jianghu or mundane person, there was a clear change in her. She was gone. Zhan knew that feeling. It was how it felt whenever someone underwent Soul Forging or when his sister’s soul had finally left that slab of jade after too many years. He sighed and tried to figure out how to tell the panicking researchers what had happened. Then the power went out.