Ikaris remained unmoved.
"You don't seem to be surprised by this revelation." The old shaman grinned bitterly.
Focusing on the dying woman's eyes, the boy replied factually,
"Malia seems cruel and indifferent, but she actually has a good heart. She answers our questions, gave me and Ellie some meat, and also took huge risks to get the Heart Strawberries you needed to heal. She might have seen my potential as a threat, but unlike other villagers my intentions were never hostile. I didn't join any squads, nor did I interact with anyone beyond what was strictly necessary. Unless she is paranoid and fundamentally evil, the claim that the Crawling was thrown against my tent intentionally does not hold water.
"I thought for a while that it was the Demonic Beast meat in my possession that caused the Crawling to enter my tent, but in retrospect it didn't make much sense. After all, I wasn't the only one with some. Ellie and maybe some of the other villagers hiding their supplies had them too. They weren't attacked for it."
"So what tipped you off?" Grallu grunted curiously.
Ikaris sneered. What nerve!
"Really? You have no idea?" He scoffed in a low voice. "I realized the difference between you and Malia the day I accompanied you to the ritual in Malia's absence. Malia doesn't talk much, but she always asks the newcomers' first name. Even though it may only be courtesy, she makes an effort to memorize their names, knowing full well that most will not survive.
"The day you replaced her, you didn't ask anyone's name. It was as if these prisoners were already dead or at any rate expendable cattle not worth knowing any better. At that moment, I knew your heart was cold as stone."
"Fair enough, hehe." The shaman cackled in her bed, but it soon turned into a coughing fit.
Cough, cough, COUGH!
A bloody spray dripped down her hand and the old woman gazed at her blood with grudging reluctance and remorse. Her eyes glistened faintly, her bloodline manifesting to keep her alive for a while longer.
"But there's one thing I still don't understand." Ikaris resumed, ignoring her sallow face and wheezing.
"What is it?"
" That night, did you want me dead or were you trying to get me bitten or contaminated by one of those creatures?" He asked gravely.
Grallu did not answer right away this time.
"You don't realize how gifted you are with magic." She sheepishly confessed after a bit. "You are an anomaly. You were wounded and scrawny to begin with, and your Divine Spark is one of the weakest I've ever seen. And yet, you pulled off your first spell so easily! And it was so perfect! Did you know that when a novice Sorcerer casts Black Veil the first time on someone it is actually very rare to blind someone... Having tested many trainees, at best I see a few black spots clogging my vision and my vision darkens a bit as if a cloud passed before the sun. But I can still make out enough to orient myself. It's only after the seventh or eighth attempt that their Black Veil becomes good enough to prevent me from seeing properly. And another ten tries before I can't see at all...
" In your case, your Black Veil was short-lived, but this is the first time in my long life that I have experienced utter darkness. There is only one possibility to explain this: Outstanding intelligence, focus and visualization skills. But most importantly... a powerful mind. Your Soul Spark must be at least ten times stronger than that of a normal human."
"101 times. It's 101 times more developed than normal." Ikaris corrected her with a smile, taking advantage of the fact that she was about to die to brag a little.
Grallu froze, her toothless jaw wide agape. For a second, the teenager thought she hadn't taken the news and suffered a premature stroke. Thankfully, she began to breathe again and with a long disillusioned sigh she uttered,
"No wonder the Crawling-Thrall bloodline doesn't affect you. In the end, it looks like I won my bet. So to answer your question, yes I wanted you to be bitten or scratched by that Crawler. I was ready to intervene at any time, but even if you died it wouldn't have been a big loss. It would just prove that I was getting excited about nothing. If successful, Malia and the village would have gained a powerful ally.
"But as you can see... it was all for nothing. The village was still destroyed. And even earlier than I expected."
Ikaris remained silent as he learned the truth. To say that he didn't hold a grudge against the shaman would be a lie, but he had to admit that the scratch had been a blessing in disguise for him. If he were asked to turn back into a human now, he would adamantly refuse.
BADUM! BADUM!
Suddenly, the floor of the cottage began to quake. The walls cracked and the straw in the roof partially collapsed. The boy shielded the old woman, but when he met her eyes he saw her eyes bulging with terror and despair. A smell of urine immediately invaded the cottage.
"Ikaris, listen to what I'm going to tell you, there's no time. Run away to-"
WAAAAAAOOOOOAAAAA!
A loud, unbearable wail, somewhere between an elephant's roar and a whale's wail, rattled the eardrums of every living thing in the Barren Bush. It was the most intriguing and fear-inspiring sound the boy had ever heard in his life.
Ikaris felt his vision blur briefly due to a sudden headache, but the symptoms subsided almost as fast as they came. However, when his vision settled again, he saw that the shaman had passed out, blood trickling from all her facial orifices.
When he took her pulse, he confirmed that she was still alive, but barely. Of the few hours or days of life remaining, she had only a few minutes left.
As he wondered what to do, he heard Malia's heart-rending shriek outside. He ran outside and realized why the earth had started to shake.
Tens, hundreds of thousands of warriors in shining armor of all origins coming from the Great Wall were rushing north in total anarchy, trampling everything in their path. Among them were humans, elves, dwarves, goblins, orcs, kobolds, ogres, onis, hobbits, and all sorts of miscellaneous species bearing the crest and flag of the army or nation they served.
Even more shocking, he saw huge Demonic Beasts, even more massive than the Alpha Bison, scurrying northward, oblivious to the thousands of soldiers fleeing in the same direction as them. He even thought he saw a bird as large as a Boeing flying past them, flapping its wings relentlessly to vacate the area.
What all these soldiers and beasts had in common was the sheer terror that disfigured their faces and the blood that dripped down from the facial orifices of many of them. Those who were on horseback or another creature were whipping their mounts relentlessly, the latter accepting the harsh treatment without flinching, also in a hurry to get the hell out of here.
"What the..." Ikaris paused as he took in the state of the village.
Except for the Alpha Bison, Malia and the Otherworlders, all the aborigines, including Krold, had fainted, blood pouring from their eyes, noses and ears like Grallu and that fugitive army. No one noticed his arrival, and when he saw what caught their attention he became as livid as they were.
The Great Wall.
It was an element of the scenery that Ikaris had learned to accept while knowing that it was off-limits. Although it was dozens of kilometers south of them, it was so high that it was visible from anywhere in the Barren Bush. A wall 506 meters high, perpetually under construction.
Right now, a creature was creeping closer to the other side of the Great Wall. Half of the body of this monstrosity was towering over the wall. It bore a vague resemblance to a Crawler, but at the same time not at all. From such a distance, Ikaris couldn't see it clearly, but he suddenly had an awful feeling of danger.
BADUM! BADUM!
The ground quaked again, and deep rifts rent the earth, uprooting trees and altering the waterways. Some of the riders subconsciously turned to look at this doomsday embodiment, but as they beheld the abomination slowly opening its mouth packed with fangs and tusks, fear gripped them and they broke into a mad gallop.
All the air from kilometers around was inhaled into its mouth as if by a gigantic vacuum cleaner, then a shrill sound that had nothing in common with the previous one came out of its vocal cords.
"WAAAAAAOOOOAAAAAAAA!
This time, a harrowing headache wracked Ikaris' brain and he fell to his knees, before rolling on the floor and tearing his hair out of pain.
Again, it only lasted a few seconds, but when the pain abated and he opened his eyes, he was struck by a world-ending sight.