Blood was everywhere.
Shiv, in his mentally disordered state, took a minute to comprehend the sight before his eyes.
Blaze was lying on the ground, unconscious, with a bloody stump in the place her left leg had been. Blood was gushing out of that stump and soaking into the unforgiving stone road.
Shiv didn't hesitate. He threw himself forward, setting his hands on fire and grabbed the stump. He intended to cauterize the wound, but after several seconds of nothing happening, he remembered that she was immune to fire due to her affinity. Fire was much easier to manipulate than water when using it to heal, which is why he'd tried to use that first. Especially in his weakened state, he didn't think he had enough juice left to try to heal her.
Despite that, he had to try. He activated his healing ability and closed his eyes as unwilling tears squeezed out through the corners of his eyelids. His body was eating itself. He could feel it. He was turning into dust from the inside out. When he opened his eyes next, he was going to be with his ancestors…
***
Someone was cursing. They were cursing a lot. They were also saying… "Eat! Eat the," more curses, "food! Eat it!"
'Why would I eat food? I'm dust. Dust can't eat food. Just go away.'
Despite his best effort to fade away, the cursing would not stop. With an exasperated sigh, Shiv eventually cracked an eye open just a hair.
He saw a small silhouette shoving something into his mouth. As his eyes slowly widened, his sense of feeling came back, and he realized the silhouette was holding his nose and shoving some liquid down his throat. And there were chunks in that liquid. Disgusting chunks.
"Swallow! Now, before I kill you." Briggs ordered when he saw Shiv's eyes open.
Shiv was forced to swallow, not being able to spit it out if he wanted to. He gulped down the horrible tasting substance until Briggs let go of his nose. Now free, he sat up coughing and gagging, but was immediately slammed back down with his nose plugged.
"Don't waste a drop of this, you fool! This cost me more than you could ever hope to even see." Briggs hissed and poured more of the vile stuff down Shiv's throat.
'I doubt that.' Shiv had a lot of money sitting in his inventory, after all.
He didn't say anything, however, and dutifully drank the rest of it.
When it was finally all gone, Briggs released him and stood up, sending a leather water skin back into his inventory.
Shiv felt… completely satiated. Like he'd eaten a five course meal. Everything about him actually felt incredible, even if he was a little light headed.
"You've proven far too essential to my plans for me to simply let you die." Briggs said, looking at the town they were on the outskirts of.
Shiv idly wondered why the short man had said that, then saw that the man was explaining his reason for saving his life. Shiv didn't see a need to explain, but nodded along with it. Briggs' next words, however, opened a pit in Shiv's recently healed stomach.
"…and I'm sorry about your daughter. I've never had children, but I've lost many of those closest to me."
As those words registered in Shiv's mind, he threw himself to his feet in a panic, wildly throwing his head around, searching for Blaze.
"Calm down, Shiv! She's in that building over there with Mathew." Briggs gestured to a building, and Shiv sprinted toward it, throwing the door open the moment he reached it.
Inside, the scary old man who had healed Shiv was sitting next to Blaze, who was lying on a blood-stained bed. Shiv rushed in, causing Mathew to jump out of his seat and summon a bow made of water… only to put it away and move aside when he saw it was Shiv.
Blaze looked completely fine, if a little pale, and missing a leg. The place where her stump of a leg had been bleeding was now smooth skin. She took a deep breath when he entered, and opened her eyes a tiny bit.
"Blaze, are you alright?" Shiv knelt by her bed and took her hand in his.
She smiled bleakley and shook her head, a single tear making its way down her face. Then she closed her eyes and took another deep breath.
"Blaze! Wake up! Do you hear me?" Shiv stood up, anguished.
"Calm down, lad. She just needs rest. Rest and time. She'll be fine soon. Just give her time." Mathew gently put his hand on Shiv's shoulder and spoke in a soothing tone.
Blaze opened her eyes and smiled faintly, nodding ever so slightly along with Mathew's words.
Her eyes closed again, and she seemed to fall asleep.
Shiv stood there, watching her for several minutes before nodding to Mathew and leaving the building.
He quickly found Briggs, who was giving orders to several of his lieutenants, and interrupted him. "Where's Big Farmer?"
"He got away." Briggs barely glanced at him.
Shiv scowled, initially angry, then his anger unexpectedly disappeared. 'Hunting him down will make his death much more satisfying.'
With his next course of action settled upon, he set out.
***
Dusk had fallen, but Shiv continued onward by the light of a flaming hand.
The trail Big Farmer had left behind was laughably easy to follow, even for Shiv, who was a farmer by trade, not a hunter.
He traveled through the woods, no longer worrying too much about the animals that inhabited them, as he closed in on his quarry. He had been at it nonstop for several hours, and had recently come across the very fresh remains of a boar Big Farmer had killed.
He was close.
Half an hour later, he had caught up to the giant, who was taking a break. Big Farmer had set up a temporary camp with a circular wall of steel surrounding him, where he sat on a metal chair.
Shiv had climbed a tree and was currently on a limb directly above the cowardly man. He stared down at his prey, deciding how he'd attack.
Thinking back to the talks on strategy that Briggs had forced him through, Shiv realized that attacking now would put him at a disadvantage. It took far less energy to manipulate the element you had an affinity for, in Big Farmer's case: metal, that was already in existence than it did to create that substance and then manipulate it.
Big Farmer didn't have those walls up just to defend against ranged attacks, but also to have a ready-made source of material to fight with. He would no doubt have used the metal wall he created to defend against the fire mages earlier in the day, if Shiv and Briggs hadn't been taking so much of his attention and he hadn't been so focused on trying to protect his comrades.
Now, Shiv could do the smart thing and wait till his unwitting opponent left his barriers, or he could throw caution to the wind and give in to the darkness screaming for destruction from within his very soul.
In the end, the yearning for destruction proved to be overwhelming.
He silently dropped from the tree, a long spear made from a dead branch he'd shaped with [Imbue] aimed at the giant's exposed neck.
He missed.
At the last second, Big Farmer seemed to sense something, and shifted to the side, looking around. In doing so, he prevented his death, and got a long, sharp piece of wood stuck in his shoulder.
Big Farmer's reaction was to be expected - he roared in pain and immediately reached up to pull the spear out.
As that happened, Shiv slammed into his back, and bounced off into the steel wall behind him. He quickly put his hand on the ground, summoning a new spear that he lunged forward with, though the awkward sitting angle made it difficult for him to put too much force behind the strike.
Especially when his opponent was ready for it.
Big Farmer whipped around and smashed the spear into smithereens with one massive fist, while his other hand gripped the spear stuck in his shoulder and yanked it out.
For a moment, all Shiv could do was watch as blood splattered everywhere and an expression of true rage made itself known on the man… no, the monster's face.
The spell passed almost as soon as it had come, and Shiv immediately employed a move he had used only once before… Lava Lover.
The ground in front of Shiv in a fan shape quickly crumbled and became molten lava. Shiv's stomach growled and Big Farmer roared when his ankles became submerged in the bubbling magma.
Unlike the last time Shiv had used the ability, his opponent's feet were not burned away. Instead, Big Farmer had been able to turn his skin into metal on time, and now had glowing metal feet that were propelling him at a very rapid pace with his shoulder aimed at Shiv's face.
'Not again.'
Shiv was ready this time.