He shrugged. “Might be true, but right now? My best bet here is to make sure she never makes it to Katashi — so that he launches the attack that he promised you. And maybe, just maybe, he’ll be thorough enough to eradicate the monsters on your council that were pulling the strings on this whole plan.”
I narrowed my eyes. “And the people who live near the tower? Our civilians? Katashi said he was going to send Seiyru next time, Jin. The real Seiryu — not a manifestation like Sera made. A fully-grown god beast, unleashed with the purpose of destruction. That’s exactly the type of thing you’re trying to stop!”
Jin’s jaw tightened and he turned his head to the side, unwilling to meet my gaze. “You’re right. I’m behaving just like Orden, in a sense. I know that. I value my home over yours. And, if need be, I’m willing to sacrifice your home in order to save mine. Maybe that makes me just as much of a monster as the people I’m fighting. Maybe it’s just human nature.”
“I won’t accept that.”
I pushed my hands against the ground.
I clenched my jaw.
And, with trembling legs, I stood.
I flexed my legs experimentally. I felt a momentary surge of pain in the right one, but it held. “I won’t accept that either of our nations has to suffer a tragedy. And I will find a way of stopping it — even if that means stopping you.”
Jin stepped into a dueling stance, knife pointed toward me. “Even if you have to kill me?”
I clenched my hands into fists. “I’d really rather avoid that. But I’ll do what I have to do to stop a slaughter.”
Jin laughed. “You’ve got more spirit than sense. But that’s something I like about you. Unfortunately, Vera is going to bleed out here, and she’s not conscious. You can’t save her even with the ring.”
I nodded. “Another problem I’ll solve after I’m done with you.” I took a step forward tentatively, then another. I was unarmed, but I led with my right hand. It was tingling from using the gauntlet as much as I had, but I still had a fair bit of mana left.
“Not every problem is solvable with the tools you have on hand.” Jin stepped closer, almost in knife reach. We began to circle each other.
“Then,” I replied, “I’ll make more tools.”
I pointed my hand at him and fired. Jin dodged to the side, just as I’d expected, and attempted a shallow jab. I deflected it with the gauntlet.
We circled each other further. My legs trembled with the effort, moments from failing.
He must have seen the weakness. He stepped forward and tried to trip me.
I let him.
Staying standing had never been a viable part of the plan. Not with the condition I was in.
Instead, when he stepped in, so did I. I grabbed his arms and dragged him right down onto the floor with me.
We hit the ground hard.
Unfortunately, he was on top. Fortunately, I still had a good grip on his arms, and they were half-way pinned beneath me.
He started maneuvering immediately, trying to get his knife into a striking position.
I slammed my forehead into his already injured nose.
Jin recoiled, but his shroud stopped most of the damage, and I was dazed.
He pulled his arms free of my weakened grasp and jammed his dagger into my left arm. I screamed, flailing my right arm free, and tried to reach for something vulnerable. We were pressed too close together for me to hit his face.
But that wasn’t what I was aiming for.
I grabbed the phoenix sigil pinned to his chest, felt the mana inside — still almost full — and took a deep breath.
And then I flooded the sigil with mana far, far too fast.
Jin tried to pull away, but I had a good grip, and he was far too late.
The sigil exploded in my hand. Metal shrapnel and mana lanced out in both directions — into my gloved hand and into Jin’s chest.
The feeling of metal splinters in my hand was a new kind of pain. One that even the ring couldn’t banish immediately.
But as Jin fell backward, I knew it had hit him a lot harder. The sigil was too close to his skin for his shroud to do anything to protect him, and his tunic didn’t provide nearly as much protection as a thick leather gauntlet did.
He’d had the pin over his right breast. I’d hoped that wasn’t close enough to pierce his heart.
Jin screamed as he fell off of me, clutching at his chest.
I shivered on the ground, in too much pain to do much of anything.
Neither of us noticed Vanniv, still bleeding profusely from the gash across his entire chest, one wing entirely missing and half of his body still enshrouded in ice, until he lifted Jin with a single stone hand and punched him in the face.
Jin fell unconscious to the ground.
Vanniv looked down at me, shook his head, and pulled the dagger out of my arm. “No mana left. Been like holding my breath just to keep myself here this long. It’s up to you now.”
And with that, Vanniv vanished.
I was too preoccupied with pain to do anything for several moments.
The ring continued to work, but it was clearly overtaxed. It wasn’t doing a thing for the knife wound and very little for the shrapnel.
My first action was to try to dig as much of the shrapnel out of my hand as I could. With that done, those wounds sealed quickly.
I was pretty sure I still had some metal fragments in my skin, but I couldn’t reach them all with the glove on, and I was running out of time.
With my strength failing, I limped toward Vera’s fallen body, and I opened my pouch.
She was unconscious and bleeding bad.
And as Jin had claimed, my ring couldn’t help her. Not in that state.
I emptied out my bags. First the one on my waist, then my backpack.
And from there, I got to work.
I started with the rock.
Then, with my etching tool, I carved nearly identical runes to the ones that had been found in the ring, but I omitted the trigger rune. The one that required the user to send a bit of mana into it to turn the device on.
I replaced it with a different trigger rune. One from the bell, which caused it to activate when someone shook it if sufficient gray mana was inside.
The “ringing” part wasn’t relevant. It was just detecting movement.