25. RUINATION

twenty-five

RUINATION

A cracked thumb stroked Oliver's cheek. His eyes fluttered at the touch, the soothingness of it incomparable despite split metal catching on his skin. Tau didn't respond, only made a musing noise and moved away, down the corridor. Oliver stopped in his tracks at the sound of doors sliding open behind him. Janice staggered out, eyes red and tears still gleaming.

"There's nowhere for me to go," she croaked, ramming all ten fingers under her thick-rimmed spectacles. A sob contorted her expression. "Everyone's dead."

Oliver pursed his lips at Jacob, wordlessly asking what to do with her. Not that he expected an answer, let alone any sort of acknowledgement and was unsurprised when he received neither.

"Hey Dunderpate, take us to the doorway?"

If Jacob took offence to the nickname, he didn't show it, only shuffled past with a sour look. Janice followed, and Oliver soon fell into step with her while keeping hold of Tau's hand.

Over loud sniffs he asked, "What did you mean when you said he should compress?"

"It's when he turns into a solid sphere instead of the bright floating one," Janice said, her voice claggy with sorrow. "It helps him preserve his energy and focus on recovery."

"Oh. You mean when he turned into a big marble?"

A minute twitch of Janice's lips, whether from annoyance or amusement, Oliver wasn't sure.

Did that mean Tau would have eventually come out of such a state? …Had his efforts against Nu truly been for nothing at all?

"Condense," said Tau, correcting, and knocked Oliver out of his spiralling reflections.

"Sure?" Janice swept away another tear careening down her cheek. "The last time you condensed, you were injured far less than now."

"Wait, what does that mean?" Oliver stilled, his arm momentarily jerked along before Tau too came to a stop.

"It means that he realised he needed to preserve himself to avoid dying off. Although if that was a conscious move, we don't know—was it?"

Tau shrugged and impatiently tugged Oliver along.

He frowned, a chaos of thoughts whirling around an already muddled head. He had so many questions, none of which he knew how to ask, the knowledge Tau was gravely injured needling him worse than the guilt of leaving his friends behind. Maybe he could use that as a reason to get Tau away from the Elder Realm, and back with him, where he belonged.

"What is this place?" Oliver asked in a futile attempt to distract himself.

"A vestibule," Janice replied.

He had no idea what a vestibule was.

"Is it really over the harbour, or did I imagine that?"

Janice hesitated. "Technically it is, but isn't."

Since Oliver wasn't of mind to make sense of her answer, he shook Tau's hand to get his attention."Talking of, we should probably go back there, huh? They're waiting for us."

Unfortunately, Tau ignored him, silently following Jacob, who led them through what felt like the same corridor, over and over again. Until eventually, they reached large, rampant-pointed archways. Beyond, an open room, empty aside from thick columns and black mire coating otherwise grey floors.

And in its centre stood double triangle doors, tall and disconnected from any walls.

These were decidedly different to the one Oliver had seen in the mountain's forest. Its surface was reminiscent of green and blue crystals. Vivid light filtered through, illuminating trails of blackened slick that ended right at the stoop.

His stomach dropped further with each step he took toward it. He knew Tau would go inside. Leave him behind again in an attempt to stop the repetition of atrocities in Malimoure.

"If you're going, I'm coming with you," Oliver said, his voice echoing through the large room.

Tau spent some time simply standing there, staring at the doorway. Unbothered and unhurried by relentless sirens, by the stink of rot. By Oliver's climbing panic.

The eventual, "No," though spoken softly, came after so long that it startled him.

Mostly, because no was not what he wanted to hear. Neither would he accept it.

"I said you don't get a choice with this, right?"

"Will perish."

"Yeah, that's a shame."

"You're being selfish," Jacob hobbled to a column and slid down to the floor, shifting out of sight. His gravelly voice continued, "You're going to make him watch you die?"

Oliver thickly swallowed. He hadn't really thought about that.

Neither had he considered that he was likely keeping Tau from returning to his home. The sudden understanding hit him straight in the chest, hard, and it robbed Oliver of all the air in his lungs.

Would Tau be happy there? Without him?

He chewed his lower lip. Clenched his fingers around Tau's. Hating the realisation that it had come down to such a terrible choice either he or Tau had to make.

"I don't want to be without you." His throat constricted around the words. "If I can't be with you, I don't want to live."

Oliver didn't think he could live without Tau, when mere moments away from him brought back all the things he didn't want to remember, feel, or think about.

"No, will perish inside."

Right in front of Tau, too. What would be worse, for either of them?

"I don't care."

"Wow, that's inconsiderate," said Maji's voice behind him.

Oliver whipped around so fast his eyes struggled to keep up and feet slipped in the dregs of corpses. He steadied himself using Tau's arm. "Sentinel's orbs, you scared me!"

Lucetta and Maji stood a few feet from him, clearly upset, with an equally disapproving Samuel and Benjamin beside them.

"I can't believe you just ran off like that!"

Maji's scolding and the burning guilt it brought made Oliver want to drop through the ground and disappear. He didn't mean to be so selfish.

"What are you doing here?" he asked, hoping to deflect as he reached for Tau's hand again. Just in case he decided to slip away from him.

"Bercord Harbour is overrun by everything from Malimoure," said Lucetta, simply. "They were released when this place showed up, I think."

Janice's, "Oh no!" and loud, awful bawling drowned out Oliver's horrified stammering. She croaked something about having the worst day as she sank to her knees, prompting strange looks that were soon directed at him.

Oliver shrugged. "That's Janice."

"Are you from here?" Maji lowered in front of Janice, reaching for her shoulder, but stopped, Janice's reply entirely unintelligible amid the blubbering.

"Humans safe?" asked Tau.

"Obviously not," said Samuel, tearing his eyes off the surrounding gore. The waspishness in his tone was the only betrayal to how he might have truly felt, when the mask of neutrality gave nothing away. "They're likely all dead by now. I'm assuming it's only a matter of time before other towns and cities meet the same fate."

Tau tilted his head back and released a bizarre, drawn-out noise. A groan. He turned back to the double doors, then to Oliver. Back to the doors. Then, made a move toward the archways.

Oliver quickly pulled him back. "Not. Without. Me !" Another yank forced his stubborn Sentinel to face him. "You're not leaving me alone ever again. Anytime you do, I find you nearly dead because you keep thinking that sacrificing yourself is the only fix. It's not happening again!"

Tau made that same groan-like noise, but did nothing else. Only stood there, as if waiting for instruction. Oliver longed to tell him they should flee, find a quaint little place to settle down at. He could teach Tau how to play cards in peace, and they could swive the rest of the time.

"Considering your current condition," Janice mumbled, regaining some control over her weeping, "you likely won't be able to fight for long. I suggest you condense again."

"We can't let everything get overrun." Samuel crossed his arms. "I'm not seeing any of the other Sentinels around, so it's up to Tau to do something. You need to let him go, Oliver."

Oliver turned a glare on Samuel, full of loathing. "He doesn't have to do anything! You knew about the landfill and thought it was all fine until you decided Tau is evil."

"He has a lot to repent for," said Samuel.

Oliver barely resisted the urge to kick scattered rot at the man. Instead, he settled for, "Why don't you take that high horse you rode in on and get swived by it?"

While the others looked startled, Samuel, unfortunately, remained nonplussed.

Annoying bastard.

"We can't ask Tau to sacrifice himself like that," said Benjamin, not quite meeting anyone's eyes, least of all Oliver's, who could only stare at him in shock and confusion.

Tau, however, wasn't listening. He bent low, gathered Oliver into his arms, and walked away from the triangle doors. This was what Oliver wanted, of course, but not because Tau was about to sacrifice himself, yet again, for their sake.

"You don't have to do this," he beseeched, arching back and cradling Tau's face in his hand.

Oliver knew, before Tau even spoke, what his response would be. His leaden stomach upended itself with the singular word of, "Must."

"I'm not leaving your side."

No matter what happened.

From his peripheral,he caught his friends following. He pointed past Tau's shoulder at a column to the left. "Bring Dunderpate!" he said. "And Janice."

"I'm fine where I am," Jacob growled from out of sight.

Maji's huff and stomps echoed around the open room as she marched toward the old man and yanked him up by the arm. Jacob incoherently grumbled, but didn't fight. Neither did Janice, when Maji did the same to her.

"Let's go," Maji said, dragging both along.

Tau seemed to be in a rush, his hold on Oliver remained steadfast, seemingly confident in where he went—until he abruptly stopped and faced a startled Janice.

"Egress?"

Janice quavered between responding and leading. She staggered in the opposite direction.

Lucetta groaned. She tilted her head up and said, "When you listed all his virtues, you forgot to mention his noodle is empty."

Oliver managed a smile over his boyfriend's shoulder.

Tau released him only after entering a spacious elevator at the end of a long corridor. Thrice the size of Oliver's hovel, its ride so smooth and quick, his stomach flipped. Unlike the cage lifts in the mine, there were no bars to see past, all rounded walls so polished, his reflection stared back at him. Scared.

They would be facing another manifested nightmare. One Tau wasn't strong enough to fight for long.

They were headed straight to their deaths.

Oliver shifted, restless, his touch moving up to the clasps of his mantle, then back to hold Tau's hand, and up again. He undid the clasps, clumsily pulling it off his shoulders to swing it over Tau's, bent low to accommodate. Maji wobbled across the elevator to help, securing the leather straps around a wide chest, quietly slipping away shortly after.

"High time I gave this to you," Oliver murmured. Reverently, he stroked its front one final time while Tau straightened up. It looked good, like it had always belonged to him, even though both the mantle and Tau had lost their pristine white.

"Long time." Although the bandages muffled Tau's dulcet voice, the note of amusement was clear.

Oliver smiled, sheepish. "Yeah, sorry."

Tau reached out and stroked his thumb across Oliver's cheek, again catching his skin, crumbling dried dirt. "Grateful."

"It's from all of us," Oliver said. "The others, mostly. From Ben, too."

It had to be worth mentioning, surely. Although Benjamin shrank under the focus he had unintentionally thrown onto him. Oliver tried in vain to catch his attention, seeking some kind of reassurance they were still friends. For a moment, he thought those amber eyes might finally turn up to him, but then his stomach lurched, and the curved doors slid open with a muted swish .

At the end of a short, wide hallway lurked an entrance, its thick metal doors muffling the chaos that awaited outside. Roars and screams burrowed their way past, even gunfire, yet Tau pushed the doors open with a confidence Oliver wished he didn't have.

Tau stepped back at the cacophony pouring in—along with a deluge of viscous flesh, flooding the hallway, sticking like pinkened glue to Oliver's boots. A swift flash of green. Skin bubbled and blood curdled, giving rise to a foul stench.

Janice rightfully ran back into the elevator to cower by its mirror-like walls. "Wouldn't it be better if we stayed up there?"

"That's not the worst idea for you," said Lucetta, then motioned at Benjamin and Samuel. "You two as well." She turned to a glowering Jacob. "You, come and help."

"You're going out there?" asked Samuel, eyebrows raised in surprise further than Oliver had ever seen them. "What do you hope to accomplish?"

Lucetta squared against her brother with a foul look. "I'm not leaving Tau to do this on his own. This was what you wanted, just remember that."

"We'll come and help," said Benjamin, his hands visibly trembling, eyes betraying the horrors he would never be allowed to forget.

"You'll just get in the way," said Lucetta.

They moved out as a group onto grassy hills, and absolute pandemonium. The harbour's buildings were already crumbling under abominations worse than what they'd seen in Malimoure. Bigger, more malformed, merging with anything they consumed, from humans to each other. Each great maw that devoured one thing birthed another set of eyes, or arms, or a mixture of things . The stench dragged along with fierce winds burned the back of Oliver's throat, wails scraping shivers down his spine, lancing his ears. He kept firm hold of Tau's robes, while Tau flicked his wrists and sent spheres scattering to explode against swarming monstrosities.

Few people not yet slaughtered hid behind debris, many of them unarmed, a spare few with rifles in their shaking grips. Maji conjured barricades of taproots to shield survivors who wouldn't last long either way, as amalgamations squirmed through grass, into windows and doors.

"Try healing Tau," Maji called to Lucetta over the screams, the roars and wet snaps of large teeth walling them in on either side.

While Lucetta struggled to heal, Jacob opened the earth nearby, swallowing scaly, four-legged things whole. Oliver ran beside Tau, unable to help beyond kicking away eager claws and snapping jaws, but refusing to leave his side.

In the distance and the dark, roads writhed with countless creatures, and the sea frothed with more still. Tau created a path through the storm of flailing limbs, finishing off everything Maji couldn't with the vortex she had conjured. His body was barely aglow with Sigma's coruscant magic—Oliver didn't know how effective Lucetta's healing was, or how helpful Maji's attempts were, when all she managed was to flay sagging skin that whipped away in the gales of foul breath.

Enormous claws descended, slamming down onto the leafy whirlwind, the creature's face loomed above them, barely visible within the smoke and clouds trapped under the Vestibule's belly. A downpour of saliva had Tau whirling his magic upward, lines of green cutting through a sea of blinking eyes. The creature groaned low, shifting away.

Maji yelled something unintelligible, turning her focus onto Tau, a gleam of yellow joining Sigma's lustre and occasionally weaving into a wattle wall. An attempt to shield him as he curled an arm around Oliver and pulled him away from claws grasping at his leg. He held on, flinching every time Tau's body jerked in full against a flailing tail or magic hurtled at him.

"We should go back inside," he gasped into the side of Tau's hood.

They were at the centre of the town. There was no sign of the monstrous swarm dwindling. A long limb of melting flesh flung down, crumbling cobblestone at their feet, forcing Tau, Maji, and Lucetta to sidestep, closer to a building already wrecked.

Still in Tau's hold, Oliver swung his leg out and kicked the nearest finger as large as his entire body, snapping it in half with brute strength. Whatever he had hoped to accomplish, the limb simply raised back up, and descended—light spheres trounced it above them. Exploded. Felled the limb like a tree, causing skin to rain down.

Instantly, another entity with several arms and legs crawled on top of the creature and tore into it with an elongated mouth. Long, sharp teeth caught slumping flesh still sizzling from Tau's light. Faces formed across its centipede-like body, and it turned its focus on Oliver.

Lucetta panicked, conjuring a portal right by the creature. Oval, its frame a shimmer of stars, leading into the night sky just long enough to catch the new amalgamation's attention. The portal closed and took with it one half, the other flopping to the ground to be consumed by yet another thing that grew more legs and in size.

A relentless cycle broken only by Tau, who not only needed to destroy everything around them, but fend off onslaughts, now forced to keep a diaphanous green dome around them.

Janice's words came back to Oliver, echoing louder than the horrific screaming. Tau wouldn't last long.

"We need to get away!" he shouted.

They had tried, surely this was enough of an effort.

"Cannot," Tau strained, his arm around Oliver's midriff painfully tight.

Everything was drawn to them. Clawing, scratching, thrashing. Tau struggled to walk. Maji had already exhausted herself, barely able to keep up, and Lucetta didn't know how to wield the magic well enough. Jacob too struggled, his arms violently shaking with each attempt to open the earth under things far larger.

Something bashed into the surrounding dome, shattering it like a window. Trees sprang up from the ground, upward, shielding Tau from the striking fangs of a snake-like entity. It broke through.

"Heal Tau, both of you!" Oliver cried, swinging out of the hold and forward to stomp down on a slick tendril twining around Tau's ankles. It splattered in bursts of red across the cobblestone.

Sphere after sphere fulminated all around them. The green barrier shimmered back to life, only to be broken through again. Tau buckled to his knees. He pulled his arms inward against his chest. Shockwaves of light rippled away from him, tingling Oliver's skin and whittling down the surrounding wall of entities.

It was hopeless.

They were going to die like this.

"Please Tau!" he shouted. "We need to leave! Transport us away!"

The buzz of Tau's might and the racket deafened Oliver's plea. The green barrier crumbled again, under massive scythe-like limbs slamming down on Tau. Oliver crashed to the ground to duck. Scrambled back up. Grasped thick bones to pry them off. They broke away in his grip, releasing Tau enough for him to stagger upright again.

Maji dodged something long and sharp with a startled yelp, knocking into Oliver with her back. They were being pushed closer together, cornered against a caving wall.

Tau erected the barrier once more.

It faltered again.

The ground quivered under heavy feet, under endless waves of light.

Tau straightened up.

And stilled all movement. He stood like a stalagmite.

"Don't!" Oliver cried, knowing. Knowing .

He brought his fist down on Tau's arm. It did nothing. He shoulder barged into the love of his life, and still Tau stood like a mountain's peak as the hum of Sentinel magic grew louder, became electric. Light-waves scintillated, drawing inward. Intensified, turning empyreal, blinding.

"Maji, stop him!"

Maji didn't.

Neither did Lucetta, or Jacob.

Into the vividness Oliver wailed, "I'll never forgive you for this!"

But Tau, forever headstrong, and ever the Sentinel with too much love, wasn't listening.

A great force thrust Oliver forward across gore-slickened stone, incandescent might rolling him bodily across the road until he caught on something by his foot. What little he could see combusted in a devastation of blinding light, of a will to protect so powerful, it flooded the roads, flashed across the sea, and up the hills into the horizon, taking with it monsters and trees and structures alike.

The earth rumbled and cracked, the light so intense, closing his eyes wasn't enough. Oliver needed to cover them with his arm, exposed skin singeing, hair burning.

Until everything stilled.

No more screams, no more gunfire. All abominations gone.

A hush befell the town, even the sea.

Broken, as Oliver's burning eyes set on the body collapsed to the ground, and a ululating howl shook his chest.