Finding my Parents in Another World-Chapter 43: (Zack) Don’t Look

"Summoner?" Zack asked warily. The look in Pende’s face was truly terrible.

"A special category of animal magik. They don’t have Inito or Words of Power like normal mages. In exchange they get to summon the entire beast by their side."

"Isn’t that way too broken?"

"Extremely hard to use. Since you can’t use normal Incantations. You can only call upon the beast you can summon."

"If you are done with the lecture, shall we begin?" Brunaulf asked from the hall, almost bored.

Pende turned irritatedly towards them. His eyes darted from Fermi Ja on his Sciadorm and Brunaulf with his hammer. It was clear he didn’t expect good odds in this fight.

He began rolling forward, and Zack tentatively followed him, when he stopped abruptly. Narrowing his eyes, he looked instead to the switchbox at the end of the hall.

"Old man, use your magik on that box." He said in a low voice.

Zack looked at him puzzled, but then did as he was told. Stretching a single finger, he let loose a bolt of electricity that hit the switchbox. Immediately there was several sparks that went off throughout the room, including one just in front of them.

"Electricity based trap huh?" Pende said, looking up, almost accusedly at the two men standing in the hall

Fermi Ja shrugged, his thin frame making the simple action look almost comical. "The best time to win a fight is before it begins."

With a grunt, Pende launched himself into the air. He began spinning once more like a top, and headed straight for the tyrant, ignoring General Brunaulf beside him. The General didn’t make any move to intercept him, turning his eyes almost boredly towards the hurtling Pende.

Fermi Ja raised his hand, and the beast beneath him moved with breathtaking speed, zinging past the tumbling Pende. His blades harmlessly bounced off the floors, but he immediately twisted the ones on his legs, trying to catch the Sciadorm on the way past. The beast was way too agile though. It folded its wings close to its body and evaded the incoming slice of metal quite easily, while keeping it’s master securely on top.

Pende stood up with a grunt of frustration. Fermi Ja stood casually a few feet in front of him, sitting almost regally on his mount. Zack had expected the so called tyrant to be more mad, more delirious, more....something. He appeared to be almost boringly normal though, there was no madness in his walk, his eyes, his demeanour. There was instead a cold, calm, calculating gaze.

And that gaze turned to Zack.

Zack hadn’t jumped in after Pende, in fact he was still ambivalent about fighting to kill. The gaze in Fermi Ja’s eyes however told him that the Mayor had no such compunctions.

The Sciadorm, almost as if driven by its master’s gaze, turned towards Zack as well. The shimmering, ever changing face threatened to captivate him once more. Zack almost felt as if it were magik, a force compelling him to keep looking at that ever changing face.

"Look away, you fool!" Came Pende’s shout, breaking Zack’s reverie. Grunting, he ducked just as the claws of the Sciadorm swiped the air where his head had just been.

As he rolled over, he looked back in the direction of the beast. Fermi Ja was sitting, still casually, on top of it, and there was no discernible expression on his face. Zack raised his arms and sent two bolts of electricity zigzagging towards the tyrant.

The tyrant made no attempt to even move. As Zack watched in astonishment, the Sciadorm swiped up at the two bolts, knocking them out of the air. He watched the skin of the beast turn charred where it had made contact with the bolt, evidently injured. And as he looked closer, he saw there were injuries all over its body. Some seemed to be the slash of a sword, while others the singing on fire.

And that’s when Zack realized the nature of Fermi Ja’s madness.

He just expected the beast to keep taking blows for him. He didn’t even bother to dodge, he didn’t bother to block. He used the Sciadorm as a meat shield and didn’t think twice of it. Fermi Ja wasn’t a tyrant because he was delirious, because he was mad with power, because he was afraid or paranoid. No, he was a tyrant because to him everyone else was not a human, but rather a meat shield which existed to serve him.

A deep sense of distaste rose up within Zack. For the first time ever, he was truly disgusted by anyone in this world. Even Ginat, despicable as he might have been , hadn’t caused such intense hatred to rise up within him.

Almost roaring, Zack again raised his hands. This time instead of two, there flew several strands of electric bolts, straight at the Mayor himself, forcing him to dodge, to acknowledge the attack.

Casually, too casually, Fermi Ja gave a signal to the Sciadorm, which leapt up in the air, flying with its black wings. It soared over the electric bolts, but a few of them still hit it in the legs. There was a low moan of pain, so low that Zack didn’t hear it almost.

"Don’t feel sorry for the beast, old man!" Within seconds Pende was beside him. He was looking at General Brunaulf who had finally risen and was swinging his hammer. It seemed like their particular skirmish had already started.

"I’m not." Zack said, his voice cold. Pende looked at him in surprise, he hadn’t expected such a level of ruthlessness from the old man.

"Good. I’m leaving the tyrant to you then." He said before leaping off, running across the walls to dodge the repeated strikes of Brunaulf’s hammer.

Zack turned away, focusing his attention on the Mayor. He couldn’t help Pende too much anyway, he didn’t achieve Inito yet and both those combatants had. He therefore could only fight against the remaining enemy without Inito.

Fermi Ja sat on his flying beast high above the ground. Zack looked up at him.

"I see disdain in your eyes, stranger." The tyrant’s raspy voice carried down.

Zack didn’t respond. Once more he raised his hand. This time he made a shape he was sure the foreign Mayor wouldn’t recognize.

A gun.

A bullet of electricity shot out of his outstretched index finger, ripping through the air directly towards the Mayor. For a moment his eyes widened and he moved forward the first time atop the mount, turning sideways as the electric pellet whizzed past his ears. When he came up again, his eyes seemed to be even colder.

But they were fixed on Zack.

"You will die." He said simply and the Sciadorm swooped down, hurtling towards Zack.

He started running immediately to his right. His left was where Pende and Brunaulf were engaged in fierce combat, and he didn’t dive straight into a battle between two Inito users. He also wasn’t confident enough on his athletic skill to be able to dodge at the last second in the correct direction.

As he ran, he felt the Sciadorm changing directions in the air, turning towards him with its claws extended, ready to rip his head out.

He kept running. He felt the breath of the beast from behind him, the roar resembling a lion, coming closer and closer. It was all about timing now.

The roar intensified. The hot breath was almost upon him now.

At the last second, Zack abruptly turned around. The beast was just behind him, he saw the huge claws of it inches from his face. Every instinct in his body, every muscle, screamed at him to turn back and keep running.

But he knew that doing so was suicide. He couldn’t hope to outrun a magik beast with wings. So he rolled forward instead, ducking his head beneath the sharp claws. The forelegs of the beast passed over him harmlessly, and then came the backlegs.

The opportunity Zack was waiting for.

Disregarding every survival instinct in his body, he lurched forward, catching the hindlegs of the beast even as the main body passed directly over him.

Now!!

He let loose. As strong a burst of current as he could passed through his hands onto the beast’s body, causing it to roar in pain. Roar terribly.

I’m sorry

Another sound accompanied it. A raspy scream from above told him that the electricity had passed on from the Sciadorm to its master.

Zack dodged the claws of the hindlegs by rolling to the side, immediately getting up to see the result of his actions. His arm was scratched by one of the claws, and was bleeding, but he didn’t care about that. He wanted to see that detestable Mayor, that horrible tyrant writhing in pain.

As he turned around, he saw that the Sciadorm had crashed down onto the floor, making a crater there. He wasn’t able to see what was in the crater.

Eagerly he made his way down. He could hear the sound of Brunaulf and Pende fighting on the other corner of the room.

I need to go help him!

But first the Mayor.

Zack carefully made his way to the edge of the crater. He could see one of the Sciadorm’s wings at one side of the hole. He made his way over there, waving his hands in front of him to clear the dust, expecting to find the Mayor dead or dying inside.

The shimmering face!

It was propped up so fast in front of Zack that he had no chance to block, to dodge, to get out of the way. One moment he was waving his hands in front to clear the dust, the next there it was. The face of the Sciadorm staring right at him, right through him.

He tried to back away, to get out, to look somewhere else, but he was unable to do so. A hand, someone’s hand had grabbed a hold of his injured arm, pinning him in place, forcing him to look.

And why shouldn’t he? What was so important that he couldn’t look at that changing, shimmering face? What was he even doing there? Why was he trying to hurt this beast?

Why was he even here?