Hector looked at Rodrick held before him in a princess carry. His friend was gasping for air and coughing up blood and phlegm and miasmic fluid. An anteater of epic proportions stood between them and medical attention. His brow drew down.

"Zelda, hold onto Rod. I'm going to toss the two of you through the exit."

"Hector… it's not safe in the tunnel. You saw what the beast did."

"It's going to be distracted for a bit."

"We need to find another exit, Hector. That thing will end all of us."

His lips peeled back in a snarl as he glared at the monster. "You were right about me, Zelda. About Xian and how we think about ourselves. I'm trying not to be conceited, but if we're being real, then the fact is that Xian are made to fight. Get Rod to a healer. I'll make sure this thing doesn't give you any problems."

"Hector… thank you."

He wrapped his friends in a cable and moved them towards the exit even as he rose into the air, making as much spectacle as possible. Sure enough, the anteater turned round to face directly at him, ignoring the two human forms that zipped by its feet to the mouth of the tunnel.

"The rest of you should stand back!"

The tongue struck with the force of a car crash, sending Hector tumbling through air and then skidding across stone. As he sat up, the anteater jumped closer, tongue swing like a lasso before striking again. Once more, Hector found himself tossed by the impact.

He sat up just in time to see an Arahant be brushed by the tongue. The man stuck fast to it on contact, screaming as the saliva began to digest him. From the tunnel, a force of soldiers wearing the uniform of the elite dungeon squad emerged. The new troops were arranged into working pairs, with Jinn dressed similar to Conrad partnered with Arahant carrying medieval weaponry adorned with runes. Plasma bolts and rockets and supernaturally extended blades shot forth at the anteater.

The creature ignored the attacks to chase after Hector. The tongue approached slower this time and attempted to wrap around him. Hector leaped free and began to whip his cables at the meaty appendage.

The tongue pulled back up, the Arahant caught on it screaming as he disappeared from view. Then the monster's tongue lashed to the side and picked up a dozen of the newly arrived soldiers. A moment later they were gone as well.

All the while, giant eyes far above had not moved from Hector. He had the attention of the beast. It stomped forward, tongue weaving a complex path through the air. The delvers who had followed his group sprinted for the safety of the tunnel. Others who had been hiding in the dark saw that and began their own desperate escape attempts. The soldiers meanwhile continued their ineffectual attacks.

Hector shot high into the air and whipped his cables at the nearest eye. The lid slammed shut, blocking his attack. Then the tongue caught him. Once more, his aura prevented him from sticking. He flew away, hitting hard on the ground. The ground shook as the beast pursued, bouncing Hector back up as if he were laying on a trampoline.

The tongue, thicker in diameter than his height, wrapped around him, snatching him out of the air like a lasso. Hector squeezed free and fell as the tongue was halfway back to the mouth. He couldn't get his feet pointed downward before striking solid stone and winding himself.

Two humans were close to his position. Soldier uniforms. The one held what looked like an anti-tank missile. The other was painting runes onto it while chanting what sounded like 'big bomb bust bad beast' repeated endlessly.

Perfect.

Hector shot towards them and landed in a crouch. "I need that."

"You can't use it, Xian," the Jinn man said. "If the detonation isn't causally triggered by the action of one of my kind, it won't be empowered by legal energy."

"Then trigger it when I'm in its throat."

"Look, Xian, we don't have time for –"

"His runes won't work with your tech unless you let me emulsify it with cosmic energy." The technical term caused the Jinn to hesitate. "You need me for the joint working. And I guarantee you it's going to try for me again."

The Jinn jerked a nod. "Then die a hero, Xian."

The missile was removed from its launcher and pushed towards him. The Jinn held up a detonator. "It's set to remote detonation. I'll be ready."

Hector held the bomb tight and lifted himself into the air to hover slowly closer to the beast that was currently rampaging against the soldiers, who responded by scattering. The tongue, covered with human forms, paused. Then it shot through the air to wrap about Hector.

This time he let it. Though he wondered what he was doing. Did he think he could bind together a half-ass ritual and a missile the way Conflagration and Zelda did with the antimatter bomb? And if he did… was his aura up to the challenge?

He definitely had not done enough in his cultivation of humility.

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The tongue retracted at dizzying speeds, pulling them inside past opened lips. Then the lips closed and the tongue slid out again. The victims were mashed against the lips and forced free of the sticky tongue. Then the suction of a giant swallow began pulling them towards the throat. In the dark, Hector had no idea what was colliding with him in the wash of gooey beast saliva. He did know that he still held onto the payload. Hector wrapped a cable of force around it and let go.

He didn't want to be holding that thing when it-

Events happened out of order to his mind, occurring in a sequence dictated more by the priority of the stimulus than its temporality. Loud. Pain. Dizzy. Vast drain of energy reserves.

He spat out the substance in his mouth, which at first seemed to be the sticky saliva of the beast but quickly began to reek of rancid filth. It was in his nose up to his sinuses, in his throat and stomach, in his ear canals, covering his eyes, everywhere. It was everywhere. And it was beginning to burn like a bitch. He hacked out thick phlegm, bringing up miasma from his lungs.

Hector felt he only had about ten percent energy reserves remaining. He almost laughed as he thought how convenient it would be to have the second reserve of a realm right about now. An overpowering urge caused him to vomit up the nastiness within his gut.

There was so much more of it. He could feel it clinging to his skin and sinking into his pores.

Hector pumped energy into his body as if performing body enhancement, trying to push the toxic miasma out of him. He pushed until he needed to equalize pressure. Then he had no choice but to pull a little. He tried not to take in any miasma, but couldn't be sure how successful he was.

Big push. Force the evil out. Tiny inhale. Couldn't be helped. And push again. Hector pushed himself to his feet, wiped his eyes clean as much as possible, and began stumbling forward.

"By the holy ones, he survived that?"

"Xian really are built different."

"He might have endured the blast, but he's covered in miasma. He won't make it to the exit."

Hector forced himself forward, refusing to stop. He had to find his friends. He tripped and fell at the start of the tunnel, where the ground bottomed out. There was a grate on the ground there that had tripped him. Probably it was intended to trap liquid miasma.

He crawled forward, forcing cosmic energy through his body. The miasma within him numbed his soul aperture. He felt it spreading and infecting and spoiling. With an iron will, he seized those bits of foulness with cosmic energy.

Hector turned his attention back to his main task. He regained his feet and wobbled to the moving sidewalk. It was going the wrong way, but as he neared it slowed, stopped, and reversed direction. He didn't remember falling, but Hector looked up from the sidewalk to find people standing above him on all sides.

Soldiers and delvers. He struggled to stand and saw the serious expressions on their faces.

Then the salutes began. Fist to heart for the Arahants. Hand to brow for Jinn. Defiant fist raised high for the Titans. Hector watched their gestures, understanding all at once that this was his sendoff as he passed into death.

No.

Hector turned his defiance inward. The tarnish of his soul's body aperture had retreated. He refused to die. Not to lingering miasma. He was a Xian.

With great effort, Hector found his feet. He steadied himself with a hand to a nearby railing and briefly studied the ring of people around him. There were a lot of them. All saluting in their own way. He returned the salute with a slight incline of his head, then began walking.

His audience went with him, disbelief in their eyes.

The stain on his soul had vanished now. A check of the System revealed he was down to four percent energy reserves. He probably should get the ebony gunk off of him before he was out of energy to purge the inimical substance. "Need a shower."

A Titan heard him and called out with a booming voice. "Bring the hero to a purifier!"

"This way!"

Figures pointed in a certain direction and Hector went. His steps were growing more sure as he continued moving. The crowd parted to let him stand upon a ritual circle. The Arahant stationed there were wide-eyed as they took him in. "He's… fighting it off?"

"Purify the hero, already!"

He was asked to sit on a stone bench, where a small bucket of water was dumped over his head. Its contents shimmered as they flowed down over his body. It evaporated away in another second, leaving him entirely clean of filth.

And naked. He'd lost his clothes either in the explosion or through the action of the saliva decaying back into miasma. Hector stood and looked down at himself awkwardly. He didn't know what the laws were on public nudity in Promise City. Certainly he'd never seen anyone walking around fully exposed during his time here.

A man came forward and removed the robe he wore over top of a tunic. He wrapped it around Hector's waist and then faded back into the crowd. Hector cleared his throat. "Thank you. Now I need to find the healers. Can anyone tell me where that is?"

"I will take you there," the Titan rumbled.

He followed his immense benefactor through the crowd. Eventually, they passed far enough away that the people around them didn't recognize Hector and he could relax a little without the intense attention focused on him.

Hector knew they had arrived when he heard the wailing.

It was a strange thing how he could know a voice by a keening grief that he'd never heard it express before. All at once strange and so very terribly sad. Sad because he didn't want someone he knew to feel that way. Sadder still because of what that grief meant for him.

"Please, help! I'm a ritualist!" And the words faded away to wailing once more.

Hector stopped beside Zelda, knelt to wrap an arm around her. On the ground were the desiccated remains of a human body. It looked like it was centuries old. Dry and collapsed and crumbling. Hector knew it was Rodrick only by the armor, which itself had been terribly warped.

"Tell them, Hector! We can make a ritual! A ritual with Jinn medicine and cosmic energy."

He squeezed her tighter and buried his face in her hair. His voice broke when he spoke. "Zelda, he's gone."

"Don't tell me that, Hector! We have to… I'm a ritualist!"

"We have to dispose of the body," a woman said.

"No!" And then Zelda's resistance abruptly collapsed. She had accepted the truth.

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