Book 3: Chapter 12: Antidote

  A hole ripped through one’s chest was a deadly wound to a human, it seemed to be no different for a large reptile beast. Alex’s final strike had broken Devon’s creation, but the resulting blast sent concentrated aether completely through the basilisk’s body, tearing a hole inside its organs and out the other side.

  He had to jump away to avoid the thing’s death throws, the serpent lashing out wildly with claw, tail, and teeth in every direction it could muster. The rapid jerks and twists only made its injury worse, though, speeding up the arrival of its dark passenger.

  It took only moments for the creature to finally grow still, its blood slowly constructing a putrid pond around its corpse.

  Alex didn’t wait. He sprinted straight for the basilisk’s body, his boots splashing in the pooling blood and dirt.

  “What the hell is he doing?” One of the mercenaries barked, hand tightening on his blade.

  “Looting already?” Selka spat, fury flashing in the woman’s eyes as she watched him.

  “Are you serious?” Kate called after him. Her voice was sharp, but Alex didn’t bother turning around.

  He would let them think what they wanted. He wasn’t doing this for coin, or greed, or power for that matter.

  His fingers tore through thick hide and muscle, scales crunching under his weight. He hacked away at the muscles and tissue with his hands until he had a jagged opening toward the upper part of the basilisk’s torso, then he shoved an arm inside. The heat and stench hit him like a festering wall. The moment his hand sank into the slick slurry, bile rose hot in the back of his throat.

  Alex gagged, wrenched his head to the side, and then vomited across the blood soaked dirt at his feet. His body trembled as his stomach emptied itself, but his hand didn’t stop searching.

  The stench was almost unbearable, acidic, rotten, half-melted meat mixed with a metal tang that racked at the insides of his nostrils. He pulled free a handful of corpse slush without meaning to: bone shards, shredded muscle, a mixture of bile and black muck of unknown composition. He threw it aside with a wet slap, heaving again.

  “Ohhhh,” Obby cackled inside his skull, voice positively gleeful. “This is just like the badger mother, remember? You’re disgusting. I love it.”

  Alex’s jaw clenched as he plunged his hand deeper. His aura pulsed faintly, shielding his flesh from the acidic burn of the thing’s blood. He groped around until finally, finally, his fingers brushed what he needed.

  The stomach lining here was thick, veined with glowing wisps of aether in his [Aether Sight]. He tore a pouch from his belt, and jammed three vials under the torn stomach flesh, carefully filling them with the sloshing yellow-green liquid that hissed as it touched the glass. The resulting smell alone nearly made him pass out.

  He staggered back, coughing violently, and retching once again, his stomach heaving until his throat was raw. The vials clinked as he corked them, his vision swimming hazily. But he kept them close, clutching them like a treasure.

  Because they were.

  Doran lay propped against a wagon wheel, his face pale under the low light of the stars. The petrification had now climbed past his calf, creeping along muscle like frost devouring a car window. The runes on his hammer flickered dimly in his lap, his teeth clenched against the pain. Myrae knelt beside him, whispering prayers and pouring useless healing light over the stone limb. It only made the hard sheen glisten more.

  “Move.”

  Alex dropped down beside them, the vials of basilisk bile rattling in his bloodied hands. The stench coming off the glass was already bad enough to make a few mercenaries gag.

  “What the hell is that?” Myrae hissed, reaching to shove him back.

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  “The only chance he’s got,” Alex snapped. He uncorked a vial. The smell hit them like a punch in the gut, rotting eggs and burning metal.

  Doran’s eyes widened. “You… don’ you dare—”

  But Alex was already tipping the bile over the stone-flesh. It hissed like acid poured on steel, bubbling and steaming as it ran down Doran’s petrified leg. The dwarf howled, fists pounding dirt hard enough to split skin around his knuckles. Alex ignored him, grinding the fluid in with his bare hands, spreading it across stone until it soaked in. His throat gagged with every breath, and his skin blistered on his palms and fingers.

  Then, slowly, the gray faded. Veins of color returned to the dwarf’s limb, warmth crawling back into the leg as if his blood had an epiphany and remembered its purpose. The petrification receded like a waning tide, leaving behind a leg raw and bleeding, but flesh, and alive.

  The dwarf sagged back, gasping, sweat dripping from his beard. His hands shook, and his face was horridly pale, but he was breathing.

  “Wha’ the bloody fuck was that?” Doran gasped.

  “Basilisk bile, it works,” Alex said, voice hoarse. He tossed two more vials across the clearing, one to Selka, who caught it without question, and another to a merc who was already dragging his comrade closer.

  “Don’t spill a drop,” he said.

  The treatment was messy, cruel, and very loud. Every victim screamed as the bile ate into stone flesh, and every bystander covered their nose and mouth against the stink that wafted around them. But beneath the pain, the screams, came the same miracle: gray stone sloughing away to reveal flesh, ruined and bloody, but still human.

  The mercenaries stared at Alex after, some with disgust, some with dawning awe.

  Obby chuckled in the back of his skull. “Disgusting and brilliant. My favorite combination.”

  “How did you know?” One of the merchants finally asked.

  A shaky hand finished wiping away stomach residue from Alex’s mouth before he gave an answer. “I didn’t know.”

  “What do you mean? You moved pretty fast for someone who didn’t know what they were doing. We thought you were looting the corpse.” Myrae looked up at him in confusion from her position on the ground next to Doran.

  “Yeah, you had us all going there for a moment.” Holly reached his side by this point, wrapping an arm around his waist.

  He wasn’t showing how weak he felt. How exhausted he was from the fight, and the aether expenditure, both compounded by the drawback of the [Vita-Surge Cloak], no matter how briefly he had activated it. He didn’t show it, but Holly didn’t seem to be fooled by his performance, as he felt her support some of his weight with her arm, an act of literal support disguised as affection.

  “Thank you,” he whispered softly in her ear. His legs felt a little less like pudding then, and he breathed a little deeper. He saw Holly smiling in response to his verbal gratitude, but she didn’t reply.

  “I didn’t know for sure it would work.” He continued loud enough for everyone else to hear. “I just had a hunch, and acted on it.”

  “What was your hunch then?” Myrae pressed.

  Alex sighed as he wrapped his arm around Holly’s shoulders. He leaned into her a bit more, letting himself trust her to be there. With her stats, he didn’t weigh much, she probably barely felt it.

  “These things need to eat right? So, if their bites turn everything to stone, how would they do that?” He explained his thinking, pointing at the basilisk mother corpse like a defendant in court. “It has to have some way to digest the prey it catches. So I made an educated guess.”

  “Why assume it can’t eat stone though? It’s an Arcane Beast, with magic, who knows what is possible.” Peter had joined the conversation now. Alex looked over at him, wondering just who’s side he was on.

  A few more people had gathered around at this point. Some of the worldstrider team, but also a few of the other mercenaries. Tension was rising now, a subtle build-up in the air that Alex needed to defuse quickly.

  “Assuming it couldn’t eat stone was the only outcome that meant helping them revert the venom.” He titled his head toward Doran laying on the ground, his flesh-once-more leg laid bare for all. “If they could eat stone, well then there was no hope at all, and we’d have to go back to amputation. Which I’m sure no one wants.”

  He looked about at the many eyes that now bore into him. He didn’t back down from their suspicious gazes. He knew they were just tired, angry, and afraid, and Alex made a perfect outlet for those emotions. He could handle that much.

  “And yes, I’m sorry I didn’t think of this until now,” He looked over at one of the mercenaries who had lost their limb after the fight with the juvenile basilisks. “Really wasn’t time to think much back then given the situation…”

  “So why the stomach acid then?” It was Cole this time, but his voice didn’t sound accusatory, more curious.

  “It was either that or its saliva. I figured having the petrification juice, and the UN-petrification juice in the same place wouldn’t make much sense. So, process of elimination.” He shrugged. “Like I said, I wasn’t sure, but I knew it was worth a shot.”

  “Well I’m thankful you took that shot, thank you.” One of the mercenaries shouted from the small group. Alex turned to find it was a pale man in chain armor that was shredded around one of his arms. The exposed skin was raw and bleeding, but Alex was sure it was grayed stone just a minute before, instead.

  “Don’t mention it. We are stronger together, so we help each other. No use being petty, the monsters will kill us all one by one if we start getting petty.” Alex waved the man off before he could reply. “Look, it was gamble that paid off. Lets move on, we still have things to do after all.”

  Everyone’s eyes shifted to the large serpent corpse that lay a couple dozen feet away. Already the smell was starting to get stronger, and Alex’s nose wrinkled as he thought about the process that came next.