Academia: The House of Lionheart

XIV

Impossible, thought Regina. It seemed implausible. There was no way the scourge could infect any species of man — yet there stood a man, ravenous as a rabid dog, swinging an arm charred black with strings of dark matter in his skin, wiggling their tails in the air like worms. Black, sharpened bones stuck out of his fingers, hanging like scythes over his grey nails. Just one part of his body was afflicted — his right arm, and there wasn't a single inch of skin up to his shoulder left as human cells, but as the ashen coal of the scourge instead.

From the sight of it, there was no doubt about it — it really was the virus, afflicting a man for the first time in decades since its first appearance. But how? For animals, the scourge quickly turned their vessels into beasts. Here, however, this man was fighting for his humanity. His left arm held a child captive as she screamed for help, and his infected hand swung at his assailants. A man dropped dead before the girl, his blade snapped in two and his blood splattered over the door to an elder's home.

Was he fighting to save his life? Or was his mind plagued by the scourge? If the warriors tried to kill him, they would fail — the scourge could only be vanquished by blades of vandrilium steel. But Regina didn't want to kill him — he would prove to be a valuable specimen to study. She marched down the dirt path, drawing her sword with the silhouette of reddened elven runes spinning over the blade. She imbued her spiritual energy with the vandril to cast her magic through it, giving her spells the capability of slaying the scourge-infected man.

The warriors knew her face — it was notorious, and not only as the grandmaster of the Legion of Raiders.

"The Crimson Witch," they murmured as they made way for her to reach the afflicted.

"Tell me," said Regina, "Are you a man . . . or are you a beast?"

There was no response. He stared her down, struggling with the child. There were other bodies near the paddy fields of warriors and farmers alike. He left nothing but destruction in his wake. The villagers told her he'd waltzed into their rice paddies and grabbed the girl, trying to run away. What was his objective?

It was good to know the scourge was never airborne. If it was, all their animals would be dead or beasts at that point. Everyone would've been infected already. The virus needed to get into their bloodstream, so looking back at the corpses, she wondered why there wasn't any reaction to the man's attacks. If it really had afflicted him as a virus, a single scratch from those scythe-like bones protruding from his hands should've been enough to infect another man.

Could it be that only certain hosts could sustain the scourge? He was struggling to speak. His teeth chattered, his head twitched, and those scythes of his threatened the girl. He still had thought — a scourge-plagued mind would have killed her long ago. They only sought bloodshed, after all.

"I . . . it . . . i-it doesn't . . . matter," he tripped over his words. "Man or beast, it doesn't matter."

"What do you want?"

"Salvation. Redemption."

The ground shook before them. An earthquake brought the villagers and the Lionhearts to the floor as they ran to open ground. Regina and the warriors held fast, but the ground began to crumble beneath the man. He smiled, but she wasn't going to let him get away.

"Ignitia avianus," the grandmaster swung her sword, calling fire from her blade in roars echoing over the village. A flaming bird soared through the air, cutting through the man's infected arm. Scourge beasts resembling bears leaped out of the ground, sacrificing themselves as they took the spell head on. The man vanished into the hole with the girl. Dozens of beasts climbed over the hills and the paddy fields, making an easy escape for the abductor.