Ela bled.
At first, limbo didn't understand what his eyes were seeing.
Red streaked line across her sleeve, even it low light it was bright and noticable, it happens too sudden, soaking into cloth that had always smelled of herbs and warm earth. Her knees bend, she didn't screamed but the weight of her own body was hard to balance that made something inside him crack.
"No!!!!" Limbo shout.
The word left his mouth without second thoughts.
Ela's body hit the ground sideways, breath knocked from the chest. Dust rose as she collapsed. Someone shouted her name, it was Ronan, raw and sharp but it reached limbo as if arrow perce his heart and blank consciousness.
Everything was slowed.
Too slow.
Limbo stood frozen, the battlefield still ringing the sounds, metal, screams, dying beasts. But all of it drained into the silence.
His gaze locked on the thin line of blood spreading beneath her.
That blood shouldn't exist.
His hands began to shake.
"Medic!" Ronan roared. "Healer! Someone get the healer, RIGHT NOW!"
Limbo dropped to his knees beside her before anyone could stop him. His palms hovered uselessly over the wound, his mind was racing like crazy horse.
He almost chocked himself in panic.
"No no no—this isn't how it supposed to—"
Ela's eyes fluttered, they struggle to focused. Then a faint breath escape form mouth.
Alive...
The relief He felt was beyond the words.
But soon the undirectional rage filled replacing fear.
Limbo tore open his pouch hanging at waist, rushing with trembling fingers, he pulled out silver bloom some grabbed some spilled. He crushed them with others herbs into powder, every emergency mixture he carried was used. His movements were fritened, messy, nothing like he's usually precise calmness He always carries.
"Hold on mother," he whispered, voice breake.
"Please... please...just—"
He quickly put his hands on the wounds, "Heal!"
The mana surged through his hands as he, too fast, too strong. Even the screamed as the energy pored into the wounds, flesh began stitch unnaturally fast.
Ela gasped.
Limbo coughed violently, blood splatering onto the side dirt as the feedback of force energy through his chest. His vision blurred, but he didn't stop. He couldn't.
Not until ensuring the bleeding is stopped.
Not until the wounds sealed enough to no longer threaten her life.
Not until her breathing became steadied.
Then slowly his strength was gave out.
He pushed forward himself, gasping, heart was hammering painfully against his ribs.
"She'll live... she's out of danger," someone said panicked and urgently.
Ronan knelt opposite to him, hands were already supporting Ela's shoulders, eyes never leave her face. His jaw was clenched so tight that it tremble.
Limbo barely heard them.
Because the forest laughed.
A low mocking sound echoes out from between the trees.
Hehehe, hahah hahha...
Limbo's turns he's head sharply.
Shapes moved in light beyond the barrier from the forest.
Not the mass swarm that appears before.
These were larger, smarter than others.
Slowler, deliberate.
They advanced while dragging something.
Bodies.
The smaller corrupted beasts, broken, dying, some still twitching.
They were thrown forward, shoved against the barrier like the meat shield.
A meat sheild that they carried with one hand and wooden banch in other.
Limbo's breath became shallow.
"They're... using them," someone whispered with shiver and horror.
The beasts behind them laughed again and again, wet, guttural disgusting sound full of crude and half intelligence.
Suddenly everyone fet the pressure increasing in surrounding.
The rage was floding in Limbo's veins.
The heat and fire, generated from his pressure.
The kind that makes bones feel too small for what's inside them.
The system itself screamed warning after warning, he didn't hear, or choose not too.
The fragments recoiled, vibrating violently inside him like a frightened fragile animal or a child.
Limbo stood on his place.
Slowly.
Every present eye turned toward him.
"No," Ronan said sharply. "Limbo — don't."
As if he knew what's coming, a fear and worry that divide in half.
But Limbo didn't hear.
The laughter gre louder.
One of the giants struck the barrier with a wooden weapon in backhand, splintering the remains of a corpse against it.
Something inside limbo shattered as he noticed something.
He reached inward not careful, like he didn't thought for a second.
He reached down.
The repository responded to his call.
A dull wooden hilt appeared in his grasp as he pulled his hand out.
Then metal coil unfurled, clinking softly as they fell free, they streach outward, slowly growing longer...longer ... until the blade brushed the ground with the sound.
Gasps rippled through the defenders inside the barrier.
"That's —" someone remembers.
"No."
"An iron..whip?"
Cold and silent voice call for someone.
"..URUMI..."
The URUMI fully opened from his slumber.
The air recoiled.
Wind reversed it's direction.
Mana across the battlefield warped violently, as colours bends, green, yellow, crimson, white, bleeding into one another like oil on water, yet bonded like water and milk.
The ground vibrates.
As limbo slammed the URUMI into the earth hard.
The sound wasn't like ordinary metal.
It was..like a roar.
A roar of Thunder.
The forest screamed.
The lightning didn't not explode, it sang.
But suddenly, the first giant lost its head.
Everyone was stunned mouth vide open, no one saw what happened, the strike was clean.
One moment it stood laughing, mocking.
The next its skull jump sliding from its shoulders, body collapsing seconds later in disbelief.
A deep silence followed.
Then, it begins..
Chaos.
The remaining beasts surged forward in fury as they saw one of them fall, they abandoned their position or strategy if they had, rage replacing mockery.
So limbo moved.
Not like a warrior.
Nor like the mage.
Like something dancing to a rhythm no one else could hear.
His stance twisted unnaturally, feet sliding, body leaning too far, too loose, yet every movement was perfect. The URUMI whirled around him, invisible until it struck.
Slash....slash...shashsss.
Three bodies fell apart mid-motion.
Slash.
A second arc carved through muscle and bone in a single breath.
Blood rained.
Mana screamed.
The barrier cracked, not because of beast, but from the force of Limbo's movement tearing space itself.
"Stop him!" Someone cried.
"Get away from him!"
Fear spread faster than courage.
Limbo didn't hear them.
He couldn't.
The dance had begun.
Babam bam b bam—babam bam b bam...
He leapt.
The URUMI tra wd four colour through the air as he spun, body twisting, dropping low, rising again, slashes landing faster than sight.
The beast tried to surround him.
A mistake.
Limbo's movement became like violent poetry.
Up.
Down.
Around. Surround.
Through.
They cane in range where even blind swing, can turn lethal.
The sound of cutting wind drowned out screams.
Limbo fell.
Bodies collapsed.
Some burned where they stood, lightning detonating inside them, some disintegrating flesh from the inside out.
No one was spared who came in contact of URUMI or rather limbo.
From a distance, holding Ela, Ronan saw and tried to reach him.
But he couldn't.
The pressure alone drove him back.
Ela slowly stirred weakly, something inside force to wake. Her eyes open fluttered just long enough to see her son wreathed in violent light, eyes empty of recognition.
"Lim..bo?"
The words barely left her lips.
Limbo didn't hear, but something was felt.
The last giants advanced together.
He met them head-on.
One strike.
Two.... three.
They didn't fall.
They vanished as if they were never present to begin with.
Ash scattered across scorched earth.
The battlefield went silent.
Limbo stood alone.
Holding a tight grip.
With slowly heaving chest.
Lightning crawling accross his skin like living veins.
The URUMI still sang.
He didn't stop.
He couldn't.
He turned toward the forest.
The rage demanded more.
The ground began to burn where he stepped. Trees blackened.
Ronan shouted his name until his throat tore.
Elder chaya arived, staff glowing as she unleashed suppression magic, seals, chants, force barriers.
They shattered on contact.
She called for the guardian.
Nothing answered.
Her face went pale.
"This isn't corruption," she whispered in horror.
"This is grief given form."
Limbo raised the URUMI again...
...and then...
"Li...limbo..."
A gentle hand touched his arm.
Warm.
Shaking.
Real.
Worried.
Ela stood before him, supported by Ronan,
Blood still staining her clothes.
Her eyes were full of pain.
And love.
Everyone saw rage...she was the pain, grief and helplessness, and self anger.
Limbo frozen with touch.
The URUMI clattered to the ground.
The lightning flickered.
His breath hitched.
"Mom...?"
Her arms wrapped around him.
The rage collapsed inward and the cry burst..
The world tilted.
Limbo scream, not due to anger, but agony and fell into her arms as the Tandava finally mercifully, ended.