Chapter 26: Point of No Return (Part 2: Finale)

With a hard clatter, Milo’s body thrashed against the steel rods of the gate.

"S-Shit...!"

Clinging tight onto the top bars, he coughed and saw a drop of red fly out with it.

"B-Blood."

Yes, because that was what he was missing!

Mistaken for a hostile ghost and hunted for it; two days of nothing to eat nor drink; a nap that snored away Aldous’ departure. Now internal bleeding! Awesome!

Shaking it all off, Milo threw the hook outside and pulled himself over the spiky ends of the gate’s poles.

He crossed the threshold and slid down, palms rasping over the ragged metal. Nobody shouted at any escapist.

The flail’s outline went on shrinking, fading farther out with every step Milo took. Aldous had not reached the Calamity’s territory yet.

He ran.

After making it past the capsule platforms and onto bare fields, he quit looking behind him. A point of no return was a point of no return.

The road climbed between meadows and bare-topped hills. Each downhill sloshed something behind his breastbone, and he spat the taste of it into the grass.

If the Calamity had manifested on such terrain, all the better. More hiding spots for Milo. But winds accompanied every manifestation; the rare windless kind he dismissed as a possibility on the spot like anyone else.

He had no helmet. A rock to the head would knock him out. Game over.

Soon, the flail’s outline stopped shrinking. It only became bigger and clearer at the horizon, eventually darting side to side around a single place.

Don’t finish without me.

Adrenaline drove his legs that had no energy left in them. Mist thickened over the skies, and from the top of the hill, he finally saw the Eye.

Aldous burst out of the clouds. For a moment, Milo could see the man instead of just his weapon’s outline.

A shrouded figure lunged after him, and the gray-green cyclone followed it, mold dust and ropes of flies sweeping Aldous back out of sight.

From that distance Milo made out pieces. Shroud was wound tight over the skin the color of old tallow. Restless twitches moved under it.

He had read about this Host in the records, as it manifested near his roads more often than most. Officially, it rated as a bringer of Magnitude IV havoc. A small one.

Still, it was nothing short of spectacular.

As he drew closer, more details emerged, the wind packing grit into his teeth.

The land at the outer ring sickened in a moving radius, worms twirling out of the ground and crops going gray along the line.

Aldous sprang inside and smashed the Host’s chest with the flail’s head. The boom lagged behind the swing and came up at Milo out of the ground, into his boot soles.

Struck, it shed omens: gray-amber droplets crystallized as they fell from the sky, and an Ashpicker’s fortune slowly piled up over the battlefield.

With free money on the ground, Milo’s legs found something better to run on than fear. But the gust picked up, and the payday stayed untouchable.

The flail dipped in a bob. Dust burst out of the cyclone, and the weapon came up again.

Alright... how do I do this?

Milo quit marching straight at the Eye and planted himself a good hundred meters away from it. Any closer and he was airborne.

The dip-bob pattern was proving consistent, for reasons he couldn’t decipher.

Bob, pause, dust wave, up again.

Was Aldous breathing out?

Milo watched for the next dip and blew out a breath, lowering the Turnhook along with the flail.

"Fuck..." he muttered, turning his back on the storm.

Years spent on roasting cowards inside his head, and now he had become one.

He had put a gun in his mouth. Now he couldn’t make himself face the clouds. Back when nothing of his was worth saving, he had made peace with death.

Milo planted the Iron Turnhook into the dirt anyway and spread his fingers in front of his face.

Survived Misprint encounter, he counted, folding down the thumb. Survived gun to mouth. Survived Seb’s baton, survived maids’ and cooks’ suspicion, survived Mr. Cald...

The hand closed into a fist, and the tally spilled onto the other one. Behind his back, the horizon thundered on.

And none of that amounted to a raging Calamity with a Parish Warden inside of it.

Survived Aldous, once, with a slingshot...

That was something relevant!

Aldous could Turn it. Milo had beaten Aldous with a slingshot.

And now he could see every swing through the clouds. The most aware person on the field. Him.

Unless Aldous dropped the flail.

With the Doom’s noise and whistling intensifying, guessing blind would not do.

"Bookmark?"

[ Bookmark Active ]

[ Traced: A Nimble Flanged Flail ] 𓂃🖋

As the sheet floated, completely indifferent to the air that should’ve shredded it, Milo turned back.

"A Nimble Flanged Flail? What does it do?"

...

The sheet had nothing to add to the name he came in with. All he had was the weapon’s movements and his own guesses.

"Wait..."

The whistling had closed in. Underfoot, the dirt shivered, and he looked down.

Quivering out of the hole was his Turnhook.

Worms had come to twirl in front of his own boots, and with the gust ramming his face, he had to look sideways to be able to breathe.

He pulled the hook free and faced the Eye.

It was moving along the road toward the school.

Milo stood in its way.

Right.

He had crossed his point of no return an hour ago, but no one told him it could cross back.

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⋆˚࿔ Coming right up: "The Final Blow (Part 1)" ... ⤵︎ [!]