Kain's breath caught in his throat as he watched the black corruption spread across Aegis' massive stone body.
The earthen texture and sandy colour of the golem darkened, the once sturdy and familiar surface now appearing slick, as though coated in black oil or tar.
Fissures broke out along his rocky body that emitted black smoke, and his massive form trembled. Then, his eyes—his once unwavering, sandy-yellow eyes—began to bleed into a haunting, soulless red.
"No…" Kain whispered, his voice barely audible over the battle's din, dread settling like a vice around his chest.
The moment a contracted creature succumbed to corruption, the contract itself would shatter, sending a backlash of pain deep into the beast tamer's soul.
Worse still, the turned contract would immediately become another enemy, no different from the abyssal creatures they had been fighting.
And Aegis, who had been acting as the final protector for many of the defending guards, was standing mere steps from the defensive line. Now, the position he had taken to better defend his allies would prove to have disastrous consequences once the change was completed. If he turned completely, he would become a huge threat to their already dwindling forces.
Kain braced himself, his body tense, waiting for the unbearable agony of a severed bond.
He also recalled his other contracts from their various tasks and told them to focus on guarding his body in the inevitable event that his defenceless body was attacked by the nearby Aegis while he was coping with the backlash.
But the backlash never came. His breath remained steady, his mind unpierced by the soul-shattering pain of losing a contract.
The golem's massive figure remained still. Save for a faint, almost imperceptible tremor, Kain would have thought that Aegis was a silent statue. His massive fists clenched and unclenched, as if wrestling with something.
And his eyes that had almost fully shifted to red, were now changing. Between pulses of crimson (the sign of the corrupted), streaks of sandy-yellow flickered desperately, as though waging a battle of their own.
Kain's heart pounded. Corrupted creatures didn't hesitate. They didn't struggle. They simply turned and attacked their former allies like mindless creatures with no memories of their former selves.
But Aegis… Aegis wasn't attacking.
He wasn't lunging at Kain or the others, nor did he let out the twisted, otherworldly screeches of the fully turned. Instead, he stood frozen, his entire body wracked with violent tremors.
The corrupted abyssal energy surged through him like a storm, but something—some part of Aegis—was resisting it.
A spark of hope flared in Kain's chest. "Aegis?" he called out hesitantly, stepping forward, despite every instinct screaming at him to stay back.
Aegis' head twitched in his direction, but the motion was sluggish, unnatural. His mouth, which rarely ever moved beyond speaking a few words to Kain occasionally, opened slightly as if he wanted to respond. Instead, a deep, guttural sound rumbled from within him, a cross between a groan of pain and a growl of a hungry beast.
The battlefield continued to rage around them—abyssal creatures swarmed the walls, corrupted humans and beasts alike turned on their former comrades, and Vauleth, as an immune 'True' dragon, fought tooth and claw to hold the line. But for Kain, all of it became background noise. His focus remained entirely on Aegis.
Aegis let out another strangled sound, his body convulsing as if trying to shake off an unseen force. The corruption on his body pulsed violently, spreading in jagged lines across his stone form, but then—
A single patch of his body lightened.
Just slightly. Just barely.
The corruption wasn't advancing as fast as it should have—in fact, it was the opposite. It seemed more like it was losing ground. It was as though Aegis was holding it back, gradually adapting to the invasion and fighting against it, resisting it with every ounce of his being.
Kain's mind raced. Could it be possible? Could Aegis… withstand the corruption?
If Aegis was truly fighting back, then Kain couldn't just stand there. He had to act.
He reached out through their bond, pushing past the distortion, searching for any trace of Aegis beneath the abyssal taint. The connection was muddled, unstable, but there—deep beneath layers of encroaching darkness—Kain sensed something familiar. A presence that had not yet been consumed and turned.
"Aegis," Kain said, his voice carrying over the chaos. "You can fight this."
The smoke that escaped from the cracks on his body seemed to be escaping from within him, as though being expelled by Aegis himself. With each new fissure, more of his body reclaimed its original colour and texture.
The black spots signifying his corruption were continuing to spread while being simultaneously expelled. Kain now had hope of not losing Aegis.
But it still wasn't enough. Aegis' body was now in a balanced equilibrium that may tilt against them at any time once Aegis lost the energy to resist.
Kain stepped closer, placing a hand against Aegis' shaking arm. He poured all of his remaining spiritual power into their bond, reinforcing the connection between them and channelling as much spiritual power as possible to support Aegis' internal battle. Unfortunately, due to his constant refuels of Bea, he was practically an empty tank.
Therefore, Kain actually overdrafted his own life force, converting it into spiritual power—a last-ditch life-saving means possessed by all beast-tamers but is scarcely used due to the long-lasting and potentially permanent negative effects doing so could have to their potential.
Receiving the last of Kain's energy, a deep tremor ran through Aegis' body. But before Kain could see the effect, see if Aegis was saved, the side-effects of burning his lifeforce caught up to him.
His vision blurred, his knees buckling as exhaustion clawed at his very core. Aegis' form flickered between corruption and resistance, the battle waging on inside him far from over. But Kain had no strength left to watch the outcome. As darkness overtook his mind, a single thought lingered—had he done enough?