by Andrew Rowe
I let go of Reika’s arm and shoved her pastries toward her. “Sorry, I’ll be back.”
“Hm?” Reika blinked at me, fumbling to grab the pastry bag while balancing her other food items. She’d apparently been too distracted by eating to notice what was happening.
The shadow was rushing right toward us. The crowd parted around them. Few people wanted to get in the way of someone surrounded by a nexus of dark magic.
That made it easier for me to run straight into the middle of the shadow’s path. “Stop.”
I lunged.
The shadow kept rushing toward me, then dropped to the ground and slid on their knees under my lunge, as if the ground was as slick as oil. A moment later, they were up and running again.
I spun, briefly gawked, and then began to pursue.
They were fast, but I wasn’t the only one reacting now. Another armed swordsman lunged for an attempted grab, but the shadow grabbed his arm and flipped him. He hit the ground hard.
The shadow ran on, turning into an alley.
I was fast even without magic helping me. I prided myself on my sprinting speed as a kid, and I only got faster as I grew and reinforced my body with sorcery.
Now, with Dawnbringer’s help, I flowed across the ground with a speed that rivaled an arrow in flight. I dodged and wove between the few civilians who hadn’t cleared the road, rushing into the alley. I was gaining on the shadow, if only barely.
I had the advantage until they started running straight up the nearest wall.
Even with my speed, I couldn’t manage that. They had to have some kind of magical adhesion, as well as enhanced balance on a level that far exceeded my own, in order to run up a vertical surface.
The building they’d picked was at least ten stories tall.
To my credit, I didn’t pause to gawk.
Instead, I rushed to the side of the building and jumped as high as I could.
Then, as my hand brushed the side of the building, I concentrated.
Reshape.
I formed a hand-hold in the stone and pulled myself upward. Then, with my other hand, I reached higher and repeated the process.
My climbing pace was nowhere near as fast as the shadow could run, but it wasn’t slow, either. Hand-over-hand, I pulled myself up. I’d only made it up a few stories by the time they reached the top, but I kept going.
When I reached the rooftop, I just barely saw the shadow in the distance, running across another roof a few buildings down.
My arms ached from the effort of climbing, but my legs were fine.
I broke back into a run.
I kept running, reached the edge of that building, and jumped.
As I hit the next rooftop, the shadow — still one roof away — paused to turn and look at me. I saw their head move, as if considering, but I still couldn’t see their expression underneath the weave of darkness.
Then they turned back around and resumed running.
I belatedly processed what Dawn had said.
You okay?
Like an ambush?
I scanned the area, but kept running. I didn’t see anyone else roof-hopping.
Another jump. I hit the next rooftop just as the shadow jumped one more ahead. I was catching up.
I frowned at that, but kept running.
The shadow slowed, turning again as I jumped toward the roof where they were standing.
The shadow’s hands moved quickly in an intricate pattern I couldn’t trace. A blast of darkness flew toward me, but I swung Dawnbringer downward in a gleaming arc. Her blade tore through the shadow as easily as parchment.
I’d missed the part where the shadow had dropped the caltrops, though. And as I made my dramatic landing on the roof, my right heel landed on top of one of the ones the shadow had thrown while I’d been distracted with the blast of darkness.
Caltrops are little spiky metal things that can be dropped or thrown in someone’s path. They’re basically like little balls of nails, so you can imagine exactly how much it hurts when you step on one.
...assuming your body isn’t harder than iron.
As it is, the spike that I landed on was hard enough to leave a hole in my boot and get stuck, but not hard enough to break my skin. I stumbled in the same way most people might when they hit an unexpected rock in the road, which is to say that it was awkward, but not particularly damaging.
The shadow took a step back in what I’d have to assume was surprise, but I still couldn’t see their face. The cloak of darkness was still wrapped around them too tightly for me to see what they looked like, but I had a good solution to that if I could get close enough.
I focused on the spike in my boot and kicked upward.
Reshape.
The caltrop flew out of my boot, shaped by my command into a single spike.
I missed badly. Fortunately, the shadow’s head turned toward the projectile, and I used that moment to rush forward with Dawnbringer. I was still a good ten paces away, but closing that distance fast.
The shadow folded their arms and tilted their head downward.
Four chains of shadow emerged from their body, surging toward me. As I watched, the ends of the chains shifted into scythe-like blades.
They were fast. I deflected the first with ease, and the second and third with greater difficulty, but the fourth managed a glancing cut across my chest.
It didn’t leave a wound. Instead, I felt a mixture of cold and burning at the spot where the chain had struck.
That didn’t slow me much. I continued advancing, blocking two chains as they descended from above, then jumping over two that swept at my legs.
The shadow threw another blast of darkness. I cut it in half again, then barely deflected a fifth chain that followed in its wake. That darkness behaved differently when cut, seeming to splash over my weapon and onto the ground behind me. It was clearly a different spell, but it hadn’t hurt me.
I took another step forward. I was almost in reach.
I spun just in time to deflect a sword-swipe from a creature formed entirely from shadow, then jumped back to avoid the blade of another shadow.
It took me a moment to realize where they’d come from — that last darkness spell hadn’t been a conventional attack. Instead, it had been more like some kind of summoning spell, and when I’d cut through it, it had formed two creatures instead of one.
I was being flanked now, and that meant the fight had changed. I had to change tactics along with it.
I pointed at one of the sword bearing shadows. “Luminous Arc!”
A blast of light flashed outward and tore straight through the shadow. It melted into the ground, leaving an ink-like stain.
I deflected a rush from the other sword bearing shadow, then danced to the side as the chains flashed toward me again. I took another cut from one of the chains, this time on my left leg.
A moment later, I swung Dawnbringer through the other sword-shadow’s leg. It fell forward, and I cut it in half as it fell.
The chains swept toward me again.
This time, I didn’t try to dodge. Not exactly.
I side-stepped one of the chains before it hit and slipped my left arm around it. As I’d suspected, it was solid enough to grab. I felt cold surge through me, even without touching the bladed portion, but the move was worth the cost.
Then I spun, deflected the other chains with Dawnbringer, and pulled. Hard.
The remaining chains veered off course, and as I’d hoped, the original shadow flew toward me.
I swung the flat of Dawnbringer toward them. “Golden—”
“Dawn!”
Dawnbringer shined brilliantly, nearly blinding, and drove the darkness back. The shadow chains melted away in the wake of the brightness.
The
concealing darkness around my opponent began to burn away, but not completely. I caught a hint of a woman’s face beneath before Dawnbringer met another blade. And in that moment, everything changed.
There was a deafening crack as a burst of concussive force exploded around us, crushing the ground beneath us. The surge of energy flung us apart, leaving a swirling vortex of light and shadow in the place where we’d stood a moment before.
Dawnbringer had met her opposite for the first time.
The explosion left me hurtling toward the edge of the roof. I landed, slid, and focused my mind.
Wall.
A stone wall rose behind me. It wasn’t the most comfortable thing to crash into, but it stopped me from flying straight off the roof.
On the opposite side, I saw my opponent drive her chains into the ground to stop her own movement. The chains tore through several feet of stone before she finally stopped near the opposite edge, a good twenty feet from me.
I could see her more clearly now, the explosion the brief contact between our blades having wiped away much of the shadow that was concealing her.
She wasn’t Wrynn, the person I’d been hoping to find beneath the shadows.
My opponent was taller, paler, and had an eyepatch over her right eye that glimmered with a bright red gemstone in the center. Her hair was auburn and cut short and uneven. It looked like she’d probably just grabbed a handful and cut it off herself at some point.
She was dressed in a practical suit of leather armor that had dozens of tools hanging off of it, only a few of which — like lockpicks and a couple of knives — I could identify at a glance.
And, of course, there was another key difference. She was holding one of the Six Sacred Swords.
Twilight’s Edge was in the form of a jian, a straight sword with a thin blade and a small crossguard. The blade was a yard-long tear in the fabric of the universe. It didn’t seem to spread darkness in the way that Dawnbringer spread light; instead, it seemed to drain the color from the world around it. Looking at the hand that held it was like looking at a black-and-white picture.
I raised Dawnbringer and took a defensive stance, evaluating.
Are you okay?
I’m going to try to talk to the wielder, but be ready.
I took a few slow steps forward. “Easy, there. I just want to talk.”
The woman on the other side of the rooftop extracted her chains from the ground. They whirled around her in a defensive nimbus. She kept her sword raised, but didn’t make any hostile movements.
Instead, she snorted. “Please don’t tell me you’re trying to buy time for the city guard to catch up to us. I’d just trounce them. Again.”
I shook my head. “No, about that sword...”
“Oh, you like?” She waved it through the air. As she did, I could see blackness beginning to spread from the hilt down her hand and across her body. It resembled the darkness that had covered her earlier, and in a few moments, I expected to be unable to see her properly again. “I admit it is pretty impressive, as long as you can get over how creepy the crawling darkness thing is.”
I lowered Dawnbringer. “Did you steal Twilight’s Edge?”
“What?” She blinked. “No! Well, I mean, okay, technically yes? But not like right now. That was ages ago! Like years. You can’t hold me responsible. It’s way past the time limit.”
“Time...limit?”
“Yeah! It’s been way over a year, and no one got him back, so he’s mine now.”
I opened my mouth, then closed it again. Then finally, I replied with, “...I’m pretty sure it doesn’t work like that.”
She gave me a considering look, then shrugged. “I’ve always been a little iffy on how the law works. But anyway, he’s very definitely mine now, and you can’t have him.”
“I’d like to discuss that further, but did you steal something today?”
“Hm? Oh, yeah, sure. Hold on.” She sheathed Twilight’s Edge in what looked like a black metal scabbard on her left hip, then started digging through pouches.
The chains were still whirling around her, but the way she’d seemingly lowered her guard either indicated a tremendous amount of naivety on her part or extreme confidence in her own defensive abilities. Possibly both.
I wasn’t quite sure what to make of her in general yet.
She finally pulled something out of her pouch, then displayed it in front of her. “Here it is! Recognize it?”
The object she was presenting was a hexagon of metal attached to a long black chain. A single bright red rune glowed on the front.
I did not, in fact, recognize it. But I could hazard a guess. “An amulet?”
“Right you are! As expected of another sacred sword wielder. This is one of the six amulets necessary to properly wield Twilight’s Edge.”
Well, that confirms that she recognized my sword.
I’d been uncertain about that, given how little attention she seemed to be paying to Dawnbringer...but perhaps that was just her personality.
And she thinks she still needs the amulets, even though she has the sword. Maybe her sword is just as picky as you are, or...how significant are these amulets, from a magical standpoint?
I frowned at that. I’d known the amulets had magical powers of their own, but I wasn’t thinking of them as being connected to the swords quite that directly.
You mean they’re like the Pale King’s regalia?
Isn’t he supposed to be a historical figure?
I heard a chuckle for Dawn.
Given how much I chided Dawn and Reika for the same assumption, I deserved that jab. I considered a rebuttal, but given that I still had a potentially deadly opponent in front of me, I had higher priorities.
I had a guess about where my fellow wielder was going to go with her next argument. “And I assume you’re going to claim that the amulet belonged to you, because you’re Twilight Edge’s wielder?”
“What? Oh, no. Stealing is stealing. This didn’t belong to me at all.” She shoved it in her pack. “But it will in a year. I think?”
I had no idea how to respond to that.
She took a step closer. “Anyway, that’s Dawnbringer, right? She’s so pretty! Can I see her for just a minute?”
She’s going to try to steal you, Dawn.
I sighed and sheathed Dawnbringer, shaking my head. “That seems unwise. But maybe if I get to know you a bit better later on.” I strode forward and extended a hand toward her.
One of her chains floated downward, extended, and reached out to toward my hand.
“Keras Selyrian,” I offered, shaking the chain.
The woman nodded absently. “Oh, I know. I already read up on you. One seventy-one in the first round is a respectable score. Not as high as mine, of course, but reasonable.”
I released the chain, giving her an appraising look. I didn’t even know how she could have obtained that amount of information this quickly. Was she involved with running the tournament, or had she simply snuck in?
“Anyway, I think I can hear the guard coming, so we’re going to have to cut this short for today.” She smiled as the blackness spread up her neck and toward her face. “I enjoyed the run, though! We should do it again soon.”
She took a few steps backward, the darkness from her sw
ord moving up her face.
I reached out with a hand. “Hold on. What’s your name?”
“Me? I figured you’d already know. I’m the wielder of Twilight’s Edge, bearer of forbidden power, and...well, I’ll let you figure the rest out on your own.” She tore a feather out of her mask, dropping it on the ground. Then she winked at me. “What’s life without a few mysteries?”
The shadows finished spreading across her body. She fell backward, and as she hit the ground, she seemed to flatten into the ground.
A moment later, I could see only what looked like her shadow on the roof. The moment after that, even the shadow was gone.
Only the raven-black feather remained behind. I inspected it dubiously, then pocketed it.
<...Oooh! She has a way better dramatic exit than you do.>
I’m more about dramatic entrances.
Oh.
I slipped on my mask just before other figures came into view atop the nearby buildings.
Dramatic exit it is, then.
I ran to the side of the building furthest from the guards and jumped.
Chapter VIII – Blade Chronicles
I hit the next rooftop a few moments later and broke into a run.
Now masked, I was reasonably confident that anyone who saw me wouldn’t be able to identify me. The mask’s magic didn’t just block detection spells — it was supposed to prevent people from associating my masked appearance with my normal appearance, unless they already knew about the mask beforehand. I didn’t know exactly how it worked, but I assumed it was some kind of deception sorcery effect.
I made sure to slip on a new pair of gloves to cover Dawn’s symbol, though, just in case.
I had to hope that no one had seen me before I’d put the mask on.
I sprinted across the roof, jumped again, and then hit the ground hard on a lower building nearby. Behind me, I could hear distant shouting, but I ignored it.
Three buildings later, I’d run out of tall buildings to jump to. I paused at the edge and concentrated.
Ladder.
I reshaped a portion of the stone on the side of the building, forming hand-holds like when I’d climbed up. Then I began to climb down.