by Max Jager
Ajax could feel his wounds healing, closing, his bruises clearing up. He could feel his legs and arms and the nimble steel of his blade.
"Honor is what makes the fight worth enjoying, honor and life, the only things worth putting on the scale. Nothing else matters but those two. Nothing." Astrix said.
"How you've lived this long, this conceited and this stupid is beyond me." Ajax stretched his body.
"Most things are beyond a wretch such as yourself." Astrix scoffed.
"A wretch, huh." Ajax jumped up and down in rhythm. "I guess dying to me will be that much more embarrassing, then?"
Silence amongst the crowd. Astrix twirled his spear.
"Tell me, heart eater. Had I been as injured as you, as rude as you, as crooked as you; would you have given me the same respect I've given you?" Astrix asked.
"No, the golden rule is for fools," Ajax said. "I would have slit your throat a long time ago."
Astrix laughed to himself again.
"Well, the weak fear the strong." They walked in circles opposite of each other. "And I do not fear you. For what difference will you make of fate, with that simple renewed strength? None. "
"Well then. You're strong and stupid." Ajax could feel a bit of confidence returning. His blade stopped shaking, his eyes were focused. He only hoped it was an authentic article, something that would survive him through the fight.
"I've fed you, I've allowed you your fangs," Astrix said. "So don't disappoint me, put up a fight. Do me that favor."
Ajax was silent. His blade ready, his heart starting that momentous engine roar. Badum, badum, badum.
Astrix stomped on the floor. Both now ready.
"You're amongst rare and good company, Veron." His silver-mask faced away from the light, gaunt shadows across the pale face. "Die comfortably with this knowledge: you are part of the few to face me in open combat. And you will be one of the many to die beneath me."
Ajax XIII
Ajax
They were close enough that Ajax could hear the chinking metal sounds. The loud scrapes were audible, even amongst the crowd that berated and that applauded. The heat of Ajax's sword warmed him, its glowing edge pointed directly in front of him.
Astrix hid behind his shield, only an eye remained of what was him. His spear was high above his head, pointing down towards Ajax. And Ajax began counting the meters of distance and range between the two. His lips quivering as he did so. His feet inched towards Astrix, his clothes were wet with blood.
His courage had not survived even mere minutes. And for all his gloating, here he was now, afraid.
All of him was fidgeting and buckling and all he could find comfort in was that blade of his and its dying glow.
"Aye, what's wrong heart-eater?" Astrix took a step forward. The corner of his slight smile appearing past the shield.
"At a loss of enthusiasm, already?" Astrix took a step forward. Ajax a step back.
"Aren't you aware of what I've done? Doesn't it make you angry?" He thrust his spear forward, into empty air. Ajax moved instinctively. There was no fight, not yet. Just tests.
Ajax moved his head and scanned the room, he lost track of all the demons around the two. He inspected the size of the building instead, every tower and its shadow, every corner and its set of curious eyes. The surrounding perimeter of the building was hidden, almost completely dark and what few torches were there could not illuminate past five feet. The center, where they fought, was the most illuminated and up above, Ajax saw the painted glass pane.
Jesus Christ, quite literally, stared down at him.
The demons hid in that darkness, cheering.
He returned back to the fight, surprised he hadn't be stabbed in his absentmindedness.
Five meters of range, ten meters apart. Ajax thought.
He stopped moving. Astrix took steps forward.
"The scum and the men," Astrix tapped his wide shield against the floor. It rang. "The women and the children, all dead by my command. All to deliver you and Darr unto me. All it took was a promise, words. A few simple words directed at a few simple creatures. Clever, don't you think?"
Ajax twitched at the word 'children'.
"Words lead men. Words destroy empires, delete religions, reduce cultures. So are you surprised then, that words could kill children? It's not like they were that tough, to begin with."
Ajax's eye flinched, his stance changed. His face winced.
"Oh? Already hurt? It's your choice to be offended or not, you know. And I don't think someone who was so hurtful only moments ago should be this offended now. Don't take it so hard, would you?" He paused two meters from striking distance. "She was just a child, a dumb child. I don't even think she was aware of death as it happened. I was there, you know, as a simple rat. The albino."
Ajax's grip clenched. He felt something crawl down his spin, anger.
"What was her name again? Opie? Souve? Mmm. Sophie?"
And of all things to go wrong, this was the worst.
Ajax rushed first. Blade forward. The spear zoomed towards him. He dodged. The wind pushed his hair to its side. He heard his blade whistle, then bang.
Astrix had his shield high in front of him, absorbing the blow. The leather began to burn behind the blade. The smell traveled up Ajax's nose. He kept banging down at the shield, beginning to melt the metal. On the fifth, he was pushed away.
Astrix riposted Ajax.
He exposed his body and kicked him. Ajax flew, his face dragging across the floor. He could taste the granite in his teeth, he could feel the specks of dirt stuck to the roof of his mouth. Blood was coming out from a cut brow, his temples rattled.
His left ear rung as Astrix approached. The heavy footsteps were dulled to him, only a reverberation.
Stand up. He thought. He stabbed his blade into the ground, the stone softened underneath the heat.
The spear shot out again. He rolled to the side. It struck the floor where he was, rope and wood and the metal tip all shattering. The splinters shot out like a compressed shrapnel grenade, hitting Ajax's sides.
It wasn't good enough for Astrix. No, not him.
Astrix screamed, both hands out high above him. He grabbed his shield with both hands and slammed it towards Ajax. Ajax who put his elbows up to block. He was tackled. Thrown. Tossed. Pushed out, towards the edge of the cathedral where the demons laughed and taunted him. Ajax stood, only to feel another push from behind. The audience was pushing him forward, to Astrix.
His chest ached, he could feel his broken bones stabbing his skin and muscles. He could feel his body trying desperately to repair itself, like a warm sting all across his body. A wave of heat and pain. The red steam rose from his inconsistent healing. Cuts and gashes were disappearing and reappearing all the same.
Astrix struck him again, over and over, with the face of his shield, with the edge of it. Ajax dashed away after the tenth blow.
His legs were heavy. His grip was weak. He dropped his blade twice before he picked it up.
All the while Astrix watched, spitting, screaming.
"Darr had spirit!" He walked towards the spear holder, a collection of barrels on top of a cart. He grabbed the handle and pushed it towards the center of the cathedral. "He stood and fought. He! He had in him the strength of will to suffer through agony. Do you?"
Ajax's head rose. His lips were burst, his tongue rolled around to feel the wound. And he shook his head, trying to fix the triplets of blurry images that plagued his vision.
He could see the hordes of demons and their long tendrils or hands and bizarre shapes cheering who in his tossed-head looked like three times the people. He shook his head.
The three images aligned at once. Just in time. A spear was screeching, coming for him. Hungry.
He dodged to the right. The demons behind him were struck by the blow. The cathedral wall behind him broke, the head of a feline-creature was stabbed through the cracked surface. Ajax could hear the dying moan and further around the body
, the frightened shock of the audience. It was an infection that grew and grew and all around the demons were beginning to fear.
Ajax caught it, eventually. A little later than most.
His heart beat fast, his eyes focused. He ran laps around the arena, the spears were shooting out. Like machine gun fire, whizzing and shattering air and concrete. The pops and sharp sounds of bone and stone breaking near him. The columns were collapsed, perforated and weak. The demons were killed for every spear Ajax dodged, their bodies hung and spasmed on the walls they were pinned to. The torches collapsed. The glass and ceiling broke. A new darkness overtook the arena, one filled with the sporadic caustic sounds of death and collapse.
He ran twelve laps, Ajax counted, twelve laps around the cathedral before the javelin's stopped flying.
Berok and Darr were both low to the ground, Darr now silent in his deep state of unconscious, Berok with his hands to his head as his body laid prone on the floor.
Some demons had decided to leave. They rushed through the door, trampling smaller creatures who could not manage. Some still stood, out of paralyzed fear or obligation. Some were forced to stay, half-dead on the broken Gothic walls.
Glass and wood and stone littered the floor. The once sharp and precise architecture was reduced to broken gaps and shattered cement. The building looked sieged, it was in a way, by a single man who stood, breathing heavily, at the center of the cathedral.
Ajax reared his head out of the trunk of a half-standing column. Most of it was lying on the floor, only the stem remained. He pulled his coat away from him, it was sticking.
All his clothes were sticky. Why?
He looked down. Blood. So much of it, trickling down his pants and filling his feet. He was still alive, barely. He wasn't punctured, yet. Rather, he had been cut up by rosy-tinted church glass and other such gaudy shrapnel. His body had tried to heal but now, in his tired state. He couldn't. His blade still in his hands, its bright glow now dimming, its radiant heat now cooling.
"I'm surprised you didn't run with the rest." Astrix said. He reached inside the barrel, only one spear left. He raised it above him, eyed it against the unfiltered light of the broken glass ceiling and spun it like a propeller.
He slammed it three times on the floor, it had a good weight to it.
"Out of conversation, jester?" He painted towards Ajax.
Ajax put his blade forward, he ran.
"I guess you are."
They went at it, the steel and leather and armor all clanking into a harmonious symphony of violence. The way blood rained and sprayed on the floor, the way their sweat trickled down, the intimacy of their bodies interlocked into holds and bouts of strength, all of it seemed like passionate theater. A dance, perhaps. Or lovemaking, to some perverted extent.
And like a dance, like the loss of the self in the moment, they stopped thinking after a while. Both of them.
Ajax just rushed. And rushed. And rushed. His blade banging down on the shield, the heat of his very sword beginning to melt and sawing through the bronze and leather. The sparks flew. The fire spread across the face of the shield. Astrix pushed Ajax away. He looked at his flaming bulwark. The metal was melted through, it was branding his arm. He threw it to the side.
He looked at his spear. It was half its size, a portion of the wooden handle having been burned out. The ash came down from the ruined end like a used cigarette.
Ajax lowered himself. He galloped forward. An opening, he hoped.
A mistake.
Astrix saw the man leap. He moved quickly and launched his spear through Ajax's shoulder. His body would not heal that. It would not even reject the stake in his shoulder blades.
Ajax dropped. He rolled on the floor, away from Astrix and faced him. He pulled out the wood. His wound suckled pursed and suckled air as the stake came out. Ajax felt the jolt of pain, then the burn, and eventually, the weak wetness of his blood escaping his body.
And Astrix, weary and angry, annoyed and confidant, reached down to the side of his metal skirt. He took out his gladius and walked forward. His pace was slow. His head hung forward.
Ajax saw the shadow approaching. He could feel his stomach turning, his cowardice returning. As if all confidence had bled out of that wound as well and all that remained was the frightened fidgeting of a boy. He looked at his sword, then to Astrix, then back. One of his arms was useless.
Of course it was. It was stabbed through.
It didn't matter now. He had to try anyway, he had to fight. He stood and steadied his blade as best he could with his only good hand.
"This is the land of warriors," Astrix said. "And your existence here is a mockery. Coward and Clown, whichever you be, know that this charade ends here."
Ajax looked around. Desperation guided him. The collapsed walls, the broken ceiling. The dark ring around the cathedral now growing and covering the corpses and stray observers. The torches unlit. A veil of complete blackness was nearly enveloping them both, and they remained just in the center, just in the last circle of light. Them and Darr and Berok.
And he looked down at his shaking arm.
"Keep your blade up, die with decency," Astrix said.
Ajax could feel the king approaching, his long shadow covering Ajax completely.
And he looked down at his broken arm. It was warm now.
Was it warm? Why warm? It ought to be numb.
He looked at his useless arm, below the black coat, below the cufflink and even further below the white undershirt.
He looked around himself, towards the ring of darkness. Complete darkness. He looked at his sword. It wasn't glowing anymore, still a bit hot. But not glowing.
His heart almost stopped. His breathing hastened.
His arm was losing blood, that's why he hadn't felt it at first. That terribly tight, terribly hot string of fate. That lasso, that bondage wrapped around his arm, bright and hot at the presence of demons and monstrosities. Though not to Astrix, not that immortal monstrous soul of a man. But to the audience? To the very crowd Astrix had invited? Oh, yes, it burned for them bright.
And it was hidden. Underneath the rags of his coat, underneath his shirt. Hidden well.
"How will you die?" Astrix threw his helmet off. His white hair fell down. "Standing or begging. What suits you best?"
Ajax smiled. He ran away.
Far from Darr and Berok. Towards the edge of the cathedral, into the absolute darkness where only the moans of the dying demons remained.
"With a sword through your back, then, is it!" Astrix ran after him, thinking to throw his gladius. But Ajax had run too far deep into the darkness by then.
Astrix stopped inches from the tapered end of the deep shadows, near a pillar. He tried to look inside the darkness and saw nothing.
"Shadows and trickery, do you think it'll keep you safe?" Astrix screamed.
He heard a scoff repudiate him. His face scowled.
"Die in the bowels of darkness then, snake. I offered you a quick death, but now you will writhe." Astrix put his blade forward as he came in.
Ajax saw nothing in the darkness of the edge of the cathedral. Not even with his crimson eyes. He was coming in and out of doors, passing walls and columns and disappearing further into the false night.
He touched something.
He jerked his foot away.
He stepped down on it, the soft flesh. Oh, just a corpse on the floor. His foot made a light noise.
Astrix heard him. And he jumped away. He felt his hair move from the wind of a passing blade. Again, and again. He was fighting in that darkness, fighting invisible knives and noises. He danced. He dodged. He ran.
And once again bid his time in darkness. His heart raced. And he thought, only for a brief moment, of what he stood to lose. The thoughts flooded him, images of death and misery. The deaths of himself, of Darr, of Berok.
Then, as if stabbed again, he saw the terrible image. Of the girl, Sophie, on that rooftop, split open.
He w
anted to groan. He held his mouth shut.
He focused, holding his breath. The footsteps were coming closer, judgment was coming closer.
He hid his blade in his coat and almost as if in surprise, found something else underneath. Whatever it was, he held it in his mouth and bit down hard on it to stop himself from screaming.
Whatever he did was hot and painful and almost made him wail, had he not held the strange object in his mouth. He heard the footsteps approaching. His blade was still down, beneath his clothes, hiding its light glow.