Restart Again: Volume 3

by Adam Ladner Scott

  RESTART AGAIN

  VOLUME 3

  Written By: Adam Ladner

  Artwork By: Alice Catrinel

  Table of Contents

  1. BROKEN SIGIL

  2. DECLARATIONS

  3. A JOURNEY TAKEN TWICE

  4. THE MOUNTAIN GATE

  5. A LOT TO LEARN

  6. OLD FRIENDS

  7. HOMESTEAD

  8. OURS

  9. CURRICULUM

  10. ADVANCEMENTS

  11. LAST SUPPER

  12. FRIENDS

  13. ADVENTURE

  14. PLANS

  15. PEACE, AT LAST

  16. NO MORE LIES

  17. THE END OF THINGS

  18. MADE WHOLE

  19. RETURN

  20. PERSPECTIVE

  21. THE DARK BELOW

  22. RETRIBUTION

  1. BROKEN SIGIL

  “Kill them.”

  Even as Val took a reluctant step towards us, followed closely by the remaining men of her Trinity Guard, I wanted to believe I had misheard the perfectly clear order. After everything we went through together, everything we did for you...even knowing we’re innocent. I felt a great sadness building in my gut, and I focused my energies down to replace it with another emotion: rage. You said you cared about us, and you followed his orders anyways.

  “I will take care of the girl,” Val ordered quietly over her shoulder. “Be cautious engaging that man; he is much more dangerous than he appears.”

  What she thought was a hushed order rang clearly in my ears. You’re right, Val. I am dangerous. But so is she. I leaned down to whisper in Lia’s ear. “Don’t hold anything back, Lia. She may have been our friend before, but—”

  “I know,” she growled under her breath. I could feel her energy burning like a bonfire as her enhancements activated and grew in strength, and her feelings of betrayal and anger crashed over me in increasingly powerful waves. “She’s going to regret this.” I reached out to put a comforting hand on her shoulder, but she sprinted forward before I made contact. She cut a wide path around the two Trinity Guardsmen who had advanced towards our position, focusing her assault directly against Val, who had fallen behind to ensure she was still interposed between us and Virram.

  Her lightning dash to the front of the room didn’t seem to register with my two advancing targets, who increased their pace to take advantage of their new two-on-one advantage. “If you throw down your sword now, I’ll make sure both you and the girl are given a painless death,” the man in plate armor shouted through the small slit in his greathelm. “No need to drag out what is an inevitable conclusion, don’t you think?” His voice was remarkably higher and gentler than I had expected given his imposing stature, and it sounded as though he was almost empathetic to my situation.

  “Throw down your weapons, and I’ll consider letting you live,” I answered coolly as my mind sharpened into an adrenaline-fueled focus. “My fight isn’t with you.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong,” the knight replied. “The King’s Sword is sworn to fight the King’s enemies, and the King’s Strength enforces his justice. If you’ve threatened him, you’ve threatened us as well.”

  The runes along my sword flashed in unison, and the pent-up mana in my core crashed throughout my body as the enhancements took effect. “Oh, that’s my mistake, then,” I said, shrugging. “I guess my fight is with you after all.” Without warning, I launched forward and leveled a cut at the Sword’s helmeted head.

  Lifetimes of fighting against every type of weapon imaginable gave me a distinct advantage in most fights, and I leveraged that knowledge with my opening gambit. My experience with greatsword fighters told me two things about my current situation: he would have a hard time blocking attacks that required a large range of movement from his weapon, and he would burn through energy exponentially faster than I would swinging the massive blade around. In contrast to that knowledge, my recent sparring match with Val had taught me that the weaponry these men wielded was extremely powerful and would most likely hold a few unseen surprises. I knew that my success would come from how well I adapted to the unique styles I was about to encounter, so I increased the energy flow to my Combat Acceleration and focused my Detection on the knight’s sword.

  Like the first time I clashed with Val, something unexpected happened. Instead of wrenching the sword upwards to deflect the blow, the knight rushed his hand across the face of the blade next to the crossguard. The mana reserves within the sword flashed, and his hand pulled away with a dagger that hadn’t existed before. It was made of the same black metal of the greatsword, complete with a matching gold guard and grip, but it left no trace of where it had been pulled from the main weapon; the greatsword shimmered like stone under the summer sun, then reshaped itself into a seamless blade that was slightly smaller than it had been before.

  He can change the form of his weapon almost instantly. I’m not fighting a greatsword user, I’m fighting an armory. It was a fascinating discovery, full of potential and unanswered questions, but my immediate curiosity had been sated. His newly created dagger flicked up and redirected my opening strike harmlessly over the top of his greathelm, and I followed the momentum of the attack into a tight spin towards the King’s Strength. Now, what do you have to offer me?

  My maneuvering brought me into striking range of the pugilist, and I lashed out with a quick stab aimed at his unarmored chest. He dodged the attack effortlessly, ducking to let the blade fly over his shoulder while he slipped towards me with a right hook. I dashed to the side to let the blow go wide, then brought my sword up to deflect his follow-up punch. When the heavy gauntlet connected with the flat of my sword, the force of the attack threw me backwards as if I had been struck by a warhammer. My boots skidded across the polished stone floor until I crashed into one of the pillars lining the hall, and the breath was knocked from my lungs.

  I realized that I had been watching for some sort of magical change so closely that I missed the fact that the gauntlets’ ability had already been activated. As opposed to the greatsword’s stagnant pool of energy that activated when needed, the mana within the gauntlets was burning almost imperceptibly along the surface of the metal at all times. Simple enough, I suppose.

  As the Sword and Strength regrouped and closed in on me again, I took the brief moment of respite to check on Lia. She had pushed Val back towards the throne platform, raining down hellish attacks against the tower shield so ferociously that each blow traced a trail of sparks along the metal. As the assault continued, she shouted increasingly pained rebukes at Val. “We trusted you! You promised you would help us! I thought you were a good person!”

  While I watched their battle unfold, another part of my mind whirred into overdrive to formulate a plan of attack for my own combat. Between these two, the Strength is clearly the bigger threat: a single punch from those gauntlets could easily kill me if I’m not careful. I just need them separated for—

  My thoughts were interrupted by a wild haymaker aimed directly at my head. I dashed sideways just in time to see the pillar I had been resting against explode into stone shrapnel as the pugilist’s fist crushed through it as if it were made of cardboard. He laughed as he chased after me, knocking his fists together like the echo of a beating drum. “I can’t remember the last time someone was able to block one of my punches!” he cried out excitedly. “You’ve really got my blood pumping now!”

  Bingo. Another memory surfaced from my practice session with Val: a lesson I had learned from a moment of introspection. Just like I had grown complacent with my swordsmanship by relying on my combat enhancements, the Strength had grown dependent on his crutch as well. What’s going to happen when I don’t go down i
n one punch? Will you remember what a real fight feels like? The corner of my lips curled into a vicious smile. Let’s find out.

  I turned hard on my heel and dove forward, sliding on my knees underneath a right hook from the King’s Strength to launch a rising attack at his armored comrade. He caught the strike with the flat of his greatsword, and I saw a brief moment of panic through the slit in his helm as he struggled against the force of the blow. The hand holding the dagger darted up the length of his blade and came away with a shortsword, which he swung over the top of our clashing weapons towards my face. I heaved upwards and slipped beneath our blades, dodging just in time to avoid another strike from the pugilist.

  It became abundantly clear as our battle progressed that the two Trinity Guards had been fighting side by side for years. Every time I created enough space to engage the Sword on his own, his parries and counter attacks always slowed my movements enough for the Strength to circle and attack me from behind. Likewise, the Strength’s quick movements and devastating punches consistently drove me backwards towards a primed and waiting slice from the enormous pitch-black blade of the Sword. If it hadn’t been for the Detection magic providing a second set of eyes in the back of my head, I would have succumbed to an unseen blow almost immediately.

  The two fighters pressed their numbers advantage well by never allowing me a chance to retreat and regroup, and although I could see the strain taking its toll in their movements, my muscles had started to ache as well. Enough of this. Time to show them something they haven’t seen before. I pivoted to engage the Sword alone, drawing out the expected flanking maneuver from the Strength. When he closed in to throw a punch at the back of my head, I spun and braced my sword with both hands as the blow impacted on the flat of my blade. The attack sent a painful, jarring shock up through my arms as I was lifted from the ground and thrown backwards across the hall.

  I landed in a low crouch, already prepared for the next coming attack. The pugilist charged towards me in an attempt to capitalize on what he thought was my mistake, leaving the Sword behind in his haste. Mana rushed down my arm as I raised my sword and pointed it at the Strength’s chest, suffusing the blade with energy. I continued the channeling until he was only a few steps away, raising his fist for another devastating punch.

  The fire rune on my sword flared to life, and a gout of crimson flames exploded from the length of the blade. I could see the vicious red light reflected in the Strength’s eyes as he desperately tried to escape the inferno, holding up both of the massive gauntlets to cover his face and throwing himself to one side. It was to no avail; the point of my sword followed him as he fell, and the hall filled with the sound of screams and the scent of burning flesh.

  There was a wordless bellow of anger as the Sword rushed at me to avenge his fallen comrade, now wielding a massive black spear. I spun sideways, narrowly avoiding the attack, then ducked as he whirled around with a horizontal slash from two longswords. The surface of my sword still rippled with fire as I swung it around to parry his next attack, and I unleashed another torrent of flame as our weapons met. It licked harmlessly around his greatsword and heavy vambraces, but I felt a momentary waver in his resistance as the fire grew.

  Another shift in his weapon caught me off guard as the blade morphed into a khopesh, and he suddenly wrenched the hooked weapon backwards. The opposite edge of my sword caught in the hook and was yanked from my hands, clattering to the floor behind the massive wall of raging armor. With another shimmer, the khopesh changed back into a greatsword, and he raised the weapon above his head with a fearsome warcry. I knew that the length of the weapon would reach me no matter where I tried to dodge, so I took a deep breath and flooded my body with mana.

  My stomach lurched as the world around me slowed to a crawl. The knight that loomed over me seemed to be frozen in place, apart from the massive sword that was steadily descending toward the top of my head. Although I could perceive my surroundings perfectly, taking action to influence them was a challenge; it felt as if both the air around me and my muscles themselves were holding me back, in an attempt to keep me from surpassing their preconceived notions of how fast I was allowed to move.

  Pushing on my Strength and Agility enhancements, I began to force my left hand up and over my head. My brain was moving leagues faster than my arm, calculating how much additional force to add and which microscopic corrections to make in order to perfectly connect the flat of my palm with the falling blade. As the blade fell ever closer, I dragged my right foot backwards and turned my body sideways, leaning back as far as I could while still keeping my balance. When I finally felt the cold steel of the greatsword against my skin, I channeled all of my focus into the open-handed strike.

  Time righted itself in an instant, and I felt a gentle breeze as the sword swished by my face mere inches away. Missing its target, the weapon continued on its trajectory downward to impact against the stone floor with a reverberating crash. While the knight was still stunned from a combination of missing his impossible-to-miss strike and jarring his overextended arms, I slipped inside his guard and wrapped my hands around his now lowered helmet. Energy snaked around the surface and suffused the metal just in time to be activated by a rune engraved on my ring.

  The greathelm shattered with a deafening ring, sending metal shrapnel inward against the Sword’s head. As the armor blasted apart, I saw the whole of his face for the first time; he was a younger man, with pale silver hair pulled into a tight topknot, dark brown skin, and light green eyes. His otherwise beautiful complexion was marred with a hail of metal splinters, and blood trickled out of both of his ears. The greatsword fell from his hand as he reached up to his ruined face, and he screamed as he collapsed backwards in disoriented agony.

  To my great surprise, my Detection alerted me that the King’s Strength had risen to his feet behind me. I turned to find him panting as he stared me down, the excitement that had painted his face earlier replaced by a mask of suffering and rage. Whereas his head and shoulders had been well shielded by his gauntlets, the rest of his body hadn’t been so lucky; the lower half of his torso and his exposed legs were burned into a horrible, charred mess that bled and sloughed off as he began a valiant charge in my direction. The fact that he was still conscious, let alone trying to fight, was amazing to me.

  He began to smash his fists together again as he approached. “What are you going to do without your magic sword, bastard?” He lunged forward with a flurry of blows that came much slower than before, but I could sense that the force of the attacks was much greater than the ones I had previously blocked. I dodged and redirected the punches in step with him as his assault continued to drive me towards the closest wall, waiting for my opening. “When I’m through with you, you’ll be—”

  My opening came in the form of a left hook that flew well wide of my head; I recalled my sword to my hand and sliced upwards through his armpit, completely detaching his arm at the shoulder. The limb fell to the ground with a heavy metallic thunk, and the Strength staggered backwards and looked at the wound with wide, confused eyes. Before the pain could register in his brain, I whipped the sword in a horizontal slash that separated his head from his shoulders, and his body collapsed into a bloody heap.

  I kneeled down and retrieved the detached gauntlet, carefully extricating the severed limb from inside. The cold steel felt far too light in my hands, and I could sense the mana stored inside still pulsing away, ready to be used. After dismissing my sword, I gingerly slid my arm through the metal sleeve and wiggled my fingers into the articulating joints. While the gauntlet felt a bit loose around my arm, even with my armor providing extra padding, I found the grip comfortable and oddly empowering; my mana probed at the energy stored inside the metal and found it hungry, almost as if it wanted to be activated.

  As I retrieved and donned the second gauntlet, the King’s Sword screamed from his place on the floor. “Primes curse you! You would dare defile the body of a Trinity Guardsman?! Those are not yours!�
�� He climbed to his feet shakily, using his sword as a cane. “You’ll find no aid in those gauntlets now; only through years of prayer and discipline can their power be unlocked!”

  I sighed and shook my head. “If you believe that, come and take them back.” Turning to face him, I rang my fists together and retook my fighting stance. The mocking gesture enraged the knight, and he charged forward in a foolish headlong rush. I closed my eyes and observed the scene through Detection, focusing on my newly acquired weapons. Broaching the energy in the left gauntlet once again, I followed the natural flow of the stored mana and activated the enhancement that lay dormant within the metal. A satisfying flare of power told me that the magic worked as I had hoped, and the stored mana began to burn off as it had before.

  When the Sword reached me, he lashed out with a desperate lunge aimed at my neck. I raised my left hand casually and caught the blade midair, bringing it to a complete standstill. With a hard yank on the sword I pulled the knight forward, bringing him to a forced crouch in front of me. Disbelief played clearly across his face, but it quickly faded away to fear as he fully realized his mistake. I pulled back my right arm and activated the gauntlet’s enhancement, this time adding my own surge of mana to the effect, and leveled a punch directly into the Sword’s chest.

  His armor peeled away like paper beneath the enhanced force of my blow, crumpling inward to impale the flesh underneath. I felt the fleeting sensation of his chest collapsing under my fist, but it disappeared a moment later as he flew backwards like a ragdoll, bouncing violently across the hall until he smashed against the opposite wall with so much force that the stone shuddered and cracked. He fell to the floor where he remained an unmoving, broken mess.

  I deactivated the gauntlets’ enhancements and examined the obsidian blade that I still held in my hand, having wrenched it from the Sword’s grip when he made his unceremonious exit. Unlike the other weapons of the Trinity Guard, it seemed to be much heavier than its form otherwise indicated, and I found it uncomfortable to hold in one hand without a small boost from my combat enhancements. I tested the balance with a proper two-handed grip and was surprised to find that the heavy gauntlets had almost no effect on the dexterity of my fingers; the craftsmanship of the tiny articulated plates was beyond anything I was capable of, and the gloves were still comfortable to wear.