“We’ll see about that,” Ethan countered.
Before the verbal exchange could go on, Ethan tried to seize the moment and attacked again. Azrael, however, easily deflected all four thrusts and cuts of Ethan’s blade before issuing a counterattack of his own. His sword knocked Ethan’s to the side faster than Ethan could comprehend, but at least Ethan had the presence of mind to leap backward and avoid being skewered.
To Ethan’s surprise, Azrael didn’t immediately follow. He simply adopted a more relaxed fighting stance and gave a brief salute. “You show much promise, Master Ethan, and I’d love to see how finely tuned we can train your swordsmanship,” he said. “However, in the interest of time and the regatta, I believe this shall now be your final lesson.”
Azrael lunged, sending a flurry of attacks that looked to cut, gut, and stab Ethan a dozen times from a dozen different angles. It was all Ethan could do not to let one land, to retreat as fast as he could without stumbling to the ground in the process. Azrael whipped his blade around the hilt of Ethan’s, and then using it in conjunction with his main-gauche, he knocked Ethan’s weapon out of his hand.
Azrael hits you!
Azrael disarms you!
Narrator had yet to finish those words before Ethan suddenly found himself staring Death in the face with not even four inches separating the two of them.
“Good day to you, Master Ethan,” Azrael said. His eyes were both hard and filled with admiration, and his breath smelled of pipe tobacco. Then a wink came from those eyes, and his breath turned icy. “I shall think of you fondly as I cross the finish line.”
Ethan straightened. His throat tightened, and his heart skipped a beat. He dared a glance down, wondering what it would be like when Azrael ran him through. Instead, Death drove a fist into his gut that sent him stumbling backward and then issued a swift front kick that would’ve pushed him another two or three feet easily if it hadn’t been for the well they’d ended up at.
Ethan caught the lip of the well with the back of his knees, and momentum sent him tumbling down, bouncing off the rough stone walls and into the dark.
* * *
Katryna paused to regard the ragged group of men who stood between her and her goal: Sir Gideon. She’d driven toward him at the start of the battle with all the vengeance of a Fury, intent on helping Jean avenge his brothers and rid the land of such a vile being, but their advance had been plagued by a chaotic battlefield that constantly demanded their attention.
But now, all that changed. While Sir Gideon was locked in a skirmish with a few others, oblivious to Katryna and Jean’s approach, all that stood between the two were three men, bloodied, tired, drowning in fear and fatigue.
She almost pitied them.
Almost.
But the fact that they terrorized the world under the guise of righteousness with Sir Gideon kept her from doing such a thing.
“Any last confessions you wish to make?” she asked, boldly approaching their line with Jean at her side. “I’m no priest, but if I were you, I’d hedge my bets regardless.”
The man on the left retreated a few steps, and from behind his back, he whipped out a short-barreled flintlock pistol and pointed it at her. “Stay back!” he said, hands trembling. “You stay right there, or I’ll shoot!”
Katryna raised an eyebrow. “Do you think that will matter?” she said, directing her question to Jean.
“Jamais,” he replied, laughing. “But they probably think that it will.”
“I guess we keep attacking then.”
“Oui. I suppose we do.”
“I mean it!” the sailor shouted, retreating a few steps more as his companions did the same. “I’ll shoot!”
“Then shoot,” Katryna said, not missing a beat.
The man’s eyes glanced to the wake of carnage Katryna had left behind her. A half dozen bodies at least lay sprawled across the ground with surgical cuts across their necks. In that instant, Katryna drove forward, covering the ground that separated the two groups with blinding speed.
The man pulled the trigger before she reached him. The blast from his pistol sent the bullet driving square for Katryna’s chest, but it never reached it. Her skill, Deflect Shot had already kicked in, and before the flint had even struck steel, she’d maneuvered her scimitar to make the intercept. The bullet skipped harmlessly off her scimitar, not even taking a nick out of its metal in the process.
Then she was upon them all. Her blade slipped between the ribs of the nearest man with such speed, he never had time to raise his defenses. The next had the wherewithal to issue a counterattack, but it came slow and wide, and even if Katryna hadn’t positioned herself in such a way to beat a proper attack, she had all the time in the world to make the parry.
Which she did.
His weapon fell when she sliced open his inside forearm and finished him off with a stab through the gut. His body had yet to hit the ground when she was upon the last man, the one who’d shot at her. By the time she reached him, he had his cutlass up and was swinging wildly, trying to fend her off as his footsteps carried him back as fast as they could.
Katryna kept a measured pressure against him, not wanting to charge recklessly after him lest he find some measure of backbone and issue a lucky strike of his own. It would only take a moment, she knew, before an opening would present itself. Her prediction proved true. The man’s left foot caught on a rock, and while it didn’t cause him to topple whatsoever, it stole his concentration enough that by the time his eyes flicked back to Katryna, she’d already knocked his cutlass to the side, and his sword arm wrapped in her free one.
“Jean was right,” she said, easily dispatching her foe. “It didn’t matter.”
Sailor killed!
You feel slightly more experienced.
Katryna paused as the body hit the ground. She hadn’t paid Narrator attention in what felt like years. Hell, it might have been. The grind to the next level was taking a phenomenally long time, especially since most things out there granted her exactly zero points toward her goal due to the lopsided fights. Case in point, this one, and as such, she’d tuned him out long ago. But maybe these men weren’t quite the cannon fodder she’d expected. Maybe she’d gained little bits of EXP here and there she hadn’t noticed.
She ought to check her sheet when she had the chance, she decided. Maybe she’d be pleasantly surprised.
All of that fluttered through her head in a second at the most. She returned to the battle to see Jean launching himself at Sir Gideon, his sword coming down with a brutal overhead chop.
The Golden Templar parried the blade with his own, stepping to the side as he did so he could redirect the attack. Sir Gideon twisted his sword outward, further knocking Jean’s weapon wide, and went on the attack. He hammered at the man with a pair of fast, low chops that sent Jean scrambling backward. Sir Gideon didn’t press the attack. Instead, with a few feet now separating the two, he leveled his pistol—Ethan’s pistol—at Jean and fired.
Jean tried to dive away, but he wasn’t fast or lucky enough to do so. The bullet tore through his body, striking him high in the chest.
“No!” Katryna yelled as she desperately tried to reach her crewmate.
Even with all the speed she possessed, with all the talents and perks she’d picked up over the years, none of them mattered. As Jean stumbled, dropping his weapon and clutching his chest with both hands, Sir Gideon cut him down, first with a slash across his midsection and then a follow-up thrust to the heart.
Katryna’s skin burned like a furnace. Her jaw set like a vice. Her legs launched her in the air, and she let loose a bellowing war cry that would’ve sent any wasteland barbarian running.
Sir Gideon spun around and dropped into a fighting base quick enough to defend her enraged attack. Her blade struck his, sending sparks flying in all directions and the clash of steel against steel ringing through the air.
“I’ll kill you!” she said, hammeri
ng at his defenses time and again.
“Best not to make a promise you can’t keep,” he said, grinning as both footwork and blade work kept him safe.
The fight quickly turned into a series of complicated feints, cuts, and thrusts, taxing each to their limits. Sir Gideon, however, not only hit those limits first but went over them first as well.
Katryna knocked his cutlass down and issued a high thrust aimed for his neck. Sir Gideon, predictably, overcommitted to the parry, and while he managed to nimbly step back to keep his throat from being cut, he couldn’t avoid the swashbuckler’s blade when it dipped under his guard and carved a deep, three-inch-long gash in his wrist.
Sir Gideon hit!
Sir Gideon lightly wounded!
Katryna smiled at Narrator, and the sight of first blood drove her into a further frenzy like a hungry mako who’d gotten a taste of an upcoming meal. She redoubled the tempo of her strikes, each one coming at Sir Gideon from a different, yet no less deadly, angle. Another hit opened up the man’s shoulder. Then a fine line across the top of his knee. A third put a gash in his thigh.
The color drained from Sir Gideon’s face. His legs weakened from fatigue, and a moment later, he lost his footing and came crashing down, losing his sword in the process. “Wait,” he said, outstretching his hand as he scooted away. “Please. I can pay.”
“There’s not enough gold out there for me to spare someone like you,” she spat.
Katryna drew back her sword, and in that instant, the look on Sir Gideon’s face changed from dread to elation. He snapped Ethan’s pistol up to bear and pulled the trigger.
The magical shot punched through Katryna’s blade, past all her defenses and talents, and struck her in the stomach. Her jaw dropped, and her legs gave out.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Turned
Ethan had never been a fan of wells. Ever since he’d seen his first one, he couldn’t help but feel as if they were sinister contraptions whose sole purpose was to swallow wayward kids. Sure, it was an irrational fear, but one he’d never succeeded to fully shake himself from. And that damn movie with the girl who crawled out of them and killed everyone certainly didn’t help things, either. When he’d gone and seen said movie when it first came out at the theaters, his fingers left gouges in the armrests, and his friends had to apologize profusely to the people behind them when creepy girl made her first appearance and Ethan sent his popcorn flying.
Thus, it was hardly a surprise that when Ethan hit the bottom, his first several seconds were spent in a mad flail, which was then followed by another half minute of him flattening his body against the mossy wall, all in an attempt to keep himself safe from whatever evil spirit called that place home.
Cries of fevered battle mixed with a few more pistol shots finally got Ethan to refocus, and thoughts of Zoey were strong enough to bolster his resolve and spring him into action. He had to get out of there, had to return to the fight. Had to make sure she was safe.
These were not new thoughts but ones he clung to and repeated as he began his slow ascent. The walls had plenty of finger and toe holds, but between the slick moss that grew on them, and the sharp, stabbing pain that attacked him through all of his limbs, progress was tenuous at best.
About a quarter of the way up, he wondered how many bones he’d cracked during the fall, if not outright broken. It didn’t matter, he told himself. As long as they worked, he’d use them.
Halfway, his left arm gave out, and he slipped. Five points of Luck kept him from dropping more than a few inches. Once he felt stable enough to resume his ascent, he did, doing his best not to pull any weight with that arm but only use it to help keep him steady.
It took another five minutes of steady work to draw near the top; all the while, the sounds of battle faded away and eventually ceased altogether. His entire body burned like fire once his right arm reached up and grabbed the lip of the well.
Digging deep, Ethan pulled himself up and out of the well, body shaking, brow dripping with sweat. Staggering to his feet, he found himself alone in the courtyard. Or rather, he found he was the only one standing in the courtyard. Or moving, for that matter.
The dead lay scattered about by the dozens, crew from Azrael, Sedra, and Sir Gideon all in equal number. Jean Baynard, too, no longer could be counted among the living. He’d fallen with his back against a wall, shot in the chest, and struck several times. His head lolled to the side with a vacant stare in his eyes while his right arm clutched yet another wound to his gut.
“Oh no,” Ethan muttered, feeling his mouth dry. His eyes scanned the rest of the battlefield, hoping and praying he wouldn’t find Zoey having suffered a similar fate, but she was nowhere to be seen.
“Zoey?” he called out, willing himself forward. Every step he took felt shaky, and he paused long enough to check his character sheet and confirm what he’d suspected:
Severely wounded.
“Why the hell couldn’t there have been a trampoline at the bottom,” he said, stuffing his sheet back into his pocket. If he could feed, he could heal. Sadly, everyone still looked as dead as they’d been before, and Ethan wasn’t sure how that worked, vampire-wise. More than one myth said vampires who fed off the dead died themselves, or at the very least, became severely ill. Given the fact that just the thought of nibbling a corpse made his stomach queasy, Ethan opted not to press his luck.
Besides, if he could find Zoey and they could make it back to their ship, he could always get a donation from his crew there.
“Ethan,” called out a weak, feminine voice.
Ethan spun at the sound of his name. Across the courtyard, surrounded by six other bodies, he saw Katryna curled into a fetal position. Most of the color had left her face, and she held tight to her blood-soaked stomach.
“Hang on, Katryna,” Ethan said, racing over to her. His hands instinctively went to the wound, but they retracted when he realized he didn’t know what to do. “Damn, you’re a mess. Should I try and bandage it more? Or do you think you can get to your feet? We can’t stay here.”
Katryna gritted her teeth and clenched her eyes as she shook her head. “Please, don’t leave me like this,” she whimpered.
“No one’s leaving you like anything. Stop that right now,” he said as he tore off part of a sleeve, folded it thrice over, and pressed it into her gut. The fibers instantly turned scarlet. “It’ll do for now,” he said, hoping he didn’t need a decent First Aid skill to make this work because as of that very moment, he had none. Investing in it on his next level, he thought, might not be such a bad idea. But that was something he’d have to deal with later. He had to get her out of there.
Ethan snaked his arm under Katryna’s shoulders and tried sitting her up. “Come on. We’ll find Zoey together. She’ll know what to do.”
Katryna stayed upright for a moment, but the instant he let go, she fell to the side like dead weight. “I can’t,” she said. Water clouded her eyes, and there was a peculiar tremor in her voice. Not one born from pain, but terror.
“Come on, Miss Level Thirty-Four,” Ethan said as he tried again. “A little gut shot isn’t about to do you in, right?”
Katryna let out a wet cough and shook her head once more. She kept her bandage pressed against her abdomen with her right hand, and with her left, she fumbled inside her bodice for a few seconds before pulling out her character sheet. “No, Ethan, you don’t understand,” she said. “I literally can’t go anywhere. Look.”
Ethan took the piece of paper and quickly looked at where her health was written down. Two neat lines painted a dreadful picture:
Gravely Wounded
Permanent Injury: Paralyzed
“Paralyzed,” Ethan repeated, falling back. His gaze drifted out to infinity, and his thoughts ran rampant with how disastrous his decision of coming here had become—how awful of a leader he was. “We can fix this, though, right?” he said. “We’ll find you a healer or a cleric or whatever
. They’ll say a few prayers, light some candles, and you’ll be walking again in no time.”
“No, it’s not that easy. You’ve got to turn me,” she begged.
“Maybe Marcus can fix you.”
“He can’t fix me, Ethan!” she yelled. “Your stupid magical pistol ensured that no one can!”
Ethan fell back. “What? How?”
“It’s enchanted against the living!” she went on, fully losing herself in grief and anger. “Its wounds are permanent. Always.”
Ethan shook his head, his mind reeling. “No. No, that can’t be right,” he said. “I healed.”
“When, Ethan? While you were still alive or after she turned you?”
Ethan felt his mouth dry and his eyes glaze. As much as he wished otherwise, she was right. “Oh, God. This is my fault. Isn’t it?” he said weakly. “If I hadn’t lost it playing cards…”
“You can still make it right,” Katryna said. “Please, Ethan. I’m begging you. I can’t be a cripple. Not here. Not again.”
The swashbuckler’s words snapped Ethan out of his shock. “What do you mean, ‘again’?”
“I—” Katryna choked on her reply, and it was only when Ethan took her free hand in his and gave it a squeeze that she found the strength to get it out. “All I do back home—our real home—is lie in bed and waste away.”
“Seriously?” Ethan reeled at his reply. The moment it left his lips, he knew how awful it sounded. Thankfully, Katryna didn’t rip into him because of it.
“Seriously.”
Silence then smothered the conversation for far longer than it should have, and Ethan said the only true thing he could think of. “I don’t know what to say.”
“You don’t have to say anything.”
The Crew (Captains & Cannons Book 2) Page 26