Mythborn III_Dark Ascension

by V. Lakshman

  Arek was out of position and turned, only to see Ash dive and put his own wings up as a shield. The next instant his vision went black. He instinctively rolled and could hear two blades imbed themselves one after the other in the wooden floor, each stab following his path.

  When he’d regained his feet he saw her loop Valor out from Yetteje’s grasp then turn it around to choke the princess while using her body as a shield. Never fight three opponents together. Attack each quickly, fighting one opponent at a time by moving. Movement is life, Silbane used to say. She was using basic techniques, but executing them with flawless grace.

  Worry for Tej filled him as he moved toward the pair but Kisan must have sensed it. She dropped the semiconscious princess and met Arek head on, bringing the fight close, her blades having shrunk to the size of daggers. Her expression promised this would be brutal. Arek’s problem was that he still held his long blades and didn’t know how she’d commanded them to shrink. Also, it looked like she wasn’t going to give him time to find out.

  Arek dropped both blades, quickly blocking her strikes at the crook of her elbow and wrist with his forearms, then countering to her neck with his hand in an open Y.

  She fell back gagging and dropped a blade, but was right back at him. Then Arek felt something ice cold slip into his side. Warm blood welled out from her stab. Kisan gestured and her lost knife flew back into her waiting hand.

  Yetteje had recovered from her near choke out and now attacked with blazing arrow after arrow. One pierced Kisan’s thigh in between armor plates, but the master didn’t seem to notice. Instead she whirled and kicked, sending a one of Arek’s discarded swords flying into the girl’s temple. The princess crumpled as the heavy pommel cracked into her skull.

  Arek watched, horrified, then wished he’d held onto his blades. To his surprise they jumped into his hands! Just like Kisan . . . he performed a test, willing them to be shorter. Sure enough, he also had control over the length of his weapons. It was an expensive lesson to learn. A sudden wave of dizziness made the world tilt but he blinked and recovered. When he refocused, Kisan wasn’t there.

  She had jumped impossibly high, and when her boots slammed into the ground, created a small shock wave of force. It didn’t knock anyone down, but four torcs that lay nearby got tossed into the air. These the master struck with her swords in quick succession, batting them at Arek and Ash.

  Arek deflected the two sent at him, then moved in. Metallic tangs told him Ash must’ve also successfully blocked his torcs. He switched his vision to Clouds before Moon, a technique he’d practiced without luck in training, but it came as naturally to him as breathing now that the blackfire curse had been unraveled by Brianna.

  He caught the master materializing from the shadows, her moonskin obscuring her from normal sight. She dropped that, feinted left but faded back to her right. He was on Kisan, his sword licking out at her hip in a flash of silver.

  Kisan kicked and caught Arek’s wrist, deflecting his weapon outward, then continued her spin so that her other leg delivered a spinning hook kick at his head.

  He ducked and spun under her leg, trying to sweep her. Rather than jump over his sweep, she let him hit her balancing leg, using it to give herself more momentum. The result was an aerial kick, magnified by Arek’s sweep. It caught the firstmark across his head as he rushed in to help, stunning and knocking him back. Arek rolled even as Kisan’s knee came down with crushing force, cracking the wood where he’d just been.

  He stood, surveying the scene, knowing Kisan had gotten the better of them in that first exchange. Yetteje and Duncan were down but Brianna had pulled them back behind the pedestal, the outcropping serving as a small but reasonable defense. She’d also drawn her weapon, though frustratingly she wasn’t pointing it at anyone. Ash slowly regained his feet. Kisan had risen from where she’d landed, looking at Arek in disdain.

  “Inept, slow, and bleeding like a stuck pig,” she remarked, her eyes glancing at Arek’s side. Then she flicked her wings forward and back and a hailstorm of blades flew in opposite directions, both at the firstmark and Arek.

  They ducked behind their wings, but the zip of Brianna’s weapon firing repeatedly told Arek the master must be heading toward the dwarven healer . . . and his father. If Kisan took him out, Arek would lose a father for the second time today, and any chance of his friends escaping Arcadia would be lost—and that made him realize Kisan’s plan. She’d kill Duncan and let the rest of them die with Arcadia. He gathered the Way, sending a blaze of pure whitefire at the retreating form of the black-winged master, who had shielded herself from Brianna’s gun using her black-feathered wings.

  At the last moment she turned and faced Arek’s attack. The blast engulfed her in an argent firestorm that should have turned her to ashes. Instead it wrapped around her wings, then gathered into a ball of coruscating energy between her hands. Arek recognized the technique as Eye of Death, but had never seen it actually used. The master didn’t even pause but fired the ball at the firstmark, who covered up again just as it detonated. The resultant blast sent Ash flying back to land in a smoking heap.

  A few more shots from Brianna were casually blocked with a flick of Kisan’s wings or ricocheted off her armor in random directions. Kisan looked at Arek and sneered, “I took a lightning spear once. Taught me a lesson.” Without another word she launched herself at him.

  Arek’s wings flicked out blades with deadly precision, his instincts as true as Kisan’s own, given the short time he’d had his new form. However, as she’d pointed out, instinct wasn’t experience and the master had spent more time fighting in her Artymis form than Arek had as Azrael. Her swords spun a figure eight as she neared, deflecting his feather blades as she tucked behind her wings.

  A short snap kick caught Arek’s knee, locking it back painfully. The second downward smash he avoided by rolling to his right, but that gave Kisan the advantage of freeing her blades and wings. She stabbed downward with all her weapons in rapid succession, the razor wingtips and sword points puncturing the wood in a staccato measure, trying to literally skewer him to the floor.

  Arek continued to evade, his side leaving a trail of blood as he fought to get away from the jabbing death of the master’s attack. Wood splinters from missed strikes flew in all directions.

  Then Ash was there, smashing into her and driving her to a knee. As she fell she reached over and grabbed the firstmark by the head, throwing him over her shoulder. The man landed heavily, the breath whooshing out of him. Kisan’s hammer fist caught him in the chest, then her elbow came down hard on his forehead. The firstmark lay there, stunned and semiconscious. Only his helm and armor had saved him from being killed instantly. The master rose slowly, her swords lengthening.

  Arek stood facing her with his weapons drawn. They regarded each other for a moment. A steadiness, a calm sense of strength settled over him and he breathed, “Azrael is with me.”

  Kisan cocked her head at that. “Then you’ll die together,” she said, wiping the sweat from her brow. “You were always a disappointment to Silbane, to all of us.”

  His heart skipped a beat at that, a momentary break in his composure. Her instincts were so finely tuned to any change, like an animal sensing weakness, that two kicks were launched at him before he blinked. One came at his head and the other followed low, toward his groin.

  Arek ducked under the first and spun out of the path of the second, but he missed the perfectly timed spinning heel that drove into his gut, sending him sprawling backward. He breathed out at the strike, focusing his strength, automatically using his momentum to roll to his feet. He saw her smile, as if letting him know she could play him like an instrument whenever she wanted.

  Her smirk began to fill him with rage, but something strange happened. In that instant something cool and calm descended over him. It was a balm, a salve acting like psychic armor. He could feel his strength flow, pure and clean, so unlike the fear that always had been his constant companion. And with
that, a realization struck him, a moment of clarity crystalline in its purity.

  The opposite of fear is not courage, he remembered his master said. Courage is acting in spite of fear. The opposite of fear is . . . acceptance. We fear what we cannot accept. We strive against what we think will happen, rather than accepting all things as they are. If you accepted the outcome, whatever it might be, fear died.

  A smile came to his lips, the only sign that a wondrous change was happening within. His knowledge of Kisan and her tactics gave him a rare kind of defense, enough to counter any fear he might feel. He’d fought her thousands of times over the years. There was nothing she was doing that he’d not seen or faced before. He’d always known her taunts were designed to play on his uncertainties. Silbane had berated him again and again to maintain control but it had always been impossible. Rational thought left him when she played her mind games. And why did they work? Because he could not accept losing.

  This time, he didn’t feel the white hot rage that would normally have consumed him. Instead, his measured composure gave him a view into Kisan, though whether this came from his master’s final advice or something imparted by his master himself he couldn’t tell. He began to see things, small details he might have otherwise missed.

  Her sweat, which meant this wasn’t as easy as she was making it out to be. She was taunting him, because in the past it had always worked. Yet she was normally never loquacious, saying, “Kill first, you can always talk to their memory.” It was a sign of her overconfidence, or perhaps her doubt. Arek’s eyes flicked to Ash, who still wasn’t moving.

  One thing was certain—insight or not, if he didn’t break her composure, she would ultimately win. She was just too precise, too experienced, and with Ash and Tej down, it meant life or death for all of them. Two could play her game though, so he selected his next words carefully.

  “Those magehunters . . . they won,” he said softly.

  “What?” whispered Kisan, her eyes widening just a little.

  “They broke you inside. Silbane thought so,” he continued. He shook his head sadly. “He said you feared love and now I know why.”

  “Shut up,” Kisan said, her eyes fierce.

  “Deep down you think love and pity are the same, and you can’t stand being pitied.” Arek was watching intently, knowing he was getting through. His newfound and more precise combat sense told him Brianna was still there with Tej, and Ash was slowly recovering. He needed to buy more time.

  “Silbane loved you,” he said, “and for that, he had to die.”

  Kisan’s smile faltered, and her eyes flicked left and right. With a scowl, she attacked. Her strikes came fast and in rapid succession, her blade work still perfect in the extreme. Yet he could see her anger show itself in the overkilling force she used.

  Arek slid left as a blade passed by his neck and narrowly avoided another to his leg. He threw a wing in her face then ducked under her sweeping slice, moving in close, but held his strike, only because she was offering him a lure. He’d seen her use this time and again. Had he taken it, he’d taste the kiss of steel long before his counter made a difference.

  Instead he grappled, pulling her in close, and said, “You couldn’t kill his faith in you”—Arek looked her in the eyes—“and you couldn’t accept his love—so you killed him instead.”

  The master didn’t say anything; instead she sent a knee crashing into his armored chest. Before he could recover, the pommel of her blade hit the side of his helm and he fell back.

  Kisan now attacked with a palpable fury, her strikes coming almost faster than he could block. Then she dropped her blades, as if she wanted to beat him to death with her bare hands, her lips stretched back over a rictus-like snarl of hate.

  He stopped a ridge hand, only to be hit hard with an elbow. He ducked under the next one and punched her in the midsection but it barely slowed her down. He had to get her out of her armored form, but how? Even angry, the armor protected her from her own worst mistakes.

  She aimed her stiffened fingers for his eyes. He’d seen those fingers go through stone. He blocked using the outside of his wrist, then came in throwing elbow after elbow in an effort to overwhelm her. He crashed three hard strikes into her crossed forearms and shoulder before she countered.

  She struck using one elbow on the inside of his arm and dropped the other into his opposite inner thigh. He felt his arm nearly dislocate, but her second strike put him down hard. Her knee made a short forward arc, catching him under the chin.

  Stars burst in his vision. He shook his head, smelling coppery blood, only to find her blade at his throat.

  He opened both hands, looking into her eyes. “Killing me won’t fix you”—he spat blood—“and it won’t bring him back.”

  There was silence, Kisan looking at him, her gaze wavering though her weapon was rock steady. “Before I end this, I absolve myself.” She paused, then said, “I sent Piter against you.” Her eyes darted side to side, as if she’d just heard what she said.

  “Why?” Arek began to rise but then laid his head back down, her shortened blade’s point tickling his throat.

  “I asked Silbane to push you, with my students,” she breathed, her face falling, “and now he’s dead.” Still her blade hadn’t moved.

  “How does this end?” Arek asked, not knowing if she meant Piter or Silbane in her last admission. The master seemed lost but he knew her reaction to any movement on his part would be just as lethal. She was honed to react instinctually, presciently, and now he knew that was the key.

  She was quiet, then she met his eyes and said, “Piter was all I had. Somebody’s paying for his death.”

  * * * * *

  Time slows . . .

  In this moment talk is over. Arek can feel her forearm tighten an eyeblink before she thrusts and does the only thing he can—he changes form, shrinking, the blade passing just over his head, splintering into the wooden floor instead of running him through.

  Kisan reacts instinctively, reading his move and changing to her unarmored form right along with him, keeping him pinned under her, her blades recovering just as Arek’s fly into his waiting hands.

  Arek stabs up and Kisan stabs down, his blades piercing through her body a fraction of a heartbeat before hers reach him, and pushing her up. It might make her thrust less deep, but he knows it’s a pyrrhic victory. She’s just too fast, too good.

  He feels the points enter his chest. He’s about to die but it’s the best he can do. At least his father and friends will have a chance. Would his master be proud?

  Bam! Bam!

  Blood blossoms from Kisan’s shoulder and stomach in a violent outburst of red, splashing Arek’s front with its warmth. She looks down for a moment; a small smile lifts the corners of her mouth.

  Bam!

  A third deafening blast comes exploding out of her chest. What sounds like a small incredulous laugh bubbles from her lips. She falls off Arek and collapses beside him, unmoving.

  Time resumes flow . . .

  * * * * *

  Brianna stood frozen, her weapon drawn and pointed. She looked lost, as if she didn’t remember firing. Arek put pressure on his wounds to try to control the bleeding. Kisan’s blade points had entered into the muscle of his chest but Brianna had stopped her before the blades pierced deep enough to puncture his lungs or heart. His side was another matter entirely. That cut was deep. He needed to elevate his legs.

  “Is she . . . is she . . . ?” asked the dwarven healer in a daze.

  “Are you okay?” he asked her, looking up at her from where he lay. Brianna looked like she was in shock, so Arek used the last of his strength to prop one leg up on Kisan’s body, for whatever good it would do.

  “I promised myself never to harm,” Brianna murmured, “but I had to use the lethal setting.”

  Arek raised an eyebrow at that, realizing until now the healer had been firing something less than lethal. An unbelieving laugh escaped before he could stop it, and he shook
his head in disbelief. Lucky she hadn’t voiced an oath to that effect here . . . the thought made him pause . . . then where was Brianna from? He recovered and instead of chastising her, said, “You did what you had to.”

  She fell to her knees. “I’m think I’m going to be sick.”

  Arek lay there, his mind floating into and out of awareness. He caught some of what she was saying, but making sense of it seemed beyond his abilities. What am I doing here? he wondered.

  A sudden thought about what Silbane would do entered. He’d give her a task, something to focus on. He grabbed her hand and squeezed until she looked at him, her eyes over his as she looked down at him. “Check on the firstmark. He needs your attention.” Brianna nodded slowly and got up.

  While she attended to Ash, he rolled on his side to look for Duncan and Yetteje. The man lay behind the outcropping, a feather blade through his leg. It wasn’t bleeding because Brianna had wisely chosen not to remove it. When Arek met his father’s eyes, the man sighed and said, “I’m tired of being hurt.”

  Arek couldn’t help but smile at that and said, “Me too.” He squeezed his side tighter, the pressure temporarily working to slow his life from draining away, but the wound felt funny, as if he was holding onto something inside. He risked a glance at Brianna, hoping she’d hurry, and looked for Tej.

  A wave of dizziness overcame him and he dropped down beside the unconscious princess, before his world again faded to white.

  * * * * *

  “You have succeeded.”

  Arek looked about the white expanse. “The opposite of fear—”

  Azrael strode in, appearing as if from an all-encompassing mist, “—is the acceptance of all things.”

  “Why?”

  The war angel shrank so that he and Arek were of a similar height. “Because when you accept an outcome, it no longer has power over you. This is the crucible you needed to understand in order to Ascend. Combat holds no test for you; neither does fear. Yet to Ascend you must understand why,” Azrael finished. “There are a thousand ways in which one can harbor fear, and in doing so you give life to dire shades.”