by Ron Glick
Avery's smirk twitched slightly in annoyance. “What would a mortal know of the Gods or their progeny?” Avery spoke the words, yet as had happened before, he was not entirely certain where the words came from.
Nathaniel chuckled himself. “Of late, that is a very good question. If you would be inclined to sheath your sword, perhaps I could explain?”
Avery raised the tip of One slightly higher to emphasize his words. “You would have me lay down my sword so that you might tell me tales of your traveling here under the command of the Gods yourself? Do you not realize that your words brand you a false prophet in the presence of a true God?”
Nathaniel sighed, though inwardly he felt as though he should be breaking out in a sweat. He kept expecting to feel the cold drip of sweat rolling down his forehead and into his eyes, yet some inner resolve kept him steady, and even gave his voice a steady air of confidence that he himself lacked. This man wanted to fight – to fight! - with swords, no less! Perhaps the God of War had gifted him with knowledge of how to wield this sword he now wore, and perhaps over the last few days his self-confidence in the task of wielding it had risen, yet now when faced with the very real prospect of putting that gifted skill to the test, he felt the very real weight of his inexperience in real world duels. The idea of seeing another man's sword aimed at him dissolved any self-confidence he had built up over the last few days. All he could think of now was that he was just a small town lad playing a game that he was not even close to prepared to play.
And yet, the die had been thrown and he was now facing the possibility of being skewered by another man's blade. Ready or not, Nathaniel Goodsmith was likely to have his first real test as the Old Gods' Avatar, and if he wilted under the pressure now, he would not live to face another.
“I have no wish to fight you,” Nathaniel said. “I only want the sword. It is as you say: I have been sent to retrieve it. It does not belong to you, and I must have it if I am ever to see my wife and child again.” Nathaniel's words sounded hollow, even to himself. Yet he could think of nothing else to say.
Avery cast his glance to the priestess, who in turn had cast her own questioning stare at Nathaniel. “And what of her and her claim? You would take the sword, she would take me? Is it possible to have too much demand for a God?” Avery chuckled at his own humor. “Let me settle this. Kneel and swear fealty to me, and I shall permit you to serve me as is your due. Resist and... well, One has already demonstrated to others far greater than yourselves that I am beyond the touch of mortals' weapons, even those wielded by a clerical tongue!”
Nathaniel was at a loss as how to proceed against such an ultimatum. He had no intention of bowing to a false God, nor to any God for that matter, yet the only other recourse was to put this one's boast to the test. Before he could decide upon a course of action though, a deep, bellowing laugh interrupted his thoughts. Everyone turned to look at the dwarf, now leaning his full weight upon his axe as its head rested in the ground.
“Ya truly think tha' ya gots no fear o' harm? Wha', ya thinks 'cause ya found a strong sword, tha' makes ya a big man, does ya? Ha! Ya's a boy by compar'son ta me, an' e'en Nate 'ere coul' take ya! E'en the bes' blade e'er made takes time ta be learned, and yer green, boy. Too green ta be makin' the boasts ya are! Give it up, lad! Give up the sword an' let us be on our way 'fore ya lose more'n yer pride 'ere this day!”
Avery glowered at the dwarf. “You dare to laugh and make jest of me, dwarf? Have you any idea of what you face? You face a God today, and you have no idea of the wrath you draw towards you...”
Bracken laughed again. “Yer a joke, lad! A joke! Can ya no' see tha'? Are ya gonna go ta yer grave wit' those words on yer tongue? C'mon, lad! Lay it down!”
Avery felt his face flushing in rage. “Say one more word, dwarf, and you will seal your doom!”
Bracken took on a look of exaggerated dismay. “Wha'? Me? A word? 'Ow many does this make?”
Avery had never felt so enraged, not even in all his years as an outcast. Then, demonstrating anything other than subjugation only increased his torment. Yet this dwarf seemed to raise up all the anger, all the humiliation he had suffered during his years as a heretic and gave him a source upon which to unleash all the unbridled hatred he had never before been able to express. This little man represented everything that Avery had come to despise, and he could no longer bear to be the subject of such degradation – especially not now when he had become a God amongst men! He did not have to take it, and he intended to prove it.
“You have sealed your fate, dwarf!” roared Avery as he launched himself across the distance between him and Bracken. As he took his first step, he felt One's power as he slipped out of visibility, moving with a singly direct purpose toward the dwarf who had dared to ridicule him. There was no thought behind Avery's actions, no strategy, just an overwhelming need to bury One deeply into the sub-human's skull! He felt a nagging urge to move aside, to strike the dwarf from the rear rather than the front. Yet he ignored that instinct, his need for revenge upon his tormenter fueling his impatience. He could not wait the few extra moments it would take to step around and perform a more elegant execution – the dwarf would feel his sword without any delay. As he raised his sword high overhead, Avery pictured the impact of the grisly dwarven form being split in twain upon his fellows, and smiled wickedly at the prospect of the fear he was about to inflict.
One came down in a satisfying arch, and Avery let his rage flow out of him into the swing. Pure ecstasy flooded his mind as he once again felt the fluid strength of the blade and reveled in the expectation of the blade cleaving through the body of the dwarf. Yet remarkably, One did not deliver that sense of satisfaction as it had so often before. Coming back to reality from the euphoric images his mind's eye had been playing, Avery realized with some shock that One had not finished its swing as he had expected. In fact, it had been stopped abruptly in mid-swing. And once his eyes focused on the cause, he began to feel his first tremor of doubt.
Bracken stood in front of him, arms wide and the axe he had previously been leaning upon firmly spread between his open arms. One had come to a solid halt upon the shaft of the dwarf's weapon! Where One had previously cut through steel blades, the presumably wooden shaft of this dwarf's axe had stopped One without even staggering the dwarf in his stance.
“Ya were sayin', Boy?” grunted Bracken.
Before Avery could react though, he felt a sharp poke between his shoulder blades. “Lower the weapon,” came Nathaniel's voice. “Truly, we have no wish to harm you.”
Avery felt his rage building anew. “You cannot have One!” he shouted. “One is mine! Mine!” Avery was not entirely sure how, yet he found himself moving again, first forward to avoid the blade behind, then down and back as he escaped from between the two armed men. By instinct alone, he willed himself invisible again and quickly moved behind the taller man, deftly swinging One as he moved to strike the man along his side.
Nathaniel saw too late what the would-be-God intended, pushing forward too late to catch the little man as he dodged to escape. And before he could come around with his sword, Avery had again vanished. Yet Avery had not disappeared completely, Nathaniel realized with an odd clarity. Somehow he could sense the little man's movements – no, not his movements, he realized: the sword's! And he instantly knew where the sense was coming from, as well – his own blade seemed aware of the other sword's movements and transmitted those senses as almost a vibration along Nathaniel's arm! The awareness came to him in an instant, and in the next he found himself responding to what the odd sensory input told him. Moving quickly, Nathaniel took a step back and brought his blade downward towards the ground, just in time to intercept Avery's stroke!
When One had come in contact with the dwarf's axe, there had been a solidness that had accompanied the contact – a sense of the strength of the weapon, perhaps, or whatever force that existed to defeat One's previously unstoppable power. Yet when One came into contact with Nathaniel's sword,
the feeling was more of an incredible shock, electrifying every nerve in Avery's body. For the first time since wielding it, Avery felt no strength at all from the sword. Sheer stubbornness alone kept the sword in his hand.
Yet the stubbornness worked against him as he found himself struggling to fight against his own body when he needed to be focused on defending himself from the others. A blow to side of his head, clearly with the flat of a blade, sent him spiraling backwards onto the ground. Yet through it all, he kept his grip upon One, now defending the sword with his body as it had so often before defended him.
Utter confusion gripped him as Avery opened his eyes to see the men towering over him. Avery's eyes came to rest on Nathaniel's sword, the blade that had somehow deflected One's power back upon him, and suddenly he recognized why. He was looking up the length of a blade that was identical to his own in every respect that he could see. The same marksmanship, the same runes inscribed into the blade, the same dark hilt. As Avery's eyes took in these details, he was filled with an inexplicable dread. He had found the Godslayer, after all. And the Godslayer possessed One's twin!
First... The word seemed a whisper in Avery's mind, one he did not immediately recognize.
First! The word repeated, this time with a very clear voice, this time raised in fear. This was no sense of a word, this was an actual voice that Avery heard in his head. And he knew instantly where it had come from. Why he had not pieced it together before this moment, he could not understand, but there was no mistaking it now. One was more than a weapon, more than a sliver of steel – it was alive! And at the moment, his sword was deathly afraid!
First! Avery barely had time to absorb the import of these thoughts than One did what it had been doing all along in more subtle ways – it took over! Avery felt his body rise up, One coming up in a sweeping motion to force away the other blades leveled against him. In a rage not his own, Avery felt himself lashing out with a ferocity he knew was born of desperation. One was fighting now for its very survival against a threat it believed capable of destroying it. And Avery was powerless to do anything about it!
The sword now dominated Avery, leaving the man's consciousness as a hapless witness to what his body did. He was fully aware of his body's actions, could feel the burn of his muscles, the rasping of his breath. In every way, Avery knew and felt everything he did – he just had no control of it whatsoever. And the prospect frightened him more than anything ever had in his life! Unbeknownst to the errant heretic, he had become the sword's tool, the sword slowly sinking its tendrils of control into him, disguising it as strength and stamina. The truth though was that the sword was a monster, and it had only used Avery to accomplish its own goals. It had never been Avery posing as a God, he now realized – it had been the sword! Avery had been duped into believing he had had the power, when all along it had been the sword pulling his strings! And now, it seemed, the sword intended to use him up completely, without any consideration whatsoever for Avery's own welfare. Avery was no God – he had been a fool, and it seemed he would at last face the consequences for being one.
Avery found himself moving as he had never moved before, lashing out against Nathaniel and Bracken, forcing the two back with the ferocity of his attacks. Amazingly enough, both men's weapons held up against One's assaults, neither giving or yielding. First Avery could understand – it was the Godslayer's weapon, and One's twin. But what power could possibly be in the dwarf's weapon that could give it the power to stand against One's power? In a dim, half conscious way, Avery began to distance himself from the actual battle as his mind wrested with the mystery surrounding the two men and their true origins. Were they actually Gods themselves, only posing as men? If the taller was the Godslayer, was the dwarf something else?
Avery's inner thoughts were suddenly shattered by a blinding pain in his back. His body turned quickly to determine the cause, and saw Lady Brea muttering more arcane words. It seemed the priestess had now entered the battle, and he was now assaulted from both front and rear! Remarkably though, instead of being weakened by the attack, Avery found himself empowered, the fatigue he had felt lifting.
In a remarkable move that Avery could not have hoped to mimic in all his years, the former heretic found himself launched into the air, flipping in mid-air and landing soundly to the rear of the two men. The move had effectively put Nathaniel and Bracken between him and the priestess and also afforded him a clear attack on the unguarded flanks of his assailants. With a sweeping combination blow, Avery found himself slicing upward at the dwarf's legs, receiving a satisfying feel of contact before moving onwards to bring One downwards towards Nathaniel's unguarded back. However, by this time, Nathaniel had had time to react and once again brought First into line to block One's swing. The force of the recoil sent Avery staggering backwards, yet this time he had remained standing. Apparently, One could prepare itself for his opponent if it knew to.
A quick glance towards Bracken verified that One had scored a serious wound against the dwarf. Though the leg had not severed as Avery had felt sure it must be, the gouge in the dwarf's leg was severe enough that he would now be out of the fight. Which left Avery facing off solely against Nathaniel and First, so long as he could keep them between himself and the priestess.
Nathaniel found himself taking on a new level of anger himself now. Having seen his lifelong friend downed, and unable to see for himself how badly without taking his eyes off of Avery, he found himself enraged. If this man had maimed his friend...
Up until now, Nathaniel had found himself crippled with self-doubt. He had been able to defend himself, yet he had lost his self-confidence in the skills gifted to him by Malik. He could not surrender himself to his instincts for fear that they would be insufficient to the task at hand. Yet now, the doubt was gone. All that remained was a single-minded determination to make the little man in front of him pay for the harm he had caused. There was no longer any room for mercy – Avery had demonstrated that he would offer no quarter, and Nathaniel no longer intended to give any of his own.
As Avery charged, Nathaniel met him with equal fierceness. The two began to pummel at each other, their blades striking sparks as they clashed again and again. The world seemed to disappear for Nathaniel as he focused only on the man in front of him. Avery himself could see the rage in the other man's eyes, and would have withdrawn or surrendered if he could have. Yet One was intent upon fighting to the death, and there was nothing Avery could do about it.
Despite his renewed passion, however, Nathaniel found himself losing ground. He felt his arms tiring and his body ached every time the blades clashed. Avery seemed empowered by a force greater than any he could dredge up from within. In a fit of senseless humor, Nathaniel found himself wondering why one of the gifts of the Avatar had not been superhuman strength.
Suddenly a growl distracted Nathaniel away from his attacker, permitting the other man to slide a strike under his guard and into the side of his rib. The growl had also drawn Avery's attention, though One had seemed unfazed by the distraction, permitting it to score a sizable wound. Yet One was not completely oblivious to Avery's eyesight as the heretic saw the grounded dwarf hurling his axe in a mighty heave along the ground. Avery found himself turning to leap over the offending weapon when a sharp pain in his right hand informed him that Nathaniel had taken advantage of his own defensive move.
Avery was not completely aware of what had happened, only that he found himself once again fully in control of his body. He found himself sprawled upon the ground, clutching at his wrist, looking wildly around for his sword. He may not have been in control of the fight, but even Avery knew he was helpless without a weapon to defend himself.
Even when Avery saw One lying to the side, he did not fully grasp the significance of what had happened. The pommel's size had increased, doubling in width, it seemed. It still rocked slightly where it had fallen, half suspended in the air by some stone in the road. It took him a moment to focus on the hilt to realize why it seeme
d larger, and only then, when he saw the hand clasping the hilt, did the pain truly pierce his confusion.
In horror, Avery looked to the stump of his hand to see the blood flowing freely, even though his other hand was clamped tightly to instinctively stem the flow. And he screamed. Not out of pain or even fear. Avery just screamed. He was not even sure why he did, only that he could not seem to stop once he had started.
Scrambling to his feet, the once-would-be-God backed away from the man who now looked on with his own degree of shock at what he had done. Somehow, the idea that Nathaniel was just as stunned as he gave Avery the willpower to silence his screams. For a moment, he stood staring at Nathaniel with only the sound of their heaving breaths between them, with Nathaniel returning the stare with equal confusion. Then, without so much as another sound, Avery took to heel and fled into the surrounding woods.
Chapter Twenty-One
Avery ran. It was all he could do. Nothing else could process through his mind. In fact, there was nothing in his mind – a complete absence of thought or reason. The loss of his hand, the loss of One, the loss of his Godhood. None of it processed save the desperate need to keep moving.
As he ran, Avery clutched his severed hand to his chest, oblivious to the copious amounts of blood gushing out of it, drenching his tunic. Though his left hand clutched the wrist, still the bleeding would not stop. Though Avery was not truly aware of the bleeding, he was equally unaware that his mad flight was adding to his blood loss. His heart raced and pounded, and the more he ran, the greater the beat within his chest resounded. And with each thump in his breast, more and more blood pumped along his veins and out his wrist.
Avery was equally unaware when he had stopped running. He did not remember stopping, did not recall falling nor how long he had been lying upon the ground when he finally regained a dim measure of awareness. He could feel his head pounding, the weakness of his breath, the difficulty it took him to form thought. Yet he could not fully grasp the reason.