by Marc Mulero
Blague turned his head to Aslock and spread his hands, hoping for some sort of introduction.
“This is Valor Malbourne,” Aslock shouted ahead. “He merged with his brother, Wildern, who lost three of his limbs in battle. The promise of being whole again led Wildern to embrace duality. They are both fierce warriors by nature, with heightened coordination and agility which comes with Ohndian unions. There you have it. Now fight.”
Blague drew his black carbon blade and planted one heel back in position for battle. Green eyes tracked the revolving lance – left to right, right to left, overhead – until Valor suddenly halted his dance and lunged its point en route for his dueler’s heart. An effortless motion from the Sin pushed the lance away and into a guided swipe at his opposite side. Blague then ducked the long-winded attack, regained his stature and backpedaled slowly while deflecting the series of deadly pointed jabs that followed.
“This is not duality training, outsider. You will gain nothing by acting peaceful here.”
“This hardly feels like training at all,” Blague bantered back. “You’re presenting nothing that I haven’t seen a million times before.”
Valor turned to Aslock while pointing at his opponent. “Do you believe this guy?”
The observant Elder shrugged his shoulders in response.
And before anyone could catch up to speed, Valor had already leapt high into the air, his lance rotating rapidly around his arm to call attention. Then at the peak of his jump, he leveled it like a jouster would, appearing as a Spartan for an instant in time.
Blague stepped back and raised his blade instinctively, to where he was sure the spear would be met. There was no need to think about it… he just did… like he had many times before in close-range combat. Why, then, had there been no clash? He looked over the blackness of the carbon blade to see Valor abruptly pulling back, cloak flailing and legs aflame with Cryos.
What in the…
Valor dazzled his enemy, distorting reality with an ethereal platform that materialized beneath glowing limbs.
Another trick, like Aslock’s when he attacked. It’s no different… keep it together.
A second mid-air jump changed Valor’s trajectory and toyed with Blague’s instincts a bit more, making him fumble in his step, his grasp on physics deteriorating right before his eyes.
Stop!
A third platform prompted a third leap - this man carried a staircase with him wherever he went. Bastard. It was all happening so fast. Valor boosted himself over Blague’s head and in position to strike at his open backside. A clean thrust into his oblique splattered blood when he rescinded, awarding the first point before Valor touched ground again.
"I could’ve pierced your heart. My brother thinks I should have," Valor bragged.
Blague reached across to his side, faltering, covering the wound that pumped blood through his fingers like a sprung leak.
A fleeting shadow of Briggs formed beside Valor, haunting Blague with a look of disappointment upon his face. The nightmare of fallen Sins rushed back to enrage him.
Abandoning his defensive stance and composure, the Sin Leader charged.
"Finally, some life!" Valor shouted, gripping his stick with both gloved hands.
Blague’s Cryos radiated to match his opponent’s, leaving a trail on his mad dash.
"You're just a lunatic!" Valor goaded, evading the Sin’s first attempt.
Ignoring the taunts of a couple of overconfident brothers, Blague kicked low, to the Neraphis’ shin, but found nothing except air and lost footing. A radical jab followed, which Valor easily dodged. Rage was taking over. He was becoming predictable. Telling. His next lunge was meant to gouge right in the center of Valor’s veiled face, but he was foiled again. So easily, too.
"How do you ever expect to refine your abilities while you're lost in such wrath?"
Blague was just that - lost. He grunted wildly, gaining speed and losing all grace. The collected man that had started this duel was diminishing into something feral.
An image of Eugene's decaying face resurfaced to remind him of what was to come if he didn’t succeed soon.
Valor withdrew while backstepping, guiding his spear to parry Blague’s slashes, sparks flying with every strike.
"You think wild, untamed guerilla warfare will gain you any ground here, against a Neraphis warrior?" Valor sneered, his lance beginning to emit a bluish hue.
Cryos is latching onto his weapon… how?
Blague roared and burst forward to topple Valor before he could perform another one of his tricks. An overhead swing was meant to cut the ancient being in two, but the stave was there to stop it. Another scream and another heave lifted Blague’s blade like he was wielding an axe to cut firewood. Long, powerful swipes descended with fury, forcing Valor’s elbows to bend and knees to buckle from the force of each successive blow. And on the Sin’s last wind up, every exposed inch of skin illuminated in blue, but his blade fell to cut nothing, triggering a fumble as the whirling Cryos staff left him blinded. He shook off his daze and blinked away the brightness to see Valor backpedaling to gain some distance.
Focus. Pull back from this rage or he will best you again.
There it was… some regained rationality. He relaxed his tension, ceased the endless rush forward and instead fell into a defensive stance. “Go ahead! Your attacks will lose their surprise soon, Elder.”
Valor let out a short howl and flew forward. He led with his enchanted weapon, hands abruptly ceasing to level the lance like a fan stopped short by an interference. He was fast. Too fast. The first jab aimed at Blague’s throat was narrowly met by defending steel – an inch of room at most. Something was different now. The failed strike was already replaced with another, as if the Neraphis had skipped an interval of time. A brief instinctive jolt gifted Blague another deflection, but an unsettling feeling crept up… fear… of being outmatched. Judgement was immediately clouded, leading to a near surrender. And when his vision retreated from laser focus to the broad view of things, he could only register the haze of a lance waving impossibly fast through the air, in between the blade and through to meet his skin, penetrating the Sin with multiple stab wounds and leaving him in bloody awe.
Mouth agape and eyes wide, Blague dropped to his knees.
The warrior stood triumphant and flipped his stave, slamming the blunt edge on the stone floor to dissolve the Cryos like a dying flame.
“Rest now, lowly adept. Internalize this beating in your unconscious state. Let it be a humbling lullaby,” Valor lectured while Blague began to slip into a comatose sleep. “We will have at it again, ‘war leader,’ don’t worry.”
Blague imagined a smile underneath his hood before collapsing to the floor.
Blague’s eyes sprung open to a familiar scene. Once again, the open sky above him was briefly lit by forked lightning. Those unrelenting winds cycling over a pile of bodies burnt into his retinas long after the flash left darkness to consume. Loud thumps pelted the ground like hawks falling from flight, but it was worse. Sin corpses. Crunching bodies thrown from the gales, speckling the area with more death.
He tried to ignore the horror around him by letting his pinned limbs fall to where the winds willed them. But that just led to a worse disturbance, what lied within. Sound was weird in this plane. The storm was insufferably loud, and then suddenly muted, usually to tell another part of this nightmarish tale. Then he heard it. The drip, drip, drip, of a leaking faucet tapping at all angles. His wounds - they were real. The leak was now running water, or blood in this case, pumping through each stab wound left by Valor, making him feel like he was being shoved between worlds, resting in one to awaken in the next.
Snaps grew louder on either side of him. Storm gusts were acting as whips, lashing at Briggs and Eugene methodically to deny death and promote torture.
“Above us,” Eugene screeched to point out three more comets soaring with a scarlet shine.
Blague lifted his head to trace the crackl
ing sound drawing near. There they were - more celestial rocks falling into the funnel like basketballs spinning around a rim. It was magnificent, colorful and shining, before they were spit into the sea of corpses, hurling body parts in all directions.
“Look,” Eugene slurred with a strangulated voice, feebly lifting his finger. “More have come to prove your worthlessness.”
Lesh burst from her casing, slashing through the rocky carrier and onto the wasteland. With a gothic battle axe wedged diagonally in her chest and the storm tearing at her flesh, she marched onward unimpeded, waving away the substance swirling to repair her, like it was a swarm of gnats in her way. She cursed the purgatory she had landed in with every step, until stopping inches from her floor-bound leader.
“I don’t blame you, Blague,” she proclaimed with hatred. “I blame myself for ever following you.” She looked back to the other struggling commanders breaking free from their cages. “Now you get to suffer as we have, by watching us bleed dry.”
On cue, a gust that Blague could’ve sworn had fangs clamped over the restorative matter, snatching it back into the tornado. The axe lodged in the vulnerable assassin then ripped through her torso and into the destructive gale, bringing with it flayed skin that peeled all the way up to claim most of her face. Lesh dropped to her knees, stripped of her flesh, left with nothing but muscle and gore and shining, beautiful hair atop it all.
One by one, Blague’s closest were reduced to terminal shells of their former selves, waiting not so patiently for their flames to finally be snuffed out. Volaina was a clear example… taking the spotlight as she inched forward, cupping the guts that poured out from her slit belly.
“I still don’t understand how all of this happen-” Blague was cut off.
“I deserve to die,” she spoke over him. “Don’t try to make sense of it. If this is how it ends, then so be it!”
Lito crept up beside her, steadying himself with one hand gripping onto her shoulder. “You left us to rot, hermano,” he moaned. The cluster of matter weaved through a bullet wound that overwhelmed his chest, circling the gaping hole to replenish it. “It didn’t have to be this way! We would’ve followed you into hell, if that’s where you led us. Instead, you chose to abandon us, going against everything you taught us to do,” he scolded, shaking his finger at his bound leader.
Blague let his head fall back to the rocky ground in defeat. After taking one last look at the carnage around him, he closed his eyes tightly, releasing tears to trickle past an overwrought face.
And the next time he opened them, he was in the real, erupted straight away into a raging roar sent from his heart. Veins bulged and muscles flexed, causing bandages draped around his shirtless body to saturate with blood.
Aslock then rushed over to help the Sin get to his feet, visible worry written all over his face.
“I have to leave, now!” Blague shouted.
Aslock disagreed, tilting his head to one side in disapproval. “Now is hardly the time to go anywhere, adept. You were just released from the Nostrum Chamber. For both physical and mental health reasons, you must stay… unless, of course, you have some undying wish to slip back into an endless cycle of despair.”
“You’ve taught me much in this short time. I will take what you gave and build upon it, but I can’t stay here another minute.”
“You surely do not have enough experience to build upon anything at this point in your training. You owe it to all those who count on you to stick this out as long as possible.”
Those words fatigued him further. It wasn’t just the training, no, it was the stress. It was endless. Grueling. The guilt became unmanageable. He wiped his face with a bloody hand. “Ar-are they safe?”
Aslock slapped the air dismissively. “Erase those thoughts. Ease your mind… and also, have some faith. I will alert you if the time for your stay needs to be cut short. Hm? You have my word.”
Blague took a deep breath, relieved somewhat, but still felt that all too familiar rage bubbling inside him.
“Fine. In that case,” he straightened, “bring in that smug cape again. I’m not done with him.”
A slight grin appeared on Aslock’s face. “I had a feeling you would say that. But hear me, adept, and hear me well – I do not care what kind of shape he leaves you in after this bout. We will hold a guided meditation together afterward. Whether it be out of one bloodshot eye, or with your entrails seeping through skin, you will attend. And you will attend wisely. It is time, Blague, that we dig deeper.”
I can’t let them down. I have to accept what I’ve become and let this time spent be worth my absence. No more faltering.
Blague looked up to see Valor reenter the training grounds, and so he drew his carbon blade. Wounds bled through his dressings from spiked adrenaline, and his Cryos mark looked as though it would melt his arm.
“So soon, warrior? Don’t expect my pity because of your band-aids.” Valor wound his lance.
Blague left no room for subtleties on his ruthless charge, forcing Aslock to quickly shift aside to make way for the Sin’s warpath.
“So eager to die, are you?” Valor taunted.
A leap fueled by the haunting of Blague’s forsaken commanders propelled him high, and a long howl announced his descent. He curled around Valor’s pointed strike and slammed down to deliver a cut of his own, but the Neraphis was as fast as Aslock had warned. Vanishing behind the Sin, Valor left only the butt of his lance to whack his opponent in the temple.
Stars spotted Blague’s vision, his senses reduced to the sound of a whooshing cloak circling him.
He thinks I have no control… that I will fight blindly, recklessly.
Blague pivoted and halted the dancing stave with grace. Metal clashed one, two, three times in a mere second. What the Sin lacked in speed was made up for in experience. He read the ancient warrior’s body language like a book, countering with an open armed block that led into a crossed swing, catching both sides of the lance before the ball of his shoulder pushed forward to knock Valor off balance. The split-second fumble is all Blague needed to turn on the offensive. Wild jabs meant to find exposed skin between links of armor, but the Ohndian pulled back, narrowly avoiding the attacks until a Cryos platform materialized under his boots to retreat.
All side commentary ceased, for the cocky Neraphis was nearly struck.
Blague gripped the hilt of his blade before bursting into a sprint to reclose the gap. He was charging a wide spanning shadow, an oversized hawk, who sent cleaving strikes that sprung like booby-traps from the darkness of his shrouded existence. The Sin flattened his body sideways to evade one slash, somersaulted forward to dodge another, and with each maneuver gained him another pace toward his target unscathed. Only old blood leaked.
With Blague closing in, Valor took flight, using Cryos beneath his heels to reposition mid-air, grunting along the way.
The determined Sin slid to a stop before pivoting to find the predictable warrior.
Head craned, he rushed to where he’d expected Valor to land, adjusting his stance after every platform that spawned into existence.
Keen to his opponent’s adaptation, Valor stabbed downward to thwart him, before flipping off of his sixth ethereal floor and letting gravity take hold. Cryos swirled up from his feet all the way to his arms, finally releasing through his fingers to imbue his lance once more. But Blague dove to stop the madness.
His shoulder crashed into Valor’s breastplate the moment he touched ground. Crunch. The Ohndian was driven backward, off balance for but a moment, a collision that severed patience and any intention to pull punches along with it.
Then came the lance… less metal and more blur of kinetic energy.
Left – a miss. Up – another. Left again. Right. The unworldly whirl of power it emitted was tangible, loud. And when it caught Blague’s retaliatory lunge, the steal was torn right from his grip.
Valor was lost in a dance, empowered by Cryos, by his brother, by the battles he used to
fight, and so he pounded his spear on stone ground to support his weight and flung himself high.
Another crunch… this time on Valor’s command, in the form of a dropkick right into Blague’s side.
He then landed, boots flat, torso twisted, before unwinding with the torque of a cranked lever. He used the momentum to catapult his spear underhand in frustration, out of character, driving it on a concentrated course for the unarmed man’s heart.
The projectile ticked through the air in slow motion – Blague’s eyes wide in the split second he had to react. What was this plane of reality? A gift? To relish in the seconds before death? There was no room to block or dodge… just to brace.
These were intervals of time too brief for a human to grip, but he was here, his arm suddenly ablaze with fire, burning so hot that his limb felt instantly severed. But it wasn’t. Another gift arrived - a tidal wave of blue wind encircled him – like Valor – like the Neraphis.
Cryos…
The spear was only a foot away, but he could feel it already piercing through skin, in between bone, through to his organ pumping hot blood. But that was a false anticipation, for his body had a trick of its own. A surge emitted from his brand. Finally, it did its first good thing - it protected him, countervailed the airborne weapon and flung it far out of reach.
A watchful Aslock made his way forward in shock, mesmerized by the turn of events.
Curbing his excitement for what he’d just accomplished, Blague raced into what was now an all-out fist fight. He ducked in like a boxer and wailed with powerful hooks aimed high. Each critical strike hit nothing but air, until he shifted his weight and hooked a pointed elbow into Valor’s ribs. His enemy’s curl sideways gave Blague what he needed. An aggressive swipe snatched Valor’s hood back to reveal his face, which was then greeted with a pack of knuckles.