Arc 6: Chapter 8: Wave Crash, Thunder Roar

    Morgause stepped onto the field as a war steed, with barding reinforced by plates of deep blue steel. I took some minutes with her, letting the chimera get used to the sound of my voice and judging her temper.

    I needn’t have bothered. The scadumare seemed calm, even with the watching crowds, noise, and worsening storm. Despite the regular rumbles of thunder in the sky, the rain barely touched the field as I did my own check of her harness.

    I mounted, then turned my attention on my opponent. Siriks rode the same monster he’d battled the storm ogre on, that first night I’d met him not long after arriving in Garihelm. A manticore with a leanly powerful frame and a feline head maned in ruddy brown fur, armed with a lashing scorpion’s tail. Like my own mount, it wore elaborate armor of its own.

    There were no melodramatic pronouncements from the herald this time. If the Crown spoke, it would be with Markham Forger’s voice. This was no longer just spectacle, but a duel as dire as the one which decided Laessa Greengood’s fate.

    Siriks had challenged the Emperor himself, in front of all his lords, allies, and subjects. I’d just been the unlucky bastard to fall into the role of royal advocate. Probably served me right, for showing off with Karog.

    But if I beat him, then the only remaining threat would be Calerus.

    Hendry cast me worried looks, but I ignored him. We were technically strangers in my current guise. Karog watched from the opposite side of the field, burly arms folded and eyes focused. If he was angry that his own struggles went on hold for this, he did not show it.

    Our mounts began to circle without any pronouncement from the spire. Siriks watched me, his swordspear held at an angle to his right, his manticore’s tail twitching in anticipation. It had a gaunt face with large ears, as much bat as lion. Rumbling growls emerged from its bared fangs, blending with the vitriol of the angry sky.

    Morgause, for her part, remained demurely quiet save for the crunch of her claw-hooves on gravel, and the low swish, swish of her sinuous tail whipping the air at my back.

    I’d spent much of the day dwelling on why I was here, what I needed to accomplish, my doubts. I put all of it aside, and let my entire world become that narrow window of vision offered by my helmet, and the warrior waiting in it. The murmuring crowds upon the high walls faded from my notice, along with the other knights observing from the edges of the island.

    Lightning forked over the sea. A wave crested the northern point of the isle, spray bursting up in a shower that rained down on us a moment later as the wind caught it.

    The rumble of that distant bolt reached us a breath later.

    The manticore charged, letting out a ripping growl. Siriks shouted in harmony with his beast, taking his great blade in both hands and cocking it back as he advanced.

    I didn’t even have to spur Morgause on. She moved, her training perfect, and I found myself readying my hammer without concern for what my beast did.

    Another flash of lightning. A second cresting wave.

    We struck at near perfect center of the field. Our chimera passed one another, almost close enough for steel barding to grind together. Intentional on my part, because it neutered the full weight of Siriks’s mighty swing.

    His blade went past my helmet at an angle, missing only because I bent sharply to one side at the last instant. I struck out with my hammer, catching him on the shoulder. His armor took the blow, but he felt the knock. Sparks danced just as if I’d struck an anvil.

    The manticore twisted out of my reach even as Morgause turned, readying to capitalize on my score. The larger beast prowled, snarling at me, while Siriks winced and prodded at his shoulder armor with one hand. I’d left a dent in it.

    We circled. Siriks bared his teeth at me, brandished his blade. His eyes almost glowed with approval.

    I caught his second attack on my shield. The manticore lunged, a leaping motion no equine beast could have copied with such speed. Its iron-shod claws lashed out, forcing my own mount to backpedal. The swordspear, so much like an oversized glaive or halberd, slammed down.

    I turned it, shield up and over my head, but the blow’s power sent a shockwave through my arm.

    No aura. That’d been all him, and the weight of his weapon.

    “Who’s the one playing?” I snapped.

    “I’ll put my soul into it when you do!” Siriks laughed, spinning the weapon at his side like it weighed no more than a baton, its blade singing as it whirlwinded the air.

    Very suddenly, he ducked low and clutched at his manticore’s neck. In the same instant, its scorpion tail lashed out. It almost went right into my breast plate, but my mount saved me. Morgause danced back, nimble as a fawn, and I got my shield up to block the stinger.

    Perhaps as a concession to his fellow knights, Siriks had shelled the stinger in metal to trap its venom. Even still, the deadly point punched right through my shield and emerged a finger’s width from my helm’s eye slit.

    The design of the stinger’s “armor” included a barb very much like a fish hook. I saw this in the same moment it ripped back, and nearly pulled me right off my mare as it caught inside my shield.

    I let it have the shield, because the alternative would have ripped my arm right out of its socket. Even still, a flash of sharp pain spiked into my shoulder. The manticore’s tail flicked, flinging its prize away.

    That beast was deadly. Every part of it was strong, fast, and sharp. More than that, Siriks fought in perfect sync with it, the two forming a brutal engine of war.

    Morgause was a good steed, but not a proper war chimera. Her kind were taken from the wild more as a luxury mount than anything, a symbol of rarity and status. She performed well, but wasn’t a living weapon.

    I needed a counter, something to even the playing field.

    I found it, and grasped my steed’s reins. Siriks’s eyes narrowed, perhaps sensing some change in my manner. He hunched low over his elaborate saddle. The manticore’s tail twitched.

    I spurred my mount on with a kick, directing her not at my opponent, but to his left. Siriks lunged at the same moment, but he’d anticipated a charge. I didn’t go at him, but skirted past.

    Not out of reach of his beast. The tail lashed, and I reacted on flinching reflex, having already traced its motion. My hammer struck at the dense cluster of muscle right above the barbed sting. It too was armored, and a piercing clang! shocked the air at the impact, given greater volume by a less natural sound — the humming music of aura.

    My blow knocked the armored tail so hard that metal bent, the flesh beneath bruising, cartilage tearing. The manticore let out a shriek of pain, a yowling sound that made my teeth clench. Eddies of gilt vapor coiled through the air where hammer and tail met, fading like mist off hot stone even as I spurred Morgause on. She flew over the sand, sleek as a bird’s shadow.

    My left hand shot out, and grabbed my advantage.

    The great spear, discarded by Karog as a show of cooperation, ripped from the ground as I pulled it. I spun it even as my chimera kept her speed, adjusting my grip on the move, lifting the spear high into the air like a waving banner. To the ogre it had been a flexible sidearm, but to me it may as well have been a hefty war lance.

    Morgause turned without slowing hardly a step, until we once again bore down on our opponent. Siriks struggled to get his mount focused as it lashed its tail about, driven into a rage by pain. He gave his reins a savage yank, spat something in his country’s tongue, and managed to get the manticore back in control. His eyes shot up to me.

    The sky had grown darker even in the short time since our duel began. There was hardly a break in the rumbling lines of thunder stretching across encircling clouds. Though hardly any wind seemed to touch the island, the sea practically boiled around the Coloss, waves cracking and reaching across the walls, the trenches separating them from the tourney field, the sharp point of coastal rock at the far end.

    The sky itself seemed to bend toward us.

    Siriks spurred his mount on to meet me, but I was too close and my steed too fast. He wouldn’t be able to pick up enough speed to counter my charge. Mere heartbeats separated the point of my lance and him, all my focus, my will, narrowing to the joining of those two objects.

    Strangely, Siriks took his hand off the manticore’s reins and spread his arms out, as though welcoming the blow. I sensed something. A shiver in the world.

    In the moment before I struck him, the cymrinorean vanished. He was in the saddle, and then... gone. The manticore remained, lashing out with its claws in a blow Morgause dodged with a nimble sidestep that should have been impossible at that speed. I had to tighten on my grip on her to keep from being thrown off.

    Something struck me, hard. The blow caught me across my chest at an angle, hard steel slicing across breastplate and pauldron. The armor saved me, but the force of the blow ripped me right out of the saddle.

    The world tilted, turned, spun. Karog’s spear struck the ground before I did. The wooden handle bent and snapped. I hit an instant later, in a bone jarring fall that sent me rolling, then sliding across the flat isle.

    It took me near half a minute to realize I’d already stopped moving before my mind caught up. My vision reeled, my bones ached. My beautiful armor and rich blue cloth were gray with dust and wet sand.

    I’d lost the spear in the fall, and the hammer... still nearby, just a few feet. I got to one knee, reached for it—

    Movement in the corner of my helm’s eye slit made me react on pure instinct. I turned, lifting a vambrace to block what I expected to be a blade.

    It turned out to be a boot. It went past my guard, slamming into my chest and knocking me on my back. It struck hard, and for a moment I wondered if it were Karog rather than the lean northerner who’d attacked me.

    The next thing I saw was Siriks above me, more demon than man with his leviathan helm and twisting braid framed by the storm-blackened sky. He lifted his swordspear up with both hands, readying to bring it down point first, his left hand gripping the hollow above the weapon’s cross hilt.

    I kicked out at his shin, made him stumble, then rolled as the weighty blade embedded itself into the sand where my head had been. I rolled over my fallen hammer, cradling it against my chest. With my left hand, I grabbed a clump of sand and hurled it right into Siriks’s face as I rose.

    Not the most knightly move, but I’d learned how to fight in the bailey of the Herdhold, not on the tourney field. Siriks flung an arm up to shield his face, but some of the dust must have gotten into his helmet. He stumbled back. I managed to stand.

    The crowd stirred around us, near loud as the growing storm with excitement. I barely noticed them.

    What just happened? He’d seemed to flicker out of his saddle, gone in the blink of an eye. Teleportation?

    He swung with a shout, a cleaving blow with all his blade’s weight behind it. I stepped backed, waited for the reckless blow to sink the spear’s tip into the sand. I trapped it under one boot, then pressed the fingers of my left hand to my helm’s mask, blowing the cymrinorean a mock kiss.

    I got the reaction I’d wanted from the stands. Siriks’s face reddened with rage, even as he fought to catch his breath.

    “Need to sit a moment?” I asked him.

    He yanked his blade from under my boot, then used his Art again more in desperation than strategy. A blast of wind tugged him away from me in a flash, taking him from my reach as suddenly as a sail ripped from its bindings. The same pull dragged at me, but I was ready for it this time. Dropping to one knee, I sank the back-spike of my hammer into the ground, using it to anchor me. I also focused my own will, concentrating on staying grounded. In all auratic combat, willpower was half the fight.

    Even still, I was almost ripped right up into the sky. A terrifying sensation.

    This time I tracked him, looking up, and sure enough found his figure suspended in the sky, distant and small in that space before he started to tumble back down. I caught a flash behind him, an odd light.

    So that’s how it was.

    He twisted, lashed out while still in midair, and a shape blurred toward me. I avoided the hurled spear by inches, letting it embed itself into the island.

    Once again Siriks fell, landing behind me before lashing out with a seax, the same dagger he’d used to take Nimryd’s eye. I ducked the swing, slashed at his wrist with my rondel, caught only the solid steel of his vambrace in a brief flash of sparks. I followed with the hammer, nearly catching his chin before he tilted away from the blow.

    Swing, dip, dodge, parry, slash, feint, riposte. A dance I knew well, and Siriks did not prove a disappointing partner. He fought like a young lion, strong as he was fast. He matched me in footwork if not in brawn.

    When I backed away, he snarled at me. “Why are you holding back!?”

    Holding back? I was barely keeping up. Jocelyn had been right — this lad was a monster.

    But neither was I done. I crossed my two weapons again, waiting for him. Eyes popping wide in rage, he reached out with his free hand as though to claw at me. Again, I felt that odd shiver in the air, saw a light form behind him—

    I rolled aside, even as that sucking power — gravity, Lias had called it — ripped air, debris, and water into a whipping orbit around Siriks. His spear flew from the ground where he’d hurled it, flying back into his hand. If I hadn’t dodged, it would have impaled me right through the back on its way to him.

    Three times now, four counting his earlier fight. I felt like I could almost grasp on how his power worked, or at least felt a solid hunch.

    All Art involves the manifestation of a phantasm, a spiritual construct of aura which acts as the tool by which one’s power affects the world. This can be simple as a blade of fire, or complex as the internal mechanisms of a Marion.

    Siriks’s power was no different. The problem was understanding the form it took, and how he could manipulate it.

    Siriks crouched, levered his spear back, one foot sliding sharply to the side beneath him. I waited for his Art to activate, ready for it this time. Let him bring me close, I thought.

    When I felt the pull behind me, it took me completely off guard and changed my perception of how his power worked in an instant. Is he not its center?

    I tilted backwards, off balance. Siriks shot forward, using the pull of his own magic to give himself unnatural speed. His feet lifted off the ground, his spear point driving forward with all the strength of a chimera-sped lance.

    Too close, too sudden, too fast. My own Art didn’t have time to finish forming. He hit me. I felt the sharp point of his spear bite through steel, through chain, through cloth, flesh—

    My feet left the ground. I had to drop my dagger and grab the spear just to stop it from going right through my abdomen. Even still, I lost the ground, lost my sense of up and down. Gray sand raced beneath us until we stopped, very suddenly, at the edge of the island.

    Angry water cracked and spat below, a shapeless monster eager to welcome me into its maw. I braced myself against the cliff’s edge, grunting in pain at the metal biting into my skin. The spear formed a breach in my armor. Small, but large enough to be lethal if it went much deeper.

    “What trick were you about to pull?” Siriks asked me. He stood very close.

    I tightened my grip on the spear, then lashed out with the hammer. Siriks caught my hand by the wrist, squeezing hard enough to make metal creak. His flaring power gave him unnatural strength.

    “Let’s go for a little ride, black knight!”

    Before I could so much as blink in response to that statement, we started moving again. Still digging the spear into the gap it’d broken in my armor, Siriks was caught in the grip of his magic and began to rise.

    This time, he took me with him.

    Wind rushed around us, filling the gaps in my armor, whistling in my ears. Once more I felt that eldritch pull.

    We rose. Up, up...

    Into the storm.

    I’d never flown before. For a moment, the fight for my life, even the pain of the metal threatening to tear my guts, faded from my thoughts. I saw the twin arcs of the Coloss wall, the island between them like a broken plate at the edge of Garihelm’s lagoon. It grew smaller, the crowds on the stands blurring into an indistinct mess.

    The coast stretched out before me, distant mountains curtained in rain. And the sea...

    I saw the sea in flashes of pale lightning. Far out, waterspouts crawled over the unsettled waves. Terrifying. Enormous.

    Beautiful.

    Siriks’s voice found me through the rushing wind, muffled even though he spoke nearly next to my ear. “Yield, and I won’t drop you!”

    I took a moment to burn that horizon into my memory. We were near the low-hanging clouds now. A fork of lightning cut them, unnervingly close. Siriks’s demand for my surrender was lost in its boom.

    In that flash, I saw dark shapes in the clouds with simian arms and eerie white eyes, each large as a castle.

    “YIELD!” Siriks roared over the wind. “OR DIE!”

    The air grew cold. And hot. The storm was gravid with power, more primal than almost anything I’d ever felt.

    “Damn it!” Siriks placed a hand on my shoulder. “If you don’t—”

    I grabbed him around the back of the neck and pulled him close, cutting him off. I laced my breath with aura, so he could hear me clearly even over the howling wind.

    What I told him made his eyes widen. I let the words sink in, then twisted against his grip, endured the spike of agony as the spear tip bent in my flesh, and flung my hammer.

    It whipped through the air, end over end, flickering with golden fire. I had been a bit overconfident in my talk with Rose.

    And there is nothing better for breaking sorcery than aureflame.

    The hammer struck my target, and the sky behind Siriks erupted like shattered glass. Brilliant silver light burst into existence, chasing away the gold of my own magic.

    For a moment, within that flash, I saw Siriks’s phantasm. An adamant moon, a guiding body to protect and shelter the last son of House Sontae. As my own power burned hot to reveal it in the same way I’d stolen that earlier vision of the boy’s past, I saw its true nature.

    A Blood Art, just like Emma’s. Clean and cold, hard as diamond, yet paradoxically fragile. I felt I could almost touch on its true name.

    But I never learned it, and it was lost to the world that day.

    When my hammer broke the moon, it wasn’t unlike breaking a rare and precious treasure. Siriks had suffered much in his life, and that construct was all he had left of his family. Perhaps he would be able to reforge it one day, but never quite the same.

    That was his consequence to bear.

    The spear point snapped in my flesh. Siriks stared at me, stunned both by what I’d done and what I’d just told him. The wind caught at his braid.

    We both began to fall.