“So? What say you?”
I sighed. I hadn’t really given it a lot of thought, but if past me usually agreed with to his challenge, then there must’ve been some merit to it. Granted, it was quite possible Iberius was lying to me about everything, but for some reason I believed him. Probably it was due to the fact that he seemed like a bored toddler just pulling the wings off of flies because he had nothing better to do. To him I was just a fleeting distraction from his perpetual role as an uninvolved ‘Observer’.
“Fine, I accept your challenge.”
Maybe I can get him to reward me a better weapon or something. Perhaps the reason why I always come back here is my overreliance on the Katana… Maybe I should find something else? Something less likely to get me killed…
Iberius grinned, then suddenly the tent unfurled itself. His body fell away into the shadow of his seat and the table with sweetmeats, treats, and wine, vanished, along with the carpet on the floor, the chair he’d been sitting in, and everything else. Even the red tent was gone moments later as well as the two guards who’d stood out front.
I now found myself standing within a village, no, a hamlet, with eight houses around me, scattered at near random it seemed, as well as a ruined tower ten metres ahead of me, its top half seemingly crumbled away.
Iberius lounged on one of the rooftops, belonging to a house with six massive spear-looking bolts lodged through it, no door, and a collection of ruined corpses belonging to both Gothershall guards and Red Runner Bandits in front of it. He was additionally flanked by three white-robed attendants, the blonde woman who’d given me the healing tea standing amongst them. Like a true Lord of Indulgence, one of the attendants was waving a large fan to keep him cool, while another was refilling his cup with wine.
“What about my sword?” I yelled.
He waved a hand in front of himself lazily and my ‘Passing Breeze’ materialised in the air before me. The ‘Iron Katana’ on my hip evaporated as I grabbed hold of my weapon, probably returning to the Blacksmith’s inventory.
As I equipped my trusty weapon, my total weight returned to what I was used to, and I regained fifteen percent of my stamina as it shot back up to a total of eighty-five percent. My movement speed also went back up to high.
“Now entering Stage ‘Encore!’.”
A strange kind of waltz duet of a cello and violin rolled across the Hamlet, and from where I stood, my hand on my katana hilt, I saw Iberius waving his arms around to the melody as he sat on the roof observing me.
Aside from his small retinue, there were no one else.[1]This was purely for the amusement of the eccentric World Architect.
The sound of hard shoes on stone caught my attention, and I turned to see a silhouette standing atop the broken tower, his features hidden in the glare of the sunlight. Somehow, without being able to see the figure whatsoever, I felt him exude a regal and haughty authority as he stared down at me from high above.
Though he did not raise his voice, I heard Iberius easily, as he explained. “This creation is one I call a Forlorn Aristocrat. I’m quite proud of it, but unfortunately there was no Stage for me to use him in. However, I have repurposed the ‘Hamlet’ Stage setting for this fight, lest you miss out on seeing my creation. I hope you can give me a spectacle worthy of my time. You now have my undivided attention,” he finished by saying. Because of the way he phrased his words, it made me wonder if he had the ability to see many different scenes in his World simultaneously, because, if so, it gave me an idea of what kind of reward I could ask of him.
I let out a long exhale, as the Aristocrat walked over the edge of the tower’s wall and fell quickly to the hard-packed earth many metres below. I took in my opponent as he raised himself from his straight-legged landing.
The Aristocrat was dressed far better than the Intruder, but it offered quite a lot less protection, since what he wore was a fancy Buff Coat[2] that emphasised appearance over protection. His head was left unprotected and his purple-skinned face with shadow-covered, recessed eyes were on full display. His hair was partially gone, but the bits that clung resiliently to his scalp was a red-tinted grey. The jaw on his face was sown shut with black string, which I found peculiar, but then again, I had no idea what the supposed origins of this creature should’ve been, and considering Iberius mentioned it wasn’t included in any of the Stages, I would probably never find out.
Every step of the Aristocrat’s black dress shoes on compacted earth sounded hollow and loud, as though I was listening to the sound of someone walking down a palace ball room. I looked at his pants and noticed they couldn’t even be considered ‘armour’, since they were made from something akin to tweed. I also noted that the metal buttons, pocket-watch chain, and jewellery on his fingers were all rusted. Further, I considered the jarring discontinuity in terms of design, since the Aristocrat was about five-hundred years too early for this World.
I didn’t have more time to mentally berate Iberius’ terrible World design, because the Aristocrat suddenly plucked an Estoc from a scabbard on his belt which I hadn’t noticed. The sword had a simple T-shaped hilt and crossguard, with a slender blade that seemed capable of puncturing metal, not to mention, it glowed... with shadow…[3]
With a powerful kick off the ground, the Aristocrat leapt forward, extending his arm to its full length and managing to stab the tip of his blade into my left shoulder, just where the cuirass cut off. With ease it slipped through the jacket and punctured my skin.
I stepped back while drawing my sword to knock away his blade, but before my edge could touch his, his estoc whirled around and sliced shallowly across my upper right leg.
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This guy is a lot faster than anyone I’ve fought before.
I drew in a quick breath from the pain and stepped back a few more steps, but the Aristocrat easily kept up the distance between us, holding his blade pointed at me with his right hand on its hilt in a strange palm-to-the-sky kind of style and two fingers on the centre of the crossguard.
Then the estoc jabbed forward and I flung my katana out to meet it, sending out a ringing glass-on-metal cling that seemed to hang in the air for a moment. I felt the wind at my back as I surged forward with a diagonal cut aimed at his neck, but he danced backwards in a duet of hollow-sounding steps, keeping his sword close and vertical to his body, its tip aiming at the sky, before jabbing it forth just as I finished my swing, lancing me through the exact same spot he’d already wounded me in my left shoulder.
“Argh fuck!”
I moved forward again with a rapid, albeit disorderly, flurry of swings, but he continued to dance out of reach, always conscious of the surrounding buildings and tower, ensuring he repositioned himself so that I could not corner him.
As I finished the last of the random slashes, he was on me again, lancing his blade-tip at my shoulder for a third time, but I deftly avoided it with a roll of my body, managing to get close enough to him to land a solid knee to his stomach.
Instead of flinching or momentarily pausing, the Aristocrat just danced away again with that persistent hollow tap of his ridiculously-out-of-place dress shoes.
“Fuck this guy!” I yelled in frustration.
“I’m glad you are enjoying yourself,” Iberius commented. Even without looking I could hear the smile in his voice.
I let the Aristocrat push me again, keeping myself in the very centre of the hamlet. Even with my speed I couldn’t catch him if I tried, so it seemed more prudent to let him come to me. Besides, I was starting to feel the pearls of sweat forming on my forehead and neck, tickling my skin as they rolled down my body. The adrenaline was such that I didn’t actually feel the shoulder wound, though it must’ve been quite deep, considering the sticky mess that glued my skin to the inside of my jacket.
Hopefully I don’t die from blood-loss, I prayed. After all, I didn’t have any more potions on me…
After a bit of mucking about, he finally went for me with one of those leaps that seemed to imbue his reach with an extra metre-and-a-half. Instead of piercing straight through my shoulder however, it skirted along the face of my cuirass as I rolled my body out of the way, leaving just a faint line in its wake.
As I made it within reach of the Aristocrat for the second time, I grabbed the neck of his Buff Coat with my left hand and hammered my katana straight through his stomach, easily penetrating his leather protection. While he struggled to release himself from my grip, I released a Lacerate within his flesh, drawing bucketfuls’ of blood.
The Aristocrat danced away again, but this time he trailed blood in his wake. And, of course, given that he was a Forlorn, it was the foul and putrid kind. In the waning daylight, the purple-black liquid looked less like blood and more like oil.
Unperturbed, he stopped moving when he was a few metres out of my reach, then with his free left hand he curled a fist and from his palm emerged a blooming shadow that soon coated the entire hand and then his body. It happened so quickly that I didn’t have time to exploit the momentary opening, as the abyss-black shadow went from covering just his hand to covering his entire body, hair and all, before I even realised what was happening.
With his coat of shadow, his figure seemed to grow taller and his estoc longer. When he moved towards me this time, there came no hollow out-of-place tap-tap-tap of his dress shoes. In fact there came no sound from him at all, apart from a static hum the shadow seemed imbued with.
I narrowly avoided the cleaving edge of his shadow-empowered sword, and it was a good thing I did, because it left a deep cleft in the door of a nearby building, as it passed through it without pause. However, I was less lucky on his second slash, as it opened up my left shin, carving through the bone partially.
Though I must’ve looked quite mad then, what with a blood-smeared shoulder and two damaged legs, I dodged under his third sweeping cut and came up past his guard with a Quick Draw to his abdomen.
Unlike my knee to his stomach, this slash had the desired effect, as it doubled him over. I moved around him, and, in a move I unfortunately recognised as the one Kerebor had used to kill poor Patrik, I drove my edge down on the nape of the Aristocrat’s exposed neck, severing his head from his shoulders.
As the Aristocrats body collapsed to the ground, his body melted through it as it became vapour and shadow. Then I blinked and found myself back inside the red tent, with Iberius lying sideways in the chair, dangling a cinnamon roll above his open mouth.
I fell to my ass on the carpet, feeling the pain in my body flare up, and then—
Then the pain was gone. Erased. As though it had never happened. As though the fight had just been a lucid daydream.
Iberius let out a satisfied puff of air as he swallowed his treat, then sat back up in the chair, looking down at me on the ground.
“I don’t like that sword,” he simply said. I guessed that I wasn’t supposed to have been able to cleave through the shadowy coat of the Aristocrat, at least not with such ease.
“Name your price.”
I let out a deep sigh. Then considered what kind of reward I wanted. Iberius had said he could do anything as long as he abided by the rules, which probably meant that any weapon he awarded me would have to be within the appropriate theme and strength of this World, which I guessed meant it would have to be on par with the Intruder’s Halberd.
“I want a favour,” I then answered.
“With the little lovebird?” he asked, no doubt already intimately familiar with how Kerebor had been stalking me.
“Yes. Can you get me something like a restraining order?”
He chuckled, though there was no humour in it. “I can do anything to him, as long as it isn’t outright murder. Of course, I could get him put in a situation where that would be a likely outcome, but, owing to these blasted rules, it needs to be possible for him to overcome.”
That last comment caught me off-guard. One of the Watcher’s rules is to keep things fair??
“You can be creative. I don’t care. Just keep him away from me. I’m sure he’s waiting outside the Tournament area or something.”
“Your loverboy is not as dedicated as you might think,” Iberius commented. His eyes glazed over as he focused on something I couldn’t see. “He’s currently eating a steak at the tavern where he is lodging. He left the tournament stands over an hour ago, before you had even fought the Intruder.”
“I don’t care what he is doing.”
Still staring off into space, Iberius asked, “You’re sure that you just want him out of your way? Even after what he did?”
I thought it over for a moment. Maybe Kerebor deserved a worse punishment. After all, he’d killed Patrik’s friend and ruined my party with Jakob. “Actually, I just thought of something.”
Iberius grinned from ear-to-ear as I told him my idea.
“Now you’re speaking a language I can understand.”
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[1] Unless you counted the corpses.
[2] A leather coat worn by European cavalry in the 17th century. Most of them were a light tan, but the one worn by the Aristocrat was black, owing to some kind of dye, and it had the motif of a serpent in red.
[3] Not technically something that’s possible, but I’m just reporting on what I saw…