Chapter 307 - The Bell Tolls VI

Claire pursed her lips into a frown as she scoured the forest for a decent arena. There was nothing but an endless sea of trees. The only clearing between the fleet and the halfbreed was situated around a lake. The watering hole would have served as the perfect battlefield if her goal was outright extermination, but she needed to prove a point, and the terrain would only give her foes excuses.

Left with little other choice, she picked a random spot and turned it into a ring. The hemlocks, birches, and maples were uprooted one at a time and flung in random directions. She could have completed the process with her vectors from afar, but she relied entirely on the strength of her arms. The less her enemies knew the better.

It took roughly ten minutes to set up the arena and another ten for the Cadrians to converge. The shipless, flying division was the first to land, with a particularly angry count among their number. He was practically seething with rage, but he joined the others in silently awaiting the rest of the spectators’ arrival. Duels were auspicious events and a common source of entertainment. It was only in good manners to allow everyone to see their fill.

The spectators formed a ring, with many further mutilating the forest to better their personal perspectives. Those aboard the ship were hardly forgoing the spectacle. They were gathered on the ramparts, abandoning their stations just to get a closer look. They wanted to see what she could do. She had, after all, claimed that she would fell their champions. If not an overconfident fool, she would have to have been a warrior with some degree of skill.

In her mind, she leaned closer to the former than the latter. She had certainly slain Pollux with relative ease, but he was a defensive supporter. While the man in question had certainly formulated the idea that drove the most effective warrior specifications, he was far from the epitome of what he proposed. At his core, the flagbearer was most fearsome when accompanied by a legion, not when he fought alone.

The same could not be said of a true champion. The strongest duelists in the army were exactly that, duelists. They specialized in single combat, with their skills refined through long years of war. Still, Claire proceeded with utmost confidence. It wasn't a choice. She had to stand tall if she wanted to shock her countrymen into submission.

“You will pay for your lies and accusations.” When the spectators finished gathering, the count was the first to rise to her challenge. The rabbit stepped out from a crowd of centaurs and drew a sword from his waist. The bright red ore used in its construction clearly revealed its nature. Like every other springrock blade, it was made to be as limber as a willow branch. “I will fell you with my own two hands.”

Claire raised her own weapon—a Boris in the shape of a butter knife—but a third party stepped between them before the duel could begin.

“Father, wait!” The voice came from a slightly larger cottontail dressed in an officer’s attire. “Please allow me to fight this battle in your stead.”

Claire remembered the boy. It was hard not to, given his rather striking appearance. He was a rare variant born of the otherwise common union of cottontail and thoraen blood. His form factor was still closer to his father’s—most of his features were like that of a standard bipedal rabbit—but he had a stinger instead of a fluffy, round tail and six arms over the usual two. There was also a second jaw hidden inside of his mouth, but otherwise, he looked as any cottontail did. His name was Ignatius Titus, and he was the count’s most likely heir.

“Her total level is barely five hundred,” he proclaimed. “I’ll win in three moves.”

The count slowly lowered his blade. “Very well.” He didn’t like the idea of his son reclaiming his honour, but the boy was talented and needed a platform to make his name known.

“Thank you, Father. I will not disappoint you.”

A grin appeared under Claire’s helmet as she watched the half-bug raise his weapon.

“Begin at will,” she said.

“Gladly.” He rushed across the open field, but a vector mispositioned his feet and threw him off balance. He was sent crashing to the floor as the caldriess remained unmoving. He tried to get up, but he fell right back down on his face each time.

“What’s wrong?” asked Claire. “Too scared to move?”

“Shut up!” cried the indignant rabbit-bug.

Though some of the soldiers had laughed at first, they realised, after his third attempt, that it was the fault of an enemy assault. She was doing something to stop him from rising to his feet. The men who served under the young cottontail were especially concerned. They were all well aware that he was hardly the laughing stock she had made him out to be. His low standing frame and his extra arms allowed for him to be far steadier on his feet than the average soldier.

“You should never have volunteered if you were such a coward,” said Claire theatrically. “Now get up. Before I lose my patience.”

His body almost seemed to snap into position as her words echoed through the crowd. He was forcibly raised to his feet with no input of his own; her vectors had simply coerced his skeleton into an upright position.

“Kneel.”

Fear flashed through his eyes as his pose was altered again. He tried to open his mouth or raise his hand in hopes of forfeiting the match, but neither moved on his command. It was not as if she didn't understand that he had lost his will to fight. That much was clear to every observer.

“Pathetic,” she said. She remembered the boy clearly. He had visited her home every time there was a public event, in hopes of receiving her father’s tutelage. “You claim that Virillius had personally taught you the way to hold a blade.” Whispers rang through the crowd. It was an event that Ignacio openly bragged about. “Surely he must have reminded you that levels alone are not an accurate judge of power?” He desperately fought to whimper out a response, but his lips were still sealed, held together by a pair of powerful vectors. “It's a shame that you were unable to internalize any of his lessons. And I dare say that the punishment for such a crime is death.” She pointed her tiny butter knife right between his eyes. “Kill yourself.”

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He raised his sword to his stomach and slowly sank it through his flesh. He tensed his body in a last ditch bid to resist, but he was unable. Her vectors were stronger than his muscles. His wrists snapped beneath the weight of his resistance and his chest parted from his torso. And yet, though he was absolutely terrified, he somehow remained alive. Unlike his father, he was a pure warrior, built to the traditional standard. His training drove his blood vessels to extend from the two halves of his body, reconnecting the pieces as he collapsed in a pile on the ground.

Fortunately for the man in question, the fear rendered him unconscious. He had managed to silently forfeit the duel before she could subject him to any more torment.

“Next.”

There was no cheering, only a moment of silence as everyone watched the rabbit recover. The count returned to the ring before the process completed, kicked his son’s half-healed body to the wayside, and drew his sword again.

“Cowardly fools, the lot of you,” he said, with a scoff. “Mind domination is ineffective lest the target is caught unawares. There is no reason for any of you to fear, now that she has shown her hand.”

The clash began in the moment to follow. Titus assumed the standard offensive stance that the Royal Cadrian Springblade’s practitioners so often favoured and lunged at his highest speed. As a master of the style and the same precise race as its progenitor, he travelled at over thirty times the speed of sound. Or at least that was what was supposed to happen.

When he tried moving his legs, he found that they were anchored to the ground. It was not the same phenomenon that had overwhelmed Ignacio. His feet were frozen to the mud, perfectly locked in place by a layer of true ice. He tried slashing at it, but his efforts failed to bear fruit. His sword was unable to scratch, let alone rend the impossibly hard material.

The crowd grew abuzz when she willingly stepped into his range. He lashed out with a flurry of blows, but none pierced her defence. She parried every single one of his attacks with a tiny knife, warding them off with practiced ease.

The man in question was thoroughly confused. His blade was being guided off course. It was not that she was intercepting his blows, but rather that they were drawn towards her tiny weapon in a way that he was unable to explain. He simply couldn’t stop himself from walking right into the obvious trap that drove his humiliation.

Before he knew it, his arms were frozen, tied like a prisoner’s with shackles of ice. She stood behind him with another tiny knife in hand, held perfectly against his throat, just digging into the skin. He wanted to yield before he suffered the same fate as his son, but the point slowly dug into his flesh.

“You have lost,” she said. “Turn your ships around.”

The count snarled. “Don’t think for a second that you’ve won. When the crown hears of this, he will only send more ships, more powerful warriors. There w—”

His words were interrupted by a bash to the jaw.

“Send another fleet and I’ll drop a sword on every major Cadrian city.” Another chilling moment of silence. “As you might suspect, I’d rather not do something so horrible to my own countrymen. So I propose this, Count Titus.” It was a lie, of course, but with a strangely familiar icy weapon forming in the sky above, and its size swelling by the moment, the lie was easy to believe. “Let us fight a war by proxy. Each side will choose their champions. And they will settle this through a sequence of duels.”

“Ridiculous,” he groaned. “There is no reason for me to agree to your terms.”

“Think like that, and you will never earn your place by Vella’s side,” she said, with a mocking sneer, “for she is also the goddess of fair contests, and she derives no joy from unilateral destruction.” Claire looked him in the eyes, her own glowing red and gold through the slit in her helm. “You have one month to decide,” she said. “If I hear nothing by the fiftieth day, I will visit you in person and send you to your grave.”

She drove the butter knife deeper into his throat before raising her eyes and scanning the crowd.

“Anyone else?”

A thoraen glaivier stepped forward, but she was stopped by the goat and the deer that fell out of the sky. The warlords landed next to the count with annoyed looks on their faces and turned their eyes on the supposedly nameless knight.

“Marquis Ephesus, Marquis Flaccus,” she lightly nodded her head at each.

“If you knew who we are, then I’d rather you didn’t try and wrap up negotiations without us,” said Ephesus, the goat. The criocentaur was much shorter than most of his peers, standing at roughly the same height as Claire. He made up for his size with his massive horns, however. Each of the curved head blades was about as thick as his skull and three times as long. It was a wonder how he had managed to don his helmet at all.

His intentions were only thinly veiled. It was clear, from the panic in his flattened slit eyes, that he didn’t trust in the defeated cottontail’s ability to negotiate a reasonable result.

Claire shrugged. “I’ve said everything I wanted to, and I have no intention of repeating myself.”

“It is not a negotiation if only one side lays its terms,” said Marquis Flaccus. The deer was larger than the other marquis, but he was still only two meters tall, far smaller than that of the centaurian average. He had white spots along his back and a small but puffy tail. His ears were large for his size, but like those of most other deer, they were too wide near the middle to appeal to anyone with a reasonable sense of aesthetics.

“You are mistaken, Flaccus,” she said, with a glare. “I didn’t come to negotiate. I came to make demands.” A chill ran up the man’s spine. The icy look was just familiar enough that he felt like he knew it, but he couldn’t quite say why. “Abide by the war goddess’ whims and face us in the arena, or fall to unilateral destruction. The choice is yours to make.”

“You have no proof that Vella woul—”

He cut his words short as a mechanical spider descended from the heavens. The living weapon, which had attached itself to Arciel’s carriage without anybody’s permission, was pulled directly into the lyrkress’ armoured hands and presented to her foe.

“Is this proof enough?”

It took a few moments for the shock to sink in.

“You’re one of her chosen,” he muttered. The arachnid was a lesser gift, lower in rank than the divine spears granted to the king and his antecedent, but it was a gift nonetheless—a weapon bestowed upon a warrior that had earned the war goddess’ affections and confirmation beyond a reasonable doubt that the so-called nameless knight would enter the hall of heroes when her time came to pass.

“Then tell me, nameless, ‘exalted’ warrior.” While Flaccus wallowed in silence, Ephesus raised his voice with a begrudging frown upon his face. “How do you see the shape of this war?”

“In the same way that feuds are always settled,” she said. “Each side will produce three representatives to do single combat. The party with fewer victories will comply with one of the other party’s demands.”

“And I don’t suppose each duel’s winner will be granted a say in the demand’s fairness?”

“Precisely.”

Ephesus scoffed. “You dredge up all these old traditions, but work for the Vel’khanese? I don’t get it.” He stared at the slit in her helm for a solid few seconds before twisting his lips into a grin. “You’re practically asking to turn Vel’khan’s assimilation into a festival. You know what? Fine. We’ll do it. But we aren’t settling for three measly champions. This isn’t some silly dispute between a pair of houses. Each of us is sending eleven. Take it or leave it.”

“My, attempting negotiations behind the king’s back? How ambitious.” She narrowed her eyes. “Let us defer the decision until we have heard Virillius’ opinion. It is only when he is at the table that I will consider revisions.” She spread the wings on her ankles. “Your point of contact will be the Vel’khanese queen. Communications are to be directed to the castle in person.”

Turning her back on the man, she took to the sky, and returned to the carriage that held her companions.