Drexo’s war-hammer came hurdling towards him in a downward arc. Kiran spun to his right avoiding a collision with their large imposing weapon.
It wouldn’t be a struggle whatsoever for him to crack open each of their skulls with that weapon. One hit with that thing and I’m dead.
Although Drexo missed Kiran, he utilized all of his forward momentum to redirect his attack at Juna.
Juna screamed as she used one of her daggers to slice through the back of his forearm as his attack missed her as well. Juna quickly dived and rolled underneath Drexo’s. Without hesitation, the dagger went straight into his left calf.
His leg went backwards knocking Juna back. Despite having a dagger sticking out of his calf, he didn’t wince or appear worried about it. Maybe to a creature like him, pain didn’t register the same way it did to a human. Either way, he didn’t lose his focus on killing them all, especially Kiran.
He’s that desperate to kill me, that a dagger sticking out of his leg can easily go ignored. Juna kept Drexo focused on her for a moment. He sent his war-hammer in multi-directional arcs managing to miss her every time.
Kiran eyed Silvy and they both charged together. With Drexo’s back turned to them briefly so that he could defend against Juna’s current onslaught, Drexo ducked down and swung his war-hammer in a circular arc.
With an outstretched hand, he prevented Silvy from going any further. The war-hammer appeared as a blur as it flew past both of their heads.
Crap, that was close. His heart began to pound harshly against his chest. If it kept it up, he imagined it would fly out of him if he weren’t careful.
He stepped back as Drexo pulled himself back up and looked at him menacingly. “I have fought many battles,” Drexo said aloud as he swung for him again. “I have fought and killed countless triumphant warriors. And I have never once lost a single encounter!”
“Oh really?” Kiran said ducking out of the way once more. “What was that in that arena then?” Kiran extended his right arm hoping for the edge of his sword to hit them, but unfortunately, he wasn’t close enough for the hit to land.
“You consider that a loss?” Drexo began to laugh. “You ran away the moment I stepped foot in the arena. Or does your wretched human brain not remember?”All three of them went for a simultaneous attack. Drexo however began to swing his war-hammer in another circular arc keeping them all a few steps away from him.
Every one of them was sweating profusely. Kiran tried to take a moment to catch his breath while noticing how much sweat also dripped down their opponent’s arms, chest, and legs. “I would like to see you try to meddle with my soul the same way you did with my kin.”
“What are you even talking about?” Kiran said avoiding another vertical downward attack from Drexo.
His war-hammer stopped an inch above the ground as he followed it up with a strike towards Juna who rushed for him.
“Don’t even begin to suggest that you don’t know!”
While the three of them began to tire, it felt as if Drexo only increased in strength as the fight continued. He moved faster. He moved with more grace. He appeared more focused and dangerous with fewer mistakes and even fewer openings allowing them a chance to land a hit. The only ones they landed were in the beginning. Now he avoided them all.
Perhaps that was simply because they were getting more tired, or perhaps that was a result of him adjusting to their fighting. Regardless of any of that, Kiran found himself wishing Lar was here to assist.
“I need your help. Where are you?” he said in a rush telepathically.
“I’m almost there!” she said.
Kiran pulled away and breathed in heavily struggling to not focus on how fast his heart was beating. He could feel his pulse pounding in his ears and sweat kept getting in his eyes.
Drexo stood completely upright in a more relaxed stance. He locked eyes with Kiran whilst holding up his war-hammer. “Tell me again that you don’t know what you did.”
“Not the slightest clue,” he said and took more deep breaths as their fighting took a pause.
Fighting elsewhere went on, particularly at the walls and within the structure that was built above and around the gate. Come on you guys, secure it already and lend us a hand. There can’t be that many of them that sneaked into the city.
“I would find you tolerable if you simply admitted what you did, but this,” Drexo’s eyes began to open wider, “is truly reprehensible.”
“If you’re talking about me defending myself and the rest of us in that arena, then sure, I won’t apologize for that.”
“You didn’t just merely defend yourself. Are you truly that oblivious of your own actions?”
Now he’s starting to annoy me. “Are all banespawn as vague and unclear as yourself?”
He began to chuckle slightly. “You humans and familiars always come up with the most clever of names to attach to others that aren’t yourselves. You all know we’ve never liked being called by that name, yet you have since our arrival to this domain titled us as such.” He lifted his war-hammer allowing it to rest comfortably on his bulky left shoulder. He stood there unafraid of them and ready to respond the moment they decided to attack once again. “To answer your question, I merely find it hard to believe that someone who freely manipulates the souls of others would not know what they’re doing.”
The souls of others?
Kiran thought back to when he fought in the arena. He remembered focusing on all of the banespawn and trying to force this strange power of his towards them. However, was it possible that instead of using his own soul as a source of power like Yorais believed, had he instead been using their souls against them?
His head began to hurt suddenly. He pressed his palm to his face feeling his fingernails digging slightly into his forehead.
“Raelle…” a voice from a time long before called out to him.
A memory flashed before his eyes with Nelena—who appeared at least a couple of decades older than when he saw her in one of his previous memories—coming to stand in front of him in a dark location. Her hair was much shorter than when he recalled her from their moments at the university. Though she was older, she didn’t appear all that different. A few more lines around her eyes and across her forehead. She was still immensely beautiful just as she had been when they first came to know one another.
She came to him and began grasping both of his hands. As she lifted his shaking hands to her face, blood covered them entirely. Firelight reflected off the blood. She placed his bloodied fingertips on her warm flush cheeks. “It’ll be alright,” she said in a whisper-like tone. “I’ll help you just as we’ve always done for each other.”
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Nelena pulled herself closer to him nestling her head to his bloodied bare chest. He ran his wet hands over to her back embracing her once again.
A sharp pain coursed through his head. He pulled his palm away from his head realizing he had caused a bit of blood to run down his forehead from one of his fingernails.
Drexo began to smile. “Are the lies you tell yourself starting to crumble? Are you beginning to realize what you are?”
A bitter taste settled in his mouth. What was that memory? There was so much blood. It covered him and everything in that dark location. The grim sight was little to the horrifying emotions his previous self possessed at that moment. Had it not been for Nelena, he likely would’ve lost his mind.
His throat constricted a little as he tried to wrap his mind around certain things he hadn’t been entirely cognizant of beforehand. That memory, it must be from a time in my life when I crossed a line that could never be uncrossed. It must have something to do with what draws so much ire from Drexo.
It didn’t come as a coincidence that he’d be shown that at this moment after Drexo’s accusations. His mind was trying to awaken him to a dark nature that he had been entirely ignorant of.
I’ve been meddling with souls and not necessarily my own. That’s what this power is.
“Kiran,” Silvy said with an expression of concern clearly obvious by the way she looked at him. “Is…is that what you’ve been doing?”
“I don’t know,” he said not entirely convinced yet or perhaps as a way to protect himself. “I don’t know a damn thing Silvy!”
What am I doing yelling at her? I need to control myself. Just calm down, and try to focus. Just focus…
He possessed immense ignorance about this world due to his memory loss. While he has up to this point gained a lot of knowledge, there was still so much knowledge that he lacked, especially about himself.
Both Silvy and Juna began to look at him in ways he hadn’t seen before. Messing with souls was a truly taboo thing in this world. Yorais made that clear to him. While Juna and Silvy hadn’t reacted too poorly to learning about himself using his own soul back when they confronted Lady Meredith and Evelyn, that was entirely different than using another person’s soul.
“My, my, my.” Drexo muttered amusingly. He sauntered around without a bit of fear in his eyes. “You’ve managed to ignore or even suppress some uncomfortable truths about yourself, haven’t you? Yes, that must be the case. But even if you were unaware of what you were doing, that doesn’t matter to me. You and all those who would dare stand by your side must suffer the consequences of your actions.” He pulled his war-hammer off of his shoulder grasping it more tightly than ever before. “You must die.”
With his right foot, Drexo launched himself forward with even more fury and rage than before. Kiran focused entirely on defending himself while the other two struggled to do so as well. Just as he thought Drexo was about to crush his skull, Drexo hesitated pulling away at the last second.
“Need a little help?”
Drexo guarded against Lar who swiped her fauchard towards him. It sliced through the side of his upper body but not deeply enough to put an end to him.
Several others came to assist in the fight including Frederek. “Brought more of your friends,” Drexo said as he likely was reconsidering his fight against them. However, while he felt that they were sure to defeat him now, a slew of coalition members including Rinas and Abigail came down from the wall along with Felmir and his people.
The front gate began to open. Whoever remained up at the wall found themselves being slaughtered by the banespawn. The sickening feeling in his stomach only worsened as he realized the others had failed to secure the gate.
Drexo found it amusing of course. Several other banespawn came rushing to stand by his side as well. “This city will be ours,” he said as Rinas and the others made it to them. “You can delay what’s to come, but you’ll all face our wrath and be judged for what you’ve done to us.”
“We need to retreat to the second gate,” Felmir said loudly with another big bear beside him. Blood covered his fur. It appeared that he had taken quite a few cuts as well during whatever fighting he had taken on.
“Can we not retake the gate?” Silvy asked.
“There’s too many of them,” Rinas said. “We tried to reach the gate controls before they were taken by them, but we were unsuccessful. For now at least, we better go now before the gate has fully opened allowing more of them in.”
“That’s right,” Drexo said with a wide smile. “Go ahead and cower behind your walls. I can wait patiently as we take more and more of this precious city of yours and your dear Lucias does nothing but sit on his throne!”
All of them began to pull away as more and more of the gate lifted allowing for banespawn to crawl underneath it and begin rushing in. Their voracious voices carried out far and wide letting everyone who might still be at the lower level of the city know of their presence. I sure hope they’ve evacuated everyone to the upper levels of the city. Otherwise, they’re not going to make it out here for long.
Kiran ran alongside Juna who kept eyeing him strangely. Lar must’ve noticed something peculiar since she gave him a look as well. “Did something happen that I need to know about?” she said telepathically.
“Uh, can it wait until later?”
“I don’t know, can it? If you’re keeping more secrets away from me—”
“Lar, now’s not the time. We’ll talk about it later when we can. Let’s just say that I’ve learned a few things about myself that I need to think about.”
“What’d you possibly learn? I thought you all were busy fighting.”
“There was a moment of pause in the fighting when I gained some insight.”
“You didn’t use your soul again, did you?”
“I didn’t do that. I’m not foolish enough to start carelessly doing that after what happened to me.”
As they ran together, she gave him a questioning look. “If you say so.”
They began to reach the middle section of the city. They walked below the portcullis as lots of people gathered atop the walls to defend this point.
Once everyone motioned through, the gate leading into this section of the city closed.
“Where is Lucias?” Abigail said. “Shouldn’t he be out here helping us fight?”
“He—”
“I’ve about had it with you Felmir. How much longer can we tolerate this inaction from him? His city is falling apart, yet I haven’t seen him for one moment since this assault began!”
An eagle began to fly from the sky. It swooped down landing on the ground and switching into a naked human form that he had seen before.
“We no longer have control of the lower sector,” Felmir stated to Halmond who wore a plain expression.
Halmond lifted a hand to his chin and placed another hand on their bare hip. “As I have feared. I hope that most of the lower sector was successfully evacuated?”
“I believe most were evacuated but there are still many who didn’t make it here,” Rella said with a high-pitched tone that came across as weird due to the large white bear form she currently possessed.
Halmond appeared displeased to hear that answer. “All we can do for now is protect this gate at all costs and prepare defenses elsewhere to ensure they don’t make their way in the same way they did in the lower sector.”
“Listen, you,” Abigail said pointing her finger up towards him. “Where’s Lucias at, huh?”
“He is remaining apprised of the situation.”
“Oh yeah? ‘Remaining apprised of the situation.’ What a load of nonsense. Tell him to get his butt out here and do a little bit of something.”
“Abigail,” Rinas said angrily.
“I don’t care who he thinks he is,” she said with lots and lots of fumes, “he can’t just stand idly by while this city is being taken over bit by bit.” Kiran imagined many others felt the same way. But while he wondered about such a thing, his mind kept thinking about some of the details he learned during their fight with Drexo.
“Take us straight to him,” Abigail stated firmly. “I want to speak with him personally so that he knows we’re not going to tolerate inaction.”