I knew he was like me the moment I looked into his eyes. There is something in him missing. That part of a person that yearned for peace, that hungered for it.

We remember. We remember, but we will never feel it again.

And so we rage. And so we slay. And so death clings to us.

This is the way we are. This way and not some other way.

-Vendrian the Unnamed, Death’s Bastard

II-42

Battlebonds (II)

“Any of you have a bloody towel?” Such were the first words spoken by Death’s Bastard to Wei’s gathered disciples. The Collectress’s prize champion resembled something closer to a wild beast than a man. His eyes were bloodshot and bright, with his iris pulsing between dull gray and lunar white. Blood dripped from every inch of his body aside from his sword, and his armor was practically red from the entrails stuck between its gaps.

Death’s Bastard flicked spattered giblets of flesh from his neck-long coat of hair and Wei crooned in secret. Here the champion of Lust was, barely able to maintain his own hygiene, to care for his own aesthetic. His hair was choked tight with bits of gore. And there Wei stood, pristine — guarded by celestial fire and sheer skill. And his hair was longer and smooth as well.

A growing sense of pity welled up in the young master.

The Collectress truly sent this poor fool to suffer.

“Do not be arrogant,” his Shell chided. The Antediluvian Skill loomed over Death’s Bastard, taking every inch of his body in. “We must understand this one, learn his nature, and not assume to be his better because of appearance alone.”

Wei accepted that, but he still continued his private comparisons. What was the point of being so much better than other people if you couldn’t revel in it once in a while, after all.

“Got a rag for you,” Garret tossed a gray cloth from the back of the group as he said. “It ain’t bloody, though.” The Shadow Archer let out a rasping laugh shared by no one.

Death’s Bastard reached out and caught the offered rag with a grateful grunt. “So. I came out of the pit and you haven’t tried to kill me.” He wiped his face down and fixed with him an inscrutable look. “Can’t tell if you’re actually decent or just a fool.”

“The answer is supremely confident,” Wei said in reply. “One does not fear letting a tiger out of a cage if they are sure they can slay the tiger.”

Death’s Bastard snorted a sharp gust of air out from his nostrils. “Supremely arrogant it is, then. Fine. Dealt with worse. You said you know where our target is.”

"Yes," Wei replied, omitting the fact that his knowledge was more of a vague sense than an exact destination. Expanding his Omniscience, the young master felt more shapes slithering through the blood before raising his glaive at an angle to his right. Death’s Bastard followed the pointed weapon and found himself staring at a wall.

“Right.” The Collectress’s Champion drew his gleaming greatblade. “Time to make a new hole.”

A part of Wei wanted to burn a hole through the inside of the nest to show his rival up. But his Enlightenment demanded that he not waste this opportunity. If his supposed rival was going to show how his techniques worked, Wei wasn’t going to stop them.

“Please,” the young master said.

The large man walked past way, spat on the ground, and rolled his arms. Bringing his blade high, he lunged forward in an explosive motion that sent a blast of air washing over Wei’s disciples. More than a few weaker ones were thrown off their feet, tumbling back into the tumble, heads ringing against the armor of the Oathbearers. Even Agnesia had to hold herself in place.

Wei, meanwhile, watched with his arms folded and an eyebrow raised.

As Death’s Bastard followed through with his swing, the young master gauged his technique to be adequate. Not too bad, really. But there was something odd about his stance—his legs were half a hair’s length too wide, and his back was awfully hunched. He swung with meteoric force—and Wei deduced Death’s Bastard had a far higher Aspect of Strength if the two of them were to be compared. His Speed wasn’t bad either, but it lagged behind the young master by a half second normally and well over a second practically thanks to the Dilation-Echoes.

What surprised Wei was the sword.

It came alight with a brilliant flash of moonlit energies. A beam of cold nothingness emerged from the tip of the blade and carved through the shifting tendrils of red. Yet, the briars did not freeze. Rather, they wilted. A withered furrow opened into a three-meter wide chasm, and the blood nest itself writhed. Clumps of unmade blood rained down from both sides of the bifurcation, and a Death’s Bastard made, and two sets of silvery outlines marked the end of the Bastard’s cut.

Compared to Wei’s Deconstruction, which unmade things entirely, this was more like…

Like the cold of the grave. The coldness that comes with death.

The cut went deep too, extending far enough to create a valley of shadow. That was another reminder how unnatural space expressed itself in this place.

“All right. Where do we go next?” the Bastard asked, shouldering his blade.

Wei caught a faint resonance from within the sword—a whispering series of echoes that resounded with the Bastard’s spirit. It subsided as quickly as it came, like a wave fleeing back into the embrace of the sea, afraid to linger on the shore.

The young master pointed his glaive down the opening the Bastard made. “We proceed onward. I will make the next path when it is time. Stalag. Agate. Line the surfaces. Make sure we don’t get ambushed. Seal the path behind us as well. Rafael. Help them.”

“Aye!” Stalag chuckled, as he trod ahead alongside his forgekin. The Bastard watched the two bounding giants with a fascinated expression.

“How in the hell did you get dwarves to follow your orders. They’re not obedient to anyone but that broken god of theirs.”

Agate waved his hammer in the Bastard’s direction. “That’s Oathbearer to you, short one.”

“Short—” He didn’t even anything to say to that. Incredulity and disbelief silenced him. “Compared to you two, I suppose.” He looked down at Wei. Who used a gust of wind to make himself grow “taller.” “Ah. You’re one of those.”

“One of what? I simply wish to look over the heads of my disciples. Make sure nothing will charge out of the darkness far ahead to ambush them.”

“Sure. And my cock is nine meters long.”

“Truly? May I inquire about the spatial Skill possessed by your pants.”

Wei caught a glower from Ellena and decided to end the exchange. Such uncouth behavior was inappropriate. But still, the man had an approachable bitterness about him. And oddly, he, like Agnesia, was rather fun to tease.

Steam soon flooded the insides of the nest. After a few seconds of building, the space ahead of them went from behind a long stretch of silver lined blood to a proper hallway layered in reinforced metal and stone supports. The Oathbearers even threw up a few columns to hold the space together in case this entire place just collapsed.

“Been a while since I saw one of them do that,” the Bastard breathed.

Stolen story; please report.

“There are Oathbearers where you were from?” Wei asked, fishing for more about the Bastard’s backstory.

“There were,” the Bastard grumbled. He shook his head. “There was more of everything then.”

Suddenly, a pang of realization passed through Wei. “Your world. Is it lost?”

The man remained expressionless. “It’s not our world anymore.”

“Not much difference, then,” Rafael added, his voice light with sympathy.

The Collectress’s champion regarded the lich and squinted. “Trespasser.” He sneered, then spat. “I don’t talk to your like.”

Rafael looked at Wei, then Ellena, slightly taken aback. “I… apologize for whatever I did to offend you—”

“You exist. That’s what offends me.” The Bastard growled, and began stomping away.

Wei shot the lich a look, and then sent him a message. ‘An interesting prejudice to have. Perhaps the Inheritors did something to his world.”

“Perhaps. But we Trespassers… a great many of us are bestowed with immense power, but use it most poorly. I fear we do not need to be of great organizations to wrong another.”

The group carried on in tense silence after that. Wei used his Omniscience to keep track on several things. The first were the Scablings and other monsters lurking in the blood. They were still there, swimming through the red, thousands of them clambering through the nest in pace with Wei’s group. They were tracking. A few approached and took bites at the Oathbearer’s fortifications, but quickly discovered they were too hard to easily punch through, and any focused effort would see them obliterated by a beam of concreted Deconstruction.

For now, they seemed content to shadow Wei, doubtless keeping the Embraced at the center of this supposed sanctuary informed.

The second thing Wei watched over were his disciples. He felt many of them put points into their Aspects of Speed and Perception. Both had been sorely wanting during their first engagements. Most unaccustomed to battle often found themselves overwhelmed by the pace of combat and the intensity. But more than Aspect Advancements, they needed more experience — to run along the edge of death.

They didn’t need to be fearless, they just needed to become tired of fearing death. Used to it.

The last thing Wei kept his gaze on was the Bastard. The Bastard who walked just behind Wei, but stayed far away from the others in the group. The disciples of the sect eyed and whispered to each other about the Bastard. Wei, with his Omniscience, heard them fine, but he wasn’t sure if the Bastard did.

Considering how some of them judged him, it was clear he didn’t care, even if he did hear.

“You know the Scablings are trailing after us, right?” the Bastard said.

“Yes. I feel them. Behind the walls. They are lurking. Waiting for a moment to strike.” At the very head of the group, an oculus hovered, scanning the walls shifting ichor, serving as overwatch. Every time they ran out of fortifications, the Oathbearers swung, extending their protections a bit longer. It was a strange thing, to be building another layer of infrastructure within your enemy’s “house,” but Wei supposed it was a viable strategy.

He just wasn’t sure why the Embraced was being so passive. He wondered what the Dying Queen’s intentions were, being so brazen to attack Highrest directly.

“They’re playing us against each other,” the Bastard said again.

“Hm?” Wei looked at the large warrior, and only realized the man had been staring for a good long while. “Yes. What of it? The elites always use their lessers in games of politics. This is the nature of the world. This is the unfortunate fate of what it means to be without power.”

Something almost like a wince flashed across the Bastard’s features. “You take to this easily. But you look… young.”

Oh, so that was why the Bastard was staring at him.

“Whatever pity you feel for him, he might feel even more for you. He believes us to be a child. By age, we might as well be. The Shell regarded the Bastard. Wei wasn’t sure how he felt about that. Being underestimated was useful in combat, as shown by his bout with Silt of Storms. But Wei had survived a great many things, had gone from a broken child to…

“You are still a broken child. But you are in the process of making something of worth out of your life’s ruins. A great weight rests on your unworthy shoulders. Never forget that.”

No. No, he would not.

“I am a cultivator,” Wei finally said, meeting the Bastard’s observation with a statement of fact. “I am aware of the truth of the cruel heavens. I know the dangers of the path I tread, of how I am sought by heavenly tribulations for my every attempt at advancement and achieving dominance. I am no child. I am merely young.”

Despite the confidence he projected through his words, the Bastard simply lowered his head and turned away, as he clenched his jaw. “It shouldn’t be this way. It’s not right.”

Not right?

Well, this large brute of a man was proving to be evermore an enigma. One who hated Trespassers — understandable — had experiences with Oathbearers — interesting — and still had embers of ethics burning inside him.

The questions Wei had were overwhelming. During this moment of quietude, he had to push. “You know we are about to cross blades, yes.”

“I’d rather we didn’t. I’d hate to kill you.” The audacity made Wei bark a sudden laugh. This earned him a glare from the Bastard. “I’m serious.”

“So were most people who try to kill me,” Wei shot back.

“I’m not most people.”

“What a coincidence: Neither am I.”

And now they were back to staring. Wei noticed then that his disciples were silent, absolutely drawn in by the exchange of words occurring between the Bastard and the patriarch. Agnesia, for her part, was practically trying to burn a whole in the back of the Bastard’s head with her black-gold gaze.

The glare-off between Wei and the Bastard ended as the latter shook his head. “Why are you doing this?”

“Doing what?”

“All this,” the Bastard waved a hand at Wei’s disciples, as the space around them. “You’re wandering down a literal blood nest made from a vampire, to kill said vampire… to what? Show your dominance? Show your mettle to a cold bitch who schemes to chain you. To use you for her schemes.”

“And what schemes are those? Why do you serve her?”

The Bastard ignored Wei’s attempt at a question and continued. “Listen. You seem brave. Competent. Even skilled. I’ve seen you fight, you’re… you can do a great many things without getting involved with these people. Without making a mistake.”

“Remarkable,” the Shell said, leaning over the Bastard. “Even now, he is still trying to save us. Or so he believes. Not nearly the savage animal his appearance hints at.”

Perhaps he is. But even beasts have their nobility. Lions and jackals are of a different class, are they not?

“And what mistake is that?’

“Trying to be Hell’s Vanguard. This ridiculous contest to be selected as the first murderer of all murderers.”

“You don’t want to be the Vanguard?” Wei probed.

“I don’t want a lot of things,” the Bastard said.

“What do you want?’

“Doesn’t matter.”

“I’d say it does.”

The Bastard snorted. “And why does what you say matter? What are you going to do? You going to kill my mistress?”

Wei gave him a vicious grin. “Tell me. Give me a reason for why she must die. And then I’ll see about it.”

“I—” The Bastard snorted. “I see now. You’re not just arrogant. You’re also bloody insane—”

Then, Wei felt it. And so did the Bastard for that measure. A powerful spiritual signature approaching them. The Embraced was coming. Or something more than just a scabling. Accelerating through the walls from their right.

“You feel that?” The Bastard asked.

“Yes,” Wei said. “And so do you.”

“How high is your Perception?” the Bastard said.

“That would be telling. But I’ll tell you my Perception if you tell me yours.”

The Bastard clamped his lips tight again. Must be something more than just a Class there. Wei felt it.

Wei shifted to face the attack and flared his glaive. The Bastard took a step ahead of him. Wei took a step so they were mostly shoulder to shoulder.

“You fucking serious right now?” the Bastard asked.

“Quite. A patriarch cannot be standing behind when a true threat comes. And I especially cannot be overshadowed by someone who looks like a butcher-turned-beggar, who stole a set of armor.”

Despite it all, another near grin passed over the man’s features. “I hope this thing gores you bloody, boy.”

“You’re a very hopeful man, Bastard,” Wei said. Celestial fire, wind, lightning, crystal, and water began to meld at the tip of his Pale Fang. The wall before him began to disintegrate outright. “Everyone. Behind. Oathbearers, fall back and create more barricades within our halls. I am going to greet our enemy.”

A Lance of Annihilation began to form, and the Bastard cocked his head. “What kind of Specialization is Scion of the Celestial Flame anyway. Wei regarded the Bastard again and took in their Class.

Death’s Bastard: Unchained Slayer Lv.94

Wait… Did he see something different earlier? Why did Wei remember the Bastard’s Specialization being something else. Once again, the young master felt a string of Essence leading back to the sword. And then there was the whispering again. This close, Wei could practically hear it. It sounded like… words?

“I’ll tell you about mind if you tell me why your sword speaks to you.”

The Embraced closed in, a mere two hundred meters away and coming fast.

The Bastard simply spat. “No. I think I’d rather kill this thing.”

“Do you now? Because I think I will be the one doing the killing.”

They shared a look. Which blossomed into understanding. “Want to make a bet on this. Like you did with my owner and the old piece of shit?”

“No. I think the gloating after will be good enough for me.”

“Heh. Yeah. Good enough for me too.”