A final muted crash of distant thunder was heard before all sound slowly became muted in the muddy plain. The angry grey sky darkened, and the port city of Honeydew and the distant peaks of the Shattered Tooth Mountain range became unfocused to the young man's eyes. The vivid form of the old woman, made frightening with long, upswept horns of dark obsidian and a smoldering red eye, seized his attention. Indiscernible waves of an oppressive aura smothered his being in the rhythmic pulses of a quickening heartbeat.
The Champion of Vengeance stood casually with a haunting grin; great mace leaned against her shoulder. The air seemed to distort around her body as if she burned with what Ben could only describe as an insatiable lust for carnage. She turned her back to the young man and walked, creating a distance of about ten paces between the pair. With each step, a thick, inky black liquid flowed from the soles of her armored boots. It spread and slowly covered a large radius of the muddy ground around the woman before it reached the feet of the young man and stopped.
Ainsle inverted her grip on the thick shaft of the massive weapon and let the terrifying mace head drop to the ground, embedding itself, butt raised to the blackened sky, in a thud that sent vibrations through the young man's body. She turned to look at Ben with her glowing crimson eye, and her grin seemed to grow impossibly wide.
The Champion settled into a low stance, chin tucked, black horns forward as if she intended to break into a sprint at any moment. Ben gripped the haft of the smooth, black halberd and settled into an equally low stance, ready to intercept an advance by the woman as he knew the significant distance between them meant nothing. The heavy rain washed away the cold sweat that would've adorned his brow. He narrowed his eyes and forced a deep breath.
Ainsle spread her arms out wide to her sides, palms facing forward. Her gaze held his as she spoke with an unnaturally deep voice that echoed in his struggling lungs.
"Show me."
A deafening bang and a flash of white light accompanied the woman's advance. She had crossed the distance between them in less than a heartbeat. The displaced air of her incredible speed nearly winded the young man. Ainsle leapt, back arched, fingers entwined in a double fist held above her head. Ben trusted in the dance and sidestepped with a twist of his blade to parry a feinted attack that never came. The Berserker landed with a thunderous boom of upturned dirt and stone. Her two-handed strike had created a crater in the soil where the young man had been only moments before.
His heart thrummed in his chest. Mud and stones pelted his side from the explosion of the attack. He felt his legs grow weak, and he began to panic. He attempted to create distance with light steps but felt like he was wading through a swamp. He glanced downward and saw that his retreat had placed him within the radius of the thick, black, inky liquid on the ground.
The old woman crouched within the crater and tilted her head sideways to Ben. She bared her teeth and let out a cackle that awoke a deep, instinctual fear within him. The beast growled, and he felt its hot breath against his neck. The entity's intent coursed through his veins, and he felt a distant echo of an indiscernible concept.
He tried to leave the area affected by the dark liquid, yet he felt as if an unseen wall prevented any escape. He turned to the woman with wide eyes in time to see a fist approaching his face. Ben leaned his head backward and rolled his shoulders to lessen the impact of the blow, as he knew he had no time to block. The woman's gauntleted fist brushed past his brow, and he felt the breath siphoned from his lungs through his nostrils at the current generated by the straight punch. He fell with the momentum in a backward roll on the black ground, landing three paces from the Berserker in a crouch.
A warm liquid ran down his forehead and stung his left eye before he tasted the iron tang on his lips. The adrenaline that coursed through his veins was not enough to stave off the sudden exhaustion he felt. His frail body weakened from two months of comatose slumber, protested at the extreme activity he had engaged in. His frustration at his powerlessness when he had faced Eric, the betrayal of his assumed friend and companion, and the eagerness to show his mentor the strides he had made were his undoing.
The silence in Vengeance's smothering aura was deafening. Ainsle bared her teeth in a chilling grin and approached with slow steps, crimson eye burning furiously. Time seemed to slow, and Ben felt the beast dig its claws into his shoulder once more, and the young man felt the yearning of his Avatar to be let loose.
Okay. Let's see what you can do.
Ben called upon the concept he had gained through numerous days of training with the Monk. He spoke without words.
"Overwhelm."
All fatigue and exhaustion vanished as he felt the beast roar deep within his being. His veins seared with the concept that spoke of unparalleled power to overcome and dominate any foe. It was a bright burn. One that wasn't intended for drawn-out battles but rather a finger on the scale at a pivotal moment. He understood the concept upon receiving the boon, yet he felt as if he had begun to embody the struggle of constantly being outmatched in skill and experience. He willed the tension out of his shoulders, and a serene calm washed over his body. Ben allowed himself to drink deeply of the torrent of power and opened his eyes to regard his mentor.
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Ainsle bellowed a deep, resonating laugh, and he felt he understood the woman a little more.
He dipped his head and flourished the beautiful weapon before advancing with one light step and a low slash of the black crescent blade. The haft of the halberd bowed as the steel sang through the air, yet the woman didn't react to the attack until the very last moment. She stopped and simply stepped over the arc of the weapon, she faced Ben, yet her eye gazed forward to his chest and didn't meet his. She spun with a twist of her hips, and a muddied heel droned through the air toward his chest.
I can see her movements now.
Ben tilted his body backward to avoid the devastating kick before he countered with a feinted thrust that flowed into another low slash. Ainsle didn't attempt to dodge the attack and was summarily sat down in the mud as the strength granted to him by the concept caused his black crescent blade to chip the white, armored shin guard. He frowned and settled into the familiar stance. The current of battle had eluded him so far, and he was taken aback by the lack of reaction from the Berserker to his attack.
Ainsle rolled swiftly to her feet and bolted toward her weapon, impaled in the center of the inky-black circle, leaving a spray of mud and cackling laughter in her wake. Ben watched as she gripped the haft of her great mace, and he saw the black liquid recede rapidly into the weapon. She turned, faced the young man, and pointed the ridiculous implement of carnage at him with an outstretched arm. Her horns began to crack, yet her eye shone with the same terrifying crimson light.
"There you are, you little shit," she chuckled in a deep bass of a rasp and met his gaze. "Now it looks like you're ready to dance."
Ben returned the woman's grin, and his chest vibrated with anticipation.
"Shall we, your majesty?" Ben taunted.
The pair danced in the rain for what seemed like an eternity, yet was only made so by their heightened senses and impossibly fast movements. Ainsle was an unpredictable sparring partner, relishing in openings and improvised attacks. The young man felt that he was faster than her by only a hair, yet the difference in sheer strength and skill more than offset the advantage in her favor. He watched as the graceful, laughing woman spun and painted a scene of beauty with a seemingly unwieldy weapon. She darted in and out and clashed and parried to the rhythm of the battle. Ben answered with feints and ripostes that caused the old woman to burst into joyous laughter, and the pair rode the current as if they were old partners reuniting for the first time in forever.
Neither had scored a hit during the spar, yet Ben ached from bruises caused by debris that the great mace flung whenever he evaded an attack. The rainy sky began to brighten, and as the pair stood across from each other in the muddy field outside Honeydew, he felt their Avatar's power wane. Ainsle's horns crumbled, and her deep-red eye shifted back to the familiar steel blue he was used to. Her grin warmed his chest, and the pair collapsed in exhausted heaps on the muddy field. He stared into the grey sky, eyelids fluttering as light raindrops prickled his face, ignoring the offensive Tear in his periphery.
Ainsle chuckled, voice exhausted, and Ben turned his head in the mud to face the Berserker, who had done the same.
"You sure know how to show a girl a good time," she said with a voice raw from shouting and laughing.
Ben smiled and closed his eyes. "I had a good teacher."
The Berserker didn't remark on the comment, and the pair remained comfortably quiet in the mud for a few moments. Ben felt the fatigue of calling upon his concept seep into his bones, and he wondered whether Ainsle had a similar cost to drawing from her entity. He had no delusions that she hadn't pulled her punches or intentionally missed with a few wide swings of her weapon. He replayed the spar in his mind and tried to relive the joy he felt for those few minutes that seemed like hours.
"Hey, Ainsle," he said, and the old woman replied with a hum, her eye closed. "What happened earlier? I got the impression that you were losing your vision or something."
The Berserker's grin turned into a soft smile. "Yeah, Benny-boy, it comes with the deal. When I call the bastard, I go blind."
"What do you mean?"
"When you call your Avatar, you call all concepts you know at the same time. That black soup you saw? That was my concept, Mark. I couldn't use it on you; otherwise, you'd be dead. So, I anchored it to this beauty over here," The Berserker paused to rap her gauntleted knuckles on the great mace beside her. "It fucks with the target of Vengeance, you see? I'm guessing you had a little taste of what it can do."
"Yeah, I felt… heavy and slow. Fear," Ben said.
"Yup, and that's just a tease, just the tip of what it really does. Anyways, I go blind to everyone else, and I only see the Marked target."
Ben frowned. "How were you able to see me at the beginning then?"
Ainsle grinned. And Ben rolled his eyes at the butchery of language that would follow.
"Look at you. If you want to get into my knickers, you gotta buy me a drink first," Ainsle turned to wink at him.
Ben pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. "Yeah, sorry. I know it's rude to ask."
"Aw, you're no fun," the Berserker feigned a pout before relenting. "I'll tell you that my third concept allows me to see fear. So, naturally, when you 'disappeared,' I figured you managed to wake the bugger up. I guess it takes a while to get it up?"
Something like a hunting concept, then? When my Avatar calmed me, I felt fearless...
"I think I got it," Ben said.
Ainsle ambled to her feet and clasped her great mace to her back.
"Come on, lover-boy. You got a date with an old bastard at the temple."
Ben nodded and slowly rose to his feet. He felt exhausted and wanted to rest his body. The pair began their slow trek back to the city.
"Anything I should be mindful of when I get there?" he asked.
Ainsle seemed to consider the question for a heartbeat. "Yeah. Little Kieran said something about an investor that came to see the old bugger the night before he was stricken with whatever disease he has."
"Who was the investor?"
Ainsle grimaced. "That bastard who filled Jor's head with all that bullshit."