Lusya didn’t dare move. Didn’t dare draw this woman’s attention to her. This may have been the strongest Sacred Knight Lusya had ever encountered. No, there was no “may have.” This woman was the strongest by a significant margin. Lusya couldn’t fight an opponent like that, least of all battered and exhausted. She didn’t know what she was going to do about that, and, until she had figured it out, she wasn’t going to risk becoming the woman’s focus. Ariya had stopped moving toward the fight, at least, so there was little chance of her getting caught up in the battle.
Imgelan groaned as he stood, blood pouring from his shoulder wound. He rolled his shoulder as if to make sure it still worked, then rubbed at the wound and pulled away a bloody hand with a sigh. “Another one getting in the way, really?”
“Really,” the woman replied. She strode toward Imgelan at a sedate, casual pace. It was as if she was out on an evening stroll rather than going to confront a high-rank demon. Even her spear was held lazily at her side, not in anything resembling a proper grip or stance. “You can surrender, if you want. I’ve gotta kill you either way, though. I saw the aftermath of whatever you did back there.”
Imgelan grunted and rushed toward her. His Blade came around at her in a broad horizontal swing. And she was just out of reach, letting the hammer pass inches in front of her face, harmless as could be. The dodge had been lighting quick, yet so casual Lusya almost hadn’t registered the backstep as such.
“Nice hammer,” the woman said. “If I were a nail, I’d be shaking in my boots.”
Her arms blurred as she lashed out with her spear. Without the momentum of her charge and throw behind it, it glanced off his chest, leaving nothing more than an almost imperceptible scratch in its wake. The woman was undaunted. She took one hand off her spear and threw a punch into Imgelan’s stomach before he could begin to counter.
He sailed back through the air, seemingly without end. Indeed, he only stopped because he hit a hill that was in the way, and even then he skipped off the ground like a stone off water and landed a bit higher up the hill. Rather than pursue, the woman looked at her spear. Her face was hidden from Lusya’s view, but she guessed the look was one of disapproval.
It was a testament to the woman’s power that the first blow had pierced a high-rank demon’s skin with a conventional weapon. The spear seemed high quality, forged entirely from steel, but it was still just an ordinary spear in the end.
“Wanna try again?” the woman called. “Your friends will make fun of you in the next life if that’s all you’ve got.”
Imgelan stood with obvious effort. He had to prop himself up with his hammer like a cane to get up, and he wretched and spat blood onto the ground before he managed to stand up straight and glare at the woman. He closed the distance between them in an instant and struck, but once again, the woman dodged with contemptuous ease and thrust her spear at him. He must have seemed quite slow to her. Her dodges were narrow, but only because she obviously wanted them to be, though it was unclear whether she wanted to stay in attack range or was simply showing off. The first backstep seemed to have been the latter, but this time was harder to judge. She aimed for the throat this time, but saw no more success. She followed up with a kick. Considering her strength, it was a gentle one, only making him double over in pain and stumble back.
She waited for him to recover and attack again. He swung his hammer down at her, and she stepped to the side. She seemed to hesitate for a moment, but—although the way her cloak and wavy black hair tugged down attested the gravity ability had affected her—she did not seem to have any difficulty standing.
Seizing on this apparent opening, Imgelan brought his hammer up and swung at the woman’s head. The woman brought up a hand and batted the hammer away with a backhand, throwing him off balance as his face contorted in confusion. It hadn’t been a punch or any kind of proper blow or guard, though even that working on such a massive weapon in the hands of such a powerful demon would have been extraordinary. She had waved his blow off as one might shoo a fly. The woman stabbed out at an eye with her spear, but he managed to twist his head in time to let it graze his cheek.
For no evident reason other than to prove how little she was hindered by his power, the woman threw a rapid series of light punches—in relative terms, as each still stunned him enough that he couldn’t respond for the next—into Imgelan’s belly and chest before launching him away with a single powerful one. She looked at her hand, flexing her fingers as gravity returned to normal around her.
“What was that, ten times?” she asked. “Not bad.” She looked at her spear again and tossed it aside. “This obviously isn’t gonna cut it, though. ‘It’ being you, for the record. Foropry.”
A new spear, seemingly made entirely of thick blue ice, formed in her hand, a thin mist surrounding her as the spear chilled the air around it. It was broadly similar in shape to her metal one, with two secondary blades branching off the main one. It was not quite a trident, as the secondary blades stretched to the sides in a cross-like shape.
Imgelan struggled to stand again, his breathing loud and labored. Between his exhaustion and the injuries both Lusya and this newcomer had dealt him, he looked to be in pretty sorry shape, covered in his own sweat and blood. Nevertheless, he managed to get to his feet, and the woman allowed him to. Everything he had done and would do since her arrival, she had allowed. It was obvious she could have killed him several times over by now, if she had wanted to. For whatever reason, she just wanted to toy with him for a while first.
Undaunted by the Sacred Blade’s appearance, he snarled and charged. Lusya had not taken him to be so foolish, but she supposed there was little else he could do at this point. Anything he did was doomed to failure. She would have expected something a little less blatantly suicidal, but it made little difference. The woman waited until he was near, then stepped aside and swept her spear along the ground, covering it in a sheet of ice upon which his feet slipped. He fell in a heap and slid past her on his back.
The woman had to turn to face him, allowing Lusya her first look at the woman’s face. She regarded her opponent with a confident smirk, her eyes twinkling in amusement. There was something familiar about her face, but Lusya could not place where she might have seen it.
“Careful, it’s slippery,” she said as Imgelan stood. There were no additional wounds other than to his pride, and he had slipped past the ice itself, but he still had even more trouble getting up than the last time. Fatigue and his wounds were catching up with him, it seemed.
Imgelan roared and rushed forward. The woman dodged a downward strike and, again heedless of the added weight, struck. Lusya could not see everything, but she did see him flinch and the tip of the woman’s spear emerge covered in blood from the left side of his back. That would have punctured a lung, if not his heart.
The woman withdrew her spear and struck again before he could do anything, this time through his belly. He grabbed the spear's shaft, perhaps thinking to trap or disarm his opponent. Instead, she lifted the spear, and him with it, up over her head. It seemed she was going to keep going and bring him down on his head, but he released the weapon midway through, allowing himself to be flung away behind her instead and land with a dull thud on his face.
As he forced himself to stand, the woman turned and swung her spear. Countless spikes of ice blossomed from the ground between her and Imgelan, angled toward him. They grew at incredible speed, aiming to skewer him, until they were tall and wide enough they obscured him from sight.
The woman dashed up the sloping pillars. At least, Lusya assumed so. Even to her eyes, this woman was a blur. The woman jumped down when she reached the end, spear held ready.
A moment later, Imgelan came rocketing out from behind the ice mass. He landed roughly on his back and rolled several feet before finding his footing and stopping. Several broken spikes of ice protruded from wounds all over his body, spattered with his blood, and he was missing his left arm, though his right still clutched at his hammer.
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The woman strode back into view a moment later. He managed to stand, hacking up blood and letting the ice spikes slip from his wounds and clatter to the ground, but he couldn’t make it all the way up this time. His hammer’s head was pressed into the ground, and he had to lean on it to keep from falling over, allowing the blood to drip like rain from some of his more severe injuries. His breaths came heavy and labored, his entire upper body heaving with each inhale and exhale.
“You’re going to die no matter what now,” the woman said. “Even if, by some miracle, you won, it would be a question of when you bled out, not if. So, what’s it gonna be? I can respect if you want to fight until the end, but no one would blame you for giving up, and I promise I’ll make it nice and easy if you do.”
Imgelan took a deep breath. “My heavy soul is made from—”
His throat was impaled on the woman’s spear. When had she moved? No, there had been a blur, a faint one. Lusya hadn’t registered it as a person moving until just now, when she had had to connect it with the image she was seeing.
Imgelan’s eyes opened wide enough it seemed like they were trying to take over the rest of his face suggested he was much the same. His mouth flapped in a vain search for air, his remaining hand dropping his weapon to grope at the blade in his neck. He managed to grip it and pull, but it didn’t budge. He didn’t accomplish anything other than cutting his hand on top of everything else.
“Now, now,” the woman said, as if scolding a child, “if you do that, I’ll have to do the same, and that won’t be fun for anyone.”
Ice blossomed from her spear's tip, growing over its victims form. In a second, he was frozen solid, the spear tip still piercing straight through. She yanked it out, to the side, so it tore through his neck, and his entire body shattered, frozen bits falling to the ground like snow.
“Bye-bye. If your hammer had been ten times stronger, it might have made for a good workout.” She looked down at what remained of him in silence. When next she spoke, her tone was sincere. “I hope the next life, whatever it may be, treats you better. Rest well, nameless demon.”
Lusya felt Ariya approaching again. A moment later, Ariya was right behind her. Lusya spared a glance to see the child was crying, tears streaming down her cheeks. Her Malice was flaring. That needed to be dealt with.
“Are you okay?” she asked. She ran right up to Lusya and looked her over. “I’m sorry I made you fight. I’m sorry I didn’t listen, too…”
“I am in pain,” Lusya replied, “but I will be fine.” She put down Lunera to pat Ariya’s head, then reclaimed it and stood with a grunt. “There is no need to cry, Ariya, but get behind me.”
Ariya smiled and nodded, her Malice stabilizing as she scurried behind Lusya. Lusya stood on guard, making sure she was fully between the woman and Ariya, though she knew it was pointless. She wouldn’t fare any better than Imgelan had. If the woman got serious, Lusya wasn’t even sure she would be able to slow her down. The woman probably wouldn’t aim to kill Ariya, but Ariya still might get hurt if the woman attacked Lusya or tried to capture Ariya. They could be looking at a repeat of the Kadel incident with a much different outcome.
“Now then,” the woman said, turning away from Imgelan’s remains to face Lusya, “it’s not strange for demons to fight, but something strikes me as off about this situation.” She walked forward with that same smug, bemused expression. Now that she got a good look, Lusya could make out the few details that broke up the white of her uniform. She had seen them before, but they had been indistinct from afar. Over the woman’s left breast and on her cloak where it would fall in front of her shoulders, a stylized numeral for seven was embroidered in gold. The markings were actually quite small. From a distance, it had been unclear what, if anything, they meant. Up close, though Lusya had never seen them before their meaning could not have been more clear. “So, I’d like to ask you a few questions. You can answer them, and we’ll make this quick and easy…” She leveled her spear at Lusya, and Lusya tensed. “Or you can make things difficult and…” the woman stopped, eyes open wide in shock. “Wait, Lusya?”
Lusya gripped her swords, ready to fight as hard as she ever had. She didn’t say anything. She couldn’t afford the distraction. It was true that she was curious, but she couldn’t afford to let that distract her either.
The woman lowered her spear and look another step forward. “You are Lusya, aren’t you?”
Lusya brandished her swords and the woman stepped back. With her not attacking, curiosity won out. “Who are you? How do you know my name?”
The woman flinched as if the question were a powerful blow and looked down at her feet. “We’ve met. I don’t blame you for not remembering, you were very young.”
Lusya cocked her head and blinked. “You are right. I do not remember.”
The woman raised her head. Her prior confidence was gone, her eyes wide and pleading. She banished her spear and held up her empty hands, palms forward, as if in surrender.
“Look, I don’t want to fight,” she said. “I just want to talk. I’m sorry about before. So, please…” she gestured at Lusya’s swords “…put those away.”
Neither of them moved or spoke for a moment. Then, Lusya relaxed her stance and dismissed her Blades. There wasn’t much point in having them out anyway. She would have been foolish not to take this chance. “Very well. What do you wish to speak about?”
The woman sighed in relief and lowered her hands. “There’s plenty I’d like to say, but first things first, I forgot to introduce myself.” She put a fist over her heart and bowed. “I am Azure Yasier, Seventh Paladin of the Sacred Knights of Ysuge.” When she stood straight again, she smiled at Lusya, warmer than before. “I’m also a good friend of your mother. I’ve known you since the day you were born, in fact.”
“I see,” Lusya replied.
Azure nodded. She paused for a moment, as if expecting Lusya to say something. When Lusya did not, Azure giggled and spoke instead. “I guess there’s no reason for you to introduce yourself, but who’s your adorable little companion?”
She leaned to the side just enough to peer around Lusya at Ariya. Ariya shuffled to Lusya’s side, allowing Azure a better look at her, then looked up at Lusya for guidance with a wide-eyed, bewildered expression.
“It is fine,” Lusya said. “Introduce yourself.”
That was all the encouragement Ariya needed. Her apprehension dissolved before Lusya’s eyes as she stepped forward with a grin and imitated Azure’s bow. “Hi there, I’m Ariya. Nice to meet you!”
“It’s nice to meet you too, Ariya,” Azure said. “Such good manners. What a big girl you are.”
Ariya beamed at Lusya. “See? I told you!”
As soon as the words were out of her mouth, however, she frowned, glancing between Azure and Lusya. Her brow furrowed in concentration, but she said nothing.
“Is something wrong?” Lusya asked.
Ariya looked to Azure and back one more time before she shook her head and smiled again. “No, it’s nothing.”
Lusya nodded in acceptance of that. She did not believe it had been nothing, but it did not matter. Ariya did not seem upset, nor was her Malice reacting, so it was not important at the moment. There was no need to pry if Ariya did not wish to speak on it, least of all when making sure they survived encountering a Paladin was Lusya’s priority.
Cocking her head and blinking twice, Lusya turned her attention back on Azure. “What did you want to talk to me about?”
Azure’s smile faded a bit. She looked off to the side, as if eye contact had become uncomfortable. “Well, it’s been twelve years. I just wanted to catch up a little bit.” She perked back up a moment later, her eyes twinkling as they bored into Lusya’s. “Oh, I know, why don’t you come back to my camp, instead of us talking here? I have food and medical supplies you’re welcome to use. If you’ve got bruises forming, I have an ointment that can nip those in the bud, and I even have supplies for helping with minor fractures.”
Lusya did not believe anything was broken, but there was no doubt there were plenty of bruises ready to blossom on her. She did have her own ways of helping with that, but a Paladin’s supplies were sure to be superior. Even if they had not been, however, there was little question to be had here. Lusya didn’t have a choice.
“Very well,” she said. “Lead the way.”
“Right this way,” Azure said as she retrieved her ordinary spear before she started walking off. She was heading back the way Lusya and Ariya had come from, but Lusya was not about to worry about backtracking. She had known Azure had come from that direction anyway.
“Um, what about the ice?” Ariya asked, pointing to the massive spikes Azure had summoned during her fight—for lack of a better term—with Imgelan.
Azure stopped, blinked, and looked at them, then shrugged. “I can’t make those go away. The best I could do is shatter them, but all the same ice would still be there. So, they can be a tourist attraction or something until they melt.” She looked around. “They go well with all the scorch marks.”
They did make for a fitting juxtaposition, even if they had very little to do with each other in reality.
“This is what happens when powerful motomancers fight,” Lusya said. “It is true that I have never cared to repair the sites of my battles, but I could not have done so even if I had wanted to.”
“Oh,” Ariya said. She smiled. “Okay. It is kind of pretty, so I guess it’s fine.”
“That’s the spirit,” Azure said. “Come on, now, let’s get going.”
“I do have a pack that needs retrieving,” Lusya said.
Azure nodded. “I saw. We’ll swing by on the way.”
Lusya started to follow her, when a tugging on her cloak caught her attention. It was, of course, Ariya. She cocked her head and blinked twice as Lusya looked down and met her gaze.
“Why are you being so nice?” Ariya asked. “You’re usually more stubborn than this. And you hate going backwards.”
Lusya cocked her head and blinked twice. “Do you not want to go with her? I do not understand your concern.”
“It’s not that,” Ariya said, shaking her head. “It just kind of makes me worry since it’s not like you.”
Lusya still did not entirely understand the worry, but she saw no reason not to answer. “It is simple: I have no chance of defeating that woman in battle.”