Chapter 44 – Dual Duels, Part 2
As Zaphyr faced off against Vasil Reinhand, her mind raced as she desperately tried to find a way out of his simple, yet deadly trap. Ironically, when she needed its power the most, she found herself too panicked to effectively wield her hemomancy for her own defense. Vasil Reinhand held his clutched fist out before him, calmly and remorselessly pushing her blood through her body with ever increasing force. With each second that passed, her heart worked faster and faster, sending lances of pain through her chest. Throwing back her head, she screamed as shrilly as she could, “Help!”
Vasil chuckled, the sound hoarse and emotionless. “Did you really think that will do anything, in all the noise of battle? No one heard you, and in another minute, none of it will matter. None of it ever mattered. You could not win here.”
But Zel, who stood above the guardsman he had just slain, had heard her cry. Glancing sharply across the hall, he swiftly spotted Zaphyr and Vasil. Realizing her danger, he hefted the spear he had taken and hurled it at Vasil. The hemomancer, taken completely unawares, was struck in the right shoulder by the point of the weapon. He reeled backwards from the sheer force of the blow, his hemomantic hold over Zaphyr instantly broken. Without his influence, she swiftly used her own hemomantic abilities to restore her blood pressure to a normal level. While she still felt slightly ill, she did not sense any long-lasting damage done to her body, to her relief. She met Vasil’s gaze, and he smiled sickly at her, before drawing the spear from his shoulder with a grunt, twisting it around, and brandishing it towards her.
“A step further…,” he warned.
“I don’t need to,” Zaphyr responded. A twitch of her fingers, and Vasil groaned in pain as blood spurted from his shoulder wound far faster and in greater quantities than it normally would have. Exerting his own hemomantic will against her own, he managed to slow the flow to a trickle, but he could not stop it altogether owing to Zaphyr’s greater power.
“You’re very strong for your age, little girl, I’ll give you that,” Vasil admitted, his face now coated in a sheen of slick sweat. “But strength doesn’t count for everything in hemomancy. There’s also technique, expertise, and practice. The smallest amount of hemomantic force, in the proper place…”
Zaphyr suddenly felt a sharp, stinging pain in her right eye. Without thinking, she stopped her effort to draw Vasil’s blood at once as she clamped both hands to her eye, wincing as it throbbed agonizingly beneath her touch.
“…can cause even the tiniest of blood vessels in the eye to burst,” Vasil finished. “I could kill you with a few blood clots in the proper place, but I think this spear will be more appropriate. Consider this an object lesson; don’t antagonize your betters.”
It wasn’t the most pain that Zaphyr had ever felt, not compared to the infernos she had crawled through alongside her brother, but the sheer surprise of the sudden pain had thrown her off her guard. It quickly ebbed away as Zaphyr, blinking furiously, focused her attention outwards once more. Through her blood-soaked vision, she saw the gnomish man drawing back his hand which carried the spear, preparing to strike. With a twist of her own hand, she pushed on the blood leaking from his shoulder as strongly as she could, sending him stumbling backwards with a shout of surprise. She blinked rapidly and shielded her face with her hands as she cleared her sight, but by the time she had finished, she saw to her dismay that Vasil had vanished into the chaos of the battle around her, leaving her alone once more.
It wasn’t all bad news for Zaphyr, however. Thanks to General Steroth and Captain Zel’s superior leadership and combat prowess, the battle continued to gradually swing in their direction, with more of the Master’s mercenaries falling each minute. This, in turn, freed more and more of their loyal soldiers to concentrate on the remaining opponents. As their men rallied, Zaphyr resumed healing others, helping as she could while keeping a careful eye out for Vasil, in case he tried to use his hemomancy to shift the flow of the battle back towards the Master’s men.
Steroth and Zel, meanwhile, now stood at the front of their men while fighting back-to-back against the foremost of the remaining mercenaries. Steroth’s practiced, energetic swordsmanship, combined with Zel’s patient, more controlled fighting style, made it nearly impossible for any enemy to get close enough to injure either of them.
“We’re beating them back, Sir,” Captain Zel said as he parried the blows of one shouting mercenary who had rushed towards him.
“Keep pushing,” General Steroth grunted as he ran one through the chest. Shouting to their forces, he said, “Show no fear, men! We’ve got them now!” He turned then, seeing one guardsman preparing to hurl his spear at Captain Zel. “Look out!”
One guardsman hurled his spear. In the closed space of the hallway, Zel could not dodge it entirely, and it struck him across the side of the head, leaving a long, bleeding gash. Momentarily stunned, Zel was nearly struck again by the guardsman, whose potentially killing blow was deflected by General Steroth before he lopped the offending enemy’s head off.
“Feeling alright, Soldier?” General Steroth asked.
Captain Zel confessed, “Sir, I cannot see straight.”
“Get Zaphyr to help you,” Steroth suggested.
Zaphyr, meanwhile, continued aiding several soldiers away from the front of the fight. She used her hemomancy to alleviate bruising or swelling, or occasionally to stop a wound from bleeding. She noticed Zel, as well as the cut across his brow he had received for his efforts in the battle, approaching her unsteadily.
“That won’t take any effort to fix,” Zaphyr said before he could speak. She gestured, and a scab swiftly formed across the wound, preventing it from bleeding further. “There we go. Give yourself a moment, and the confusion will fade away.”
“Thanks,” Zel said appreciatively.
“It is the least I could do, after you saved my life from Vasil,” she replied.
Zel nodded. “Any news regarding your brother?”
“I can sense his presence, thanks to a hemomantic binding we both possess,” Zaphyr said, “Which means he’s alive, but somewhere else, far away. He’s still close enough to be within the palace, I think, but I can’t sense his location exactly.”
“As long as he has that knight companion of yours with him, he will be safe,” Zel assured her. “We will reunite with them after the battle.”
“Keep an eye out for Vasil,” she cautioned. “He is still lurking around here, somewhere.”
“I know,” Zel said, before turning to rejoin the fight. New guardsman had ceased pouring into the room, and indeed many were now fleeing before the more disciplined, organized force of General Steroth’s men. The remaining half-dozen mercenaries still standing had gathered by this point, weapons facing outwards, surrounded by General Steroth and his men, along with Zel and Zaphyr. Both sides waited tensely for the other to make their move and attack first, but neither did.
“Well?” one of the mercenaries, a tall fellow with a sallow complexion asked. “We’re willing to wait here for as long as you are; it suits us just fine.”
“Is that so?” General Steroth said. “Before we recommence, then, tell me: why did you defect to work for Captain Erevex and Prince Blyth?”
“The money,” the tall guardsman, evidently the group’s spokesperson, said.
“Now, wouldn’t you agree you cannot spend your money, no matter how much of it you have, if you are dead?” General Steroth asked.
The mercenaries considered this, then at last nodded their agreement with his statement.
“Wonderful,” General Steroth said. “Now, you have two options: you can fight me and my men, and die, and not accept the pay that you were promised by Prince Blyth, no matter how much it is. Or, you can surrender, in which case you will continue to live the poorer for your foolish choices but keep your miserable skins. Which shall it be?”
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It only took a moment of consideration for the tall guardsman to throw his sword to the ground with a loud clatter. The other guardsman followed his example, and once all of them were disarmed, they were led out of the palace by General Steroth’s soldiers.
“We’ve secured this hallway, and bested the Master’s mercenaries,” General Steroth said to his men, “But our mission is still far from finished. We will begin a sweep of the palace, room by room, hall by hall, stairway by stairway if need be. Any further mercenaries or others loyal to Prince Blyth we meet will be offered the same chance to surrender. Should they refuse, kill them without mercy. But regaining control of the palace is only our secondary objective. Our primary goal is to find the two princes, Blyth and Grevel. Grevel we must rescue and bring before the Empress. Blyth must be imprisoned if possible and killed if not. Now, forward! For the Empress!”
“For the Empress!” his men echoed, holding their weapons above their heads loudly as their cheered.
“Something is not right,” Zaphyr said, looking around uneasily. She tried to remember what it was that unnerved her, then realized that she had forgotten once again in the tumult about Vasil. She searched the room and quickly spotted him crouched down behind the bodies of two fallen soldiers, attempting to hide himself. As soon as he realized that she had spotted him, he stood up and ran away, fleeing through a half-open down a side corridor that branched off from the hallway.
“He’s getting away!” she shouted, drawing the attention of everyone else.
“Vasil?” Zel asked.
Rather than answer his question, Zaphyr sprinted down the hallway, despite the shouts of admonishment from both Zel and Steroth.
“You’re not escaping that easily, you monster,” she said to herself softly as she ran through the palace. “I will hunt you down and I will make you pay.”
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Sir Kyr cut the cloth tying himself to Zull, then gestured for the boy to stand behind him, which he very willingly did. “You’ve gone mad, Sangue,” Sir Kyr said soothingly. “I can tell from the pain in your voice that the Master has pushed you too far in his experimentation and finally broken you. I can end this quickly for you; a swift, merciful killing will put you out of your misery.”
“The pain will never end!” she snapped back, slamming one of her horrible, claw-like hands into the wall of the courtyard so hard that it created a web of cracks radiating outwards from the spot where she had struck. “You cannot kill me. No one can. My life force is tied directly to that of the Master himself now.”
“So, you did recreate your blood bindings,” Sir Kyr said softly. “I would weep for you if I still could, Sangue. Ironically, your father took that ability from me.”
“Do not pity me!” Sangue shrieked. “I will kill you both and I will drink your blood because it is what I have been made to do.”
“You won’t go a step further, Sangue,” Sir Kyr told her matter-of-factly as he drew his twin blades and shifted to a preparatory stance. To Zull, he quietly whispered, “I will keep her busy. Try to raise the portcullis if you can, so we can escape.”
Zull nodded, then everything seemed to happen at once. Sangue hurled herself at Sir Kyr, shrieking incoherently. He expertly sidestepped her, swinging at her with his swords, though she twisted in mid-leap to avoid his blades. Zull ran straight towards the portcullis and, grabbing the winch in both hands, began frantically working to try and raise it as fast as he could. He spun it in a circle, heaving as hard as he could. With each strained breath and push of his muscles, the gate raised incrementally, first lifting off the ground by the tiniest of gaps, then widening slightly further with each rotation.
Sangue, having landed on her hands and feet, spun around then stood back up in a single lightning swift motion. Sir Kyr jabbed with his sword, but she used her talons to deflect the blow before it could touch her.
“Do you not remember what happened in our last encounter, Sir Kyr?” she asked him tauntingly. “Your swords cannot harm me. I have been made even stronger by the Master, my flesh more durable, while your sickly body wastes away, your strength draining by the minute. You will be dead before the sun goes down; I can see it in your eyes, can smell the death all about you.”
“Perhaps,” Sir Kyr said, holding both of his swords out before him in a wide arc, as if to embrace Sangue between them. “But there are two things that you have not accounted for. Firstly, I have had my swords reforged and reenforced, specifically in case we should battle again. Secondly, it will not matter when I die, should I slay you before then.” He moved in a frenzied blur of motion, spinning about as he lashed at Sangue from every possible angle. His swords were no longer tools, but acted like extensions of his body, so smoothly and swiftly did he attack as he struck again and again and again at Sangue.
Taken off guard by the suddenness and sheer viciousness of his attacks, she tried to block as best she could with her arms, deflecting blow after blow with her metallic talons, but the sheer number of swings Sir Kyr made allowed him to slip past her defenses, gashing her countless times on the arms, legs and toros as he continued harrying her. None of the cuts were deep, but this time they did wound her, breaking through her skin and slicing into her flesh. To Zull’s disgust and horror, rather than bleeding normally, her wounds instead leaked a thick, black, viscous substance, akin to tar. Sangue ignored each injury, though whether that was because they did not pain her or because she was already in a state of such constant agony that these new wounds did not even register to her, neither Sir Kyr nor Zull could guess.
“What have you allowed the Master to do to you?” Sir Kyr said, his voice tinged with pity.
“What I had to do, to survive,” Sangue said. “You would have done the same, in my place.”
Sir Kyr stared down at her. For the first time, he felt genuine sorrow and pity for Sangue, for the wreck the woman before him had been reduced to. “What’s under that mask, Sangue?”
She responded by lunging towards him, moving so fast he could not bring up his swords in time to protect himself. She wrapped her talons around his throat, then threw him to the ground, pinning him by the neck. He dropped both of his swords in the process, the clatter of them hitting the ground seemingly spelling his doom. She lifted his head up, then bashed him against the floor of the courtyard, then lifted him up and struck him down, repeating this process, over and over, while she screamed at him wordlessly. Zull, who Sangue had wholly forgotten about, worked frantically to complete opening the portcullis. By this point, it was about a third lifted, which still left too narrow of a gap for Zull, let alone Sir Kyr, to crawl through.
Desperately, Sir Kyr reached out; he managed to just barely grab his closest blade by its hilt; in her frenzy, Sangue did not even notice what he had done. He hesitantly lifted the sword and, while she remained still focused, struck her with the hilt on the side of her helmet. She did not even acknowledge blow, but continued slamming his head into the ground repeatedly, clearly intent on smashing his skull in two. He struck her again, with the same lack of effect. Channeling all his desperation and rage into a single blow, he hit her again as hard as he could, this time managing to shatter the clasp on the side of her mask. She immediately let go of his neck, raising her hands to her face tentatively, checking if it remained covered. Sir Kyr took advantage of her distraction to shove her off him, then reached forward, grabbing at the mask. She struggled with him momentarily, but he managed to wrest the visor off her face, allowing both him and an astonished Zull, who stopped cranking the winch to look on in horror, to see what she truly looked like.
Sangue’s new face was something out of a physician’s fevered nightmare. Her jaw and mouth were almost entirely gone, replaced with an enormous beak, lined along the inside with rows upon rows of narrow, sharp teeth, like a shark’s. Her eyes, bulging and bloodshot, were surrounded by a complicated network of scars and stitches, showing clearly where her face had been taken apart and then sewn back together. Like the wounds she had been dealt earlier, many of these stitches leaked the same noxious black fluid.
“The Master and his associates do not have the skill that you father did, do they?” Sir Kyr said. “They put you back together, but their work was much shoddier. You’re marred now, Sangue. Flawed.”
“How dare you,” Sangue hissed. Her voice, coming from the birdlike beak where her mouth should have been, made her words even more unsettling. “I am still Sangue. I am still perfect!”
“You’d be loathsome if you weren’t so pathetic,” Sir Kyr said, his tone expressionless. “You’re a shell of what you used to be, and you don’t even recognize it. I did not think it possible for someone as wretched as you to fall further, and yet here we are.”
She opened her beak, screaming incoherently at him as she lunged forward. This time, Sir Kyr was prepared. He punched her in the side of the head as she darted towards him, sending her sprawling backwards, eyes rolling up into her head. She recovered an instant later and, tumbling to the side, snatched up his other sword, grasping it clumsily in her taloned hands as she cackled madly.
“If your blades can hurt me, then they can surely injure you as well,” she told him tauntingly. “Let’s see if you still pity me after I’ve cut your carcass open and eaten your innards.”
Sir Kyr looked over his shoulder at Zull, who had resumed frantically trying to finish opening the portcullis. The gap was now wide enough that someone short, like Zull, could duck under and make it to the other side. “Go!” Sir Kyr shouted, making Sangue look in turn. Zull did as the knight commanded, ducking beneath the gate.
“Come on!” Zull said, gesturing frantically for Sir Kyr to follow him. Instead, Sangue bolted for the gate, talons outstretched. However, Sir Kyr had planned ahead of them both. Hurtling the sword he still held through the air, it sliced through the rope connecting the winch to the top of the portcullis, cutting it neatly in two. The portcullis fell back down, slamming shut with a heavy thud just as Sangue reached it. She tried to reach through and seize Zull, but he stepped back out of reach even as she thrashed and wailed in frustration.
“What are you doing, Sir Kyr?” Zull shouted. “You can’t get through now!”
“I know,” Sir Kyr said simply. For the first time that Zull could remember, the knight seemed at peace, even happy with himself. “Now go. Help your sister. Save Prince Grevel.”
“But-”
“Go!” Sir Kyr insisted. Zull stared through the bars at his friend for a minute, tears running down his face, before turning and running down the corridor. He vanished from sight a moment later, leaving Sangue and Sir Kyr alone. Sir Kyr, breathing heavily, heaved himself to his feet, leaning against the lone tree in the courtyard as he did so. Now standing upright once more, he faced Sangue, who for just a moment, instinctively shrank in fear away from him.
“Now,” Sir Kyr said, his voice steady and calm. “Let’s finish this.”