A man was dying, and it was Galukar’s fault. Many men had died already, many more were dying as he moved even now, but this one had happened in front of him. This one, he’d known. He was no Hero, just a worm writhing in the dirt.
One sword came, and Galukar slapped it aside. Another slipped around, missing as he ducked it, then the Godblade found that crease where pauldron and breastplate parted.
The offending undead lost its arm in a single stroke, falling back from the momentum as two more swings came after Galukar. Neither caught him, parried just as the first, space newly reopened between him and his adversaries.
He was fighting again, and he hadn’t even noticed it start to happen. Galukar waited for the freezing cowardice to strike him again, but it didn’t. He felt nothing at all except the bodily instincts of movement and combat. Nothing until his heart ached again at one son’s approach.
It was worse than cowardly to keep from clashing with them. It was cruel. Galukar would not stand by and watch his boys left in their torment, not when it was within his power to end it. He surged on, roaring out every one of the molten emotions burning at his lungs and swinging in a great overhead arc that clove a streak of stone from the ceiling above. At the end of its path, the sword proved deadlier still. Undead strength, even bolstering his own son’s might, was no match for the Godblade, and steel gave in with a scream of agony as the old iron edge bit deep. Rotting juice spurted free as the reanimate fell back. Galukar turned just as the others were charging.
They had learned from their previous bout, and perhaps even from all the decades he’d spent sparring with them as living men. They swarmed Galukar carefully, bringing numbers to bear in a diffused weight ensuring that their blows fell from many angles at once. Speed was of limited aid in such conditions, but Galukar found himself striking first, and used the edge to keep them from overwhelming him completely.
A sword bit his shoulder, and a morningstar bounced from his cheek. The latter actually left him stumbling, blood filling his mouth as teeth loosened, but he was within their reaches a moment later and swinging hard enough to take two of the three from their feet entirely.
It was nothing like the fights they’d once had, and growing more dissimilar by the moment. Galukar had always held back, then, fearing even with his own sons that his strength would break them if wielded unfettered. That was no concern now, and strengthened though they were he still saw the truth in his past fears with how they failed to withstand him.
Galukar’s side erupted with a sharp, cannibalistic pain that reminded him of the other disparity between his situation and those long hours in the training grounds; he had no armour on him now. His body had always been steel enough against most blows, but these were no ordinary strikes now facing him, and he’d taken three already. He focused his wits, retaliating against the cut to his side with a long stroke that tore a pauldron free of his enemy.
The morningstar was back, then its head fell from the body as chain was cut before ancient iron. Galukar followed his swing with a kick, twisting to sidestep another sword slash and wincing as a second caught him across the shoulders. He ignored the foe behind, swinging for the one in front.
His son’s head came free in an instant, and his suffering was ended in that single stroke. Three remained.
Weight, speed, force. Galukar’s world became no more than the sum of those spheres acting in opposition and unison, working in one way, then the other, reducing all of creation to nothing more complex than the ebb and flow of a single bout. It neared its end quickly, and more quickly still with each undead he slew.
Soon enough, only one remained. The eldest, the strongest, relatively unmarked and at the fullness of its Vigour compared to Galukar’s own weakened, wounded body. Ten gashes and bruises welled along his flesh, where edges had opened and blunt heads crushed the bare meat of him. None were grievous, but together they proved an issue. Galukar could feel even his own stamina running out.
“It’s you, isn’t it?” He asked, feeling his fear grow as he spoke. “I can recognise you, armour or no, undead or alive. My oldest, my first. My boy.”
The undead said nothing, but Galukar didn’t dare hope it was beyond understanding him. He had to fight back the tears from clouding his sight, knowing that even so much as distorted vision would be neither missed, nor overlooked by so sharp an enemy.
He moved towards Galukar, the eldest. The first, his. The one whose name he dared not speak, even now, for fear of the torrentius emotion doing so would bring forth. Galukar forced other words out of himself, wincing as they came.
“I’m sorry.” He repeated. “Know that. And know that the Dark Lord will be leaving this world, too. But I mean to send him to a different place than I will you.”
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Galukar had been right, and his son did still understand him. He chose that moment to charge his father, swinging in the precise way Galukar had expected he might, opening himself up for the blow that removed one arm, then his head. It was all over in an instant, dismemberment taking no longer than the blink of a man’s eye.
It was his first instinct to take a moment staring at the ruined corpse, but Galukar resisted that. He turned instead to Falls, hurrying to the magus and kneeling down beside him.
“Boy, do you live?”
He did, that much was clear, but the wound was a nasty one. A normal man might have been cut fully in half by such a blow, but whatever magic or fortune had spared Falls, it had not done so fully. He seemed to have been slashed right down to the spine, and was bleeding in a volume which might have threatened men twice his size. He was pale, shaky, gasping. Galukar had seen injuries like it, and they were rarely survived.
----------------------------------------
Arion’s guts felt as if they were falling out, and a quick glance down to his waist confirmed the reason as to why. They were. He felt his agony intensify just from the sight alone, desperately looked away as the queasy feeling washed over him and threatened to strip his consciousness all over again.
His thoughts were solidified once more as a new spark of pain rang out, this time borne from movement. King Galukar’s arms slipped around him, hoisting his body up as if it weighed no more than a sheet of paper and starting the process of hauling it back through the corridor. Arion was seized by wheezing torment for only a moment before managing to sputter out a protest.
“What…Are…What are you…”
“I’m saving you.” The King growled, words barely audible over the sharp wind rushing around them. It was strange, he seemed to be moving barely faster than a jog, and yet the space was vanishing underfoot as if he were a sprinting horse. Vigour was a force in and of itself, Arion supposed, particularly the kind fuelled by such weapons as the Godblade.
“You can’t.” Arion croaked. “There’s no point, I’m…”
A petty, stupid, selfish rat of a man…
“I’m useless.” He breathed, finding tears, pathetically, rising up to accompany the words. “There’s nothing to gain by saving me, you have other things to do- other men to save. Every moment you spend carrying me is one you’re not fighting for.”
Galukar didn’t even hesitate, not missing a step, not pausing a moment, and not revealing a single breath strained by the efforts of speaking as he moved.
“You are my companion, under my protection, and I will not leave you to die. There’ll be fighting enough once I’ve left you with your Master for healing, and you might still be able to join it once repaired.”
Arion surprised himself by feeling a stab of…Something. Contempt, perhaps, or something categorically akin to it. He felt that same niggling wrongness, heard that same echo of his Master’s words, and decided to change tactics.
“And what if I distract him?” He snapped. “What if healing me costs him precious moments that could be spent on whatever plans he’s working, or else delays him even more. What if you kill everyone in this city and doom them to be reanimated as undead servitors of the Dark Lord?”
That finally gave the King pause, and Arion jumped on the chance.
“Please.” He gasped. “Do what’s right, leave me.”
Spare me.
“Keep from disturbing my Master.”
From dropping another of my failures at his feet.
“Focus on what truly matters.”
On anything other than me.
Arion was no fool, and he was not stubborn. His magic was no special thing in the grand scheme of things, his power no worthy virtue. After meeting Silenos and learning of House Shaiagrazni, he couldn’t possibly have continued to live with such a delusional view of his importance as he’d once enjoyed. After failing them, he could barely bear to live at all.
“Boy…You will die.” The King breathed, turning a corner now, jostling Arion in his speed and jostling himself in his consideration. He was close to convinced, Arion could see, his every word would count to weigh against the man’s decision from now on.
“Better me than us all.” He forced himself to whisper, then felt King Galukar tense, hesitate, and slowly lower him to the floor.
“If you’re sure.” The monarch breathed, eying him, still wavering. Arion realised, then, with the jolting weight inherent to any such realisation that he was looking at his own last chance for life pass him by. Oddly, he felt no sudden urge to seize it. Only a bizarre peace.
“Tell…” He coughed, and his guts squirmed at the motion. Arion’s pain lasted well more than a second, but it was within that timeframe that he managed to make himself speak anew. “Tell my Master…Tell him I’m sorry.” Tears wetted his eyes, though for what, Arion wasn’t sure. “Tell him I’m sorry I couldn’t be better.”
King Galukar stared back at him, long and hard. Then nodded. He was gone an instant later, back to the fighting, leaving Arion where he leaned against the wall.
He didn’t take long to die, at least. And he was busy in the dying. Arion thought to old lessons of magic and new lessons of Necromancy, recalled the half-remembered hints of prolonged life and onliving spirits let out by his Master during their travels together. What could the consequences of an amateur’s failure in such arts truly be?
No worse than death, he thought. And so he began to work on them promptly. Arion seized his spirit with grasping fingers of magic, feeling none of the trembles in his metaphysical hands as might have racked those bound physically to his failing muscles and dying flesh. He worked to weave a net around his spirit, and keep it tight and strong, a trail of arcane webwork tethering that vital core of his mind to the body it inhabited, carved through abyssal paths and Necromantic avenues.
Whether it worked, Arion had no idea, and no way of so much as guessing. By the time he was finished, it was all he could do to even recall that he had done such a magic at all. His life slipped from him within the minute, magic soon following. Then Arion Falls was nothing but cooling meat pressed against a cracked stone surface.
Like so many other men slain in the fighting.