Without any sense of movement, Bleak appeared in a long room with high windows. Dust motes danced among crisp morning light as the all-too-familiar sound of steel rang from all sides. Though unable to match their uniforms to any of the known nations, Bleak had no doubt the well-toned men and women just beginning to notice his presence were soldiers.

And he’d appeared in their midst, holding two knives with eyeballs on the ends like skewered grapes.

The soldiers nearest Bleak reacted to his arrival by pausing to stare, some with open mouths, a few shouting questions in a harsh tongue. Several threw up, leading Bleak to wonder how much more of that unpleasantness he’d be forced to endure today. Most of the soldiers blanched, and a handful shook with nervous tension. One even laughed aloud, a tittering chuckle with notes of madness. But none turned and ran.

Surrender was always an option, but not one Bleak had ever considered. The handful of scars on his back had been earned in the press of battle where the lines between friend and foe blurred. Or from those times he’d been thrown from a mount.

Once, he’d been thrown down a rocky slope by an anilkin with ercine features. He’d relaxed into the neverending tumble even as each revolution tore his clothes to shreds. Caught unawares by the anilkin while taking a most satisfying first piss of the day, he hadn’t yet been wearing his armor. That was the last time he’d slept without it–a decision which had probably saved his life several times over.

When his head had cleared and he’d painstakingly climbed back up, Bleak had hewn the creature nearly in half with a single stroke of his direblade.

Switching the throwing knives to his right hand, Bleak pulled both eyeballs free with his other hand. Aiming for those with open mouths, he flicked the eyes but didn’t wait to see if they actually made it in. The knives left his other hand a second later, angled down at bare feet. Two more knives appeared in each hand and flew, followed by two more, exhausting his supply of throwing knives.

Turning to face the thinnest concentration of soldiers to his right, Bleak drew his sword. Pained cries to the side, at least one of them muffled, assured him most, if not all of the projectiles had struck, giving him time to secure a better position.

Two male soldiers met him, their long swords held in a defensive stance, legs too stiff. With the slightest push from deep within his soul’s essence, liqua fed his blade. The magical energy enchanced the already unbreakable metal. It had been honed to uncanny sharpness upon its forging in the embers of Lost Avlack and would never dull.

Bleak angled his sword toward the soldier on the left and glided forward, body passing between the two men. Shear–a named sword second in the legends only to the grail–sliced longsword and soldier in half. Continuing his swing, feeling the sword’s momentum in his arms, down through his torso, and all the way to the bottoms’ of his feet, Bleak twisted and severed the other soldier in two from behind.

Still facing forward, he brought Shear down low. Three quick strides took him into another pair of soldiers, a man and woman. Like a river, he cut through the terrain of their bodies without ever stopping his forward momentum. Before each contact, he nudged a little more liqua into Shear. Though probably unnecessary, he wasn’t taking any chances.

The practice arena was well delineated, ending where the floor dropped down a few centimeters. Generations of feet had worn the sparring area as smooth in places as a wave-buffeted rock face, but the dark wood of the lower aisle running the room’s length looked untouched. His boots squeaked. So much accumulated blood left stark prints in his wake.

When he reached the wall, Bleak set his back to it and turned to face the soldiers.

Only a dozen were closing on him, the rest still hesitating or dealing with the aftermath of his first vicious series of attacks. The latter were a mixed bunch. They stared in horror at the two neatly-cloven bodies of men they’d trained alongside. Others picked their way carefully past the bodies lest their feet become tangled in slippery intestines which spilled across the floor, leaking blood, shit, and half-digested food in a treacherous puddle.

Bleak was pleased to see an eyeball at one soldier’s feet as she coughed and spat on the floor; then was overjoyed to see another soldier unmoving on the ground, not a mark on him, though both hands lay limp on his throat, and Bleak thought he could almost see a fleshy stalk of nerves and flesh protruding from the man’s mouth.

Those struck by his throwing knives were pulling the blades free or gritting their teeth as another did the nasty business for them.

A blonde woman approached with a faint turquoise sheen to her blade. So they could use liqua. Or something akin. The woman was just Bleak’s type. She was pretty due to the smattering of freckles across her upper cheeks and nose. What made her truly beautiful was the unending stream of curses loosed from her mouth like arrows.

Bleak didn’t have to understand her language to know they were curses. He could feel them grating into his ears and flaying at his soul.

He met the woman’s advance, careful not to move too far from the wall. Rather than matching swords as she obviously expected, Bleak sidestepped her powerful downward stroke. Off balance, there was little she could do when he removed her head.

After that, fighting became a blur, soldiers confronting him in pairs with the occasional lone wolf thinking they would succeed where so many had already failed. Bleak created a tidy barricade of fallen bodies around his position, muddling his opponents’ footing.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

The battle was going well until a trio pressed him hard. Shouting back and forth to each other in a language they must have finally guessed he couldn’t understand, they worked in concert, attacking and retreating in an unpredictable pattern. When Bleak finally made a mistake, twisting to the right when he should have gone left, one of their heavy swords removed his left arm above the elbow.

Taking a cue from Interloper, he feigned anguish, watching the soldiers through lidded eyes. When they struck to finish him off, far too hasty with no concern for form or stance, Bleak bent his blade in graceful arcs they probably hadn’t guessed were possible with only one arm. Their bodies joined his arm on the ground, cut into more pieces than strictly necessary.

Though he lacked an arm, the remaining soldiers hung back. They were far too many. Then again, Bleak didn’t have any pressing appointments and couldn’t think of a better way to celebrate his newly-gained immortality. Speaking of which…

Bleak stabbed his sword into a fallen soldier’s back and retrieved his left arm. Before reattaching it, he couldn’t resist waggling it at the soldiers. Doing so paired excellently with his gap-toothed smile. If they’d had any reservations about his sanity, those doubts were now certainly laid to rest in unmarked graves.

With the most satisfying noise yet, his arm became whole once more with a loud squelch. Bleak stretched a few times, then pulled his sword from its fleshy makeshift scabbard.

He’d failed to notice the flurry of activity at the training hall’s far end. In the near-silence that had settled over the battle’s lull, a single voice reverberated with unmistakable authority. Just as he’d been certain of the female soldier’s curses, Bleak knew an instructor or battle-hardened veteran had finally taken charge of the soldiers. Ranks parted in a rush like curtains drawn open for the second act of a festival day play. Two neat rows of archers, one standing and the other kneeling before them, answered Bleak’s taunts with jeering smiles of their own.

“This’ll be unpleasant,” he said. Sheathing his sword, he crossed his arms across his body then lowered his head. “But life’s not worth living without new experiences.”

He inhaled deeply, gritted his teeth, and braced for pain.

A detached part of his mind couldn’t help but listen for the now-familiar sound of Interloper’s snapping fingers. He heard only the twang of bowstrings.

When it was over, he guessed that roughly one-third of the arrows had missed. The rest peppered his arms and legs, jerking him back with each successive impact until he struck the wall. One arrow came uncomfortably close to his crotch. He felt two distinct jolts on the top of his head and was glad he’d presented it as a target instead of his face. After his recent debacle with the throwing knives, he didn’t relish pulling an arrow from his own eyeball.

As excruciating as the pain was, worse than anything he’d ever suffered (including the recent removal of his arm), he’d have endured it many times over for the look on the soldiers’ faces when he unfolded his arms and casually began twisting arrows out of his body. After tending to his left arm, he drew forth Shear with his right. Slow and deliberate, he took a step forward for each arrow removed, timing his pace to the clatter of ineffectual projectiles striking the floor.

He delivered desicration to each body in his path, refusing to be turned aside. Faces pulped. Skulls crunched beneath his heavy tred. Shear scraped along the floor, liqua thickening on the blade until even those without the gift could see its heady blue aura. The blade skittered and screeched deep wounds into the floor and further rent any bodies it encountered.

He was the drums of war given human form, building to a crescendo.

“I’ve been going easy on you,” he growled as the last arrow fell, a final period in an exceedingly long ellipsis.

A score of puncture holes closed, taking pain with them like a receding tide though the memory remained. Liqua burned at his core, begging to be used. To fill his veins with fury. To transform him into a killing inferno.

*Snap*

Bleak roared with indignation.

“Send me back,” he said, voice low. Dangerous. Each syllable a promise of retribution. “Their blood is mine.”

Infinite reflections of his rage-twisted visage echoed the words back at him. He stood in a hall of mirrors, well lit though he couldn’t see the source of so much light. The Bleak who confronted him from all sides was a ghastly creature. If drinking from the grail and gaining immortality had been a rebirth, it had been followed by a baptism in blood.

It dripped from his sweat-soaked hair, lank and plastered to his gaunt face which was painted red as a whore’s lips. It stained his shredded clothes. Coated Shear’s dark blade, held steady and unwavering before him like a tear in reality.

Wild unblinking eyes stared through him, seeing only another corpse not yet taught its true form by his instruction. What he’d thought to be a mocking smile was really a predator’s waiting jaws, the gap in his teeth a window into nightmare.

“I would ask if you’ve had enough, but we both know that question will never apply to you,” Interloper said. He appeared in the mirror directly before Bleak, each reflection somehow standing in a different pose. Only the yellow cat’s eyes and Cheshire smile remained the same, infinite iterations of an infinitely gleeful grin. “Bleak, once known as Hardy Glintstream, renamed for your utter lack of compassion or restraint. A black hole shredding any life that draws too near. I can’t tell you how happy I am that you drank from the grail.”

“What are you?” Bleak asked. He turned in a steady circle but could find no sign of Interloper’s presence anywhere but in the mirror.

“That’s a dreadfully impolite question,” Interloper chided. Hundreds of reflections wagged a finger at him. “So much better to ask ‘Who are you?’ However, in this instance they are one and the same.”

“Don’t say it,” Bleak said.

Hearing the truth would take it from supposition to fact. He didn’t want to know with certainty that Interloper was the kind of being Bleak suspected him to be. That it made perfect sense didn’t factor into the equation. He’d surmounted every obstacle in his way and didn’t want to learn that anything might be beyond his power. He’d promised himself never to feel small again, no matter the cost.

“You’ve guessed then?” Interloper said, expression changing for the first time as the teeth vanished, the outline of lips stretching into an exaggerated pout. “A pox on you! It’s so much more scintillating when I get to see a new immortal’s reaction.” The smile returned. “Ah well, I have a few other surprises for you, and there’s no way you’ll guess them all.”

“What kind of demon grants immortality?” Bleak asked, deciding it might be better to name the thing, to take away a measure of its power.

“A demon? Me? Have you looked in a mirror lately?” Interloper asked, ending the question with soft rolling chuckles. It seemed to speak an entire language of laughter, each ripe with secret meaning. “Not a demon. A god.”