by Andrew Rowe
He was, however, momentarily distracted. “Insolent. I will teach you—”
I stomped a foot. Stone shot upward, wrapping around the Pale King’s legs to hold him in place. It was, ironically, a technique that I’d first seen Sterling — one of the Children of the Tyrant — use.
Before he could orient himself, I struck. I rushed inward, battering his sword out of position and cutting him straight across the chest.
It was a clean strike, faster than he could parry with his disorientation. It was also utterly ineffective.
My sword sliced through his shirt, but when I hit his chest, I felt the same kind of resistance as I had from striking one of the hovering cuts in the air. There was no cut on his body, nor did he even seem to feel the impact.
Before he could react, I hit him twice more. The results were the same — he wasn’t even scratched.
He swung his sword horizontally to counter. It was an awkward swing, hindered by his lack of mobility from the stone that still held him from below. As he swept his sword, I side-stepped around both the blade and the lingering cut it left, then circled for a better angle to strike.
My first test had been to see if I could hurt him with the force of an ordinary swing. I hadn’t expected it to work, but I’d been looking for signs of stress on his defenses. Ordinarily, defensive spells will fail if they’re hit enough times or with enough force.
I’d seen no sign of that. There were no telltale cracks in the air, no signs of a weakening glow from the necklace around his neck.
“You cannot harm me,” The Pale King intoned. “My strength is absolute. My body, eternal.”
“Good.” I laughed, raising Dawn into a two-handed grip. “I’ve never had a test dummy that could stand up to a few swings before. This is going to be fun.”
I shifted to move.
Body of Stone.
Perhaps he sensed the subtle change in me, because he immediately shifted to a defensive posture.
It didn’t matter. When I pushed forward, stone cracking beneath my feet, my swing smashed his sword so hard that it snapped the stone around his legs and hurled him half way across the throne room.
I pursued as he flew backward, smashing Dawn into his right shoulder before he could fully recover.
And this time, I think he felt it.
With a grunt, he stumbled backward, shifting his grip on his sword. The smile on my face widened as a look of panic and disbelief crossed his face.
When I battered his sword downward to create another opening, however, his expression shifted to a snarl. “Pale Crescent: Low Tide.”
I didn’t see it in time, and I would have felt the change far too late.
But I wasn’t alone.
I jumped, my legs powerfully enhanced by the Body of Stone spell still empowering me.
I cleared the floor just in time.
Every single lingering cut in the air had flowed toward me in an instant, sweeping down toward my legs. Even with Body of Stone active, the dozens of flowing cuts in the air would have torn my legs to ribbons.
Now airborne, I brought Dawnbringer above my head and brought her downward in a glimmering arc, the full force of my enhanced strength behind the blow. If he could move the cuts in the air, the Pale King was a vastly greater threat than I’d anticipated. I had to end the fight fast.
The Pale King turned his head upward, and his lips twitched into a grin. He lifted the Pale Crescent in a two-handed grip. And, as I watched, his sword changed. “Waxing Crescent.”
His sword, once thin-bladed, thickened into something twice the width of my arm. And, as the sword changed, the Pale King’s crown flashed with white light.
I understood the change too late. The Pale Crescent’s strength waxed and waned — and along with it, so did the Pale King’s.
The sliver of the moon that his sword had represented at the beginning of the fight represented only the barest slice of the Pale King’s true strength.
When my blade crashed down on his, the force of the blow cracked the floor beneath the Pale King — but it didn’t move his sword an inch.
For an instant, I was still airborne as our blades met. And in that mere heartbeat, he countered, moving his sword with a blast of air behind it, hurling me backward across the room.
I slammed into a pillar with bone-breaking force.
With Body of Stone still active, I was far tougher than the pillar. I felt a surge of pain on the impact, but the pillar took the brunt of the damage, shattering around me. The worst part was that it knocked the breath out of me.
Before I could even catch my breath and rise to my feet, the Pale King had moved. His passage across the room was a blur, so fast I could see multiple images trailing behind him as he passed.
“Good night, Keras, wielder of Dawnbringer.” He raised his sword in a two-handed grip. “Sleep forever.”
The Pale Crescent descended for a telling strike.
On the ground and out of position for a proper parry, I did what any brave hero would do: I kicked him in the shin.
He stumbled, unhurt but off balance. His blade cleaved the ground right next to me, leaving a tremendous wave of glimmering force in its wake.
But he’d swung just a little too hard.
As his blade cut down, he’d bitten straight into the floor. And with an instant of concentration, I moved it.
Tighten.
The stone shoved closed, trapping his sword in place. I knew it wouldn’t hold him long, but it didn’t have to.
Brace yourself, Dawn.
I shifted my grip on Dawnbringer and swung her upward, straight for the chain around his neck. She connected with terrible force, enough that it should have torn right through ordinary steel.
She didn’t leave a single scratch on the chain.
That was less than ideal, but I’d known it was likely. The attack served a second purpose — to make metal contact metal. In that briefest of instants as Dawn touched the chain, I pushed my will into the chain.
Break.
My sorcery struck the necklace with tremendous force — and had no effect whatsoever.
I barely managed to roll out of the way, stunned, as the Pale King recovered his blade and brought it in for a second strike.
I’d found magical items that could resist my metal sorcery before, of course. But what I’d felt from the necklace had been different — not mere resistance, but the feeling that the chain absolutely could not be changed.
Recovering from the roll, I stumbled to my feet just in time to parry the Pale King’s next strike. It slammed into Dawn hard, carrying me back several feet along the ground.
He didn’t give me a moment to recover. He was in front of me again an instant later, his cuts so quick that I had to put in every bit of effort I could muster just to counter.
And, as I realized when one horizontal swing came within inches of gutting me, he was still getting faster.
I parried another swing, sliding backward across the ground, and couldn’t quite get Dawn up in time to block his next cut.
I couldn’t afford to let someone with his strength hit me. One clean cut and the fight would be over.
Magnetic repulse.
His blade was pushed off course by my sudden burst of magnetic force, only managing to leave a glancing cut along my ribs. A feeling of utter cold surged through that cut, and I hissed and grabbed at the wound with my free hand. An inky black substance was rapidly spreading across the injury.
Burn.
A surge of fire ignited from my hand, burning at the spot of my own injury. The pain was terrible, but it arrested the spread of the blackness.
The Pale King was already swinging again. I stomped the ground, raising a wall of stone between us to buy an instant.
I fell backward as the Pale King’s sword smashed into the wall, cutting through it and showering me in debris. The wall had barely slowed his cut, but it had given me an instant to fall back and avoid the blow, and
it was blocking his view.
My chest was in agony. My self-inflicted burn had been agonizing, but the blackness that still lingered around the cut the Pale King had inflicted was far worse. The fire had stopped — or at least slowed — it from spreading, but it was still there, leaving a feeling of sharpness that felt like I was being cut again and again with every passing instant. My jaw tightened. My pain tolerance was excellent, but not unstoppable.
As the Pale King rounded the wall to face me, my vision was swimming. I could barely raise my sword.
The Pale King lunged.
There was a flash of light from Dawnbringer’s blade, casting the entire room in a brilliant glow.
In the wake of the flash, I heard the Pale King hiss, falling backward and shielding his eyes.
And, in that moment, I realized that — inviolable or not — he still had a weakness.
He still had his sight. And, of course, that meant he could be blinded.
As Dawnbringer shined, the Pale King retreated behind the stone wall. It seemed to affect him even more than it might have hurt a normal person, perhaps because he was so unaccustomed to feeling any sort of pain or discomfort.
Dawn held her power in place longer than usual, giving me critical moments to retreat.
And then, as her brightness began to fade, she did something different than usual — she captured that remaining glow and pushed it inward. I felt the warm glow from her into my hand, lingering for a moment at the site where her symbol marked our bond. From there, the light surged to the point of the wound, spreading and obliterating the remaining blackness.
I took a deep breath, steeling myself, and cracked my neck as the pain faded.
Thanks, Dawn. You saved me there.
I gave Dawn a nod and readied myself. She’d saved me just in time.
The Pale King brought his sword down in a vertical cut, slicing through the center of the wall. A blast of force followed his swing, bursting outward and creating a huge gap in the stone. Then, stepping through hole in the wall, he leveled his sword at my chest.
The Pale Crescent had grown even thicker now. The curve was less pronounced, and the blade was nearly as wide as my chest. And, as the glow around his body brightened, I knew his strength and speed had grown greater as well.
He didn’t give me an instant to attack. His voice was deeper, stronger as he spoke. “Pale Crescent: High Tide.”
This time, I knew what to expect — but that didn’t mean I could properly counter it.
Flowing cuts littered the entire room now, and as they began to move, I realized just how few spaces I had to escape.
There were too many blades in the air. As fast as I was, I couldn’t hope to dodge them all.
A feeling of clarity washed over my mind, and Dawn’s senses merged with my own.
Dozens of lingering cuts flowed inward, aimed high this time. Where sight would have denied me the view of those behind me, and where sound flowed too slow to save me, Dawn’s senses preserved me. She could feel them all, sense their movements and trajectories.
And so, as they cut inward, I moved.
I didn’t drop to the floor. If I had, the Pale King would have exploited that weakness before I could recover. Instead as each individual cut flowed inward, I flowed around it, guided by Dawn’s light.
It felt like a dance.
One step left, a blade missed me by inches.
Two steps right, I narrowly avoided two cuts, causing them to crash into each other and fly off course.
Duck. A cut passed over my head.
Spin. Dawnbringer blocked a projectile, not stopping it, but allowing the momentum of the impact to carry me out of the way of three others.
Jump. I surged over a tide of blades from near the floor.
Parry. I blocked a projectile, and it carried me backward through the air.
Wide stance. I landed atop a perfectly horizontal cut, and improbably, stood atop it. The blade-like force, it seemed, still had the same flat portion as the sword that made it.
Low guard. I shifted Dawnbringer downward as the Pale King jumped toward me, furious. His own cuts passed through him without harm or effect.
Side-step. As the Pale King brought his blade upward in a tremendous sweep, I stepped off the blade I was standing on and let myself fall.
The Pale King missed, and I brought Dawn behind my shoulder to ready a swing as I reached the floor.
Now!
“Radiant Dawn!” I swung Dawn upward, her blade shining brilliantly. A cut of blinding white energy flashed outward, a variant of her usual attack focused into a crescent strike.
The flare of luminous power crashed straight into his midsection, tearing him out of the air. As he flew backward and landed, smoke rose from his chest.
His shirt had been burned away, revealing blackened flesh beneath.
The Pale King howled in disbelief. “You...you...”
The amulet on his chest flickered dangerously. And, on the surface, I thought I could see the tiniest of cracks.
“I will end you!” The Pale King screamed, raising his sword high.
The Pale Crescent shifted again — the pristine white surface turning blood red.
Crimson spread from his sword hand down his arm, flowing through his veins into his neck and chest. He howled in agony as the scarlet power flowed into his face, pooling in his eyes.
He smashed a foot into the ground, howling, and screamed. “Pale Crescent: Ebb and Flow!”
The lingering cuts around the room moved, and once again, I danced.
This time, however, they were different.
Each and every cutting blade aimed for a different part of me. And when they swept beyond me and back to their previous position, they didn’t stop at a single pass.
The room was alive with hundreds of living attacks, each of them seeking to end my life.
Even with Dawn’s guidance, I couldn’t keep up. A dance to the right took me beyond the reach of one cut, only for another to slice my back from behind. And as spun, ignoring the pain, to duck a cut at my face, another glanced along my leg.
I moved and moved, struggling to move toward my opponent, but with each step forward I found myself forced back by an impossible wall of cutting force.
And as I persisted, I slowed. My Body of Stone had taken a toll on my muscles and bones, and injuries were growing by the moment.
I’d let the fight go on too long and it had flowed beyond my control.
I think it’s time.
“Pale Crescent: Harvest Moon.” The Pale King drew his crimson blade back, a torrent of burning power surrounding it. Then he swung it in a perfect circle, forming a blood-red ring that hovered around him.
At his command, it shot unerringly toward me. It was an entirely different type of magic from what he’d been using before, and I could feel the vast power it contained even at a distance. I had no doubt that it if it struck, it would cleave me in twain.
I watched as it came close, then moved.
Release Body of Stone.
I closed my eyes.
Body of Dawn.
Warmth passed through my body, bright power surging within. When my eyes opened, I saw the hundreds of attacks still surging toward me—
But their movements, once cutting with lightning speed, seemed to be almost frozen in the air.
I danced no longer. As the Pale King’s strongest attack approached, I simply walked forward at a casual pace, ducking and stepping around the smaller blades that floated in the air.
It would have been a simple thing to avoid the Harvest Moon entirely, walking around it to strike at my opponent with great speed and force.
&nb
sp; But that wouldn’t have been a satisfying ending.
I walked straight in front of the shimmering ring of cutting force, raising Dawn, and met the Pale King’s uncomprehending eyes.
Bright Reflection.
Light flashed on Dawnbringer’s surface.
And with a flick of my wrist, I tapped Dawn’s reflective surface against the Harvest Moon.
A cascade of sparks flickered in the air. I sheathed Dawn in a single motion, grinned at the Pale King, and stepped out of the current trajectory of the projectiles in the air.
Release Body of Dawn.
Time returned to normal.
And the Pale King’s eyes widened, incredulous, as his strongest attack rebounded back toward him.
He tried to move. His own attack, however, was just as fast as it had been when he’d sent it at me.
The amulet on his chest sparked as the attack struck, then cracked apart. The Harvest Moon sliced right through the center of his body.
The Pale King’s mouth opened, blood flowing from his lips, and he spoke a single word.
I didn’t hear it.
Then his body fell, sliced into two pieces, onto the throne room floor. His sword fell from his limp grasp.
A white light encompassed his body for the briefest of moments....and then he was gone. Nothing but dust remained in the Pale King’s wake.
Nothing but dust, that is, and the three relics that he’d carried.
The remaining cuts in the air faded as his life did, leaving me a clear path to the throne. I walked toward him, absolutely exhausted from my efforts. From the feeling in my mind, I could tell that Dawn was badly drained, too.
Body of Dawn had taken a great deal out of us both — but it had been absolutely worth it.
When I reached the front of the throne room, I bent down to find exactly what I’d wanted.
The Pale King’s amulet had cracked, as had the gems on his crown. But, while damaged, they were largely intact.
The sword had fared even better. It had reverted to its original thin-bladed form, but it looked perfectly usable.
I tapped Dawn against it.
Do you sense anyone in there?
