Convergence

by Joe Jackson

  Kari moved to force his hand, quick-stepping in and beginning a wicked combination of short swings and inside crescents. With only a greatsword to defend himself with, he was forced to give ground, and when moving backward, his strength was all but nullified. Kari gave a flap of her wings and the demon king sidestepped, coming to a stop and staring at her coldly. There was a light in those bestial eyes, though, and Kari recognized she was not fighting someone that succumbed to bloodlust as easily as most believed.

  She kicked dirt at him. “You wanted me to surrender, and this is all you have to offer?”

  Arku straightened up and let his blade hang down at his side. “I thought to give you the chance to surrender and be spared the humiliation of direct combat, and perhaps I would have a little bit of fun with you.” His eyes narrowed. “Now, bitch, you are going to die, and I will have my fun with your children instead.”

  He leapt in at her with such preternatural speed it caught her off guard, and he slammed her with that great blade, sending Kari ungraciously to her rump. She managed to stay in a semi-sitting position, not completely prone, but he was upon her in moments. The sword hit her again, in the side of the head this time, and even with the paluric helmet, she nearly lost consciousness. He planted a foot in her chest and cut one of her wings clean off, and Kari screamed, snapping back to the immediate situation.

  He tried stabbing her through the heart, but his blade was stopped by her armor. It sent her to her back regardless, and Kari tried to scramble away, finding little success with the wind blasted out of her lungs. He hammered her with the great blade again and again, finally taking off her other wing. She was nearly paralyzed by the shock, and the next thing she registered, he had picked her up by the throat. Protected as she was in her paluric shell, he carried her over toward his coach and proceeded to throw her into the side of it as hard as he could manage.

  Kari found a brief moment of lucidity in the haze of pain, sitting crumpled against the side of the coach, only being held up by the vehicle. She had no idea where her swords were, and her severed wing stumps were dripping blood onto her like silver rain. What was strange, though, was the fact that she felt no pain. She was in rough shape, but she felt nothing, and for the briefest moment, Kari wondered if she could move at all.

  The look on the demon king’s face when she stood up would be something she’d happily take into the hereafter with her even if she lost. It was momentary, though. Snarling, he gave a great overhead chop with his blade. Kari sidestepped and drove it away with her bracer to be safe, and the sword bit into the coach and lodged there for a moment. Kari lunged in and drove her fist into the side of the demon king’s jaw as hard as she could.

  Arku tried to grab for her, but Kari fell to her rump and wrapped her legs around one of his. She wrapped him up and gave a sharp twist, just long enough to hear a satisfying pop, and then she rolled away and dashed toward where she suspected her weapons lay. Arku limped after her, sputtering curses and yanking the sword free of the coach with another snarl.

  At the very least, she’d gotten him close to unhinged. He was giving in to rage and fury, and the more she hurt, taunted, and humiliated him, the more he’d lose it. But that would do Kari little good if she was unarmed. Reaching her swords, she stopped and stared dumbly at her severed wings, wondering if they would grow back under Sakkrass’ regenerative gift. If not, she was going to have to get used to being a terra-rir…

  Kari smiled when she beheld Arku again. She was wounded and due for a few days of bruises and sore ribs, but she’d bloodied his mouth and injured his leg. Better yet, her wounds were already healing, the wing stumps no longer bleeding, and despite everything, she felt clear-headed and energetic. She couldn’t explain it, but that wasn’t necessary anyway.

  “Epaxa chi’pri!” she shouted at him, and felt another surge of energy.

  “Stop saying that!” Arku snarled.

  When he came at her this time, she was ready for it. She couldn’t spring out of the way without her wings, but she met his aggression with the Wraith’s careful style, deflecting and dodging his every attack, letting him spend his rage and stamina striking wind or meeting her own strength. She had the power of her divine patrons flowing through her, but Arku had his limits – limits he was in danger of hitting.

  Something had happened when he’d attacked her the first time. By all rights, she should be dead, but even with her wings lying in bloody patches of dirt on the road, she still felt like she was in better shape than he was. Despite the immediate, bloody results, something about having brought his power to bear had backfired, for lack of a better term, and even though he’d taken her wings off, she somehow ended up the better off of the two when the exchange was done.

  This makes little sense, she thought, but then realization hit her. She concentrated on Be’shatha’s heavenly glow, and suddenly found Arku was not so difficult to keep up with. Now he was on the attack but Kari matched his speed and fell into the Wraith’s routines while calling upon Zalkar’s power to let her strike true. She found synergy, and though it didn’t manifest itself physically, she felt the bright glow of her divine patrons intermingled and magnified.

  She drove aside a chop and took a couple of fingers with it. His retaliatory strike left him open to her favored low strike, cutting across the thigh in search of nerves and arteries. Each blow led to another strike, and each of his increasingly-clumsy defensive maneuvers opened yet another. Kari drove him back time and again, taking off fingers and toes here and there, and drawing blood in so many places he started to look as though he had stripes like Kris.

  Frustrated, the demon king tried one last time to call upon that preternatural speed, but as Kari expected, it didn’t work, didn’t faze her in the least. Power cancelled power, leaving mostly martial prowess in the void, but Kari also had the blessings of Zalkar and Sakkrass to augment her fighting style. Free of her wings, Kari executed a risky crouching maneuver, cutting heavily into one of the demon king’s forearms at the same time she caught him under the armored skirt.

  Kari didn’t miss the sudden dribble of blood or the wet splatter in the dirt below him as she sliced deeply into his groin. There was no taunting, no wasted words exchanged. With the demon king starting to double over, Kari drove her sword through the base of his neck and down into his heart and lungs. Her blade, still glowing golden, sank in to the hilt, and yet it came right back out effortlessly. Still caught up in the dance, Kari spun, her other blade coming around to relieve the demon king of his head completely.

  There was a stillness to the air, but then Kari felt it: A lingering power that settled into her mind and soul. When she turned toward his coach, she found its elestram driver was already a few steps away from her, kneeling in the dirt. “Epaxa chi’pri!” he cried.

  So this was what it was all about, Kari thought. They didn’t just kill Be’shatha, they stole her power. That’s what makes them so dangerous. But it seems to also cancel itself out, which must be why the kings have to resort to trickery to kill each other.

  “Epaxa chi’pri, my brother,” Kari replied in beshathan after a pause. “Go back home to Si’Dorra, and tell everyone you meet that Arku is dead. Destroy every last vestige of his power you can find, and then beseech one of your southern neighbors to rule over you before anyone else can step in and take power. Great Mother go with you.”

  The elestram rose to his feet, slack-jawed. “Your wings… do you need medical attention?” he asked.

  Kari waved off the question. “I’ll be fine. Go; you don’t have much time to deliver this good news and protect yourselves.”

  “May… may I take his sword, that my words will be believed?”

  Kari glanced at the ruined form of Arku Chinchala, and the great black sword that was still held in his death grip. She drew both of her blades again and shattered The Onyx Reaver with a massive sundering strike. She put her blades away and gestured toward what remained of the sword. “Take it, and show them. Show them that Ar
ku’s rule is broken, just as his sword.”

  The elestram agreed with her demand, and took up the shattered blade to load into the coach. He bowed deeply to Kari, but then wasted little more time before he turned the coach and returned toward Si’Dorra.

  Kari watched him drive off and then pulled her hunting knife from its sheath on the back of her belt. It almost seemed dishonorable, but she had made a promise. The demon was already missing his head and a good deal of his privates, but Kari turned the corpse onto its back. She then took her hunting knife and carved the name of her slain friend into his flesh: Albrecht Allerius. Standing up, she spat on the corpse and then made her way over to her severed wings.

  Kari found herself inspired to hold the severed wings up to the stumps. It took time, but they began to thread back together despite the fact that the tips had healed over. She found herself lost in thought, staring into the surprised, glazed-over dead eyes of the demon king while she let her regenerative powers do their work.

  She had killed a demon king…

  She had now officially declared war on the Overking and his council. But there was still one thing left to do. She glanced over her shoulder, glad to have a wing to look around again, and stared in the direction of Si’Dorra for a minute. She hoped Erik and her other family and friends were all right, but had to trust them to do their duty. She, on the other hand, had to get back to Anthraxis and prepare to go home after checking for any sign of their presence.

  Kari put Arku’s head into her pack and set off toward Anthraxis. Now she had a trek of a couple of days to make with food that was going to get gross in a hurry with a severed head in the bag with it. But the prospect of seeing her friends and family put extra spring in her step, and she reached a brisk jog, kicking up dust on the road to Anthraxis. For someone who had her wings cut off and suffered a beating not fifteen minutes before, she felt remarkably good.

  She covered a good amount of distance in the first hour, but couldn’t keep up the pace indefinitely. She wasn’t an elestram or an erestram by any stretch. Arku’s head was heavy, but every time she remembered that she was carrying it, it sent another surge of energy through her. For so long, her people had considered the kings untouchable, far too powerful to even consider facing in direct combat. Now, she had put that belief at least partially to rest. The Ancient Ones might be beyond her abilities, but there were only five of them.

  The lesser kings were likely one of two things: Potential allies or fair game. It wasn’t as if Kari could wander from realm to realm fighting the kings in single combat, but the chaos in Sorelizar was to be her model going forward. Once word got out that it had been she who killed Sekassus’ sons and set his realm into rebellion, and that compounded with the knowledge that she had killed Arku, there was no telling how many Mehr’Durillians might follow her. She might be able to set nearly all of the kings who weren’t Ancient Ones against each other.

  Or, better yet, against the Ancient Ones…

  Koursturaux still presented the most intriguing possibility. If Kari could turn her on the Overking – something the demoness had apparently considered already – the Crimson Huntress might also take aim at her fellow Ancient Ones. Kari could potentially set the entirety of Mehr’Durillia into a state of war, something akin to a tavern brawl on a planetary scale. Who would be standing at the end of that was anyone’s guess, but Kari was confident that if Koursturaux didn’t win, she’d at least do considerable damage to whoever the final survivor was.

  Kari considered what she knew of the lesser demon kings. Emanitar and Morduri were already on her side, and not just on the surface. It was not simply a matter of the enemy of my enemy is my friend when it came to them. She and Morduri respected each other enough that they’d shared something special, and Emanitar was Be’shatha’s son and, more pointedly, he now seemed prepared to fight to take back what belonged to his mother.

  Celigus was an ally to her people and their gods, but only to an extent. She wasn’t sure he was interested in helping them fight the Overking or any of his peers – Koursturaux least of all, considering they shared a bed. Strangely, the demon king Kari thought she should know the best was the one she understood the least. While she didn’t expect Celigus would fight against her and the people of Citaria, she couldn’t count on him fighting for them, either. Not without giving him a significant reason to risk everything he’d left Mehr’Durillia to obtain.

  The only other unknown was Arlerase Chinchala, who was apparently Celigus’ child. Was it Arlerase that Celigus was truly concerned for when he bent to the Overking’s rules? Aside from the fact that he was the weakest, lowest-ranked of the kings, Kari knew next to nothing about Arlerase. Celigus never mentioned him, and it wasn’t as if Kari was intimately familiar – a thought that had her snickering – with many of the kings overall.

  That left a considerable list of enemies – Sekassus the Calulating, whom Kari was sure would share Arku’s fate within the next year or so; Augrus Tiveron; Sheila Darkstorm; Xafastu Kenochian, who was rumored to be the son of the Overking and Koursturaux – or at least one of the two; Ouraggra Gelarri; Lestanaek the Blademaster; and Garrivokt Solimant, who was the son of Baphomet, if Kari remembered her Codex lore.

  Not the best of odds, Kari thought soberly. True, she had numerous deities on her side, several of which lent her their power on demand. But she was only one woman, and no matter how strong she might look and feel, she could not win a war alone. The price simply of getting to the other kings would be blood, and far more than Kari was willing to see spilled without having a solid, effective plan for making sure it was not spilled in vain.

  She shook free of the somber thoughts when she spied a fellow rir on the road ahead. It was a solitary figure, and one without wings, which dashed her hopes that it was Erik or one of her other friends. Assuming, of course, that none of them had their wings cut off like she had just a little while ago. But as she drew closer, she took note of the posture, the long ebon hair blowing in the wind, and the twin silver katanas that hung from either hand.

  Taesenus…

  Kari dropped her pack and drew her blades without a word. The Demon Prince stared at her with a coldness that rivaled the Wraith’s, but with such a depth of malice in his eyes that her elestram mentor couldn’t match. Years of anger flooded to the surface of Kari’s memory as she thought of him kicking her pregnant belly, paralyzing Typhonix, and, by his own claims, being the one who burned Kari’s house to the ground.

  She didn’t hesitate at all. She spat on the ground and then stalked directly at him. By the way he brought his swords to bear, he wasn’t interested in exchanging even the most insulting pleasantries. He approached as well, and they met in a shower of sparks as their blades clashed.

  The dance began. As much as she despised this man and wanted to put an end to his reign of terror, she had to respect his fighting style. He was masterfully trained, doubtless the product of many teachers, though his legacy and that of his mother suggested none of those teachers were given a choice. And with that thought, Kari expected none of them survived the final tests of their “student.”

  Though their styles were different, still Kari found a mirror in the Demon Prince: A man who fought for the opposite reasons and goals, and yet whose skill and technique rivaled her own. But it had been some time since they’d last crossed blades, and things were different now. Kari was no longer pregnant, she was stronger, she carried the power of yet another deity, and – not the least of all – her training had been completed by the Wraith.

  Kari stayed true to the Wraith’s teaching, and in following his guidance, she felt closer to the memories of Suler. She’d worried, for a time, that the Wraith’s tutelage might dim the glow that surrounded recollections of her former master and lover, but here in the heat of battle, when she actually thought about it, it wasn’t so. The Wraith taught her, but he had never danced with her, never lain with her, never become so at one with her that they thought and moved in a synergetic harmon
y. Here, fighting against Taesenus, she could almost feel Suler moving with her, and they danced with a synchronized grace that Taesenus could find no avenue to strike through.

  To his credit, Taesenus refrained from the overwhelming offensive routines he favored. Like Arku just a short time ago, he resisted the bloodlust and the rage that Kari and her fighting style typically brought out in him. His movements and strikes were measured and careful, and he avoided wading into her defensive web. She hated him, and yet she had to give credit where it was due: He learned every time they fought. In a way, it frustrated her that she was training him, in a sense, and yet he would never be her ally.

  The problem he had was that Kari had “perfected” her style under the Wraith. Once it became apparent that he was willing to pace himself and hope to outlast her, Kari smirked. She waded in and began forcing him back using the Wraith’s offensive routines. Her aim was not to kill or even maim, but just to aggravate him, to set fire to the kindling that was always piled high within his soul. This man was full of hatred, and it didn’t take much to set it ablaze. Kari began to mix kicks in with her strikes, but kept them low and quick, wary of being tripped or otherwise knocked down.

  Taesenus was not used to giving ground, and Kari kept the pressure on him, forcing him to move backwards to steal his power. Yet he still didn’t lose his composure. He met each of her attacks with his katanas, not even pressing the slight reach advantage the longer weapons gave him. It dawned on Kari that he was getting used to her fighting style, but she didn’t let that faze her. Once he got comfortable, he was going to go on the offensive, and then he was hers.