The Questing Game f-2

by James Galloway

  He could smell it clearly now. The cool breeze blowing in from the land carried its foul stench to him clearly, and he could hear its metal-shod boots rapping on the stone as it marched up the quay. He didn't turn around. He kept staring out into the sea, marvelling at the simple beauty that could be found in the sea and the ships that sailed upon it. Maybe for the last time. When it was about ten paces from him, his tail stopped swishing rhythmically, as it tended to do, and he lowered the paw holding his staff.

  "Clever," it said in that rasping, dusty voice. "Twice have ye sensed my coming, and twice have ye brought me to your own battlefield, yes. Clever Were-cat ye be."

  "I destroyed you."

  "My body, ye destroyed. My spirit lives on, in this new body. Never can ye defeat me, boy. Destroy me, and again I will come back, yes. Over and over, until ye finally fall."

  Tarrin turned around. It didn't look any different. It had the exact same taut skin-over-bone face, the same armor, the same sword and circular shield. It even had the same scent. Perhaps that was a function of what made it come back. The wind pulled at his braid as he looked at the Doomwalker grimly. "I'm not the boy you fought before." He raised a paw, and it exploded into the ghostly limned radiance of High Sorcery. This was a calculated risk, but it was absolutely necessary. Tarrin fought to control himself, to not show the strain as the Weave tried to drown him with its power. He could feel the Weave expand around him, saturating with magical energy, energy that he sensed the Doomwalker could feel. "I don't even have to fight you to destroy you," he said in a tight voice. "You can't get close enough to defeat me, Jegojah, because I could annihilate you where you stand. But I don't want to risk destroying this city to deal with you. So I offer a bargain."

  "Speak on," it said after a moment of silence.

  "I'll fight you, right here and now. But neither of us use magic. You know that if we use magic, you'll lose. You can't even hope to match my power."

  "A strange bargain ye offer," it said warily. "What proof that ye will honor it?"

  "Nothing more than my word," he said, severing himself from the Weave, and managing not to flinch when the shockwave of pain blasted through him. It had been all he could to do cover his weakness. Jegojah had to believe that Tarrin could wipe him out right then and there, and he couldn't suspect that Tarrin no longer had control of his own powers. "The word of a man of honor."

  The Doomwalker gave Tarrin a long, searching look, then he stood up straight and drew its sword from its scabbard. "Jegojah thinks the Were-cat would have done it already, if he could, yes. Clever ye be to try to limit Jegojah to equal the battlefield." It regarded him with those eerie red eyes. "Clever ploy, Were-cat, clever indeed, but Jegojah does not fear defeat. Jegojah will simply come back again and again." It pointed its sword at Tarrin, and the Were-cat hunched down and held out his staff, preparing to dodge. He remembed the last time Jegojah pointed his sword at him like that. But this time, nothing happened. "Jegojah respects ye, yes, ye be a worthy opponent, and no easy victory will be won over ye. With pride will Jegojah remember this victory."

  "Fine," Tarrin hissed, laying his ears back. There wasn't time to be disappointed. It just meant that if Jegojah used magic, Tarrin would have to risk using his own in return. "But you have to beat me first."

  Jegojah saluted Tarrin with his sword as the Were-cat hunched down, feeling the Cat rise up in his mind. He accepted it, allowed it to merge with his human half to form a unified whole against such a dangerous threat. Fangs bared, Tarrin hissed menacingly as his eyes lighted from within with the greenish radiance that marked his anger. He lunged forward with inhuman speed, staff leading, but the Doomwalker moved with equal inhuman speed to intercept it. The sound of wood on steel, a hollow thuk, rang loudly in Tarrin's ears as a furious battle rage welled up in him. Holding his staff at one end and wielding it like a two-handed sword, Tarrin assaulted Jegojah furiously, mindlessly, smashing at it with all the strength he could muster. Tarrin attacked it like an unthinking animal, and that was exactly what he wanted Jegojah to believe. The last time they fought, Tarrin had lost control, and he had paid for it. He was hoping that the Doomwalker would take the bait and think that he'd snapped almost immediately. Sword and shield kept the staff away from its body, but the effort to maintain its defense against such savage power was clear in its movements. With viper-like speed it retaliated, stabbing at Tarrin's belly after a broad stroke with the staff, but the Were-cat twisted aside easily, spun into the turn as he brought up his foot, and smashed it into the rotting face of the undead creature with claws leading.

  Jegojah staggered back, touching its face with the gauntleted back of its sword hand, then gave a raspy cackle. "Clever, clever Were-cat. Ye be full of surprises."

  "I'm just a surprise a minute," Tarrin hissed, hunkering down with his staff in the middle-grip. "I'm not the half-trained boy you fought before. I've been taught by the best."

  "Jegojah will enjoy the challenge, then," it cackled, then it waded back in.

  There was no feeling out this battle. They had faced one another before, and Tarrin already knew the Doomwalker's strengths and weaknesses. The fact that he had no weaknesses was the problem. He was fast, agile, powerful, and impeccably trained in fighting. He came in with a complicated series of slashes and thrusts that Tarrin remembered from the first battle, parrying or evading each one as it came in, but the Doomwalker turned and smashed Tarrin with his shield when he was expecting a high shallow slash in from the weak side. Tarrin was pushed back a few paces, then snapped his head back just out of range as Jegojah's sword came for his nose in a powerful swipe. He felt the very tip of it ghost against the tip of his nose as it whizzed by. Tarrin pivoted from his off-balance position to the side, letting the momentum balance him as he brought up a foot to kick Jegojah's shield. The move drove the Doomwalker back out and out of position for a backswing, but Tarrin's tail came around behind his leg and went low, the tip of it just hitting the undead creature in the ankle. It was enough to take the foot out from under it, spilling the Doomwalker to the side, making it stagger to recover its balance. Tarrin had his staff in an end-grip to take advantage of the distance between them, pointing the tip at Jegojah as it regained itself.

  It was unfazed by the strike, coming right at him with no fear of the weapon. Tarrin blocked a series of powerful strokes, coming at him from every angle and with so much speed that he couldn't organize himself to strike back. He lunged aside as it tried to stab him in the chest, then he hissed in pain when the Doomalker stopped the thrust and slashed him across the torso. The slash wasn't deep, but it went from his ribs on the right all the way to his left hip, over the white lines left by Triana's claws. The cut burned angrily, telling him that as before, it would not heal immediately.

  The last fight came back to him, and he realized that Jegojah was going to fight the same strategy. Wear him down with a multitude of weak hits and nicks, whittle away his endurance bit by bit until he was either weak enough to finish off, or he snapped and lost control, which would make him easier to kill. The sword. It was everything in this fight. He absolutely had to get that sword out of the Doomwalker's hands, because without it, it was at a serious disadvantage. Unarmed, Tarrin could easily overwhelm the undead monster.

  Tarrin bided his time, defending and blocking, keeping himself out of harm's way with training and speed. He fell back on Allia's training, becoming a reed in the wind, supple and flexible. Jegojah's sword couldn't find him, for he was always just outside of its range, just to the side of it, always very close but never quite close enough to touch. He waited until Jegojah tried to stab him again, stepping back and using his staff's length to make the Doomwalker back off, to force him to thrust.

  And it came. At the end of another complicated and admittedly exceptional series of complex slashes and movements designed to confuse an opponent into defending high, then come in with a stab at the belly. Tarrin slithered aside again as the thrust sought his belly, but this time he snapped his
staff up across his twisting direction, a powerful underhanded parry to the thrust that hit the Doomwalker right in the wrist. The hand was smashed upwards, the sword going with it, and Tarrin instantly reversed the direction of his move, going from a strong underhanded motion to a wickedly powerful overhanded chop, smashing the wrist again on the other side. The power in the blow would have taken the hand right off a human, but the Doomwalker's skeletal hand remained affixed to its wrist. But even its inhuman strength was not enough to keep hold of the sword's hilt as it was jarred in one direction, then the other. The wire-bound hilt came out of its hand, skittering a few times on the stone before coming to rest at the edge of the wharf.

  Jegojah's answer to that was to grab the staff and drag Tarrin forward, then slam its helmeted head right into Tarrin's face. His ears rang and his vision blurred as he staggered back, and he put a paw to his face and shook his head to clear the ringing and the cobwebs. He cleared his vision in time to see the Doomwalker pick up its sword, then point it at him across the distance.

  He knew it was coming. His legs coiled and then exploded, carrying him up and out of the path of the lightning bolt as it erupted from the tip of the sword. He landed on the top of a stack of old crates, hearing them groan and shift under his weight, looking down the ten spans at the Doomwalker as its red eyes tracked his movement. "Jegojah be impressed," it said in its raspy voice. "Better ye are since the last time, yes. Better, but not smarter."

  Jegojah raised his foot. Tarrin remembered that one too, so he jumped again, well into the air and well clear as the Doomwalker's foot hit the ground and created a powerful shockwave that raced towards him at blinding speed. It hit the stack of crates and smashed them off the wharf, crushing them and scattering shards of wood into the wide bay. High in the air, thirty spans over the Doomwalker, Tarrin coiled up like a spring, then exploded into motion. He came around in the air and whipped an arm out, the arm holding the staff, and he threw it like a spear. His innate understanding of where he was in the air relative to the ground gave him deadly aim, and the tip of the staff shot down at the Doomwalker like a quarrel shot from a crossbow.

  It hit the Doomwalker squarely in the breastplate, and punched through. It drove through its body and out at a very steep angle, exiting just above the buttocks, then drove fingers deep into the stone surface of the wharf beneath the undead creature's feet. The end of the staff came to a rest just outside the Doomwalker's breastplate, the rest of its length jutting out of its back and into the stone beneath. The undead creature was pinned to the wharf, bent back slightly by the force of the blow, left in a very precarious, unbalanced position where it could not stand up straight.

  Tarrin landed some spans from it, coming down on all fours to absorb the shock of such a long drop, then rose up to his height. The Doomwalker had not moved, but it clearly was not dead. Or whatever it would be, considering that it was already dead. Then it cackled. "Your staff, it can't hurt Jegojah," it cackled again.

  "I know it can't," Tarrin said in a deadly voice, extending his claws on both paws and laying his ears back. "But it can keep you from moving."

  The Doomwalker gave him a strange look, then tried to step forward. But it couldn't. The staff was driven into the stone, deeply into the stone, and it discovered to its shock and dismay that the staff would not break. It could easily pull itself free, if it had a few extra seconds. But that was time that it did not have.

  Then Tarrin was on it. The fact that it was pinned down like a seamstress's lace made it almost completely helpless, and Tarrin had little trouble swatting aside its sword almost negligently. It was bent backwards, at an awkward angle, and all Tarrin had to do to get out of the reach of the sword was stay on the creature's left. He ripped the shield off its arm, then he made an inarticulate cry as he went for its head. Claws slashed, ripped, tore bone as Tarrin felt the Cat rise up even more, smell the chance of victory, give him more strength, and he began to lose himself to its instinctive urges. Jegojah tried to fend him off with his arm, but he grabbed the limb with both hands, put a foot against the Doomwalker's breastplate, then pulled with all his might. The sound of snapping bone and twisting metal heralded the removal of its left arm, which came off in Tarrin's paws.

  And then there was pain. He hunched around the sword that had been stabbed into his right side, almost a span into him, just under the ribs. When Tarrin ripped off its arm, its body had turned with the force of it, and brought the sword within reach of him. He felt the steel, the angry pain drive under and behind his ribs, up at an angle, driving up and through his lung. He staggered back with a paw against the deep wound, hunched over, then he coughed up a large amount of blood. He could feel it filling his lung. Laboring to breathe, he saw Jegojah power itself off the end of his staff, which was still embedded into the wharf solidly, pulling itself off its length with its remaining hand. Its sword was laying on the wharf where it had dropped it to grab the staff's shaft. Tarrin felt the pain, felt the blood in his lungs. He was no longer capable of fighting against that sword, and in his weakened condition, he would have absolutely no chance to control Sorcery. If Jegojah picked it back up, he was going to die.

  With a blood-flecked cry of effort, Tarrin threw the skeletal arm in his paw, hunching around the deep, dreadful wound after he let go of it. The arm turned over and over in the air, flying across the space between them, and then hit the sword squarely just as the Doomwalker reached down for it. It and the sword both slid across the stone, and then both dropped over the side and into the water below. Heaving for breath, on his knees because of the blinding pain that throwing the arm had caused him, Tarrin gave the Doomwalker a vicious look, then struggled back to his feet. Blood saturated his trousers and shirt, poured streaming from the corner of his mouth every time he exhaled, and the pain burned in him like a bonfire, but he was not going to give up. He would fight to his last breath, and then spit in Jegojah's eyes just before he died.

  Jegojah didn't look much better. Its breastplate was punctured and bent from its attempts to pull free of the stake which had been Tarrin's staff, and its face was mangled severely by the Were-cat's claws. The entire right side of its face below the eye socket was just gone, showing the nasal passages inside the skull and the grisly gray ichor that had once been the body's brain, ichor that oozed over the torn and ripped bone. The jawbone was torn off, laying on the wharf under it, and its left arm was ripped away, mangling the armor around the shoulder. It moved with a curious gait, as if drunk, shuffling towards him and then coming to a stop.

  Left in a dreamy haze by the pain raging through the wound, along his body, Tarrin wondered what it was doing. Then he remembered its magic. It raised its remaining arm to point at him as Tarrin desperately fought to find the strength in himself to touch the Weave, to fend off the inevitable attack-

  – -and then the Doomwalker crumpled to a heap when it was struck from behind. Tarrin looked at it laying still on the wharf, its skull shattered. The body began to steam, then smoke, then it simply disintegrated into dust. Tarrin looked up, and if it not for the fact that his lungs were full of his own blood, he would have gasped.

  Holding his staff in her paws, Triana gave Tarrin a grim look. He staggered back and away from her. Not this, not now! He was helpless against her, completely unable to defend himself, and her vehement proclomation the last time he saw her left little doubt in his mind as to what she was going to do now. He tried to stand up straight, but it sent a blast of pain through him that nearly sent him to his knees. Arm pressed tightly against the dreadful wound in his side, he spat out a mouthful of blood, laid his ears back, and extended the claws on his left paw. Be it Jegojah or Triana, he still wouldn't go down without a fight.

  She just stood there, staff leaning lightly on her shoulder, regarding him in total silence. "This would be too easy," she said conversationally as Tarrin's knees began to wobble. "Then again, after what I just saw, maybe it'd be best to deal with you now."

  He could feel the blood pooling
around his foot. It was a strange warmth, when the rest of him was growing colder and colder. His mind began to drift, as images of Jesmind looking at him the very same way began to merge with Triana, that same look of reluctant duty. She didn't want to kill him. She just felt it was her duty. But it wasn't Jesmind. It was Triana. And at that moment, his life was in her hands. There was no way he could stand against her. Every beat of his heart poured more of his own blood on the wharf, and he knew he wouldn't even be conscious much longer. Jegojah had dealt him a mortal wound, and if he didn't get help, he was going to die.

  Tarrin began to wilt like a dying flower. His arms drooped, and his knees bent more and more, until he was hunched over on his knees, getting nothing but blood in his lungs as he tried desperately to breathe. Triana fearlessly squatted before him, looking at him with those penetrating eyes, her face an emotionless mask. He imagined that same expression on her face when she killed her parents, when she helped wipe out the elders of their kind. An expression that gave no hint as to what she was thinking. Was it how she dealt with the pain, the knowledge that she had been forced to kill her own people? It seemed a bit cold-blooded to him that she could stand there and watch him die, but it was just the same as if she had struck the killing blow herself. It was something that a part of him could understand.

  Her face began to look hazy to him, and his mind drifted. He spit out enough blood to take in a partial breath, then he looked directly into her eyes. "I guess you were right," he said with a weak chuckle, then he bent over, racked with spamsic coughs. Each cough sent a shockwave through him, until it had subsided and left him enough lung to breathe. "I guess one of us won't live through this."

  "You brought this on yourself."

  "I know," he said in a whisper. "But sometimes… we all… have to make… hard choices." He began panting shallowly, feeling the blood rise and fall in his throat. "I'm sure… you know… all about that."