by Billy Wong
Chapter 7
Cart-Dragger gaped as she tried to take it in. "Heir of everything? Your name is Rouge, does that mean..."
Maximilian smirked. "Your conclusion, clumsily as you express it, is correct. I am the son of Emperor Rouge, and this world belongs to me."
"Belongs to you?" Jen asked. "The empire all but destroyed the world, and you still think you have a claim to it?"
"I admit my father was led somewhat astray by the warmonging advice of the Four Virtues. Even so, his position passes to me, and with it rightful rule over his lands. Because the kingdoms that fought against him have also fallen, their land is there for my taking as well."
"But the empire was destroyed," Lars said. "You don't have an army do you, or even the resources to supply one while it conquers the world. What makes you believe the survivors of humanity, who live in the state we do because of your predecessors, would accept your leadership?"
"I do not have an army at the moment. But it will hardly be your choice whether or not to 'accept' my rule."
"What are you planning to do with the condutin?" Cart-Dragger asked. She felt very suspicious, though she wasn't sure what she suspected.
"Why do you need to know? The outcome will be same whether or not you do."
She challenged him with her glare into his eyes. "You said you weren't going to lie because you didn't need to. Are you chickening out?"
He seemed nonplussed. "I plan on using it to raise the empire."
"Well in that case, I guess we can't give it to you."
"Then as I said... if you won't give, I will take." He shot forward, faster perhaps than anyone Cart-Dragger had ever seen. She reached back for her hammer on the cart, raised it just in time to stop his descending sword as he whipped it off his back. She shoved him away and swung at his face. He ducked into a knee to his nose, then blocked and parried more blows as she tried to press the advantage. The greater weight of her weapon pushed him around some, but he impressively kept his balance.
She stared in shock. "How does your blade not break?"
"It's magic." He wiped blood from his nose. "You're impressive too. But it isn't enough." He pummeled at her with blazing quick cuts and thrusts. She acknowledged he had the speed advantage over her with her heavier weapon, as he managed to get past her guard and slice her arm. Gritting her teeth as warm wetness flowed over her skin, she met his next stroke with a forceful counter that knocked his sword out to the side and almost disarmed him. Before he could bring it back around, she stepped in and gave him a resounding elbow to the temple. He stumbled back. She darted after him swinging at his ribs. The hammer caught him and lifted him off his feet, flung him down in the dirt. To her surprise, he came to his knees and scowled.
"You're tough," she said. "That blow would have killed most people." She grinned. "It still seems like your confidence was a bit misguided."
"Do you think so? You've yet to see my full ability."
"Oh yeah? Then bring it!" They ran at each other. Their weapons clashed loudly, again and again as they both sought to find a gap in the other's defenses. Her grip began to slip, and when they broke apart she tried to shift a hand to adjust it. Immediately, he dashed in looking to take advantage. She parried a slash from him one-handed, tried to punch him. Her fist brushed his jaw, not landing solidly as she overextended herself thanks to his backward movement. In return, she took a stinging hook to her cheek.
"He's actually matching her," Allen said in an awestruck tone. "What a monster."
Jen watched anxiously, not used to seeing somebody put up a fight against her. "Willow, be careful..." she whispered.
As if on cue, Maximilian dodged her hammer and slashed her side. She winced, tried to strike back. He leaned away under her whooshing maul and brought his sword up, tearing one of her breasts open. Jen gasped.
Cart-Dragger grabbed her wound in pain, and sensing blood Maximilian lunged chopping at her head. Before his blade could touch her she launched a powerful kick to his middle, hurling him back. She sent her maul careening at his chest. Unable to defend more effectively in time, he blocked with an arm. He screamed as bones cracked.
She tried to hit him again. He jumped forward so the haft struck him instead of the head, tumbled clumsily over it and fell down. As he pushed himself up on all fours, she attempted to crush his skull. He rolled away and looked back at her, started to laugh.
"What's so funny?" she demanded.
"You're really, really good. Maybe my martial skills aren't invincible after all."
"You needed to fight me to know that? I'd be glad if I could make you admit to being unjustified in your hubris."
He continued to guffaw. "My martial skills may not be invincible... but my overall skills are still better than yours!" Suddenly, he began to glow red.
"What the-" she breathed.
Lars shouted, "Watch out, he has magic!"
He sped forward in a crimson blur. She hadn't even seen him get up. She tried to dodge, but after he zoomed past a huge gash appeared over her ribs. He turned and made another run at her. Again she attempted to evade to no avail as a wound gaped on her thigh. Another pass, and blood sprayed from her shoulder. She bent with pain, leaning on her hammer for support.
"He's killing her!" Jen said. "We have to help her!"
Allen muttered, "But he's so fast..."
Nonetheless, her friends tried to aid her. Lars and Jen shot their crossbows at Maximilian; Allen threw a dagger. He mocked them with laughter as their missiles fell woefully short. Again he swung around towards Cart-Dragger. His sword flashed in.
Her haft intercepted it. His eyes narrowed. "I just needed to get the timing down!" she said with a grin. She punched him hard, and teeth shattered against her knuckles. He flipped head over heels across the ground, looked up dazedly with blood dripping from his mouth. She took a big swing with her hammer at his face. He avoided it by a hair with a roll to his back and stabbed up over himself, driving his sword home between her ribs.
"Willow!" Jen cried despairingly.
Cart-Dragger coughed up blood as hot fire engulfed her insides. "Don't worry... I've had... worse than this." She grabbed Maximilian's hand before he could twist the blade and punched his wrist repeatedly with her other fist holding the hammer. He grunted and lost his grip. She staggered back with his sword stuck in her. Moaning in anguish, she pulled it out and stood with both their weapons in hand. "It's over now."
Maximilan rose, looking like he could barely stand. "No, it never is..."
"You won't ever give this up until you're dead, will you? Then I'll do it." She walked stiffly towards him. He backpedaled, making her labored swings miss, and pointed a fist at her. Was he going to cast a spell? She prepared to dodge—or at least try to—expecting him to shoot something out at her. Instead, the very air in front of her seemed to distort... then the world disappeared in a cacophony of noise and flame.
#
Lars and the others stared unblinking as the smoke cleared from the explosion that had engulfed Cart-Dragger out of nowhere. She stood for a moment covered in burns, exhaled a puff of smoke and fell flat on her face. Maximilian Rouge smirked, though he shook with agony. "You see? I am unbeatable."
"Quick, get him!" Jen said. They launched their projectiles his way again, but he slapped the crossbow bolts out of the air and dodged the dagger. He raised his fist at Cart-Dragger again. "No!" Jen ran towards her friend.
Cart-Dragger raised her head. "No, don't..." She met Maximilian's eyes, her expression pleading for him not to do it. An instant later, both women disappeared in a second explosion.
A hammer flew out of the smoke. It hit Maximilian in the face, obliterating his nose in a red cloud, and he flopped down on his back. The smoke cleared. Burnt even worse than before, Cart-Dragger crawled towards a still Jen. "Why'd you do that?" she whispered in a despondent voice, cradling her friend. "I wasn't beaten. He just knocked me down. You couldn't have saved me anyway."
Jen looked warmly at her.
Her body didn't show as much damage as Willow's, but she had turned pale and her breathing grew strained. "I see that. We both took the brunt of it, because I wasn't fast enough to shield you. But I thought... maybe I could, and I couldn't stand by and just watch my friend die."
"You won't." Tears streamed from her eyes. "But w-why... why do you have to make me see you die?!"
Allen asked in a choked voice, "Isn't there something we can do? Is there no way to save her?"
There were, but none they could reach in time now. Lars shook his head.
"Please don't die," Cart-Dragger begged, burying her face in Jen's chest. "You can't leave me, I love you so much..."
"I love you too. Don't worry though, even when I'm gone our love will live on."
"But I don't just want our love, I want you! I want-"
Jen reached up weakly to touch her cheek. "It'll be all right, Willow." Then her hand fell back, and her eyes closed for the last time.
#
Cart-Dragger gently shook Jen's shoulders, telling her to wake up. In her mind she knew her oldest friend was dead, but her heart refused to accept it. "Come on, get up, let's go home. Then you can eat a piece of Leviathan's core, and you'll feel all better... dammit Jen! My friends aren't allowed to die that easily... fuck, fuck, fucking wake up!"
"She's gone," Allen said.
She looked up angrily. "Don't you think I know that? But she can't... I can't..."
Lars touched her arm. "You're badly wounded, you got stabbed through the chest and blown up twice. Maybe you should rest."
Sobs wracked her frame, but then she took a deep breath to cut them off. "I should make sure that bastard is dead." She stood and limped towards Maximilian. His face was mangled, a bloody ruin, but his chest still moved. As she raised her hammer over him, his eyes opened. The earth opened below him and swallowed him up. She swung her maul down anyway, but didn't know if the impact reached him as it thudded into the sand. A second later, his sword also vanished beneath the ground. She figured he had sucked it down after him using his magic.
She tore at her hair. "No! How can this be, why didn't I finish him sooner, or throw his sword instead of my hammer... Jen is dead and that devil still lives! I'm so stupid, so useless..."
"Your friend was dying," Lars said softly. "Not making perfect decisions is understandable." He hung his head. "We're more blameworthy for not finishing him."
"Still, this victory feels so hollow—no, I can't even consider it a victory at all."
He hesitated to reply. "At least we still have the condutin, and he doesn't."
"I don't care." She walked back over to Jen and picked her up. "You deserved so much better than this." She recalled accusing Maximilian of hubris and let out a strangled gasp as she realized something. She too had let arrogance get the better of her. Even though she knew this could be a dangerous mission, she'd taken her much weaker friend along assuming she would be able to protect her. With Lars and Allen it might've been excusable, since though they might not be on her level, they were experienced warriors used to going through life and death situations. But Jen, she had barely been in a real fight before. What folly on her part. At this moment, she hated herself almost as much as she did Maximilian.
She pushed the sacks of condutin to the front of the cart and set Jen down behind them, but just stood there looking at her after. She didn't want to turn away, wishing to see her friend's face for as long as she could before...
"You just ride with her and rest," Lars said, "you're hurt after all. We'll pull the wagon."
She climbed in sluggishly, her body feeling heavy as the fight and her grief had drained all her strength. "Thank you. I'm grateful to at least still have you."
Allen nodded. "We should patch you up before we go. Be sad to have another pretty girl die."
Though his words weren't the most considerate, she heard a brittle laugh escape her throat. "I won't die. I have to live at least long enough to see Maximilian Rouge dead, and his dreams of empire ground to dust."
They wrapped her up with a multitude of bandages like a mummy and headed back home. She didn't talk much during the day, holding Jen's corpse while reliving their happy times together, and slept hugging her at night. She saw her friend in her dreams, and they ran again through the bright flowery fields of their childhood before the war. When she inevitably woke to find her dead, she wept silently trembling.
"I don't want to make you mad," Allen said eventually, "but she starting to smell. Maybe you should touch her not so much."
"I don't care. It's my own business if I get sick. Leave us be." Taking note of the sternness of her gaze, the men backed off.
At one point, when she clutched her chest grimacing at a sharp pang, Lars asked, "Was he the strongest human you ever met?"
"Besides myself, yes. I wonder how he got so strong."
"Judging from how he talked, I'd guess he was trained to be."
Cart-Dragger bit her lip. "Yes, the way he mentioned his overall skills... I feel like maybe he was trained—no, raised to take back the empire his sire lost. He's even younger than me; perhaps when Emperor Rouge realized he would fail, he had his son sent away for training in hopes that one day, he could reclaim the world." Brushing aside a flash of sympathy as she imagined the hardships he must have endured while being molded into the instrument of renewal, she glowered. "But he won't, and will join his father in hell instead."
#
Maximilian screamed on the cot as the robed Overseer twisted at his nose, working the pulped mass back into a semblance of its original shape. He writhed in agony, his fingers clawing at the mattress. "I told you meeting the mercenaries alone was a poor idea," said his old guardian. A ring of white hair, like a crown of wisdom, surrounded his otherwise bare dome. "Even for one with the best training possible, there remains a chance of getting caught."
When he recovered enough to speak, he protested, "I wasn't 'caught!' It's not as if I let my guard down against some average person. The girl I met was unfathomably good—better than I thought possible for someone without training from the empire."
"Better than you?"
"I didn't say that. She fought very well, but I wasn't expecting to face an opponent of that level."
The Overseer eased open his mouth and reached in with pliers to extract pieces of broken teeth. He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to mentally swim away. It didn't work and he remained conscious, whimpering at the pain and grotesque sensation of open holes being left in his gums. "Is she dead?" the old man asked.
"She got away."
"Don't think you can get away with lying to me."
After a moment, he said, "I got away. But like I said, I wasn't prepared. The next fight will go differently."
"So there are still people like that," the Overseer mused. "Perhaps the world itself strives to resist change, yet who is the world to try and constrain us?"
"What did you say?" Maximilian asked.
"Nothing important. There should be no next fight unless absolutely necessary. Do not seek out unneeded risks out of pride. If you die, all your father's hopes for you will amount to naught."
But his warrior spirit burned with the desire to prove it had been a fluke, that he wasn't weaker than some ugly fat girl with dry skin called "Cart-Dragger." Fortunately, he had a good excuse for not being able to avoid a rematch. "I killed someone who seemed to be her dear friend. I believe I have made a powerful enemy."
"Then you will be more careful from now on, and flee at the first sign a battle may not go your way. She almost killed you this time; you might not be so lucky again."
He ignored the Overseer's flustered look as he gave his reply. "I'll take your advice into consideration."
#
When they arrived at Galantria, Cart-Dragger covered Jen's body so the citizens wouldn't see. She didn't want to upset anyone, nor did she think their condolences would help. She wasn't ashamed to show sadness, but neither did she see much benefit in sharing it with everybody.
However, she did send for Russ, Scott, Gene and Mindy to meet her at the manor. She waited until they had all arrived before calling them into the dining hall, where Lars and Allen already sat with her. Immediately upon seeing her face, they knew there was something terribly wrong. "What happened?" Scott asked quietly.
She swallowed, still having trouble giving words to it. "Jen's d-dead."
Gene's jaw dropped. "Dead?" he repeated in his loud, somewhat annoyingly so at the moment, voice. "How?"
She sniffed. "The person who sought the condutin turned out to be a man claiming to be the son of Emperor Rouge, and heir to the empire. When we wouldn't give it to him due to not wanting to help him conquer the world, he attacked us, and Jen... she gave her life trying to save me."
"He was that strong, that you needed to be saved?" Russ sounded meek with disbelief. "You don't look that good right now either..."
"I beat him in the end." Out of respect to Jen, she didn't mention that she had failed in her "saving" attempt, and her death had been pointless. "But I didn't kill him. He got away, and I bet he'll look elsewhere for condutin in the future."
Mindy's eyes narrowed. "Or come right here for it when you aren't around. We should hide what condutin has already been dug up and seal off the mine."
Allen suggested, "Maybe we can throw what we have in the mine before it's sealed."
Lars disagreed. "No, it's always possible we could find a use for it. Though I don't know what now."
"We can keep it I suppose," Cart-Dragger said, "if we hide it well. But what do you think he wants it for? I know it's used in magic, but I mean specifically."
"He wants to reclaim the world, huh?" Scott frowned. "In the empire's heyday its most famous magical device was the Rings of Rulership, a gigantic structure which controlled the weaponized elementals that terrorized the world. It's just a guess, but maybe he seeks to rebuild the Rings and bring the God Soldiers under control once more."
