Immortal Swordslinger 2

by Dante King

  “My people?” he said tightly. “A ragtag band of Wild outlaws led by these outsiders? I don’t think so.”

  “This isn’t just the Wilds,” Kumi said. “It’s Father and all the soldiers Qihin City could spare. The guild has attacked us repeatedly, sent monsters into the city, and killed innocent people in its attempt to take control. We cannot let that stand.”

  “We need the guild. The guild gives us strength.”

  “Maybe it did once, but now, all the guild does is take.” She gestured toward the stairs and the sounds of fighting echoing up them. “Listen to that, Labu. Whatever Horix told you is a lie. This isn’t just the Wilds or people left to grow chaotic without their king taking charge. This is our nation rising up against darker forces. This is us fighting for a world with space for all of us, for a guild where Wilds are free to train without the mockery you’ve faced. Will you not stand for that?”

  “Time to choose, Prince,” I told him. “Stand with us or fall with those who would use you.”

  Labu’s mouth hung open as his barbed spear trembled in his hand.

  “Enough talk,” snapped one of the guild disciples. “It’s time to finish this Wild bitch off.”

  He advanced and raised his great curved sword above his head.

  “My sister,” Labu said, so quietly it could barely be heard.

  “What?” the disciple demanded, as I darted in to intercept him.

  “That’s my sister!” Labu bellowed.

  He grabbed his spear with both hands and rammed it into the guy’s belly. Crystalline armor shattered beneath the fury of the thrust, and the spear drove all the way through the disciple’s body to protrude out his back.

  The other disciples stared in shock as Labu wrenched the spear back out, let the body drop, and turned on them. I lunged past Labu and smashed through another disciple’s armor with a front kick. The disciples scattered to avoid their falling comrade as Kumi rushed to her brother’s side and drew her daggers once again.

  A disciple raised his hands, and the temperature of the hallway turned arctic.

  I cast Flame Empowerment, and the torch beside the Augmenter bloomed into a huge fireball. The blast of fire turned the snow from the disciple’s hand into a cloud of hissing steam.

  Labu charged at the man. His spear crashed through armor to break the arm beneath.

  I joined the fray alongside him with Kumi at my back. Our weapons struck Frozen Armor, left gashes in their protective layers, and drew blood from the flesh beneath.

  Roots rose from the floor. They weren’t as strong as when Faryn had first summoned them outdoors, but they were enough to catch the ankles of the disciples. I put a wall of Plank Pillars between my friends and my enemies, gave myself Fire Immunity, and bathed the trapped enemies with the flames of the torches. Flame Empowerment turned the hallway into a makeshift oven as the disciples’ armor melted and their bodies broiled. Their screams died down as I withdrew the Plank Pillars.

  “Gracious spirits,” Kumi whispered as she stared down at the charred corpses.

  I turned to Labu. “I thought you were going to stay an asshole forever.”

  “Takes one to know one,” Labu said as he flung an Ice Spear at a group of soldiers coming up behind us.

  “Very mature, gentlemen,” Faryn commented as she summoned a whirlwind of leaves to knock back the soldiers.

  “Maybe when I’m past a hundred, I’ll have those sorts of spectacular insights,” I said as I used my flaming sword to cut down the soldiers.

  “It’s rude to talk about a lady’s age,” Kumi said. “And ruder still to keep our host waiting.”

  She headed for another set of stairs. The rest of us followed and bolted up the steps. We couldn’t afford to waste time. The longer we took, the more time Horix would have to muster his reinforcements and throw obstacles in our path.

  Five guards barred our progress at the top of the staircase. I didn’t have time for more distractions. The power of wood flooded free of my feet, and a Plank Pillar erupted from the wall to the guards’ left as we neared them. It punched into them like a piledriver and scattered them across the floor. Two rolled down the stairs beside me as I cleared the last step. I leaped over the shaft of wood, kicked a guard in passing, and kept moving.

  “Show off,” Kumi called out.

  “I don’t think a princess gets to give lessons in humility,” I said.

  “She definitely wasn’t humble growing up,” Labu said.

  The corridors tightened on the next floor as four Augmenters appeared from alcoves in the hallway. Each bore richly embroidered Resplendent Tears robes and moved with a deliberate step. Vigor radiated from their bodies like bonfires. But the one with the knee-high boots and boy-band haircut held my attention.

  “Here you are at last,” Cadrin said. “I told Master Horix that you would choose the wrong side, but he didn’t believe me. Now, as my reward, I get to tear you apart myself.”

  He flexed his arm and a whip-like strand of ice tipped with an ugly barb hissed toward me. I threw up a Flame Shield and turned the attack into a cloud of splintering snow. Cadrin cracked his ice whip against the ground and laughed as he gave it another twist. The whip struck my cheek as I turned to block it, and the attack exploded into glittering fragments. A vicious gash opened up on my face, and hot red blood dripped into my mouth.

  Cadrin grinned and ran a finger along his face. “Of course, I won’t kill you here and now,” he said as he summoned another whip. “Just bleed you out and leave you useless to your friends. Then, I’ll have you chained up in a cell where I can take the knives to you, really see what makes an elementalist tick.”

  “And you call the Wilds monsters,” I said. “You callous fucking hypocrite.”

  I spun my fiery blade and sliced another darting attack out of the air.

  “Such harsh words,” Cadrin said.

  He flicked his new whip and again my Flame Shield turned the slender lash into a burst of icy shards. Cadrin’s face crumpled as he summoned yet another of the icy whips.

  “Who are your fancy friends?” I asked.

  “The masters of this guild,” Cadrin replied. “By far your betters.”

  “I am a master in my own guild,” Faryn said firmly. It was only because I knew her well that I could tell how hard she was working to maintain that bravado so far from the familiarity of home. “These two are heirs to one of the empire’s greatest generals. We can match anything you have. Ethan, discipline the peacock.”

  “Yes, Master Faryn,” I said without expression.

  I surged to attack Cadrin, but he sidestepped at the last moment and disappeared through a doorway. His whip lashed out as I adjusted my path. It struck my exposed flesh again and caught me on the back of the hand. Cadrin’s laugh echoed through the hallway as I shoved through the doorway and entered a dormitory.

  Neatly made rows of beds lined the walls as I sliced through the head of another whip attack. Cadrin retreated down the center of the room and drew his serrated sword as he went. His elaborate robes disappeared beneath a layer of spiked Frozen Armor.

  “It’s a shame your Vesma isn’t here to entertain us,” Cadrin mocked. “I’m sure she’s delicious. Tell me: what does it sound like when she screams?”

  I’d had enough shit from the foppish sadist. I was going to break him down a piece at a time, as fast as I could.

  I sent a stream of Untamed Torch over the beds and filled the air with smoke.

  Cadrin jumped aside from a burning bunk, and an Ice Spear appeared in his spare hand as his Frozen Armor hissed into steam.

  I pulled a spiked Plank Pillar out of a blazing mattress, and Cadrin flung his frozen spear into the wall and leaped up onto it. It wouldn’t hold for long. The burning beds around us would see to that. Cadrin’s favored ice attacks would lose their teeth the moment he tried to use them.

  “Oh, dear, is our aim off?” Cadrin cackled as he summoned more spears and flung them into the walls as makeshift stairs.
He leaped, swung one-handed around one, and landed on another not far from my head.

  Cadrin’s blade slashed down at me. I parried, twisted aside, and fired another Untamed Torch. He jumped off his perch, landed with a roll on the far side of the room, and sprang to his feet in a doorway. Heat haze rippled around us, and a curtain to his right ignited.

  “You really are a one-trick pony, aren’t you?” he said. “Just throwing fire around in hopes that you’ll finally set something worthwhile alight.”

  “I don’t need anything more than fire to kill you,” I said.

  “Said like the weak product of a weak guild.” Cadrin hurled an Ice Spear as he turned to get out of the blazing dormitory. I batted it aside with the Sundered Heart and chased him while smoke trailed after us.

  A teaching room full of chairs and desks barred my way while the crackle of ice and steam hissed through a door at the far end. My friends were giving as good as they got. Spears, whips, and blasts of ice hurtled through the doorway in a flash of swirling water and whirling leaves.

  “You’re a mockery of a disciple,” I said. “You’ve betrayed your fellow students and turned a noble institution into something selfish and corrupt.”

  “I’m helping turn this guild into something pure.” Cadrin turned to face me. “Something righteous.”

  He’d apparently had enough of running. I brought the Sundered Heart up to parry a lancing strike. Our blades clashed, separated, and sliced chunks out of each other’s armor.

  I drew blood from Cadrin’s shoulder and sent him reeling with an elbow to his chin. Fear fluttered through his eyes as he fell back. But his weasel-like speed and cunning made him too difficult to pin down. The Sundered Heart skated past his armor as he scrambled over the ground and into the outside hallway.

  Another ice whip caught hold of my armor as he went and hauled me after him. A sting of pain hissed through my shoulder, and I shattered the barbed lash with the Sundered Heart.

  I stormed into the hallway and found my friends as they fought for their lives. Faryn used her dagger to parry a master’s trident before she sprayed him with a faceful of Stinging Palm. He laughed as the thorns glanced off his frozen helmet, and he gripped her hand in his icy gauntlet. Faryn buckled beneath the pain, and her dagger dropped from her hand.

  Cadrin could wait. My team needed my help.

  I came in from the side like a runaway train and smashed my shoulder into the enemy master. He swore as I drove him into the wall and ripped the air from his lungs with a single impact. Smothering Leaves whirled around us as a punch hit me in the eye and forced me to draw back. The leafy whirlwind staggered the trident-wielding master blindly into the wall behind him. I kept the piercing trident at bay as the master froze the cutting leaves around his face.

  I called a Plank Pillar out of the wall behind the master and forced it to widen. The growing wooden wall punched him in the back and shot him toward me. I turned his trident aside, went low, and caught him around the legs. I lifted the lecturer off the floor and smashed him into the tapestry behind me. Faryn waved, and the tapestry turned into a mass of strangling threads as the plant fibers bent to her will. The master was locked in place and couldn’t avoid my sword when I rammed it straight into his heart.

  “Water masters are among the most delicious to kill,” Nydarth whispered. “Give me more, Swordslinger.”

  Sparks flew to my left as Kumi fought off another teacher. Her enemy wielded a pair of crystalline short swords. The princess stayed on the move as she tried to avoid being skewered. The swaying movements of the Qihin fighting style outmatched the ferocious attacks of her opponent. She flowed from one position to the next around the master’s blades. The master wore a look of absolute contempt as he fought off her slashing daggers.

  Time to even the odds.

  “Get a taste of this!” I summoned ashes and gave the master a faceful of them.

  Kumi dived, slid between her opponent’s legs, and cut his hamstrings in a single, vicious movement.

  The master crashed to the ground as blood sprayed from his legs. Kumi scrambled onto him before he could roll over and slammed a knife down between his shoulder blades.

  Labu came to stand beside me as the third of the lecturers advanced, a gleaming longsword in one hand and a shield of ice in the other.

  “Traitor,” the master snarled at Labu. “You were never one of us. I knew that from the start.”

  “And yet you taught me your techniques anyway,” Labu jeered. “That must cut you deeply.”

  Labu blocked the master’s attack and caught the man’s sword on the barbs of his spear. He twisted, weakened the master’s grip on his weapon, and pressed into him. I couldn’t hit Labu’s opponent with a technique when they were so close together, so I moved to flank the enemy as he regained his balance and locked his weapon against Labu’s. The two men fought hard as they tried to drive their blades into the other.

  “You’re a failure of the Resplendent Tears Guild,” the master said. “I’ll be proud to restore our honor by putting you down.”

  “There is no honor in what you do,” Labu said. “And I am a prince of Qihin City. Not one of your deluded disciples. No longer.”

  He took one hand off his spear. The master laughed in triumph as he pushed the weapons toward Labu’s face. But then, Labu’s hand closed around a freshly formed ice spear and plunged it into the master’s chest.

  The master stared at him in surprise. Blood ran from his lips as he wobbled for a moment, then toppled to the floor.

  Labu roared as he severed the master’s head with a swift stroke of his spear.

  “You’re fucking crazy; you know that, right?” I said.

  “My vision was clouded before, but I see clearly now.”

  I shrugged. Sure, he’d betrayed his clan, but Kumi had seen fit to forgive him. I wouldn’t hold it against him, and we could use every man we could get to stop Horix.

  I spotted a trail of blood leading out of the hallway and left Labu and the others behind. I followed it up another staircase and into a dining hall. Rows of long tables stretched down the middle, flanked with benches and plates and cutlery piled up on shelves at the end. Sickly green light streamed through the membrane windows as Horix’s Toxic Blizzard howled outside.

  I saw Cadrin halfway in the hall. He shot a fearful glance over his shoulder, then his face hardened as he saw me approach him.

  “Done running?” I asked.

  “You’ll pay for your crimes against us,” he hissed as he climbed onto a table.

  I fought off the urge to set everything on fire again and jumped up onto the table to meet him.

  The room was lit only by the light coming through the windows. The Toxic Blizzard Horix had summoned had shrouded the moon, and now, the celestial object provided only a dim and dismal glow.

  Cadrin summoned a frozen whip again and whipped the table with a sharp crack. Splinters showered me, and I raised the Sundered Heart to shield my face.

  “He’s a little rabbit,” Nydarth told me with a laugh. “Look at him.”.

  Cadrin slashed at me with his whip, but it was a wild strike, and I easily sliced through it with the Sundered Heart. I moved slowly forward and didn’t take my eyes from his face. The whip bit my arm and cut through my frozen armor a second time. Cadrin’s face went white as he slashed again and again. I absorbed the strikes with small Flame Shields and the occasional swipe of my sword.

  “Die!” Cadrin screamed at me.

  “His fear,” Nydarth whispered. “It’s delicious. Drink it in, Ethan.”

  I dashed across the table’s surface with a savage yell. Cadrin jumped back to another table behind him and cracked the whip again. This time, the barb caught me in the side. There was a jolt of pain, and blood flowed across my hip.

  I stumbled as pain threatened to topple me, but the white mask of fear that Cadrin wore was worth every second of it. Sunlight Ichor flowed from my fingers as I pressed it into the gaps in my armor. The techni
que was dependent on the light of day, so it wouldn’t heal me, but the sticky substance was more than enough to staunch the bleeding. I used a little Vigor to reform the cracks in my armor as Cadrin hurled an Ice Spear at me. I ducked as it whipped toward me and thudded into the wall behind me.

  “You can surrender,” I said bluntly. “Lay down your weapon and offer yourself as a prisoner of war. Just tell me where to find Horix and the trident.”

  Cadrin turned, jumped off the table, and sprinted the length of the room. I slid off the table and reached out to the furniture around me. I couldn’t hit the fleeing bastard with fire, but an idea struck me as Cadrin drew close to the shelves by the exit to the hall. I’d seen Faryn use the Vigor inside wooden things before.

  I ran after him and vaulted over a row of tables between us. Cadrin grabbed the edge of the shelves just as I reached out to the wood and felt it give at the touch of my Vigor. Stinging Palm thorns exploded out of the wooden shelving like a grenade. Cadrin shrieked as the spikes cracked his armor and punctured the soft flesh beneath.

  I hurdled over the remnants of the shelves and chased a staggering Cadrin into a massive ceremonial hall filled with grand paintings and detailed carvings. The walls, floor, and ceiling were tiled in alternating marble and ice.

  Cadrin’s ragged breathing echoed through the space as his blood splattered over the floor. A tall set of doors stood slightly ajar at the far end, but I wasn’t about to let him leave this room. I had seconds before Horix’s favorite disciple made his way across the space.

  Cadrin hurled three Ice Spears over his shoulder as he went. I cut two of them from the air with the Sundered Heart and picked up speed as I closed in on him. The battle in the courtyard and the pain that lanced through my body had taken its toll on my Vigor, but I pushed it into a single powerful effort and called on the combined powers of water and fire to grant me acid. A vicious and concentrated Acidic Cloud bloomed in front of the door as Cadrin reached out to push it open. His scream filled the hall as he recoiled from the toxic fog and turned to face me.