“Will you just die?!” Nora roared at her opponent, azurelash missing their frustratingly elusive form by inches this time.
Nora ducked under the ebony staff her opponent swung at her jaw. The dark rod whistled through the air, leaving an afterimage that bored into her mind like the fangs of an asper.
“I think they already did that at least once, Nora!” Jer bellowed from her right as he too danced with a creature wrought from death and shadows.
The paladin cursed under her breath as the swamp limited her dexterity and sapped her strength.
She and Astrid had been trading blows for the past fifteen minutes, and it wore on her nerves as much as her tired body. Their duel had long since separated them from where their allies fought, and now they stood a few feet apart in a grove of calcified trees. Astrid lifted her hand, and mist filled their surroundings.
Nora whirled around, waiting for the next blow to strike. Her opponent was nowhere to be seen.
“Is this all you have to offer?” Astrid demanded from somewhere above Nora’s vantage. “We chose you as our prey in the hopes you could challenge us a bit. I’m disappointed, especially given the esteemed company you keep, dreadling.”
Nora turned in time to catch sight of her opponent. Astrid flicked a braid behind her back and sighed dramatically as she balanced on a white branch above Nora. Her tone bordered the arrogance of youth and that of an oily diplomat.
Needless to say, Nora strongly disliked the strange girl.
“Come down here, and I’ll show you a challenge,” Nora hissed.
“I doubt it.” Astrid examined her fingernails with a bored expression. “You’ve barely forced me to try, while it looks like you’re on your last legs, dreadling.”
“Stop calling me that, you brat!” Nora snarled, and she whipped her greatsword around.
The obsidian blade cleaved the dead branch, and the tree’s appendage went crashing into the watery surface below with a mighty splash belying its weight. Nora sensed an attack coming and ducked, her elbow raised to shield her face as the strike whizzed past her head.
The girl’s ebony staff whistled through the air where Nora’s skull had just been, and she turned her dodge into momentum for a counterstrike.
Astrid tsked. “Do you really think you can beat me without using that core of yours? You stink of new magic, though I suppose that’s why you snatched up that particular sword.”
Nora whirled her weapon around and swung at the girl who now stood with one foot on the top of her staff. She jumped lazily over Nora’s vicious attack and returned to her perch with ease.
Behind and around them, Nora heard Jer, Elena, and Gavin fighting the cloaked figures. From the sounds alone, it wasn’t going well. She faintly wondered where Rayka was, as Cade almost always tasked her with the twins, but she didn’t have time to wonder about that.
She could feel the magic beneath her veins stir.
The power lurching to be poured out of her tasted like honey on her lips, but she knew that if she released it now, she would be giving in again. She had to control this. She had to draw the line somewhere.
This darkness didn’t define her. It didn’t matter what happened to her all those years ago. It didn’t even matter what her order of paladins claimed. She wasn’t a Fateweaver anymore, but she still fought for the light, with the light. She administered justice to the deserving.
And right now, this rotten princess before her was oh-so-very in need of a dash of justice.
With a snarl that bordered on animalistic, Nora swung again. This time, she didn’t aim for the petite warrior who endlessly berated her. Her greatsword collided with the metallic staff, and it vibrated with a hollow note that spread farther than was strictly natural through the swamp.
Astrid bent and flipped off of the tip of the staff with expert fluidity, landing gracefully on a small patch of dry grass.
“It seems you wish to test your mettle to the death,” Astrid said with a shrug of her small shoulders. “Alright, then. But I won’t waste my efforts on one such as you. Don’t use your magic. That’s fine. But I’ll give you a plaything who won’t be bothered either way,”
She unsheathed her staff from its earthen anchor and raised it above her head with one hand. It continued to vibrate with that one haunting note, silencing the vicinity to Nora’s ears.
Astrid met her gaze, a playful malice carefully hidden beneath that mask of serenity. “Here you go, dreadling.”
She slammed the butt of her staff down into the swampy waters, and a whirlpool took shape. Before Nora could counterattack, a skeletal hand emerged from the center of the swirling liquid, followed quickly by a second clutching a mace.
Within a few heartbeats, a skeletal warrior wearing rusted iron armor was crouched between the two women. Nora’s heart hammered in her chest as sweat beaded across her forehead.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
This couldn’t be happening. This girl had just casually summoned an abyssal creature as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Her mind flashed with the images of her childhood, where similar, horrifying, moments had occurred.
She adjusted her grip on the greatsword, desperately fighting that old fear inside of her. The magic in her veins thrummed with energy. A black fire ignited in the skeleton’s eyes as it took in Nora.
“Destroy her,” Astrid commanded the skeleton with a wave of her hand. Her twin braids swayed as she walked away. “I can feel him approaching anyway. Thanks for the distraction, paladin.”
The skeleton lunged, leaving no time for Nora to question the girl, or consider who she might be confronting next. The mace shot down to her exposed head, and she raised the hilt of her weapon so the approaching weapon slid down the wide length of her blade.
“Watch out, Nora!” Elena roared to her left just as a large form slammed into the skeleton, sending a few of its bones to scatter across the swamp.
Gavin’s broad frame reemerged from the swamp, a yellowish glow to his eyes, though there were no other signs of lupine form. Nora’s eyes darted to where a brief flash of pale blue light disappeared into Elena’s pouch.
A lunar stone. It was much like the one Hugh had used, though the potency was far less extreme if this was all the transformation it caused.
Her feelings teetered between gratitude from being forced to use her magic and annoyance that a shifter of all people was the one who helped her. She didn’t allow herself to linger on such things as she stormed toward one of the cloaked figures hoisting a glowing orb above their head.
She had more than enough creatures summoned today, thanks very much. Her heavy metal boots kicked up a storm as she ran low and fast toward her opponent. They muttered softly in some ancient tongue she didn’t recognize, but that didn’t matter.
Nora appeared directly behind the cloaked creature and windmilled her greatsword around. It cleaved the warrior from nape to groin in one swift motion. Her sharp blade barely met any resistance.
No, that wasn’t right.
It met no resistance whatsoever, save what the cloak provided. The material sank into the odorous water in two distinct pieces, while the orb continued to float in the air. As if noticing her attention, the orb’s red light glowed brighter for a few seconds before it went dark and shattered into millions of pieces.
Nora panted, arms as heavy as lead as she let them hang limply at her side. She scanned the environment for the disappeared mage, but there was no sign of a nude magic user anywhere.
“What was that about?” Jer asked as he approached her.
“I really don’t know,” Nora admitted between breaths.
Half her focus was on shoving back against the tide of magic that screamed for an outlet inside of her, so it took all her remaining energy to locate Evie in the midst of the rippling expanse of this gods-forsaken swamp.
She clutched a tree like a lifeline off to the side while Gavin snarled at the two retreating forms of the cloaked team. One wore the red gauntlets she’d spotted earlier as a reward for the waterfall trial, and they glistened malevolently in the light.
“Is everyone alright?” she asked the gathered team.
“Yeah, but that wall of death is getting awfully close. We should get moving,” Elena replied tersely.
She approached Nora with enough venom to fell a fully matured dragon.
“But before we do, answer one question before I gut you and your cowardly friend over there,” Elena seethed, stiletto blade in her iron grip.
“Don’t you dare call her that,” Nora spat, tar-thick fury raging through every limb at the threat to Evie. “What in the hells are you—”
“Where were you last night?!” Elena’s voice cracked even as she clenched her fists in barely restrained anger.
“I was…” Nora started, but caution halted her words.
Nora thought back to the nightmarish evening they’d had, but recalled that to admit the Fateweaver’s hunt for her and Evie would spell disaster for them now. Especially given the Lifekeepers and who knew who else was watching them as they spoke.
“We were detained last night by some thugs,” Nora stated evenly. “We took care of them.”
A half-truth, but it was all she could manage.
“Some thugs stopped you for the whole evening?” Elena scoffed. “What’s that sword of yours good for if you can’t take care of a few idiots in the street? While you were off taking care of some lowlifes, Hugh and his crew stole Rayka away. I was…”
Elena cleared her throat and looked away from Nora.
“…I was still recovering,” Elena admitted as if the very words were a deserter’s brand. “It was two against six. You should’ve been there. You should’ve…”
Elena shook her head and let loose a joyless chuckle while her hands came to rest on her hips.
“Actually, never mind,” Elena shouted. “If you can’t deal with a couple of thugs, what use are you? We hired you because we thought you’d be good in a fight. Dependable, at least. I can see we were wrong on all fronts.”
“C’mon, El.” Jer chimed in with a quiet voice.
He put a hand on her shoulder, but she shrugged it off with a huff and started moving toward the center of the swamp. The winds shifted, and Nora caught the smell of burning flesh layered into the sulfurous aroma of this place. Her face scrunched up in disgust while her emotions writhed inside of her.
Guilt. Shame. Regret. Concern. They all fought for dominance in her heart. Rayka was taken. She prayed that the strong woman was okay, though she doubted the gods would heed her prayers now.
Destiny would never stop. Last night had convinced her of that much, and she knew that the all-seeing god she had betrayed would hunt her to the ends of the continent and beyond.
It was an impossible situation. As much as she wanted to, she couldn’t tell the others the truth, not here, not now.
Maybe never.
The thought only made the guilt worse.
Nora washed her greatsword of the gore it had collected and sloshed through the muck toward Evie. The siren took her free hand, and Nora could feel the warmth even through the thick layers of her glove.
“The stars are singing of a clover standing tall in a storm,” Evie whispered in a singsong voice as they walked, her eyelids fluttering slightly. “We should get the prize in the center. We’ll need it!”
Evie darted away, feet light upon the thick mosses.
Nora was briefly stunned as she ran past their group with incredible speed.
“Move it, already!” Evie yelled over her shoulder.
Gavin jogged toward her while the twins followed behind. Exhausted as she was, and still wounded from the night before, she simply couldn’t keep their pace.
As long as she repressed her core’s power, her energy would continue to fade.
“Damn it all. Just save some opponents for me, would you?” Nora yelled at the backs of her teammates.
She trudged onward, ready to kill anything that reared its head in these gods-forsaken swamps.
She didn’t have to wait long.
What's the most ridiculous part of this fight?
