Chapter 30: Chapter 30: Duel of the Fates

CHAPTER THIRTY

Duel of the Fates

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Goosebumps rose over my flesh as I followed Mistress Lorelai into the proverbial lion’s den. Only, my dökkálfar instructor was no prey. She was the predator. She was the lioness about to rip into the flesh of the wolf at our door.

Yep, this chill running down my back wasn’t caused by fear, but by the excitement of a spectator about to witness something amazing. The kind I used to feel whenever I witnessed Divah’s battles. Mistress Lorelai had that same Amazon warrior vibe—and I was all giddy about having front row seats to the coming smackdown.

To his credit, the blue-eyed man in the patchwork fur cloak didn’t look the least bit intimidated by Mistress Lorelai’s golden spear or the frosty glare she trained on him. He hefted his curved black blade over his shoulder and waited patiently for us to climb higher up the hill.

As we passed close to their hunting ground, I glanced to my left and saw Liara helping to reform the formation to keep the black wolf contained. Dess and Morph were still hanging in there too.

“You’ve got this, guys,” I whispered.

It happened just as we passed them, the sound of an explosion followed by a howl of pain, and that’s when I knew Ms. Ives had succeeded in the task our dökkálfar instructor gave her. She’d given us the perfect backdrop to arrive too. With a plume of fire billowing at our backs, we came upon dueling distance of our enemy. We were close enough now that I could smell the stink of a butcher’s shop wafting out of the blue-eyed man’s cloak of patchwork furs.

The three decapitated adventurers’ corpses lay between him and us, with blood still dripping from their severed necks to pool underneath our feet.

Now that we were danger-close, I noticed a few more interesting details about our enemy. His limbs were unnaturally long. The nails on his hands and feet were thick, sharp, and yellowing like that of a beast’s. Two sharp fangs protruded out of the upper lip of a gaunt face that gazed at us with malice.

“He’s not human,” I realized.

“No, he’s not,” Mistress Lorelai agreed. “Who are you?”

“Sendimaðr,” the blue-eyed man answered in a rough, gruff voice that sounded almost like a growl to my ears.

The word was elvish and roughly translated to messenger, but Mistress Lorelai called him, “Emissary…”

Her eyes widened slightly as our enemy inclined his head toward us. As if he were accepting the designation that she’d just given him.

“Did the chained beast send you?” Mistress Lorelai asked.

As soon as the word ‘chained’ left her lips, the blue-eyed man’s yellowing teeth drew back in a snarl. He spoke rapidly in a tongue I’d never heard before—and I’ve heard a lot of tongues—and although I didn’t understand his words, the anger in his tone was implicit.

Yes, I could easily tell when someone was cussing me out even if I didn’t know what they were saying as people getting mad at me and Divah was a common occurrence whenever we visited a new realm.

“I’m not here to trade words with a crooked tongue,” Mistress Lorelai raised her spear tip forward. “Simply answer my questions as I ask them or I will cut off your limbs one by one until you give me what I want.”

Godsdamn, now that was a threat. And from the livid expression on her face, I didn’t think the dark elf was bluffing either.

More threats ensued. Ones said in words I had no clue about and threats I didn’t like hearing spill from my teacher’s mouth, because if Mistress Lorelai could promise a man she would castrate him and then make him watch as she dipped his crown jewels in chili sauce before feeding them to his wolves—yeah, she was very graphic in her intimidating—then what would she do to me if I ever failed her class?

Anyway, the age-old ritual of posturing before a duel ended soon enough. And, as if a ghostly gong sounded in the air, both Mistress Lorelai and the Blue-eyed Man launched themselves at each other. I wasn’t sure which of them struck first, but I could feel the strength of their swings as they traded one savage blow after another. His curved black blade was bigger, his swings heavier, but Mistress Lorelai parried and countered each attack with the finesse and skill of a true spear master.

One, two, three, four—spear and sword sang in the air and then screeched against each other as metal crashed against metal over and over again as if they were both still feeling each other out.

As for me, well, I admit to feeling slightly left out here. My dökkálfar instructor didn’t make me wait long though.

It happened as soon as Mistress Lorelai parried another savage swing of her opponent’s sword with the tip of her golden spear and forced him back just long enough for her to twirl the staff around and strike him in the solar plex with the butt of her spear. In that brief opening, the dark elf gestured me forward, and I wasn’t one to keep the door close when the opportunity came knocking.

I dove right in with my glaive swinging down on the blue-eyed man’s head, but he blocked its blade with just the nails of his free hand. My shock at this unbelievable thing didn’t stop me from following up one attack with another though, and I was already twirling my glaive around so that its pommel was now right-side up.

“Firebolt!” I screamed.

Yes, I know. A conjuration spell without an incantation was half the power of the original one. However, I didn’t have time to chant because my firebolt needed to explode in the blue-eyed man’s face so he couldn’t react to Mistress Lorelai thrusting her spear into his gut.

Now, my distraction worked almost like we’d talked about it beforehand—which we didn’t—but even with her prodigious muscle strength, Mistress Lorelai’s spear barely pierced into our enemy’s gut as if his rock-hard abs were made of dwarven Mythril or Dragonite ore.

This time, I couldn’t keep the shock from slowing my roll, and that made me a half-second too slow to dodge when he kicked out at us. He missed Mistress Lorelai, but his roundhouse kick smashed into my gut and sent me tumbling down the hill for a good twenty yards.

I was quick to get back on my feet though, and I began running up the hill lickety-split while they continued to climb up as they danced the dance of death.

With each trade of blows, Mistress Lorelai got driven further and further up the hill, and I realized from the way she was too quick to step back after every perfect parry that she was subtly leading her opponent upward. And, if my analysis wasn’t wrong, which I didn’t think it was, then I assumed she was doing this for two reasons; to take the blue-eyed man away from the other battles—ensuring he couldn’t interfere with my fellow novices wiping out his pets—while Mistress Lorelai also attempted to claim the high ground for herself.

Soon enough, I got back into the fight. Only now I was flanking the blue-eyed man from below, which I assumed was what my teacher wanted too. She even gave me an opening, locking up his curved black blade with her spear, allowing me to dive right in and slice at his ankles with my glaive.

He must have sensed the danger, however, as he was quick to abandon his weapon and leap upward just as my glaive came swinging into range. Even more impressive was how high he’d jump so that it didn’t matter that Mistress Lorelai had claimed the high ground first. The blue-eyed man vaulted over us to land on the hilltop which was about a ten-yard climb.

Then he stretched out his hand, and just like with Mistress Lorelai’s spear, his curved black blade flew back to him. Only then did I figure out why I was so wary of that damn blade.

“Baldr’s balls, I knew I’ve seen that sword before…” I pointed a shaking finger at it. “How does he have a sword that’s an exact copy of Master Doomsday’s weapon?”

“Because Doomsday’s Executioner’s Blade was a prize from the last emissary we’d killed over a hundred years ago,” Mistress Lorelai revealed.

I think my jaw dropped slightly from that big reveal.

“Y-you’ve already fought an emissary?”

I knew there was something odd with how she’d looked when she heard him say Sendimaðr. Although there were far too many ways to interpret her brief second of wide-eyed fear to simply assume she’d fought an emissary before now.

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“It was here on Earth back in eighteen-sixty-four,” Mistress Lorelai explained. “I believe you humans refer to it as the Gettysburg Crusade.”

“Oh, I read about that…” My brow furrowed while I recounted events that had been written down in one of our school books, Dungeons; A History. “A dungeon had formed underneath the field where this huge battle took place, but it had been neglected by human adventurers of that era because the American Civil War was still happening…”

My eyes widened as realization dawned on me.

“Holy freaking Hel… you’re saying that incident where the realm Ethereal sent a crusade to save Earth from a monster horde was actually caused by a dungeon break?”

Okay, my surprise was valid, because, from what I knew of realmsverse history, monster hordes weren’t exclusive to dungeon breaks. Sometimes a charismatic being like a vampire noble or greater demon would pop up in some realm and rally monsters to their banner to create a horde big enough to threaten the whole realmsverse. Whenever this happened, the Congress of Realms would call for a ‘crusade’ to destroy the horde. Such events were rarer than a dungeon break for sure but a crusade was far more plausible for me as the last one had happened less than twenty years ago.

“You’re a bright boy, Mr. Wisdom.” Mistress Lorelai patted me on the shoulder. “I hope you survive tonight so that you may grow to outshine even the dragoness.”

After that pat of encouragement, we renewed our pursuit of the blue-eyed man who casually waited for us at the top of the hill much like a dungeon boss might wait for its enemies to enter its range.

A clash of sword, spear, and glaive resumed, but the blue-eyed man’s choice of taking the high ground did prove effective enough that we couldn’t flank him anymore or gain enough ground to push him back, making this fight a literal uphill battle.

Fatigue eventually caught up to me, however, and I stumbled in my haste to cut off one of the bastard’s legs. He took advantage of my stumble and snapped the butt of his sword into my shoulder, driving me to my knees.

I glanced up—my breath heavy and wheezing—and watched as the curved black blade came swinging down on my head. It was Deja Vu.

“Vargr,” I whispered.

I shut my eyes expecting another death and heard the sound of reprieve instead.

When I opened my eyes again, I saw that Mistress Lorelai had jumped in and blocked the blue-eyed man’s swing with her golden spear. Unfortunately, the force of his downward swing was so great that his curved black blade bent the spear handle.

Mistress Lorelai had no choice but to discard her weapon to save my life. Again. And I knew I had to respond in kind.

I threw my glaive for her to catch—which she did—and then I watched the dark elf parry the blue-eyed man’s sword with a twirl of my glaive that I admittedly couldn’t have done as skillfully.

Now that I’d given away my weapon, did that mean I was out of the fight? Hel no. I still had enough magic for at least two more Volcanic Steps. Or a single use of Haste if it wasn’t still on cooldown.

Yep, spells from the school of chronomancy had a literal cooldown period because of how they affected a user’s connection to the flow of time, and I was about eight hours short of a long rest for Haste to become usable again.

However, I had one spell I’ve been keeping in my back pocket for just this kind of do-or-die moment. So, with a whisper of, “Nova Stella,” a ball of golden flame came to life in my hand, one that was bright enough to light up the entire hilltop.

“It’s your turn, darling,” I grinned.

With what was basically a miniature sun in the palm of my left hand, there was no way the blue-eyed man wouldn’t notice me—and that was the point. Distracted by my tier-three flame spell I’d cast, our enemy failed to block the glaive swinging underneath him, allowing Mistress Lorelai to embed its blade into his side and finally draw blood.

The blue-eyed man howled in pain. Yep. Howled. He didn’t scream like normal people would have done but howled like a wolf crying to the moon. It should have been a sign that things weren’t what they seemed, but I was too busy focusing on sneaking into the blue-eyed man’s blindside to clock it properly.

Then, with a cry of, “Die, die, die die~~e!” I shoved my ball of golden flame into his other side—and it blew up on us.

No, I wasn’t being suicidal—I don’t do that—but I couldn’t fling my ‘Nova Stella’ at him because the magic had a kind of gravity to it that made it impossible to throw. Besides, shoving it into his body gave me a more awesome result.

My special tier-three flame spell didn’t just smash into the blue-eyed man’s side like a wrecking ball might do, at the moment of contact, golden flames billowed outward, expanding over him like a mighty bonfire while also unleashing a bright flash that momentarily turned night into day.

Now, while Mistress Lorelai had no choice but to back the Hel away—dark elves and super bright lights don’t mix—I was unaffected by my spell’s fire or its brilliant flash. It’s why I managed to dodge the monstrous claw that came swiping at me from deep within the bonfire I’d just made.

“Vargr!” I stumbled as I pulled back and fell on my ass. “Why won’t you guys just die?!”

I know I wasn’t supposed to kill him, but the dude was far too dangerous to capture, and my best spell couldn’t kill him anyways.

As the light of my spell subsided, I heard the growl from within the still-growing bonfire. Something big and inhuman was moving inside of it. At the same time, I caught a glimpse of something golden on the grass next to me. I reached out for it just as the head of a wolf appeared out of the fire, a head nearly twice as big as the black wolf Liara and the others were fighting below the hill.

Flames licked at fur that was a patchwork of several colors just like the cloak he’d been wearing. All-too blue human eyes glared at me from behind a snout filled with sharp teeth as large as kitchen knives.

“Frigid Hel,” I whispered.

Out of a desire to not give up, I willed what little of my magic I had left into the tips of my fingers. A cool, bluish light flared out of my palm and reordered itself into a circular arcane array that blazed to life in the space around the bent weapon I’d just picked up.

“Wisdom!” Mistress Lorelai yelled.

From the corner of my left eye, I saw that she was running up to where I’d fallen, and she wasn’t alone either. An elf-maiden with chestnut hair was running right behind her. They would be too late though. Because the upsized wolf had already jumped out of the fire, and, even as magical flames consumed its body, it seemed hellbent on getting to me first.

But I wasn’t going to lie down and just let eat me. So, I too jumped forward to meet its charge.

“Come on!” I roared.

As incredibly powerful jaws clamped down on my chest—with a myriad of fangs piercing into every part of my upper body—the golden spear I fixed with Reversion flashed in my hand, with my last act plunging it right into the great wolf’s underbelly.

With what little remained of my dwindling strength, I plunged the spear deeper into its insides, something I shouldn’t have been able to do if my magical flames hadn’t softened him up for me.

The wolf spat me out so it could howl in pain. While I fell to my knees, my vision blurring.

Then, before my sight left me completely, I watched Mistress Lorelai jump down on the great wolf’s body. She wasn’t alone. Liara had come in from below. Together, they decapitated the beast with my glaive and the she-elf’s ice sword while my name spilled angrily from their lips.

My upper body fell just as the wolf’s head toppled over, and I managed to flip it my middle finger just as darkness closed over my vision. The last thing I felt before death took me was the callous palms of Liara as she cradled my head in her hands.