Chapter 39: Chapter 39 – Escape

//Author Note: I would strongly urge you to read alongside this story. Shared world and setting, with crossovers coming!//

 

Anna and Olive are alive. I don’t know what happened to them, or how they escaped death, but all that matters right now is that they are alive and they will stay that way.

I grip my swords tighter as I scan the darkness for the knight that I know is going to come for me. It is the way of my life. He will not let me escape easily. He is not like the wolven, and he won’t let this end until one of us is dead, I just know it. He is worse than any predator of the wild.

The deep crashing sound coming from the darkness is just further evidence of it.

“Run!” I shout back at the other two. “Find Theo and the others! I’ll escape after you.”

“Syr!” Olive shouts at me, but I turn away from them and step back towards the darkness. Anna isn’t looking healthy, and Olive can barely help her move. “We should just keep running!”

I shake my head, the roaring grows louder and through Crow’s eyes, I can see the path of devastation heading straight for us. Entire buildings are collapsing and the road is sinking beneath a wave that carves through everything in its way. He is coming for us. I don’t know how, but he isn’t going to let us go.

“He’s coming for us,” I explain. “Go. I’ll stop him, and I’ll escape.”

“You can’t win,” Anna whispers, her face still deathly pale.

“I won’t die,” I say. “Now go. The knight is fighting seriously this time. Go!”

“We’ll get help. We’ll get help, just don’t die!” Olive says, her ears flattening on her head. “Runner, I need a runner! We have silver and gold! Someone fast and someone else to help us run!”

A few people, norkit by the way they cover their heads to hide their ears, run in to help them. I let out a sigh and focus on the fight charging in at me.

Olive chooses some of them quickly, and they all move, some to find Theo and the others, and some to carry Anna away. They’re fast, but the knight is faster still. As a building falls before me, and the knight steps into the light, Anna and Olive are still around to glance back at me. This isn’t the same as before.

Mother sacrificed herself for me, but that’s not what I’m doing. I’m going to save them, and I’m going to live.

The knight takes another step, the earth itself rippling beneath his feet, washing out of his path and toppling anything in his way. He pulls even the cobblestone apart.

Each step sends a ripple through the world at his feet, carving a gully through the streets and a path through all buildings in his way. His metal greaves glow with the æther forming magic from its enchantments, likely the source of this new magic. His own magic only reinforces the armour and enchantments, if I can peel the armour off of him…

I can’t. I might as well plan on pulling out his heart with my bare hands.

The knight stares at me, his helm glowing slightly with some enchantment. He’s been holding back, the reason why is clear. The city is falling down around him. He is not meant to fight in a group, he’s meant to tear through armies.

I raise my swords at him.

I can’t stand on the ground near him. It’s in his control.

His sword is already glowing, lengthening out beyond the three metres that it was before, it now stretches to be longer than the width of the street, but even as he cuts through the homes to either side, he doesn’t care.

I have to stay close, but the ground is his territory. I can’t fly, but I have to. I have no corpses, but even if I did, he would smash them all in moments.

I have my strength, my healing, and a little fire magic.

If I use the weight of my swords to spin about, and only touch the ground to jump back into the air… it’s silly. It’s strange. I’ve done similar before. I’m rather confident in the air so long as I have my swords. He’ll be able to strike at me but I can twist around and block a sword well enough, even in the air.

I’ll need to figure out what other abilities he has, but… I might be able to survive this.

Relaxing into my stride, a spark of confidence burning in my limbs, I step up to the knight. With his abilities, I’m sure that he’s already killed everyone we’ve left behind. It wouldn’t even take him twenty seconds to cut through thousands that were back there, not with how he warps the earth beneath his feet, and with the length of his sword.

My stomach churns as I remember Cildr. The home that I abandoned.

I was too weak then, and I’m too weak now. I left them behind to die, but at least this time I saved someone. This time I have Olive and Anna, and when I beat this knight, I won’t be left alone.

“Why are you chasing me?” I ask, pushing one sword ahead and the other behind, finding a comfortable balance and waiting for the knight to approach me. The other people here are already fleeing. The sight of a war-ready knight is enough to scare them away.

“You won’t escape me, little elf,” he says. “Your little friends behind you will be next. None of you will escape, no matter how far you run.”

“Why?” I ask crouching down as the waves of liquified earth start to lap at my feet. “Why can’t you let us go?”

“I’ve already messed up enough,” he groans. “We can’t have any rumours spreading.”

“You mean your undead friends?” I ask. “You don’t want anyone talking about them? Like how fire is their weakness? How light makes them weaker?”

He growls, leaning forwards to charge at me. I get ready to jump.

Does his mission really matter? The vampires think that they can keep this entire thing secret? Or are they just acting stupidly to try and pretend that they can? Either way, this knight is going to try his best to kill us for a secret that they probably can’t even keep.

He charges, and I jump.

The golden extension on his sword carves a glowing path through the air for me, but I lift my swords to catch it. The impact between my swords and his sends me higher into the air, flipping up and over him.

I twist my swords around to control my spin, trying to steer myself down towards the glimmering knight. I swing down as I fall, smashing my swords down on his shoulder, the one that was frozen for a moment in our earlier fight. He screams, as his armour gives way, bending inwards.

He throws a hand at me. I try to defend and dodge, failing at both. My face burns with pain and the world turns to darkness before coming back with vibrant lights and shining colours. The earth rolls under me, cobblestones smash into me from every side.

A golden sword falls from above, but I slip to the side and roll onto my feet. I jump before the knight traps me in the rolling earth and stone. The sword’s blade is already rushing at me again, but as I deflect this strike it forces me down to the ground, shaping into a spike even as I watch.

I use one sword to push against the golden blade and use my other to catch the earth spike before kicking off the side of it and diving at the knight again. I have to keep moving.

Theo couldn’t teach me how to use my swords and techniques, it’s all too different from what he knows, but he did teach me how to fight. The one part of my style that he’s always going on about is how strange it is. How unexpected.

The bandits I fought should have beaten me, but they didn’t know how to respond to my fighting. Theo himself struggles sometimes, but only when I try something new, something strange, something that he’s never seen before.

The knight growls as I thrust my sword towards the slit in his helmet. It’s a tiny gap, something that I can’t usually hit, but trying for it makes a person flinch.

He spins his sword around and strikes out at me with the hilt, but my swords hit first. Both swords smash into his helmet, I twist in the air and slide past the hilt of his sword, barely breezing by him. The marks that I leave on his helmet are nothing meaningful, and he reacts with only a small grunt.

Rolling around in the air, I kick off of the ground again, launching myself at him.

My body burns and my lungs hurt. I don’t have the time to breathe, and I’m not made to move this fast without any pause. My vision is fading away, and my head feels heavy like I’m about to fall asleep.

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I can’t stop.

As I clash with the knight’s raised sword, I flood my already burning æther veins, pulling every ounce of strength that I can through them. I’m healing all my injuries from the last fight and strengthening my entire body, but this much work just makes it more difficult to fight against the darkness that is stealing away my sight and strength.

I scream, sending out waves of necromancy, trying to find something to cling to. Something that will obey my commands. Even without seeing, I can feel them responding. Bones, long dead and hungry for life, rise at my command.

Long dead bones, buried under the stones rise as I call for them. They burn through so much æther that I wouldn’t ordinarily be able to hold them together, but in this state, for a minute, I can make it work. There are too many skeletons below us, even casting with my best power I couldn’t take them all, but that just means that I’ll have more when the wave dies.

I’m already falling on his sword, deflecting it as the dark spots filling my eyes try to hide it away. This time the earth stirs under where I would land, forming a trap that I can’t easily avoid. Swimming the bones into place, I use the corpse of a team of skeletons to catch myself and throw my smaller body at the knight. The act itself breaks many of their bones.

The knight’s not prepared for that, barely raising his hand in time to block my swords, but that’s exactly what I was hoping for. The blades clatter against his wrist, the metal glows with æther channels warping the air around his hands but my blades dent into his wrist before his magic can take effect.

The metal warps under the stress before a wave of crackling magic washes out from his enchanted gear. My swords fly back, I grip tight but lose one while the other carries me away, nearly pulling my arm from its socket as I fly away from the knight. The energy from his magic washes out through me as I’m flung through the air at the forward edge of the wave.

It’s not like fire or cutting blades, it’s like an ice-cold thread wiring through me, sawing away at my insides pushing me outwards. It’s stronger the closer I am, and flying away, I’m saved from the worst of it.

What sort of magic does this?

The magic fades to nothing as I land on the roof of a building lost in the darkness, beaten by the stone before finally rolling off the edge and falling to the ground. The ground hits hard and heavy, but my body is on fire with æther and I will not let the darkness take me yet.

The knight is already chasing after me, the buildings around me crumbling. The skeletons I summon are too slow to reach the shining boots of the knight, and the churning earth scatters them in the mud.

Crow, watching the world from above warns me of the knight’s approach, rushing straight through the building before me. We’re in the darkness of the abandoned part of the city now, and in the distance, flames stir around the manor house. Some magic of a scale to compare to Adeleya’s most powerful bursts of flames.

It doesn’t matter, I have my own fight.

I jump before the building can collapse down on me.

I’m nearly out of energy, warring with my own mind just to stay conscious, but the knight is still fighting strong.

He’s pried the armour off his wrist where I hit him, and some from his shoulder too, but there are no injuries anymore. He’s recovered…

He lifts his head high and stomps hard on the ground. The earth ruptures and swirls beneath me, stones harder than teeth, ready to grind me down to nothing. The bones that I swim up to the surface are forced back or ground down to nothing. I don’t have the time for them to charge down the knight.

I toss my sword, throwing it at the man and using the force to roll back just enough that clattering bones can catch my fall. My sword is struck down and the knight wastes no time charging through the few skeletons I’ve dragged from the earth. I barely have time to stand before facing him.

His sword glows gold as he prepares to strike me down the moment I jump. The crushing cobblestones eat up the ground beneath me and I can’t stay standing long.

Darkness is consuming my sight, and I’m out of tricks.

His hand and shoulder are exposed.

If I run, I die.

I kick off the ground and fly at the man. He is mortal. He can die.

He will die because I refuse to.

I sharpen my hands and harden them as best I can. The knight is surprised but still fast enough to strike out with his sword. I raise my arms as it crosses over my body, ready to take the blow.

His golden blade grazes against my flesh, cutting down to the bone on my forearm, but sliding down to the elbow, cutting off all the skin on my forearm and some of the flesh too, but I twist enough that the blade glides by the rest of me.

I land on him, smashing my knife hand down on his shoulder and digging deep. I wrap my fingers around his collarbone and hold on tight as he punches me. Colours join the dark specks that consume my vision but the burning consumes any new pains.

 My fingers twist around his bone. I do not let go.

With my other hand, I reach in past his tall chest plate to pry off his helmet, but my fingers refuse to work right. I can barely lift it a finger’s width.

“It’s over,” he says, his eyes invisible in the darkness behind his helmet.

“No,” I refuse, gripping his collarbone and pulling tighter, trying to pry it off. I lift it a little higher. His neck is vulnerable, but I haven’t a free hand to hit him. The bones that I pull from the earth are clawing at his feet but it’s worthless. They can’t hurt him.

He drops his sword and pulls a knife, gripping me by the shoulder as he lifts the blade to my neck. I struggle to free myself, but he’s stronger.

“No!” I shout, kicking at him and prying his helmet higher.

A blur rushes through the space behind him, movement faster than anything I’ve ever seen before. The shadows move, thrusting a dark shortsword around and under his chin right into the knight’s neck, precisely in the gap that I’m holding up. The knight pauses and the shadow twists, drawing the sword and cutting back into his flesh.

The knight’s head separates from his body, and blood sprays out over me, as my skeletons catch me. I can’t see much anymore but the shadowy figure above me is wielding my own swords, and she looks familiar.

“You should consider putting those bones away before anyone else sees them,” she says.

She sounds familiar.

She steps closer still, holding out the swords to me while gripping the bloody blades. “You should be careful with gifts, you know? You could hurt my feelings.”

Semi smiles at me as the darkness and fire consume me, I call down Crow but she catches him before I can say goodbye.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper, drifting into the darkness.

 

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//Author Note: I hope you're all satisfied with this chapter and excited for the next. There are some interesting things coming up soon for those reading both stories, and it's still fun even if it's just one. Any thoughts or theories so far?

 

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