Soot-Steeped Knight (LN)
“No…” my sister muttered, lungs heavy. “No sword ought unmake a magick… none…”
A slight shiver haunted her shoulders. Unsurprising; Felicia was a sorceress extraordinaire, a devout of the magicks—and their arrant dependant. To have them all avail her so little, so asudden; to see her Yoná-given talent, her years of toil so clearly cleft in two, surely came as a shock to her.
“Yet this sword can,” I rebutted.
“No!” she cried, shaking her head. “What madness! I-I’ll not believe it! I won’t!”
“Then don’t,” I firmly returned. “Believe or deny as you like. If you cannot trust to the truth afore your very eyes… go ahead. Shut them. Shield that pride of yours.”
“Gh…!” she winced, a child cornered by criticism. And in scolding her had I been edging closer, prowling with wary paces. Not yet had she reckoned the full reach of my charge, but she should think it quite short, by my guess. Her fatal blunder, if so; what remained was to arrive in range, and…
“Striking… shattering my ice in their flight…?” my sister muttered again, yet mired in disbelief, “…you show one deception after another…!”
“Not deception, Felicia. Discipline,” I corrected. “The sword has answered my faith. This ‘twig’ now topples your ‘titans’.”
“…hh!!”
A pained expression, not unlike another shown winters ago. ‘Is there meaning?’ she’d enquired me then. Meaning in swinging the sword, cutting naught but air. Meaning in walking the woeful path, knowing naught but futility. At last, the answer was clear—to us both.
“Still…” she inly wrangled on, “…still, I… I can’t…”
Separating us now: a span fewer than five passūs, shrinkable to nought were I given but a breath to dare it. So all along Felicia’s figure I looked, reckoning the rhythm of her respiration. And the instant I scried her body at its laxest, her lungs at their emptiest—
“Hhet!!”
—I lunged.
Felicia’s eyes flashed, her silverstaff flourished.
“F-Frīgidus Ensis!!”
—Vvfaaohh!!
About her accreted wintry gales, stopping as soon as they had started. Forming out of them: crystals of airborne ice, keen daggers each, splaying and speeding in now to dice me alive—all twenty of them.
“Egh!!” I groaned. A score of dancing blades, catching me unawares but with only a single sword to answer them. “Damn it!” I broke my charge, bounding off and barely eluding the bladed blurs. Hoary air hissed past. Screeches whistled. Rounding about, they returned with all speed, and facing them, I jerked and twisted to and fro in avoidance as their darting became more and more daring.
“So you can twirl that twig—what of it!?” Felicia cried. “Soon or late, even the mightiest boughs must break!”
Twenty blades, zig-zagging independently. Twenty puppets, strung to one mind—now more than before was I reminded of my sister’s prowess.
And her limits.
A genius of spellweaving she was, but equally a simpleton of sword-wielding: though the blades flitted about fleetly, filling the air with myriad chirps and shrieks, none had hitherto closed in for the kill. Wagering on the safe thought, I began striking them down one-by-one, all the while bearing caution and seeking a chance to charge upon my foe.
—Keekh! Bakhnn!
Frozen blades, broken as they sailed and sniped. A clear and crystalline rhythm, during which it finally flickered: a lull most transient. Snatching the opportunity, I leapt forth, sending the black sword towards my sister—
—to stab her straight through.
“Aaakh!!”
A wrenching scream.
At last, my blade had met its mark.
Yet… all the sooted sword did savour was but a grazing wound upon my sister’s shoulder. The transgression was swiftly chided: unto me then converged every remnant blade of ice. Turning quick, I engaged the deadly darts, culling them till their very last. At length, the air was empty again, with Felicia once more fled to a safer distance.
There she was: standing and grasping her left shoulder. Under those tight fingers trickled deep crimson.
“…Brother…” she muttered, “…has spilt my blood… Brother’s blade…! My blood…!”
Laid full-bare was Felicia’s bewilderment. And for me, just the same: a surge of emotions assailing me at once, turbid as it was terrible.
Once upon a recent time had I imagined this moment. But to live it was a betrayal against all expectation.
Carving through her flesh—the faint but infallible feeling yet haunted my hands like a memory of murder, a blustery storm beating away at my bosom down to its very depths. Before I knew it, my face was twisted in turmoil, my teeth clenching as though bearing a deathly pain. All sound had sped away to some great yonder, leaving naught but my heart to hammer away in my ears. So ghastly was the struggle that were I any less collected, I might’ve collapsed then and there.
Yet I didn’t. I couldn’t. Not here. Not now. This, I had to endure. My resolve, I had to realise.
…Yes. That’s right.
My resolve.
I’d steeled myself for this.
This deed that must needs be done.
Catching my lungs idled, I resumed respiring. My body, I re-emboldened. My spirits, I resuscitated. From my mind I rejected all remnant sensation of having sheared the flesh of my kin… to whom I next gave my gaze.
And whose name spilt from my lips.
My sister.
My bond of blood.
The same blood now streaming down her shoulder.
Smears and rivulets of red, an ocean drowning my brotherly heart. How it harrowed me to reel it back up, to re-narrow my every nerve to the battle at hand. As this was exactly that: a battle. For the souls I’d sworn to protect. For a future that might foster them all.
I forcefully inhaled, feeding precious air back to my brain, before calming my heart and cooling my thoughts—I must needs scry what would come next, and carefully.
Above—that’s where Felicia stood. Above and beyond my prior expectations. An epiphany reached for the first time in this fight, for never could I have imagined her mastery of so close-quartered and contrarian a spell like the Frīgidus Ensis.
Oft do battlefields find sorcerers assigned to more distant perches, where they might employ their magicks with precision and impunity. Thus are near-ranged spells left wholly neglected, save for the errant case or by the eclectic adept. With nary a niche to fill nor shortcuts to their arduous mastery, and withal too many subtleties needed for their deft use, such spells are long regarded as naught more than tricks of the parlour.
But not so to my sister.
She’d taken the trek less travelled, not only mastering one such spell, but availing her very life with it on this day. Felicia Buckmann—a preeminent spellweaver, through and through.
Yet one fact remained: not without paying a great toll of odyl could the Frīgidus Ensis be woven. A toll exacted more heavily again from Felicia, for though it had proven a gainly gambit for busying my blade, it was no fewer than a score of the icy-steels that she’d conjured up, and in an instant, at that.
As though to corroborate my guess, Felicia’s breathing was now reduced to a laboured pant. Tonitrus, Globus Igneus, Flagrāns Vallum, Feriēns Flagrum, Glārea Pruīnae—and Frīgidus Ensis, all incanted to supreme scale and quantity. Indeed, not even a wunderkind like herself, though availed by a nigh-bottomless well of odyl, could remain untouched by such expenditure.
The way to victory was opened, then. But as I pondered how I might wend through it—bang!—clapping through the air next was an explosion, birthed from the bowels of the bastille overlooking our battle.
“Mn?” I twitched, broken from my thoughts. The cause of the commotion: a Lancea Calōris spell, like as not. Right; at this very moment were my braves, too, embroiled in their own battle somewhere in that building. To catch wind of their combat ought’ve been obvious enough.
But in beholding the bastille so fully did an unnamed emotion begin gnawing away at me. Visions next awoke in my heart. Of Mia, captive and made to suffer in those depths cruelties beyond description. Of her elder sister, forced unto her forlorn fate: to be thrown out of hand into some pit—as a blackened and blighted corpse.
Nay.
My heart was yet uncalmed, my nerves yet full-frayed, my mind yet a mire. In truth, never had I actually recovered from the whelm of wounding my own sister. A moment of meandering, enough to steal my eyes and wits away from the battle at hand.
A newly embarked path, fogging over afore Rolf the fledgeling renegade. Shame, indeed. And an affront to Mia, were she to see me now.
And a chance for Felicia.
“Hha!!” I gasped. My fit of hesitation had yielded her precious time: turning to her now, I found her freshly finished from preparing her next spell.
One might wonder, what ensues after a free moment given to a conjurer of her calibre? The answer was mine to know… and rue.
“Kōkūtós!!”
“Mnh!?”
No!
Felicia—a hand from hell she’s played!
And now, a great cerulean cell—cincturing me from all sides!
All was subsumed in blue.
I’d been snared.
…Completely and utterly severed from the outside world.
“────kh!!”
No time for thoughts.
No time to choose.
My fey body bent forth. My failing blade flourished.
—Gshanngh!
Through a facet of the cell the soot-steel stabbed, collapsing the cubic construction straightway.
“Ggha… hhakh…!”
Freed from purgatory, I, too, collapsed onto my knees, barely bearing myself up with the support of my sword.
From the time the spell had sprung till my escape, naught more than a slice of a second had passed. Yet it well-felt an eternity.
Kōkūtós: the most supreme of the freezing magicks. A spell to envelope a victim, and in its infernal space, cease and suffocate all living force found within. A prison carrying out the sole and swift sentence of death… one the svǫrtaskan had more swiftly acquitted me from.
But I was not fled without foulness. The instant the cell was erected, its wiles were already at work.
And so I was injured.
My every limb, my every bone, my every organ—taken right to Death’s door.
Chapter 130: Volume 3 - CH 5.6
A slight shiver haunted her shoulders. Unsurprising; Felicia was a sorceress extraordinaire, a devout of the magicks—and their arrant dependant. To have them all avail her so little, so asudden; to see her Yoná-given talent, her years of toil so clearly cleft in two, surely came as a shock to her.
“Yet this sword can,” I rebutted.
“No!” she cried, shaking her head. “What madness! I-I’ll not believe it! I won’t!”
“Then don’t,” I firmly returned. “Believe or deny as you like. If you cannot trust to the truth afore your very eyes… go ahead. Shut them. Shield that pride of yours.”
“Gh…!” she winced, a child cornered by criticism. And in scolding her had I been edging closer, prowling with wary paces. Not yet had she reckoned the full reach of my charge, but she should think it quite short, by my guess. Her fatal blunder, if so; what remained was to arrive in range, and…
“Striking… shattering my ice in their flight…?” my sister muttered again, yet mired in disbelief, “…you show one deception after another…!”
“Not deception, Felicia. Discipline,” I corrected. “The sword has answered my faith. This ‘twig’ now topples your ‘titans’.”
“…hh!!”
A pained expression, not unlike another shown winters ago. ‘Is there meaning?’ she’d enquired me then. Meaning in swinging the sword, cutting naught but air. Meaning in walking the woeful path, knowing naught but futility. At last, the answer was clear—to us both.
“Still…” she inly wrangled on, “…still, I… I can’t…”
Separating us now: a span fewer than five passūs, shrinkable to nought were I given but a breath to dare it. So all along Felicia’s figure I looked, reckoning the rhythm of her respiration. And the instant I scried her body at its laxest, her lungs at their emptiest—
“Hhet!!”
—I lunged.
Felicia’s eyes flashed, her silverstaff flourished.
“F-Frīgidus Ensis!!”
—Vvfaaohh!!
About her accreted wintry gales, stopping as soon as they had started. Forming out of them: crystals of airborne ice, keen daggers each, splaying and speeding in now to dice me alive—all twenty of them.
“Egh!!” I groaned. A score of dancing blades, catching me unawares but with only a single sword to answer them. “Damn it!” I broke my charge, bounding off and barely eluding the bladed blurs. Hoary air hissed past. Screeches whistled. Rounding about, they returned with all speed, and facing them, I jerked and twisted to and fro in avoidance as their darting became more and more daring.
“So you can twirl that twig—what of it!?” Felicia cried. “Soon or late, even the mightiest boughs must break!”
And her limits.
A genius of spellweaving she was, but equally a simpleton of sword-wielding: though the blades flitted about fleetly, filling the air with myriad chirps and shrieks, none had hitherto closed in for the kill. Wagering on the safe thought, I began striking them down one-by-one, all the while bearing caution and seeking a chance to charge upon my foe.
—Keekh! Bakhnn!
Frozen blades, broken as they sailed and sniped. A clear and crystalline rhythm, during which it finally flickered: a lull most transient. Snatching the opportunity, I leapt forth, sending the black sword towards my sister—
—to stab her straight through.
“Aaakh!!”
A wrenching scream.
At last, my blade had met its mark.
Yet… all the sooted sword did savour was but a grazing wound upon my sister’s shoulder. The transgression was swiftly chided: unto me then converged every remnant blade of ice. Turning quick, I engaged the deadly darts, culling them till their very last. At length, the air was empty again, with Felicia once more fled to a safer distance.
There she was: standing and grasping her left shoulder. Under those tight fingers trickled deep crimson.
“…Brother…” she muttered, “…has spilt my blood… Brother’s blade…! My blood…!”
Laid full-bare was Felicia’s bewilderment. And for me, just the same: a surge of emotions assailing me at once, turbid as it was terrible.
Once upon a recent time had I imagined this moment. But to live it was a betrayal against all expectation.
Carving through her flesh—the faint but infallible feeling yet haunted my hands like a memory of murder, a blustery storm beating away at my bosom down to its very depths. Before I knew it, my face was twisted in turmoil, my teeth clenching as though bearing a deathly pain. All sound had sped away to some great yonder, leaving naught but my heart to hammer away in my ears. So ghastly was the struggle that were I any less collected, I might’ve collapsed then and there.
Yet I didn’t. I couldn’t. Not here. Not now. This, I had to endure. My resolve, I had to realise.
…Yes. That’s right.
My resolve.
I’d steeled myself for this.
This deed that must needs be done.
And whose name spilt from my lips.
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“Felicia…”My sister.
My bond of blood.
The same blood now streaming down her shoulder.
Smears and rivulets of red, an ocean drowning my brotherly heart. How it harrowed me to reel it back up, to re-narrow my every nerve to the battle at hand. As this was exactly that: a battle. For the souls I’d sworn to protect. For a future that might foster them all.
I forcefully inhaled, feeding precious air back to my brain, before calming my heart and cooling my thoughts—I must needs scry what would come next, and carefully.
Above—that’s where Felicia stood. Above and beyond my prior expectations. An epiphany reached for the first time in this fight, for never could I have imagined her mastery of so close-quartered and contrarian a spell like the Frīgidus Ensis.
Oft do battlefields find sorcerers assigned to more distant perches, where they might employ their magicks with precision and impunity. Thus are near-ranged spells left wholly neglected, save for the errant case or by the eclectic adept. With nary a niche to fill nor shortcuts to their arduous mastery, and withal too many subtleties needed for their deft use, such spells are long regarded as naught more than tricks of the parlour.
But not so to my sister.
She’d taken the trek less travelled, not only mastering one such spell, but availing her very life with it on this day. Felicia Buckmann—a preeminent spellweaver, through and through.
Yet one fact remained: not without paying a great toll of odyl could the Frīgidus Ensis be woven. A toll exacted more heavily again from Felicia, for though it had proven a gainly gambit for busying my blade, it was no fewer than a score of the icy-steels that she’d conjured up, and in an instant, at that.
As though to corroborate my guess, Felicia’s breathing was now reduced to a laboured pant. Tonitrus, Globus Igneus, Flagrāns Vallum, Feriēns Flagrum, Glārea Pruīnae—and Frīgidus Ensis, all incanted to supreme scale and quantity. Indeed, not even a wunderkind like herself, though availed by a nigh-bottomless well of odyl, could remain untouched by such expenditure.
The way to victory was opened, then. But as I pondered how I might wend through it—bang!—clapping through the air next was an explosion, birthed from the bowels of the bastille overlooking our battle.
“Mn?” I twitched, broken from my thoughts. The cause of the commotion: a Lancea Calōris spell, like as not. Right; at this very moment were my braves, too, embroiled in their own battle somewhere in that building. To catch wind of their combat ought’ve been obvious enough.
But in beholding the bastille so fully did an unnamed emotion begin gnawing away at me. Visions next awoke in my heart. Of Mia, captive and made to suffer in those depths cruelties beyond description. Of her elder sister, forced unto her forlorn fate: to be thrown out of hand into some pit—as a blackened and blighted corpse.
Nay.
My heart was yet uncalmed, my nerves yet full-frayed, my mind yet a mire. In truth, never had I actually recovered from the whelm of wounding my own sister. A moment of meandering, enough to steal my eyes and wits away from the battle at hand.
A newly embarked path, fogging over afore Rolf the fledgeling renegade. Shame, indeed. And an affront to Mia, were she to see me now.
“Hha!!” I gasped. My fit of hesitation had yielded her precious time: turning to her now, I found her freshly finished from preparing her next spell.
One might wonder, what ensues after a free moment given to a conjurer of her calibre? The answer was mine to know… and rue.
“Kōkūtós!!”
“Mnh!?”
No!
Felicia—a hand from hell she’s played!
And now, a great cerulean cell—cincturing me from all sides!
All was subsumed in blue.
I’d been snared.
…Completely and utterly severed from the outside world.
“────kh!!”
No time for thoughts.
No time to choose.
My fey body bent forth. My failing blade flourished.
—Gshanngh!
Through a facet of the cell the soot-steel stabbed, collapsing the cubic construction straightway.
“Ggha… hhakh…!”
Freed from purgatory, I, too, collapsed onto my knees, barely bearing myself up with the support of my sword.
From the time the spell had sprung till my escape, naught more than a slice of a second had passed. Yet it well-felt an eternity.
But I was not fled without foulness. The instant the cell was erected, its wiles were already at work.
And so I was injured.
My every limb, my every bone, my every organ—taken right to Death’s door.
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