NOVEL NEXT 093 - Blade Lessons
Blake turned from the observation window, moving left toward the stairwell door. His boots scuffed against the metal grating—too loud. He chided himself and adjusted his stride, rolling each step from heel to toe, the way he'd done a thousand times.
The door hinges protested with a dry squeal, completely undercutting his efforts at stealth. Blake froze halfway through, listening. No answering movement from below. Just the distant scrabble of claws on metal somewhere deeper in the ship. He exhaled through his nose and slipped inside.
Emergency strips cast a sickly yellow glow over steps littered with shreds of organic matter. Blake picked his way down, Verdict leading, finger resting alongside the trigger guard.
The alley at the bottom opened between what might've once been boutique storefronts. Shattered display windows gaped like missing teeth. Something pale and segmented scuttled behind broken glass—not big enough to be a threat yet. Blake ignored it, scanning instead for movement in the deeper shadows ahead where the alley met the mall proper.
A sound stopped him cold: some kind of clicking, like teeth chattering. Close. Too close.
Blake hugged an overturned kiosk as a cutter stalked into view, bone scythes where hands belonged, spine jerking like a faulty winch. Its lidless gaze swept the alleyway. Then it inhaled, a deep, shuddering taste of the air, and its head snapped toward him. The creature began to prowl closer.
Blake could take the thing's head off with Verdict easily at this distance, but the gun's report would draw every other undead in the mall. Not a great start. He thumbed the pistol safe and slid it home, drawing Fang instead. The narrow blade flashed in the artificial sunlight.
There was nothing for it: he'd have to take this one up close and personal, blade-arms be damned. He stood up from cover, moving out and into the creature's path, stance low and ready for the inevitable clash.
The cutter hissed and charged, thrusting forward with a vicious stab that leveraged every inch of its reach advantage.
Blake didn't back away. He pivoted on his right foot as the blade sliced through empty air. The creature's momentum carried it right past Blake, slightly off-balance, utterly defenseless for a fraction of a second.
Blake's right hand moved in a tight, efficient arc. He channeled a stream of mana into Fang, summoning the shimmering, cobalt energy of [Phantom Edge]. The blade bit into the creature's elbow joint. There was no resistance, no grating of bone. Just a clean, shearing sensation as the reinforced edge passed through desiccated flesh and ossified ligaments. The cutter's arm, scythe and all, dropped to the ground with a clatter.
The thing staggered, spinning to look between Blake and its severed arm, and then threw its head back to look toward the ceiling. It was going to scream. Blake just knew it. And that scream would bring the whole damned mall down on him. Lunging, Blake slammed the heel of his left hand into its open mouth. With a surge of Intent, he flooded the thing's mouth with Force, cutting the sound off before it could leave its throat. Blake pushed, another focused pulse of kinetic force jerking the creature's head back and staggering it again.
Blake charged in after it, but the tentacles on either side of its ribcage lashed out like whips, keeping him at bay. Enraged, the creature righted itself, its remaining scythe a blur, aimed for his ribs. Blake threw himself back, the tip of the bone blade scraping a line across his combat suit. He landed hard, the impact jarring him, but scrambled back to his feet.
The cutter followed, its single blade carving vicious arcs. Blake dodged a wide swing, but the creature was faster than its shambling gait suggested. As he sidestepped, one of the tentacles managed to coil around his leg. He twisted away, breaking the grapple before he could get run through, but the evasive maneuver cost him his footing.
He stumbled, one boot skidding on a patch of gore. For a heartbeat, he was wide open. The cutter lunged, bringing its scythe down in a brutal, cleaving blow. Blake had no time to evade, no angle for a counter. He threw his arms up, crossing them in a desperate block.
The bone blade struck his gauntlets with a dull thwack. Pain lanced up his arms as the force of the impact traveled through the armor plates. He grunted, shoving the creature back to create a sliver of space. Deep gouges scarred the surface of his gauntlets. Another hit like that and it would punch straight through.
He needed more reach. Fang was a scalpel, but right now he needed a machete. Maybe literally.
An idea, born of desperation, instinct, and no small amount of inescapable nostalgia, took shape. He focused his Intent, visualizing the blade not as it was, but as he needed it to be. He poured a steady stream of mana into Fang, feeling the familiar thrum of his Warp core answer the call. A construct of pure force, shimmering and translucent, wrapped around the physical blade, extending its length from 6 inches to a full meter. He layered the Phantom Edge over it, the air around the new weapon humming with contained power.
It felt solid in his hand, weightless yet potent. He gave it a test swing, the elongated blade cutting a silent, perfect line through the air.
He tried not to be disappointed that it didn't hum as it moved. He failed. You never outgrow some things. Still, if this makeshift weapon cut half as well as its inspiration, he'd be happy.
Of course, there was a slight problem: Blake didn't know anything about actually wielding a sword in combat. He had a little experience using a fencing sabre, but that was a sport. It would have to do for now.
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Blake adjusted his stance, placing his heels in line. He turned his back foot to a near 90-degree angle, shifting it slightly forward. His feet were about 15 inches apart. His back knee bent inward toward his foot while his front knee stayed slightly bent. Most of his weight settled on the back foot. The newly formed sword felt awkward in his grip. It was nearly weightless in a way that felt wrong.
The cutter, undeterred by its missing arm, lunged again.
Blake stepped into a standard retreat to give himself space and met the attack with a clumsy parry. It was challenging to adjust to the blade's lack of mass. The force construct deflected the bone scythe, but the impact jarred him. His wrist twisted at a bad angle, and the follow-through was a wide, telegraphed swing that the cutter easily dodged. A mistake. A novice's mistake.
He knew it the instant it happened. And not just from experience. Blake's [Battlewright] skill was active in his core, and pulling mana in a way it almost never did. The skill tended to be relatively passive, simply acting as an umbrella for his various combat skills. But now it was alight with activity, cataloguing every mistake Blake made.
But that was useful if you knew how to accept critique. And Blake was nothing if not an eager student—at least when it came to combat.
The cutter pressed its advantage, its single blade a flurry of stabs and slashes. Blake gave ground, his movements stiff.
[ This stance excels in straight-line movement, but lacks lateral movement options. ]
Right, that made sense. There wasn't a ref here to knock him for his form. He allowed himself to relax and focus less on fencing footwork and more on simply remaining mobile. He flexed [Unfettered Stride] as another stab came in, paying close attention to the feedback from the skill as it helped optimize his movements. He was right to think his footwork would need to adapt to accommodate a longer blade. But he was learning.
He blocked another strike, this time remembering to keep his wrist locked, absorbing the shock with his entire arm and shoulder. Better. The correction felt immediate, natural. He could feel the pathways of his combat skill shifting, "locking in" the gains he was making. That was how he understood [Battlewright] at least: the skill, theoretically, should make him at least minimally competent in every form of combat he tried his hand at.
So far, he hadn't had much occasion to use the skill this way. He wanted to live through his fights, and that meant leveraging his most familiar tools. It was clear now that [Battlewright] wasn't just a skill; it was a tutor, and a damned effective one.
He sidestepped a downward chop, the bone scythe punching through the tiling where his foot had been and meeting the steel below. As he moved, he adjusted his stance further, widening it, sinking his center of gravity. The shift grounded him, lending his next movement a stability that had been absent before. He brought the energy blade around in a horizontal sweep. It was still clumsy, but it connected. The construct sliced into the cutter's torso, leaving a deep gash.
The creature shrieked, a high, thin sound of pain and rage. Thankfully, in its mindless rage the thing hadn't dislodged the force construct that had plugged its mouth, so the sound barely carried. Blake hoped it was enough.
The cutter recoiled as it screamed, its tentacular appendages flailing. Blake didn't give it a chance to recover. He advanced, his earlier hesitation replaced by a focused intent. Every error was a lesson learned in real-time. He felt the awkwardness of the long blade receding, his body adapting with an unnatural speed. The grip felt more secure, the balance less alien.
He thrust forward, a proper lunge this time, once more leaning on his muscle memory from fencing. He put his whole body into the motion, driving the point of the energy blade deep into the creature's chest. The cutter convulsed, its remaining arm flailing wildly.
Two things happened at once.
First, [Battlewright] was kind enough to chime in as Blake's attack landed.
[ Thrusts do not guarantee incapacitation, unlike severing attacks. Resilient enemies, like undead or constructs, can sustain lethal damage while remaining combat-effective. ]
Secondly, the damned undead surged forward, impaling itself further on Blake's blade but closing into lethal range. That probably wasn't a tournament-legal move.
Blake swore, adrenaline spiking, and felt the world slow as [Quicksilver Mind] kicked in to buy him a precious few seconds of extra time to think. Given that the cutter's blade arm was already alarmingly close to divorcing Blake's head from his neck, he appreciated it.
He forced himself to calm down. To weigh the variables. In the end, the solution was a simple one. Time resumed its regular, relentless march, and Blake acted.
First, he twisted the blade, widening the wound. He felt the flow of his mana, the way it fed the construct, the subtle feedback as it carved through the creature's internal structure. With a desperate flood of mana, Blake widened the blade construct—and its [Phantom Edge]—to a full meter. It was now a square, supernaturally sharp on three sides. Impractical as a weapon, but incredibly effective for bisecting the undead whose chest the blade had been in.
Secondly, Blake manifested a simple plane of force above his left shoulder, intercepting the scythe as it came in. The cutter's top half didn't care that it was dead. Momentum carried the scythe forward. It slammed into the plane of force above Blake's shoulder, which flared and shattered like cheap glass. The block was flimsy—a consequence of splitting his Intent between offense and defense. He wasn't good enough to do both at once. Not yet.
Still, the impact bled the attack's killing speed. Blake twisted, but the curved blade still found him. It raked across his chest plate with a nails-on-a-chalkboard screech, carving a shallow groove in the armor. But it held.
[ Battlewright has gained experience. ]
He ripped the blade free and took several steps back as the cutter collapsed, twitching, to the tiled floor. Blake wasn't sure what made the thing tick, but he wagered that losing almost all the blood in its body was enough to take it out. He looked down at the construct that glowed softly around Fang. He wasn't a master swordsman, not by a long shot. But he was a learner. Maybe he should invest in more melee weaponry as well.
On the floor, the cutter shuddered violently one final time, then lay still. After another moment, it actually seemed to deflate somewhat, as if something vital that was propping it up had fled. That was a mystery for later, however.
One down, too damned many left to go.