NOVEL NEXT 65 - The Sarcastic Peasant Gets A Chance To Be Useful
"Xander?" said the soldier in shock. He didn't lower his spear. "No, no, no. This must be a trick. This has to be."
"Stand down," Archmund said, wheezing the words out. It hurt to talk. It hurt to breathe.
"My lord…?" the soldier said. "No, this can't… what's…"
The soldier looked like Xander, but a few years older and taller, and his hair was cut short in some mimicry of military regulation. Obviously he was Xander's brother.
There was a jagged bracelet of Gemstone around his left hand, and half his fingers were missing, their edges ragged, as if they had been bitten off. There were no Gemstone Bracelets of any sort in their inventory, and the cut was far too sharp for safety. More likely he'd been assigned a Gemstone Gauntlet, which had been bitten off by one of the horses, taking his fingers with it, and then shattered a bit more after.
"Say something only Xander would," the soldier said.
"When you were ten you killed a chicken just to watch it die and blamed it on a fox, and made me swear I'd never tell mother and father."
What a stable and healthy family. These were among the best and brightest Granavale County had to offer.
"You could still be a trick," the soldier said. "Some ghost dredging up my deepest fears…"
"Do you really have that luxury?" Archmund said. Gods, it still hurt to talk and breathe. "Dead… either way…"
"What are you doing here?" the soldier said, mostly to Xander. "It's… far too dangerous."
"We failed you," Archmund said. "Not trained well enough."
Gods, it hurt to breathe.
He turned back to the fight; Rory parried the Centaur's blows yet again. Neither of them made progress much either way. There was sweat dripping off of Rory, in the dimming light of Archmund's Ruby Tetrahedron. Yet though the Centaur raged wildly, it didn't slow at all. All it could do was rage in its pain and anger and hunger.
Archmund raised his Gemstone Rapier.
"You're not going in again, are you?" Xander said.
"You saw what I did," Archmund said. It still hurt, everywhere, but he felt he could push through the pain, stay on his feet and his miraculously-whole limbs just long enough for another round of attacks.
That was the difference between the living and the dead. The dead wallowed in their pain and lashed out to stop it. The living could overcome it.
"Think you can do the same?"
"That thing with the poking," Xander said. He raised his Gemstone Rapier, and it flashed with the briefest yellow light. He jabbed it forward and back. Just a bit, and with surprising speed and agility for a largely untrained peasant, but nowhere near the speed of Archmund's Flurry of Blows. He supposed it was too much to hope for.
"Normal stabbing should still work," Archmund said. "If we go at it from both sides…"
"What if he gets hit?" Xander's brother said.
A very reasonable objection. Archmund had taken a direct hit and slammed through a wooden barricade, and he felt like every bone in his body was about to break. He'd only been saved by his skill Bodily Barrier, and he seriously doubted it would work twice.
"Stay near Rory and stay cautious," Archmund said. "I'll make myself the bigger threat. Think you can do that?"
Yet his brother still protested.
Stolen novel; please report.
"The risk—"
"I swore to serve the people of Granavale and the Empire," Xander said, though his voice was small. "And you're injured. Badly."
Xander had changed. It was a big shift from the boy who'd swaggered up to Archmund in town, all full of bravado.
It was the Gemstone Rapier. It had to be. The magic had flowed out of him, and into the crystalline matrix, and back into his soul, and it had changed him. He'd gone from rebellious commoner to diligent noble guard. One willing to lay his life down for his liege.
Well, that was Archmund's theory. But it disturbed him. It was terrifying how fundamentally someone could be changed in an afternoon by picking up a sword and swinging it a few times.
Or maybe it was the pressure of life and death, accelerating the process. Who knew? He supposed someone did, but it wasn't him. Maybe Raehel. If he ever made it back to her.
Or maybe Xander was actually of a pure and noble character, and Archmund was just an asshole for assuming he wasn't because he'd been rude once.
"Ready?" Xander said. His brother opened his mouth to object, but a single glare silenced him.
"You're being reckless," Archmund said.
"I'm being reckless," Xander said in disbelief. "I'm being reckless. You just—"
"Survived," Archmund said. "I survived. Would you?"
Xander had no answer to that.
"Run behind Rory," Archmund said. "Tell him the plan. Kite the beast to the other side, and then we start stabbing."
It worked at first.
The Hundred-Eyed Centaur was focused on Rory, still raining its blows upon him, but as Archmund walked forward, the eyes on its flank focused on him, the irises dilating to the size of dinner plates, more human than equine.
When he saw that, he pulsed his magic through his Ruby Tetrahedron, flashing and dimming the light. Human eyes needed time to readjust between light and dark. It took a good bit of his focus, and he doubted he'd be able to maintain it once he got close enough to start with his Flurry of Blows, but he could disorient it.
Just enough for Xander to get to Rory safely.
(It was another thing to practice. Do it until it felt instinctual, and it would be a new Skill. But it just didn't make sense to practice it now, to just make the Monster uncomfortable, when so much of his magic was spent on holding his body together, and he needed to spend the remainder on his Flurry of Blows to wear the Monster down.)
All three of them were in position.
Archmund let the magic into the Gemstone Rapier.
The blade did feel heavier in his hands. The instinct of the Skills, the twitch, the dance, the flow, felt ever so slightly slower. There was resistance in his magic, pushing against his will to Make It Do Things. It wanted to flow back into him, screaming against his urging to use it to kill, to keep him alive.
Perhaps he was imagining things.
He began his Flurry of Blows. Stabbing, and stabbing, and stabbing, always aiming for a fresh eye.
The Centaur's eyes regenerated with each stab, blinking wildly, turning bloodshot, but regenerating all the same. Archmund wondered why it didn't just stop regenerating in the same pattern. Perhaps that was the nature of instinct — to be whole. To regress to wholeness, regardless if danger would maim in the same way again. Unable to grow in a way that would stop the pain altogether, only diminish it.
On the other side, Xander also stabbed, but without the benefit of a Skill. Archmund could feel the impacts of Xander's blade in the Centaur's flesh, could feel the reverberations through the meat, how Xander's blade would stick, going in and out with just a bit of gooey resistance, a friction his own Skill eliminated.
The Centaur thrashed about, its arms swinging wildly like great rotors, and yet it was unable to focus on the two of them. Whenever it roared in pain and tried to turn upon Archmund or Xander, Rory would shift his Gemstone Quarterstaff upward and strike it in the neck, the tip of his weapon gleaming with crimson-red light.
Archmund found his eyes flicking towards the light, which pulsed and flashed slowly, but with focus he could tear his eyes away. It was some sort of taunt. Rory hadn't displayed that power before.
Maybe watching Archmund get punched and go flying through a wooden barricade had awakened the Skill in him.
And he really hoped that was the case. Because it was working unreasonably effectively. Every time the Centaur whirled upon him or Xander, Rory's staff flashed like an anglerfish's lure, and the Centaur was drawn back.
It couldn't adapt. They could change. It had strength. They had Skills. It was dead rage. They were desperate life.
So they whittled it down, one blow following another. After every strike with a rapier, every bone broken by Rory's impacts, the beast bled. Yet it only took instants, and its wounds knit back together.
For a moment he could believe he'd entered a comfortable rhythm. Stabbing out those hundred oddly-human eyes had become almost rote, almost routine. Like a game of whack-a-mole, or connect-the-dots, or filling out a spreadsheet.
But there were always, always, always unpleasant surprises.
The darkness of the Dungeon bubbled, and another three horses arose from the depths. From the corner of his eye Archmund saw how their eyes tracked the weaving and bobbing of Rory's quarterstaff, drawn in by its taunt.
He shifted his magic away from his Gemstone Rapier, trusting in his comrades and his Deflection to keep him alive, channeling as much power to his Ruby Tetrahedron.
It darted before him like a hummingbird. Almost excited to face those Monstrous horses.
And so was he.