NOVEL NEXT 53. Once Then Twice
The dwarf pinned him as he once had pinned her. Her eyes were wet and so close to his and he had both hands on her but could not move her for she was as heavy as a tomb. Her braid had come all apart around her shoulders and he saw the freckles dotting her nose and cheeks and he managed to wrap a circle of her torn coat in his hand but he still could not move her. She drew the head of the [Skyshard] across his vision and the sharpened point of its pick was black even in the red light as if it shed all energy but its own. He saw the wooden shaft passing with its longways grain from polishing and polishing and he saw the hardness of her weeping eyes like two diamonds made for cutting and he felt the pavers of the bridge pressed into his back and shoulders as if the stones themselves encouraged his neck to her point. His other hand found her booted ankle and he pulled with everything he had and the pavers slid an inch against him but it wasn't enough. He readied himself for what he'd earned. The heat of her breath. The smell of sweat on sweat. The iron on his tongue. All of it lay behind him and so little before him. He readied himself.
The pick did not fall.
"Oy!" she called.
He watched her eyes cast sideways to where the [armiger] was laying, now stirring, now straightening. Now sitting up and shedding the cuirass with its creases and dents that had just fractured his ribs and contused the flesh beneath them.
Stolen novel; please report.
"Oy Dara!"
He felt her grip on his neck soften and he slammed his knee into the back of hers and as she stumbled the pick pricked his mandible and he bore down on her coat and bore down on her foot and as she fell over the pick rent his jaw from joint to chin and the black blood of an orc fell onto his neck.
He saw her roll away keeping the [Skyshard] before her but the [armiger] was already standing and calmly placing the [pistol] against her rising chest and Orc saw it fire once then twice into her and he saw the great red flower bloom across the back of her coat. The [Skyshard] dropped from her grasp and clanged against the anvil and at that noise some mechanism of the forge ungated and thousands of tons of molten rock and molten metal poured from the black heart above them and onto a invisible crystalline orb that seemed to encapsulate the chamber. Yellow and red and orange liquid spread across in a sphere and superheated the interior in which they fought as if the sun now descended from its domain to consume theirs. Orc gasped in the heat and closed his eyes against the blinding light and kicked as hard as he could against where the armiger's legs should've been.
> -1 [Rage]: Peace was all I ever wanted for him... (3/10).