Re: Butterfly (Reincarnated as a Butterfly)

"Where is Lord Baranack?" King Alistair asked. His voice was calm, despite the subject of his question. Despite the overflowing power that coursed through his body and all around it, enveloping him like an ocean current. Despite the power of his opponent, whose power gave off a bit of pressure of its own even through the King's protective aura.

The demon that stood across from him stood in silence for a moment, prompting Alistair to continue.

"I can smell his stench on you," the King insisted. "Where is Lord Baranack?"

When I win, I want him turned over to my custody, he thought. But he knew he was in no position to insist on something like that. The Empire had no reason to even listen to additional terms from him.

"The answer to that question is of little concern to a dead man," Count Racomo—for so the demon had introduced himself—said.

"You will be disappointed to learn that I intend to survive, then," Alistair said dryly.

Perhaps I will thrash the answer out of you, impudent bastard.

He had to take his wrath over his daughter's abandonment in the dungeon out on someone. And here was an appropriate target.

Alistair closed the distance, concentrated his aura into a single point around his fist, and threw the first punch.

—

Under a white silk tent, one among a line of black and white colored silk tents that dotted the field in front of the city walls, Lord Baranack shivered.

He felt a sensation much like a premonition, coupled with a skin-crawling tension that emanated from the area just outside Wayn.

"I just felt the strangest sense of… I do not know what," he muttered after a moment. "A familiar presence? A familiar voice?"

He spoke the words under his breath, but the others in the command tent with him all broke off their conversations and turned his way.

"Did you hear what the King said?" asked General Niccoso, an interested expression spreading across his face.

"What the King said?" Baranack repeated.

The duel is starting already? They do not tell me anything anymore…

"He was asking for you," General Moloton replied bluntly. "Did you hear the words or not?"

Lord Baranack shook his head. The interest visibly left General Niccoso's face, and he turned his mustached visage back to the table.

"We should finish our meeting," he said, "and worry less about Lord Baranack's premonitions of disaster."

Justiciar Wertov and Duke Sebas snickered. General Moloton rolled his eyes and drained another goblet of wine, then set the golden cup down with a loud clank on the table, prompting a page to rush to refill it.

Only General Orsino seemed to remain interested in the man they had brought with them to run the city.

"Interesting that you had a bad feeling despite your senses being so dull," was all he said.

"Back on task, please, Orsino," said General Niccoso. "It is only that the King's killing intent is too obvious. We have to protect Lord Baranack, but in these matters of fighting, it is clear that he is—begging your pardon, my lord—only baggage to be guarded."

No offense taken, General, Lord Baranack thought dryly. Not that they would care if he did take offense.

"At your will, General," replied General Orsino, acknowledging by his compliant tone and posture that Niccoso had the overall command of the invasion.

General Niccoso seemed to enjoy the flattery. There was a little glint in his eye as he continued. "Now, as for what we will do if the King loses the duel and the city decides to continue resisting anyway—"

"Wait, who is fighting the King?" Lord Baranack asked. "If the high command does not mind a mere piece of luggage asking a question."

"Our third strongest fighter here after me and General Moloton," Niccoso replied bluntly. "Do you have any other questions, or can we return to discussing the future?"

Baranack had no further questions.

—

"You do not like to waste time, do you?" asked Count Racomo through gritted teeth from behind his shield. Despite Racomo making an effort to sound offhand, he was clearly surprised by the strength behind the punch.

As he took it on his black shield, the King's blow had forced the Count to take a step back. Alistair had also heard a small cracking noise on impact, and he guessed that the punch had caught Racomo less than prepared.

Perhaps I broke one of his fingers.

"I see no point in drawing out your defeat," Alistair replied. "I am no demon, to take pleasure in inflicting cruelty."

Both men ignored the reactions of the crowd—cheers from behind Alistair, shouted advice from the Empire's soldiers dozens of yards away.

Racomo jerked his shield to the side and lunged into the gap that separated him from Alistair, stabbing up with a dagger.

Alistair batted the blade away with a chainmail-covered wrist and took a couple of steps back himself. The arm he had used to punch the shield felt strange.

In the moment when Racomo was recovering his balance and pulling back to his previous stance, the King's eyes darted down to his right hand—the hand he had struck with. Almost all of the aura he had surrounded that hand with had dissipated.

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I see. That shield…

It was one of the new weapons Rosslyn had warned him about. Their agent in the Empire had informed the Princess that the demons had discovered a mineral that had the property of absorbing mana.

So that is what the mineral looks like.

The shield was an ebony octagon strapped onto the Count's left arm. Based on the brief fight thus far, it reminded Alistair of volcanic glass: shiny and stiff. He hadn't felt any give from the shield when he struck it, only from Racomo's arm and hand.

The Count sheathed his dagger, drew a sword, and lunged at Alistair. The King played for time, dodging backward and to the side so that the swordpoint fell short, and the subsequent slash just missed him too.

Why would they give him a shield made from this material? It must be slowing him down. Perhaps the Empire discovered the mineral so recently that they have yet to figure out proper applications for it.

The King ducked under a slash, and he heard the blade's edge slice through the air just inches from his hair once more. He threw a punch in response, and there was a satisfying crunch as his fist struck against the Count's armor. Racomo coughed and staggered back, the wind knocked out of his lungs, and Alistair stepped after him.

"You truly do not intend to draw a weapon?" the Count managed. As he spoke, he raised his sword and jabbed at Alistair, forcing the King to keep his distance.

"Do I need one for you?" Alistair replied mockingly.

The truth was that sometimes, a weapon was only a distraction in a fight between two who could use mana. For someone with mana reserves as large as the King's, his body was the best weapon.

He dove at the Count, and Alistair had to weave his body around another sword slash in midair. Then Racomo dropped the sword.

Alistair struck Racomo's center of mass at the same moment that he felt a heavy object strike him on the side of the neck. He felt a cold, unpleasant, draining sensation on top of the blunt force trauma, and then he was tumbling away from the Count, his momentum gone, a coppery taste filling his mouth.

The King coughed a couple of times as he pushed himself to his feet. He tried to ignore the sharp pangs of pain emanating from the side of his neck where the weapon had struck him. He brushed the back of his hand over his lips. It came away crimson.

Alistair looked over at his waiting opponent, saw the club in the other man's hand, and understood. Count Racomo had replaced the sword he threw away with a thick baton made of the same material as his shield, that odd mineral that drained mana with a touch.

Troublesome. Seems that this mineral is functional as a weapon. Maybe using my hands instead of my sword was a bad idea. I keep having to get close up to strike him. With the shield and that club protecting each flank, it will be hard to strike a lethal blow.

That pain in his neck wasn't going away, either.

He cracked his knuckles and smiled at Racomo.

Time to go all out.

The King took a deep breath and pulled out everything he could. All the raw power he had been sitting on as he decided how best to handle the duel. The strength he had not needed to use in a decade or more.

The aura that had been ebbing and flowing all around Alistair flared up. His pulse skyrocketed. His vision tunneled. He only had eyes for the Count now.

In the next minute, one of them would be dead—or both of them.

"Grr…" Alistair's body hunched slightly, his posture, expression turned bestial by the raw power that flowed through him.

"You—" Racomo's next words were cut off as the King lunged across the distance that separated the two men.

The Count staggered to the side, trying to avoid an attack roughly twice as swift as the moves the King had made thus far.

Alistair managed to grab hold of a chunk of armor plating that protected Racomo's right arm. The metal tore away like wet cardboard in his hand.

The Count retreated more quickly, stepping back closer to his army's lines. It almost felt as if he wanted to flee the duel, but of course, that wasn't possible. This fight could only end in someone dying or surrendering—the latter outcome so disgraceful for either man that death was really the only conceivable result.

The King darted in close and threw a haymaker with all his momentum and aura behind it. Count Racomo dropped his club and raised his shield, supported by both hands, to block.

Every bit of momentum, strength, and mana Alistair had poured into his right hand struck in a single shattering blow. There was a sound like a thunderclap. Beneath that, Alistair heard the crunching of breaking bone—and something else. A subtle eggshell cracking noise.

Yes!

That was the weakness of this weapon as he had heard it discussed. There was a tolerance limit for the mineral, like the capacity of any container to hold something. He looked down at where his fist and the obsidian shield met, and sure enough, he saw a spiderweb of hairline cracks spreading throughout the structure.

Count Racomo's expression had turned to one of horrendous pain, but he stood firm behind the shield, teeth gritted. Then he pushed forward, using the shield like a battering ram, forcing Alistair to take a step back.

The King smiled grimly. He was feeling the effects of his exertions now. The mineral his opponent had used had sucked up most of his energy like a sponge.

Almost over now, he thought. Just need a few more seconds.

He punched the shield again, this time using very little of the mana he had left. Racomo grunted with the impact and took a couple of involuntary steps back. Alistair could see the Count's grip on his shield was weak. He guessed that a hand or wrist had broken from the heavy blow of ten seconds earlier.

The Count gritted his teeth, took a single step forward, and then the obsidian shield exploded in a massive burst of flames. A cloud of smoke billowed between the two duelists, obscuring Racomo from view.

Alistair smiled grimly.

That was the hazard of this new weapon. When the mineral met its tolerance limit, it became dangerously unstable. Explosive.

With most of Alistair's energy stored inside the shield, it was an incredibly deadly incendiary device.

Did he survive it?

Then Racomo answered the question, stumbling forward out of the smoke. Alistair drew his fist back for one final blow. He threw the punch—and faltered. There was a sudden, sharp pain in his chest.

Not now…

His left hand rose to clutch at his heart.

The Count, visibly charred, one horn snapped off, his shield arm reduced to pink mush up to the elbow, swung a dagger in a hand with three missing fingers. The horribly burnt hand reached its target. The blade passed through a chink in the chainmail and sank deep into Alistair's lower abdomen, though the King hardly felt it in the moment.

"I d-did it," Racomo stammered in a weak yet victorious tone.

A single fist swung through the air and into his throat, ending him with a sickening crunch.

There was a moment of stunned silence as the King fell to his knees beside the limp body of the Count. Then the crowd screamed.

"King Alistair!"

The King managed to raise a single fist in the air, though all he wanted to do was lie down in the dirt. He knew that in a moment, his second would come and help him walk back to the city. He would try to show strength when that happened. For now, his mind was far away. His consciousness seemed almost ready to leave his body behind.

I will see you again, after all, Rosslyn…