NOVEL NEXT Book 2 Chapter 14
A Hellknight was, conceptually, pretty simple: they were the demonic equivalent of an Elven Mage-Knight. A humanoid demon skilled in both weapons and spellcasting, pair-bonded with a larger, quadrupedal demon that had a lot of inherent magical energy but an impaired ability to actually use it. They were the elite, highly-mobile warriors that spearheaded the armies of Hell.
And now I got to fight one.
Yay.
"Talia, horse," I ordered quickly. "Faith, hop on Talia and hold on tight. I'm gonna buy you some time."
"What are you- Joseph!"
I gunned the throttle, charging towards the Hellknight, gun already blazing. The black, chitinous armor he was wearing seemed to deflect all the bullets, but he wasn't completely shrugging them off, either- they were, at least, irritating and distracting him, which gave me time to slip past him, drawing his attention away from Talia and Faith.
I didn't know what exact sort of demon he was- there were too many more-or-less-humanoid-shaped demon varieties for me to know them all, and he was wearing full-body armor complete with a helmet- but his steed was a grotesquely wolf-like monster that seemed to drool fire, and as near as I could tell, that signified a Hellhound- meaning that I also had to worry about the Hellknight's mount breathing fire.
The next time my dad tries to play the "I fought in the War of the Roses" card in an argument, I'm going to point out that I had to fight a Hellknight when I was eighteen.
Well. Assuming I survived this, anyhow. Which was a hell of an assumption.
I zipped past the Hellknight, narrowly dodging a burst of hellfire from the Hellknight's hand- good god I wish they'd stop using "hell-" as a prefix for all things demonic, it sounds ridiculous when you're talking about actual demons for long enough- and whipped around to see... Talia still in the shape of an elf, having ignored my order to turn into a horse.
But, well, it made sense. I was a knight- I saw a mounted opponent and immediately thought to have a mounted duel, because that's what I was trained for. Talia was not a knight, she was a Druid, and quite aside from the fact that mounted combat was hard and she'd never been taught how to do that, she was, first and foremost, a spellcaster.
And right now, she was casting a spell to summon up an elemental spirit, which was rapidly coalescing from black sand into the shape of some strange four-legged beast, which reminded me more of a lizard than a mammal.
Right. Here's hoping that hellfire does not turn out to be a hard counter to a sand elemental.
I kicked my bike back in gear, and sped down towards the Hellknight, who now had to deal with both the Mage-Knight coming at him from one side and the sand elemental coming at him from the other. Evidently, though, I was judged the bigger threat, as the Hellknight turned to face me, shooting off a barrage of firebolts in my general direction that'd be abominably hard to duck and weave through.
I cast a quick fire-aspected shielding spell, and then did my best to weave through the gaps. I still got clipped by a few of them, but aside from a bit of drained magicka, I was fine, and got close enough that the Hellknight couldn't rely on spells anymore.
Steel rang against steel, as I deflected her sword with my own.
Once upon a time, I'd wanted to make my own sword. I was a machinist, I knew how to turn metal into finished goods. But then I learned more about metallurgy, and the fact that, no, a sword really did have to be forged, not machined, and also that, no, I did not want to spend the years it'd take to learn how to forge well enough to make a sword that was actually good. Not when I had a much better alternative.
Frederick Ironheart had already learned the art of the forge, in his youth, and had produced a number of high-quality swords for Mage-Knights and soldiers alike. But a few swords he'd made, he kept, in pristine condition, waiting for the right moment. And when his nephew needed a sword of his own? Well, what moment would possibly be more right than that?
Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.
I kept going after the impact, my arm a little jarred, but otherwise unharmed. Frederick's work was ostentatiously plain and undecorated, but he could get away with that for a reason: it really was just that good, even before it was enchanted by an ancient archmage, and could stand up to a high-speed impact with a Hellknight's sword without so much as a nick in the blade.
Unfortunately, it turned out that a Hellhound could turn on a dime, and now I had an angry Hellknight at my back, with only speed as my recourse. Talia and Faith were right in front of me, so I had to do some turning to keep the Hellknight from barreling into them, but I could manage it, especially with some quick magic to harden the sand beneath my tires for better grip. Plus, if I did it just right...
"Hell yeah!" Talia crowed, as the sand elemental collided with the Hellknight, catching him in the side at the apex of a powerful leap. The ensuing struggle was brief, and did not end in the sand elemental's favor, but it wasn't a clean victory for the Hellknight- in the initial impact, before hellfire could roast the sand elemental into molten glass, the elemental had managed to dislodge the Hellknight's helmet (hellmet? No, no, that's stupid), revealing...
...Ah, shit, that's another goddamn Succubus. She's got her own Occult bullshit, and this is a Big Dramatic Twist, and she's gonna capitalize on that.
"Is this the best the mortal plane can muster?" she demanded, as I skidded to a stop and turned to face her. "A half-trained Mage-Knight on a bicycle and a lizard made of sand? Your decadent softness will be the end of you."
I scowled; I did not like where this was going. If she wasn't an Occultist, I wouldn't bother listening to her- I simply did not care what the denizens of Hell thought, and I especially did not care about what the followers of Paimon, who had killed me, kidnapped my friends, and stolen my van, thought. But... Well, she was an Occultist, and I needed to know what kind of story she was trying to tell here, and why the shape of that story ensured her victory.
"I'm 18 years old," I said dryly. "And so far, you have failed to so much as draw my blood. Tell me, what exactly makes you think you're winning, here?"
She was gonna monologue anyways- why not give her a prompt to get it all out more efficiently, so I have to listen to as little of her bullshit in the process?
"It's an inevitability," she said. "King Lysander, forged in the fires of the Fairy Rebellion, was the greatest fighter who ever lived, and millennia of the Dark Crusades kept him sharp. But Lucifer is gone, and so is Lysander; you and your kind have known nothing but peace, and soft times make soft men."
Oh no. Ohhhh not this bullshit.
"The fires and trials and miseries of Hell have hardened me, made me strong," she continued. "Steel sharpens steel, and this blade will-"
She was cut off by a force bolt to the face, being very nearly unseated by the impact.
"I do not care," I began, loudly, "about the stupid lies you tell yourself about why it's not only normal but good that your parents hit you when you were a child. I don't care about your miserable, self-serving worldview of victims and victimizers, where kindness is somehow a worse cruelty than torture. I don't care about your excuses. So do me one little kindness and shut the fuck up, before I come over there and make you."
When I looked back on this moment, I'd view it as the Occult equivalent of a counterspell, dismantling the narrative she peddled to replace it with my own, stronger narrative. In the moment, however, I wasn't thinking about it in such cold, detached terms. She was wrong, both factually and morally, and I was right.
I gunned the throttle one last time, sword raised to finally finish this farce of a fight. She spurred her own mount towards me, a fierce scowl upon her face that was spoiled by the blood leaking from the corner of her mouth, her own sword- visibly chipped where it had impacted my own- raised to meet me.
In the middle, we collided. My own sword went through her eye, through the gap in her skull, through her brain, and managed to punch through the solid bone in the back of her skull.
Her sword, taking a path of lesser resistance, slipped between my ribs, and into my heart.