Book Three - Chapter Twenty-One (Patreon)

Echo left Alarion’s hand as a dagger and ended its journey as a greatsword aimed at Anastacia’s heart. With that much momentum behind it, six feet of Vitrian steel was something to dodge rather than endure, but Anastacia swatted it away with the back of one gauntlet.

Surprised but undeterred, Alarion flickered to his weapon before it flew too far away. Appearing in the air slightly above her, Alarion twisted and slammed Isha down toward Anastacia with everything he had.

And she caught it.

Up close, Alarion could hear a soft whine underlying each and every one of Anastacia’s movements, as though the armor were protesting her actions. A weakness, perhaps? Or just a quirk of artifice. Either way, it didn’t stop her from tightening her grip around one of Isha’s prongs and throwing Alarion back across the field.

More than just armor.

Alarion tumbled through the air, but landed on his feet to the distant cheer of the 238th. He’d almost forgotten they were watching all of this. It wasn’t enough to beat her. It needed to be decisive.

Which was going to be difficult.

Kali couldn’t catch a hit like that from Isha, not even a half-hearted mid-air strike, let alone one empowered by both [Orphan’s Vow] and [Guardian Oath]. She was strong and durable, but her speed and reflexes didn’t seem to be any weaker than earlier. Did it drain her mental attributes? Or was overpowered equipment just one of the privileges of obscene wealth and status? Did her skill enhance the armor, or was there another passive skill entirely?

And how does she have one of Valentina’s spells?

That had thrown Alarion far more off balance than the armor ever would. The answer was obvious—the challenge dungeon was in Vitrian possession, and Anastacia would be a prime candidate to attempt it—but the thought made him sick. It made him angry. That was his place, and fragmented as they were, those were his memories.

Had Valentina fed her? Tutored her? Laughed with her?

Was he jealous?

“I said I want you to be serious,” said Anastacia, like a teacher scolding a belligerent student. “This will not go—”

One of Alarion’s thrown daggers missed Anastacia’s face by inches. Forced to turn her head to the side to evade the attack, she was slow on the defense as Alarion rushed her.

Slow, and overconfident.

She’d tried the same defence twice, but this time Alarion had momentum to spare. Off balance and unprepared, Isha crashed into Anastacia’s outstretched arm and slammed her hand back into her body. The attack would have killed or maimed anyone else in the 238th, but it only made Anastacia angry.

Or was she excited?

Her mailed fist arced down on Alarion in a wild haymaker, but he slid in alongside it and drove Echo against Anastacia’s exposed midsection as he went. The blade didn’t penetrate, but left a long, nasty gash along the once-pristine breastplate, revealing that the dark metal was neither painted nor lacquered.

“You are one to talk,” Alarion retorted at last as Echo shrank in his hand, allowing him to slip out just ahead of another counter. She was just as fast as ever, but her size was a problem all its own. Up close she was ungainly, unfamiliar with her own reach.

“You are right,” she admitted grudgingly. “Full Equip: Railin Halberd!”

Before Alarion could even begin to guess what a Railin Halberd was, it hit him.

Nine feet in length with a two-pronged crescent-moon blade, the Railin Halberd was a foreign Awakened weapon similar in intent to an Imperial Greatsword. Which was to say, someone had taken a crescent halberd, and ramped up the weight and size to a degree no unenhanced human could reasonably wield.

In Alarion’s hands, the halberd would have looked more ridiculous than Echo. Not so with Anastacia—at least, not in her armor. She swung the weapon like an extension of her body, nearly knocking Alarion off his feet in their first clash of blade against halberd. The second wasn’t much better for Alarion, nor was the third when she instead thrust with the halberd’s spear-tipped head.

At last, Alarion understood the oddity he’d seen in her fighting style during their training mission—the constant overcommitment. Anastacia was no duelist at heart, no precise knife fighter like Sierra. She was a brute, like him.

And she loved fighting.

“Come on!” Anastacia shouted, a wild grin on her lips. She whirled the oversized halberd around her body like a street performer, only to slam it down so hard against Alarion’s guard that his feet sank inches deep into the soil. “We haven’t even begun!”

Alarion parried another strike with Isha as best he could, then threw Echo backward and flickered to it. The halberd was unfamiliar, and Anastacia’s naked aggression even more so. He needed to get away from her. To catch his breath and strategize.

She was having none of it.

Alarion’s feet had barely found the grass before she was on top of him again, their blades clashing, her armor whining.

“I know you can do better,” she said as her crescent blade took a few strands of his hair in passing. “Stop cowering and—”

An unexpectedly swift parry shut her up, replacing that wide smile with a momentary flicker of consternation. Talented as she was, Anastacia could no doubt feel something was wrong—that the momentum had shifted. His defense was too clean, and her attacks felt abnormally sloppy.

“I’m finally worthy of some of your skills, am I?” Though it sounded like a complaint, her blue eyes gleamed with excitement. She stepped back, putting space between them and instead peppering him with attacks from the farthest reach her halberd allowed.

The girl was a battle junkie, but she wasn’t stupid enough to rush in against an unfamiliar skill. Pity, that.

“Some of them,” Alarion confessed. There were skills he couldn’t use—either because he didn’t have them, like [Arcane Enhancement], or because he shouldn’t have them, like [Everything They Left Behind]—but with [Near and Far] and [Foresight] now working in tandem, Alarion had very little left to work with.

Near and Far [Ancient]

Description: With training, you have gained a better understanding of the push and pull, the Ebb and Flow of combat. More importantly, you have learned to manipulate this balance to your advantage, both through your actions and through a sympathetic bond with your opponent.

Requirements: None.

Type: Active

Effects: To activate, channel a minor amount of MP and stamina, with a slight stamina upkeep. The user creates a sympathetic bond with one target who is engaged in direct combat with the user. For the duration of this active skill, the user and target are subject to the condition [Near and Far].

Under this condition, both affected parties gain a stacking increase to either offensive or defensive actions, with a corresponding decrease in the unselected category, capping at a moderate increase/decrease. The user can change the offense/defense status of both himself and his target at will. The user can reset the stacking bonus at will, though the reset will apply to all parties.

This condition can be resisted by those with defenses against involuntary sympathetic links.

Growths: LUK +14

At least in terms of skills.

“Does that suit come with a helmet?”

He didn’t actually care. Throwaway banter like that was nothing more than a distraction, but when the gap in their reactions was measured in milliseconds, any delay was an advantage. If she paused to think as he went on the attack, all the better.

The sudden swing from defensive to offensive power was the most maddening aspect of [Near and Far], or so Alarion had been told. Anastacia had just gotten a grip on her reduced offensive strength, only to have Alarion pull the rug out from under her yet again.

There was no easy answer to [Near and Far]. If she worked with the skill—attacking when he attacked, defending when he defended—then she ceded the initiative entirely; a terrible idea in any fight. But fighting against it was no better—especially when Alarion could shift the bonus and penalty with nothing but a thought.

“When I need it.” Anastacia smirked, even as Alarion pressed her back across the grassland. Closer in, and with Anastacia on the defensive, her massive halberd had become a liability. One she quickly discarded with a shout of, “Full Equip: Alephian Sawtooths!”

Her new weapons were strange. The were as long as her armored forearms, each with a wicked curve and crafted with several gaps that produced deep, sawlike hooks. Held in a reverse grip, like oversized fighting daggers, their purpose was clear even before Anastacia put them to use.

Echo slammed into the left-hand saber with enough force to dislocate a lesser woman’s shoulder. Anastacia barely budged as she jerked her arm down. The hooks bit and caught, lodging the Imperial Greatsword in place as Anastacia lashed out with her second saber.

Echo couldn’t change size with something pressed against it, and Alarion couldn’t move without leaving his weapon behind.

So he moved her instead.

With a grunt of effort, and the benefit of all of his offensive skills, Alarion wrenched Echo’s hilt hard enough to make Anastacia stumble and abandon her attack. Planting her feet, she leaned into the pressure, pushing back against the greatsword with everything she had.

She wanted a pure contest of strength? He could do that.

He drove his weight forward, boots carving twin trenches in the grass, and felt Anastacia give an inch. Then take it back. Then give another. She had already sunk past the ankle, and still she held, the soft whine of her armor climbing like a kettle coming to boil.

She slammed her second sword against Echo, and now it was his turn to stumble. One step. Two, then three. He nearly toppled before his heel finally caught on a patch of earth stiff enough to let him hold his ground. Then he returned the favor by hooking Isha’s haft beneath Echo’s blade, devoting all his strength to their match.

Blade to blade, face to face with nothing held back, soon enough it was no longer a contest of strength, but of endurance. They were evenly matched, but something would have to break. One of them would slip, balk, or get tired. And Alarion would be damned if it were him.

“I think you need it,” Alarion said, then slammed his forehead against her nose to emphasize the point.

She barely flinched, even as blood began to trickle from a fresh cut across the bridge of her nose. “Is that the best—”

Taking advantage of her inevitable reprisal, Alarion redirected his effort. Up, not forward. With her two blades hooked around Echo, it was much easier to lift her off the ground than it was to push her back, even if that armor was heavy.

It was also much easier to throw her.

Anastacia hit the ground in a heap, one weapon abandoned in the clash, the other smashed into fragments as Isha descended. She did what she could to recover, but Alarion was relentless, swatting and thrusting at her legs every time she tried to stand. One thrust even drew blood from her thigh, proving her armor was sturdy, but not invulnerable.

“Full Equip—”

Sensing weakness, Alarion pressed the attack, and she punished him for it. He’d been so focused on her hands that he missed the kick to his knee entirely. His leg buckled, and she was on him in a heartbeat, punching, pinning, and grasping for all she was worth.

She was an able grappler, but it was no more her forte than it was his own. And Anastacia was no Kali.

Alarion had spent hundreds of hours on the receiving end of the Sergeant’s punishments, especially in those early days. Any time Alarion became overconfident or overextended, Kali had been all too happy to remind him why a talented grappler was the bane of many an Awakened swordsman or mage.

But not an unbound mage.

“Void Burst!” Alarion chanted.

To absolutely no meaningful effect.

Not no effect. The spell cast, and the world around him darkened as it passed. Several inches of grassland evaporated around them, and Anastacia gave a flinch of pain. But only a flinch. A point-blank [Void Burst] should have have been much worse.

“Empowered Void B—”

Anastacia struck him across the jaw hard enough to ruin both his concentration and his incantation as she growled, “Stop that.”

The tone of her words was off. Not desperate or afraid, nor even smug. She was annoyed. Offended that he’d brought magic into their brawl. And he felt a pressure pushing down on him, something more than her armored bulk. Something familiar but different.

One fleeting glance with [Unraveller’s Sense] was all he could spare. But it was enough. Her skill was unmistakable.

A Will.

It wasn’t flawed and incomplete like Alarion’s [Act of Will], but a fully realized, complex skill. He could have spent hours trying to unravel its secrets, but intuition told him what he needed to know. Spells were off the table unless he wanted to contest her Will with his own.

Alarion did not want to do that.

Though loath to obey her in anything, Alarion abandoned his spellcasting offense and focused on keeping her from beating him to death. He slipped a few punches and managed to tangle his legs around her hips long enough to get a tight grip around the back of her neck. Grasping an armored woman was both easier and harder than taking hold of a brute like Kali. Her armor gave him plenty of things to hold on to, but it had enough sharp edges that she was doing slow, steady damage just by putting her weight on him.

You have suffered slight bludgeoning damage. HP -290.

Alarion could get out from under her given enough time. If he found an opening, he could even catch her in a joint lock and do some damage of his own—but neither was the way he wanted to fight.

He only had a few cards left to play, but she’d left him no option but to play one of his best.

“Strike, Echo!”