TVisTV Book 3: Chapter 47 (RAW) (Patreon)

Chapter 47 - The Better Part of Valor

"The better part of valor is discretion."

- Spoken by Sir John Falstaff in Henry IV, Part 1, Act 5, Scene 4 (William Shakespeare).

In the way that powerful things simply are, so was Velens in that moment. He streaked toward where Frest stood and, calm and clinical, chopped savagely at the nape of his neck. He had not, however, accounted for the gorget, which absorbed most of the force. Even so, the blow was strong enough to mar Frest’s near-legendary aim; his finger spasmed reflexively and the crossbow bolt loosed, only to thud into the wall behind the throne.

Velens looked almost perplexed, as if this was not the result he expected. He stared at his hands as though they belonged to a stranger. His eyes went far away, a look Seraphina often associated with her mother when she was lost to distant things. The will was there, but not fully yet. Not the ability.

“Seize them, you buffoons! Traitors, all of them!” King Elidion barked, the command cutting through the temporary haze.

Seraphina let her estoc drop to the stone with a clatter, drew her zweihander forward, and with some awkward finagling managed to wrench it free. Then she scooped up the estoc in her other hand. It was almost ridiculous, a small girl holding two weapons as if she had been born to it.

She swept a cool gaze around the room, lips parting to deliver a retort, when twin impacts slammed into her from behind.

The Hydra-scale of her armor took the brunt of both physical force and magic, but Seraphina felt it all the same. Her Health bar did too, dropping by twenty points. She hit the cold floor hard, skidding through a sheen of conjured water.

The hussy, Este Lize, had the nerve to use a Water spell. A Water spell! The ignominy stung worse than the pain.

Thieving trollop, Seraphina snarled inwardly as she scrambled up. She centered herself and launched at the gray-eyed girl, mind full of fresh murder, then stopped short.

Sir Gallant stood poised over a bloodied Desdemona, who shielded a slowly recovering Gravens. The de Savant girl’s eyes were wide, the defiance of a cornered wolf in them, sharp with the willingness to die if she had to.

The blonde girl knew she would not make it in time.

With a shriek of frustration, she snapped a spell into being and hurled a Crystal Dagger at Este Lize. It was just enough of a distraction to keep the silver-haired witch occupied. Then Seraphina surged forward, rushing to Desdemona’s side.

Please, she begged herself as she triggered Dash, even as the pink shard of crystal streaked across the room and shattered against one of Este Lize’s mystic shields. Please.

In Seraphina’s old world, there were no gods to hear prayers. No divine force to give voice and substance to mortal wishes. In this world, such powers existed, but they were deaf all the same. Fate could be a cruel whore, yet it also knew mercy. It knew mercy when mercy was forced upon it.

An unnatural green light, a shade different from the jade of Seraphina’s eyes, glowed from the satchel at her side. It pulsed, and time simply refused to continue.

Where there had been nothing, there was suddenly something. And that something was a man: dark-haired, lightly armored in a warrior’s garb, bearing the look of someone who knew he stood on the fulcrum of destiny. A person who had fought a thousand battles to reach this single, sublime moment.

He drew the long, curved blade at his side one-handed, an impossibility, Seraphina thought, until she noticed the scabbard’s modifications. The upper quarter was open, allowing such a draw, and some kind of clip locked the blade in place when sheathed.

Then time resumed its inexorable march.

Steel whispered as the newcomer’s blade met Sir Gallant’s. It was a clash of heroes, and everyone else in the room was merely witness.

Defiant but pragmatic, Elidion abandoned his throne. Guards bundled him toward safety, throwing up a wall of steel between him and the violence unfolding. Lords and ladies streamed out in panicked waves, fleeing the audience chamber as if it had caught fire.

Seraphina pushed herself up, teeth gritted against an unladylike grunt. The new man looked vaguely familiar, like someone she ought to know. He moved with languid precision through sword forms: Heron Dances, The River Runs Through It, Lightning on Stones. His long, curved blade showered sparks each time it contested Sir Gallant’s.

Gallant had the power. The stranger had the skill.

He turned Gallant’s force aside with rolling parries, guiding each strike away before answering with cuts of his own. Gallant, trained to the highest degree, let his armor drink what it could. He blocked or parried only the blows that threatened his unarmored head.

Even so, Seraphina did not need a flawed oracle to see how this ended. This was not a winning fight unless she was willing to unleash the other white-scaled Cataclysm hidden between her breasts. In that moment, she chose retreat. Escape. It was the only way to salvage this stupid situation.

She drove her gauntleted fingers into the mortar gaps of the stone floor and tore up a slab with inexorable pressure. With a grin, she hurled it at Este Lize.

Let’s see you deal with that.

She did not even look to see the impact. There was no time.

Gravens rose onto one knee, face set in grim lines as he snatched his sword from the floor and dragged himself toward Desdemona. De Savant, for her part, was a portrait of feral rage, every scrap of her being clenched tight around the Change threatening to bloom within her.

“We are leaving. Now!” Seraphina ordered, and twin whips of flame crashed toward her.

Dismissive, she conjured a spear of Crystal and swatted the elemental fire aside. Her spell shattered under the strain, but it did its job. Este Lize might have raw power in the Arcane arts, but Seraphina had two lifetimes of experience.

Still, there was another threat: a newly awakened Prince Velens, who had finally drawn his sidesword. It was as if his body could not quite keep pace with his intent.

Even so, he was terrifying.

He swung the flat of his blade at the feral girl in a brutal arc. Desdemona did not wilt; she was no helpless wallflower. She moved with untamed reflexes, hands like claws as she dodged the blow and slashed up at Velens’s face from a low stance.

Velens did not dodge. He did not parry.

He simply flowed. Where Desdemona struck, he simply was not.

Frest joined in, but his contribution was almost meaningless. The Prince slipped around the Knight’s attack with contemptuous ease. To the Crown Prince, he was afterthought. A minor variable.

Never had Seraphina felt so constrained. In a fight like this, her allies were more of a hindrance than any real help. She could not use her Wail of Judgment, and she could not unleash Cornelia in such close confines. Irritation flashed through her, threatening to undo her center.

She launched herself at Velens anyway. Futile or not, she needed time, time for her people to get out. To escape so she could finally vent her true fury and power upon those who called themselves her enemies.

As her armored form flashed past the stranger dueling Sir Gallant, she saw something most peculiar out of the corner of her eye.

Red eyes. Just like…

“Ibn!” she cried as the dots finally connected in the whirl of combat. Against all reason, a compulsion seized her, the need to know. To confirm what could not be.

Unfamiliar magic spilled from her lips, sight beyond sight. It was the spell Identify, the hunger to understand.

Ibn [Human] - Swordmaster (lvl.31)

Health: 535/581

Stamina: 43/57

Mana: 13/13

To his credit, the swordsman did not falter. His guard remained perfect as he batted aside a lunge from Gallant and returned a downward two-handed strike of his own. He did not break. He was merely surprised by this supposed revelation.

Ibn had crawled and danced across a thousand hells to reach this moment, and he wore the joy of it even as he faced a titan who could overwhelm him by sheer mass. It was raw strength versus polished skill, made flesh.

Velens, Seraphina observed detachedly, was slowly losing himself in the memories of his gestalt existence. With every swing, his movements grew surer, other lifetimes compensating for the weakness and limitations of his current vessel.

Her blades arcing through the air, Seraphina de Sariens joined Desdemona’s and Frest’s attacks even as Gravens finally staggered fully upright. Sir Gravens’ eyes were clearing with grim determination, and she could see the stupidity in those lovely pools, some heroic impulse to throw himself away so Desdemona or Seraphina could land a clean strike. The boy was drunk on songs of glory and duty.

Interrupting her thoughts, Sir Frest, somehow, scored a glancing blow against the Prince’s chest, but the strike skidded off hidden mail.

Foolish boy, Seraphina thought of the boy. One strike was not enough against a creature like the Hero. One death would not be enough to end him.

“Do not make me repeat myself, Gravens. Desdemona.Frest. We are leaving!” Seraphina shouted, pouring all the authority she could into her small frame. “Now!”

Frest parried a blow from the prince that almost took his head off. “I cannot say I am entirely against the idea, milady,” he answered glibly. 

The words jolted Gravens out of his suicidal charge, just as Seraphina locked swords with Velens. The Prince tried to twist her force, to use her Strength against her, but some mountains were not easily brought low. She savored the flicker of surprise on his young yet ancient face.

And still, another variable moved.

Este Lize’s Mana reserves were obscene, and her natural command of the Arcane was legend. In the corner of her eye, Seraphina saw her casting.  The young girl noted, with no small amount of amusement, that the silver-haired trollop looked a little worse for wear.

Este Lize lifted her staff and smirked, superior and cold. Words of power thickened the air with potential. Water drew from the air itself, from the firmament, gathering into a sphere that swelled larger and larger. Yet at the heart of that watery globe burned a soul of fire.

Seraphina recognized it for what it was. Este Lize was trying to wield science she could not possibly understand, science she was not meant to have. An impossibility layered atop an impossibility.

“Velens, I love you!” Seraphina cried, past memories from another life forcing truth through her throat. “I have always loved you!”

Words were weapons in her hands. Truth or lie, it did not matter. Something pierced the Hero’s haze. A spark of Crown Prince Velens flared and seized dominance, if only for a heartbeat.

It was enough. It was all she had.

Seraphina drove a not-gentle kick through his guard and sent him skidding halfway across the hall. It would have to do.

Then she called to her magic, snapping a spear of pink Crystal into existence and hurled it at the growing sphere of water with the seed of explosion in its heart. Her magic struck the globe and shoved it upward, toward the roof.

Ibn, as if reading his mistress’s intent, jumped back and sheathed his sword faster than the eye could track. Thinking his opponent was trying to surrender, Sir Gallant’s usually unemotional face split into a smile of victory as his blade descended, a white-and-gold juggernaut.

Ibn drew, and it was perfection made manifest, an expression of what it meant to be one with the sword.

“You missed, you red-eyed scum,” Gallant drawled lazily, certain of himself.

Then the pillar behind Gallant fell, almost as if it were a preordained act.

The sudden crash was a distraction enough. Ibn used it to slip away from the clash of blades, and Seraphina ran for the exit with him. Desdemona half-carried, half-dragged a stunned Gravens. Frest surged ahead at the point, clearly unwilling to serve as rearguard. Seraphina noted his propensity for valor with a flash of grim amusement even now.

They ran. Oh, how they ran. And then, Este Lize’s spell reached its crescendo. A roar filled the world and flung the fugitives forward, spitting them out of the chamber like debris from an explosion of compressed steam. Seraphina was hit hard, but adrenaline forced her back to her feet. The girl spared only half a glance to see Desdemona rising too.

Behind them, the audience chamber was a wreck, at least the entrance portion of it. They would be free of pursuit. At least for now.

“Come on! Pick yourself up! We need to go!” Seraphina snapped, voice tight with urgency.

As if in answer, unnatural vines surged around her legs and ankles. Velens’ magic. She hacked them off without slowing, almost bored by the attempt.

“You don’t need to tell me twice, milady!” Frest agreed fervently. “I do believe the stables are that way!”