Loremaster - A Progression Fantasy Adventure, page 63
The sounds of metal against metal followed this statement, accompanied by the occasional grunt as the two girls exchanged more blows. For nearly half a minute there was no talking, as both battled their way across the room.
From the sounds of it, Morgana was the one on the defensive, and Reinne was the one pushing her advantage, which made sense if Rowan’s memory of Morgana receiving Reinne’s sword in her abdomen could be relied on.
“So House Caleigh wants me dead?” Morgana re-initiated the conversation.
“Someone does,” Reinne replied diffidently, her blade still producing sounds as she pressured her opponent. “Tianna didn’t give me too many details. Just said that someone in power wanted you dead and the Caleigh’s were more than happy to help.”
“That was all it took to convince you to kill me?” Morgana sounded incredulous.
“Of course not,” Reinne snapped. “Tianna threatened to have my family arrested for treason if I didn’t. The original plan was just to mess up your grades so that you’d be knocked out of that top spot. If I’d known that she wanted me to kill you, I’d have never agreed to join this damn party.”
I should have been more on guard against Reinne, Rowan thought. I knew she was friends with Tianna, but I hoped she was different. If I had been a little more aware, maybe I wouldn’t be lying here right now.
The thoughts were torturous, but such conjecture was pointless. Had he survived Reinne’s initial assassination attempt, then perhaps he could have mounted a counterattack. But there was also a chance that Reinne would have been even more brutal in her methods of disposing of him. He doubted that even the power of Darm’s bracelet would be enough to heal a smashed skull. And that was not to mention the possibility of Droon lying here next to him, should he have made it through the rockfall trap with Morgana’s assistance but without the magical artefact that had preserved Rowan’s own life.
“So you only joined our party to mess up my grades?” Morgana was still talking. She had said more words in the last ten minutes than Rowan had heard her use in the entire time he had known her. Perhaps the trick to making her talk had been to threaten her life all along. Who knew?
“That was the plan.” Despite her advantage, Reinne seemed happy enough to divulge information, likely believing her opponent to be a dead woman walking. “But then Tianna wanted more, and it’s not like my house can oppose hers.”
“And she wanted Rowan dead as well? You’ll have to forgive me for finding that difficult to believe.” Morgana let out a grunt as a particular loud clash of steel was heard, followed by the sound of feet skidding for purchase against unforgiving rock.
“No,” Reinne admitted. “Tianna couldn’t care less about what happens to a nobody like him. He was supposed to get caught in the rockfall along with Droon, but once he made it through I couldn’t afford to leave him alive. He can only blame his own bad luck for escaping the trap.”
“You’re nothing but a tool of Tianna.”
“Maybe,” Reinne replied, her voice playful despite the seriousness of the situation. The way she spoke brought to mind images of a cat, batting playfully at a mouse before finishing it off. She clearly believed herself to be in complete control of the situation, which meant that Morgana’s demise was imminent.
Much as he wanted to jump up and move to Morgana’s aid, Rowan found himself unable to do anything more than remain face down on the ground. His body was only just coming back to life, the magic emanating from Darm’s bracelet working to fix the damage done by Reinne’s dagger.
Within him, he could feel organs being jolted back to life, blood rushing through veins that had gone dry, and bones crackling as the joints began to work again. But he was not yet able to rise. However, that didn’t mean he could do nothing.
Taking a risk, Rowan lifted his head slightly, turning just enough to be able to see the battle through a half-lidded eye. Fortunately, neither Reinne nor Morgana were looking his way, and both were too engaged in combat to notice the subtle shift in the supposed corpse of their former party leader.
The first thing Rowan saw was the debris. Smashed rocks were embedded everywhere in the floor and walls, Morgana’s stone bullets as deadly as ever. Thorny vines lay in piles with slash marks visible, having been ruthlessly hacked apart in the defense of their master. Even as Rowan watched, another rock slammed into the wall opposite, dislodging dust from the ceiling as it bit into the stone.
Reinne is way stronger than we thought, Rowan realized as he beheld the scene. Morgana’s magic was incredibly powerful, and her close combat skills were no joke either. To be able to match her in one-on-one combat, even if she did have the advantage of her sneak attack, meant that Reinne had been concealing her true prowess for months now. Rather than the high-Brass tier she’d pretended to be, it seemed likely that she was actually much higher than that. To be able to go up against Morgana meant that Reinne was at least mid-Silver tier, if not higher.
His second thought was related to time. I must have been out for longer than I thought. For the once pristine chamber to look like this, Reinne and Morgana’s battle had to have been waged for at least three or four minutes, possibly longer. Apparently, even magic could not prevent a dagger in the heart from being pretty much lethal. And speaking of the battle… Rowan’s eyes shifted to the two figures that were fighting thirty feet from where he lay.
What he saw was not encouraging to Rowan, who was well aware that Reinne would finish him off the moment she discovered that he was still alive. Just as he had suspected, Morgana was on the back foot. Her left side was covered in what appeared to be moss, stained red from the bleeding it was attempting to staunch, the legacy of Reinne’s ambush.
How she had survived being impaled with a sword, Rowan did not know, but the wound was clearly affecting Morgana, and her movements were slower and more sluggish than usual. Every time she moved, her expression grew pained, a grimace the only expression she showed as she wielded her sword to block the repeated blows of Reinne.
Slash, cut, thrust, parry, Reinne moved like a dancer, her footwork and bladework elegant as she rained blows upon her injured opponent. Had it not been for the plants that whipped at Reinne only to be sliced apart, or the rocks that forced her to dodge instead of continuing her attack, Morgana would have likely fallen long ago. As it was, she was barely standing, and the smug smile Reinne wore made it clear that she felt her victory was assured.
If it had not been obvious before, it was now. The traitorous party member had clearly been hiding her true skill. Because she now moved with a grace and power that far outshone anything she had portrayed before.
Indeed, it was difficult to see any scenario where Reinne did not manage to kill Morgana. That was, of course, assuming Rowan was dead as everyone believed. The magic from Darm’s bracelet still coursed through him, knitting him back together as it brought him back from the brink of death.
With a light clatter, so quiet that even someone listening for it would have struggled to hear it, but loud as thunder in Rowan’s ears, the dagger was finally ejected from his chest. For a moment, he didn’t even dare to breathe, praying that no one had heard the sound.
Of course no one had. The only other occupants in the room were currently engaged in a life-or-death battle, and even the sounds of their own strained breathing were more than enough to mask the tiny noise of the dagger hitting the floor after a one-inch fall.
Satisfied that he was still dead in their eyes, Rowan flexed his wrists, testing his body to make sure it worked, wriggling his toes and rotating his shoulders as he checked all his extremities one more time.
Everything still worked, and he immediately began to contemplate his next move. His body was not at a hundred percent. Although he could move, there was a sluggish feeling to it, as if he had been stabbed in the chest and only just come back to life.
Ideally, Rowan would have liked to wait until his body was back at one hundred percent. Fighting Reinne in this state would be a fool’s errand, considering that he had never once beaten her even at full strength.
Unfortunately, fate had a funny way of ignoring one’s wants, a concept Rowan was intimately familiar with. He glanced back at the fight just in time to see Morgana stumble, tripping over a small lip of rock at the base of one of the pillars.
Never one to miss a chance, Reinne leapt forward, her sword hammering down at the immobile fae below her. Although Morgana defended well, her injuries made it difficult to do anything else, and there was no way Reinne would give her the chance to get up or cast a spell. In just a few moments, she would be overpowered and the fight would be over.
Damn it. With all the grace he could muster, Rowan climbed to his feet, collecting the dagger as he rose. His footsteps silent, he approached the two girls, a revenant returning for vengeance upon his would-be killer. He could have thrown the dagger of course, but there was no guarantee that would be lethal, especially considering the deflection skills Reinne had displayed in the tunnel. A close-up assassination had a much higher chance of being lethal, and he needed every advantage he could get right now.
Neither girl could see him as he approached, the pillar partially obscuring him from Morgana’s vision, while the more important of his two targets, Reinne, had her back to him, her attention focused entirely on the prey that lay before her.
With a vicious cry, Reinne’s sword blew away Morgana’s guard, her blade skittering away across the stones.
“Goodbye, Lunythe,” Reinne said triumphantly, her blade raised high in preparation for the final blow. “In your next life, pray that your family makes less enemies.”
Breaking into a run, Rowan abandoned stealth, desperate to stop Reinne’s blade before it descended. But he was too late, even as he leapt towards her, dagger in hand, the sword stabbed down, impaling Morgana through the chest.
Two screams rang out through the cavern.
Rowan could barely process what had happened. Morgana lay supine, her body twitching as she curled up around the wound, blood quickly pooling around her. Reinne looked petrified, her left side slowly turning crimson from the dagger that was now embedded in her flank, just below the ribs.
“You? You should be dead!” Reinne managed, coughing up a bubble of blood as she stared wide-eyed towards Rowan.
“I was,” Rowan acknowledged. “But then I realized I had something of yours, so I thought I’d come back to return it.”
“Something of mine?” Reinne snarled as she grabbed the hilt of the dagger, wrenching it from her side and tossing it to the ground. “I don’t know how you came back. But you should have just stayed dead. Then I wouldn’t have had to kill you twice.”
As she spoke, the pendant around her neck took on a golden glow, the light flowing from the pendant to the place where Rowan had thrust the dagger.
Damn, she has a healing artefact too. Rowan had tried to make his strike fatal, and it might have been with a bit of time, but very few injuries resulted in instant death. His clumsy, freshly healed body in conjunction with the hurried strike meant that he had lacked the precision needed for a strike to the heart or through the eye. Now she was healing, and her wound had been much less lethal than his own.
As Reinne stalked closer, a murderous light in her eyes, Rowan reached inside his shirt, fingers closing around a cool metal cylinder. Withdrawing it, he held it beside him, his thumb coming to rest on a slightly raised section.
Behind Reinne, Morgana lay unmoving in a pool of blood, the occasional twitch of her fingers and the shallow rise and fall of her chest the only indicators that she was still alive. Given the size of the crimson pool she lay in, that would not be the case for long. I have to make this fast.
Before Reinne could come any closer, Rowan fed mana into the handle, eight glowing tendrils sprouting from the end of the arcanowhip and growing quickly as his mana was injected into the weapon. Rather than allow all of them to sprout, he focused on two, forcing the other six to retreat back into the handle.
The moment Rowan produced the whip, Reinne came to a halt, her stance shifting from offensive to defensive as she stared wondrously at the weapon in his hands.
“What’s that?”
Rowan did not feel the need to answer her. His response was an attack.
Tightening his grip on the arcanowhip, Rowan sent both tendrils flying towards Reinne, flicking his wrist to cause one to hit from the right, and another from the left. Although he would have liked to use all eight tendrils to produce an eight-pronged attack, two was currently the most that he could manage without losing control and hurting himself.
Still, two tendrils were more than enough to keep Reinne at bay, and she skipped back several steps, staying well out of range of the whip as she studied Rowan’s new weapon. Not willing to give her the chance to analyze him, Rowan advanced, cracking the from whip side-to-side as he drove Reinne towards the corner. In his off-hand, he carried a dagger, one of several that he kept on him, which he would use if the opening presented itself.
Normally, he would have carried nothing in his off-hand, preferring to use it to cast magic in order to supplement his combat skills. He did not have many combat spells yet, mostly just relying on arcane bolt and Darm’s barrier spell, but they often proved more than enough in fights against Brass-tier monsters, and he relied on them frequently.
However, the arcanowhip required a constant flow of mana, and his control over it was not so good as to allow him to cast spells while also maintaining the mana tendrils. The inability to use magic was not ideal, but no spell in his arsenal was as powerful as the arcanowhip, making it a worthwhile tradeoff.
Feeling her back growing near to the wall, Reinne stepped sideways, dodging one tendril which cut small chips of rock from the wall just above her, and attacking the other with her sword, which she swung with vicious abandon towards the oncoming tendril.
Rather than be knocked away, the whip wrapped itself around Reinne’s weapon, festooning it in arcane energy. Seeing her weapon immobilized, Rowan made to leap forward, aiming to use his dagger to cut at her while her weapon was out of action, but with a ferocious roar, Reinne yanked her sword backwards.
The whip was nearly ripped from Rowan’s hand, and only a sudden tightening of his grip kept it from slipping from his palm. Although he kept a hold of his weapon, Reinne’s strength was immense, and Rowan felt himself being pulled towards her, the tendril wrapped around her blade acting as a lever for her to winch him closer.
Rather than fight the pull, Rowan gave in, launching himself towards her with fist raised high. Whether Reinne had been expecting this or not, she quickly adapted, using her free hand to throw a haymaker directly at his face. A small twist of the neck allowed Rowan to avoid her strike, and he returned it with one of his own, aiming to bury his fist and the dagger held within into her abdomen.
Following the momentum of her blow, Reinne used the force of her swing to rotate her body, causing Rowan’s blade to graze gently past her ribs as he flew by rather than skewer her as he’d aimed to do.
A moment later, Reinne completed her turn, her off-hand holding a dagger of her own that she plunged down viciously towards Rowan’s back. Unwilling to be stabbed for a second time today, Rowan tucked himself into a roll, tugging on the handle of his arcanowhip to pull Reinne off balance as he did.
With a slight stagger, Reinne’s attack was disrupted, the dagger striking air a foot away from Rowan as he rolled to his feet and jumped backwards, putting distance between them. While doing so, he willed the tendril around Reinne’s sword to dissipate, terminating the link between them as they found themselves once again staring each other down.
Both were breathing heavily, the short exchange having resulted in several near killing blows from both parties. Despite their wounds, the fight was just as fast-paced as any of their spars on the training grounds, faster even. Both were using moves the other had not seen before, and the winner would be whoever could figure the other out first.
Armed with this knowledge, Rowan made the decision to increase the number of tendrils under his control to three. Although he could not control them completely the way he could two, he could not allow Reinne to grow comfortable fighting against the arcanowhip. She was the superior fighter, and her ability to deal with two tendrils was becoming readily apparent. If he wanted to beat someone of her caliber, then risks would need to be taken.
Opposite him, Reinne examined the blade of her sword, checking for any damage after its encounter with the arcanowhip. Satisfied that there wasn’t any, she advanced for the first time, apparently having analyzed enough to be confident in her ability to beat him.
With a snarl, Rowan attacked, three glowing whips cutting through the air as they lashed at Reinne. Moving gracefully, Reinne wove between the tendrils, her sword in one hand, and her dagger held in a reverse grip in the other. Like a dancer, she moved, her footsteps sure as she approached one step at a time, her blades deflecting any attacks that her movements could not avoid.
Ten feet, then nine. Eight, seven… Slowly, Reinne approached, advancing as Rowan retreated, his arm flickering in front of him as three tendrils assaulted his foe from all sides. His attacks were relentless, but Reinne refused to be swayed, and she continued to advance through the storm of blows.
It was Rowan’s turn to be backed into a corner, and he gritted his teeth as he desperately sought a way to turn the tides of the battle. As his back hit the wall, he ducked, narrowly avoiding Reinne’s leaping thrust as she leapt through the tendrils, her sword digging an inch into the stone above his head.
