Someone had told him once that to see them wage war was to see the ocean crash upon the cliffs - two incredible forces, striving eternally, unable to achieve victory against the other.
This was their final battle. It was in the heavy salt smell of the air, tumbled and roared with the waves crashing against the cliffs. The cawing of crows was a death knell, ringing for one of them. For both of them, in a sense.
He stared out across the bottle-glass green of the ocean, distant sails visible on the horizon. Footsteps sounded through the brush behind him, but he didn't turn. His red tabard fluttered in the brisk breeze, and he raised his voice over the wind.
“It’ll be war. Again. They don’t learn.”
She was silent for a moment before she spoke.
“They don’t,” she agreed. “So it comes to this. With both of us, it’ll be another stalemate.”
“So it comes to this,” he repeated, and they stood there for another moment. “The sea is beautiful, isn't it?”
“It is,” she agreed again, and then there were no more words to say.
He finally turned. While he was plated in armour, she had none; her blue robes were below the dusky, heart-shaped face, the eyes like chips of ice. Her hair was dark, and tumbled freely down her shoulders in a curly waterfall. The wind tossed it, but she paid it no heed.
They nodded.
He uncoiled his soul from his body, splitting it into a hundred points of razor-sharp thought. She merely focused on herself, leaping a dozen metres as his soul-spears lashed towards her. With a pulse of power she propelled herself towards him, and he threw up quick walls of thought to block her. She smashed through each in turn without slowing, sending fragments of spirit to sparkle and shatter against the landscape, but he’d taken the second it’d given him to bring some of his own soul back inside to enhance his body.
She slammed into the ground where he’d been, and his mind was the jaws of a bear-trap that slammed shut to bite deep into her limbs. She forced it open and came after his, the ethereal teeth of the trap glistening with blood and soul before it dissipated.
He lashed out with crackling whips, and she seized them, ignoring the charring of her palm, and pulled him close to land a punch that sent him bouncing, limbs flying, into and through a tree. Birds burst into the air in terror as he rolled to a stop.
He’d barely ceased rolling before she was nearly upon him again, arcing downwards through the air, a blade of mind held in both hands. He threw up another thought-wall, but it was only a cover; when she broke through he met her with a lance of energy that carved a burning hole through her stomach. She dropped back, injured, as he pulled himself to his feet.
It had been perhaps twenty seconds since the beginning of their duel.
She circled him, more cautious, the wound on her belly ignored. His own broken ribs met the same treatment. They’d given each other much worse. There were only two weak points: the head and the heart. Everything else would regenerate, and he could already see her stomach wound hissing as it began to knit the flesh back together. His ribs shifted uncomfortably inside his chest as they were repaired.
This time, he attacked first. He forged his pain into hissing, snarling knives and hurled them, the weapons bouncing off the barriers she threw up. He threw more, keeping her stationary, as more of his power wormed through the soil to strike from underneath. But she’d guessed his plan – oh, he remembered he’d used this at the battle of Chirgowitz, four years ago – and sprang out the way, rapid-firing mind bullets that gouged chunks out of the arms he raised to shield himself. He could have thrown up another wall, but he built up his power instead, crystallised it into a single attack resonating with his soul.
It became a game of cat and mouse. She leapt after him as he desperately evading, battering aside the attacks he threw out, ignoring any trivial injuries he managed to inflict. He grimaced as one of her strikes took off an arm, the flesh and steel cut through like butter. He could barely hold on to the power, and finally she caught up with him. A blade impaled a leg, and she plunged her hand through his chest, seeking his heart. She grasped the pulsing organ, but just before she could rip it out he fired the attack. The force of it ripped her torso apart. The left side – hand grasping his heart and all – disappeared as the force of the mind-blast vaporised it. The left leg, hanging on by gristly threads, collapsed and she thudded to the ground. Her regeneration had stopped.
Her heart was gone. He had won.
She looked at him and spoke three words – mouthed them, really, as she no longer really had lungs left with which to speak. He said them back. She died.
With him leading the charge, his nation would win for certain. The enemy, with her gone, would be unable to match him.
Damn them. Let them fight their own wars. His was over, with her death. He stared out over the sea, watching the ocean crash upon the cliffs.
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Topic: ___/The Writer's Apprenticeship\___ (Read 313849 times)