Chapter 24
Rys roared with pain and took another swing at Barul.
Barul let go of his sword. Then he ducked to the side, rolling through the grass. The axe swung over his body, slashing his red coat apart.
Power surged through Rys as his body instinctively realized how close to death he was. His strength Gift poured power into his muscles. They burned so intensely that Rys expected them to start glowing.
The blade burned within his chest. Barul’s blade was enchanted with Angelic Arts and ate at the magical energy within Rys’s body.
Given the elders were Sages, Rys avoided using hellfire. It was too recognizable, even if the Ashen had gotten away with using it so far.
But that left him without too many counters.
Barul straightened. His right arm barely held together and he held nothing in his left. If he felt any pain, he didn’t show it.
Rys grabbed the sword in his chest while he had the chance to remove it.
Barul flickered again.
Cursing, Rys let go of the sword. He felt energy in the surrounding air, right as Barul appeared on top of him.
Rys’s axe swung upward. Barul grabbed his sword with his remaining arm, trying to pull it free by pushing with his legs on Rys’s chest.
Gravity threatened to knock Rys down, and his swing was thrown off by his lack of balance. The backside of his axe slammed into Barul’s side, likely shattering ribs. The Kinadain continued to pull out his sword.
Fortunately, Rys had a hidden advantage.
His strength Gift ensured he was always physically strong enough to do whatever he wanted. Right now, that ensured he remained standing despite the fully grown man standing on top of him.
It also meant that Rys was stronger than Barul.
Rys grabbed Barul’s arm and yanked the Kinadain down. They fought against each other for an instant. Then Barul screamed, before blasting Rys with magic.
The two of them separated, rolling across the field. Hanna had made the circle large enough, but Rys came too close to the flames for comfort.
Barul’s attack had felt like a force blast. Rys nursed a few broken ribs. The blade had shredded his insides a little, but it was held in place by his plate armor.
But Barul was far worse for wear. Blackened burn marks covered his left forearm. His fingers twitched and the Kinadain struggled to form a fist. His eyes burned with anger.
He recognized Rys’s hellfire, but nobody else had seen it. To everybody else, it looked like a smart use of fire magic.
Rys ripped the sword out of his chest. Sparks flew as it rubbed against Rys’s armor, followed by blood and flakes of metal flying everywhere. Blood poured out of the wound as it refused to close. Rys pumped magic into his chest and ignored the pain. It felt like he was pouring lava into his own wound, but that meant his healing was working.
With a grunt, Rys hurled the sword out of the arena. It flew through the barrier of flames without any trouble. The clatter it made on the gravel of the distant drive signaled the end.
“This duel is over!” Hanna declared. “Both of you, stop right now. Lord Talarys is the victor.”
Barul’s expression turned grim. He stood up straight, but magic continued to pour off him. His Arts remained active, and he intended to keep fighting.
“Are we sure it isn’t a draw?” an elder question. “Our supposed winner has a hole in his chest.”
“Lord Talarys has never loosened his grip on his axe. He’s made no apparent use of magic to keep himself standing. His ability to continue the duel is apparent,” Hanna said. She turned to face Barul. “Sir Barul, you have lost. Such is my ruling.”
“I accept your ruling. This duel is my loss,” Barul said.
Rys blinked. What?
Then it occurred to him.
Was Barul so stupid that he thought if he said that he accepted the result, then it meant that everybody would smile and nod? That Hanna would say, “Oh, yes, I remember him saying he accepted the result. He might have immediately tried to kill Lord Talarys after, but that doesn’t matter.”
Apparently, yes, judging from the hateful gaze he threw at Rys. It took a special kind of arrogance to believe a trick as dumb as that one could work.
Rys focused himself, drawing on as much magical power as he could before Barul attacked.
“Barul, stop!” Hanna shouted, signaling the start of the true battle.
Several astral lances appeared around Barul. Rys blinked, then cursed.
Forget caution, Rys realized. He countered the astral lances with hellfire, only an instant before they would have blown him apart.
Barul rushed through the flames, his clothes lighting on fire as he did so. His injuries didn’t slow him down in the least. He might be called a Sword-Slayer, but he knew how to fight without a weapon.
Rys swung. Barul leaped over the swing. His body flickered, then appeared closer to Rys.
Rys didn’t fall for the same trick twice.
Dropping to the ground, Rys let Barul’s kick fly overhead. An astral lance exploded from the Kinadain’s foot and created a small crater.
Rys snapped upward, swinging his axe right at Barul.
Impossibly, the Kinadain’s body twisted in the air. Barul dodged the attack, but at great cost. The muscles in Barul’s body rippled and contorted as he used magic to displace his body. Bones snapped and crunched. Blood poured out of dozens of tears in his skin.
A foot flew toward Rys’s head. Remembering what happened earlier, Rys caught it with his hand and tried to shift out of the way. An astral lance exploded through Rys’s arm, sending blood and gore everywhere.
Then the blunt side of his axe crashed into Barul’s head and sent the Kinadain flying across the arena.
Immediately, the barrier outside the arena fell. Magic erupted within the arena. Rys tensed, expecting an attack.
He looked over to see Barul glaring at him while wrapped in glowing, magical chains. Hanna’s brow furrowed in concentration as she maintained her technique.
Fara rushed to Rys’s side, her tails tensed. Rys felt a spell around Fara and realized she had empowered her body in order to intervene.
“I’m fine, Fara,” Rys said.
Then he placed his good arm around her shoulder and leaned as heavily on her as he could, without being too obvious.
Her eyes narrowed. “Yes. Fine. I can see that from the way you’re trying to crush me. How much muscle do you pack in there to weigh this much?”
He ignored her, watching the panic around Barul.
Hanna and the elders clustered around Barul’s unconscious body. They cast spiritual techniques to heal him, but they amounted to nothing in the end.
If he wanted to, Rys could save him. But what was there to gain?
Instead, he watched as Barul’s life slowly slipped away in the hands of his healers. Not every wound could be healed fast enough to save a life, especially if inflicted with the help of infernal sorcery.
“Do you need healing?” Fara asked.
“We’ll talk later,” Rys ground out. His chest still burned. While he had stopped the bleeding, healing the entire wound was another matter. The wound in his arm looked worse, but was less severe, as it didn’t appear to have anti-regenerative properties.
“If I’d known he could teleport—” Fara began to say.
“It wouldn’t have made a difference. I won,” Rys said. “And it wasn’t teleportation. He used spatial manipulation. I can count on one hand the number of humans that can use it among the spiritualists I’ve fought.”
“Out of how many?”
“Hundreds. Maybe thousands. I didn’t keep track,” Rys said.
Fara didn’t respond to that. Her tails rubbed against his back, for what little he felt of them.
Eventually, Hanna stood over Barul’s corpse, her face like stone. “It is done. The duel is finally over. Barul Sword-Slayer has passed, and he broke multiple rules while getting himself killed. Lord Talarys will receive Barul’s collateral—Alsia will serve Lord Talarys for as long as both are alive.”
The elders snarled in anger and shock.
“This is ridiculous! The duel was over before this happened,” one elder shouted. “Barul accepted your ruling.”
Well, apparently that stupid idea worked on somebody. Even if it was in extremely bad faith.
“It doesn’t matter what Barul said. What matters is what he did,” Hanna said. “My rulings are final, elders.”
Rys saw the bands of the spiritual contract tighten around the elders. They had agreed to accept her rulings and ensure the delivery of the collateral. If they refused, then they couldn’t speak of the duel at all.
Except, of course, Rys had no obligations whatsoever.
“I don’t think—” the elder cut himself off before he broke the spiritual contract. “To clarify, are we certain that Barul knew that was the case? If he acted out of ignorance, then I question the fairness of your ruling.”
The old man looked so proud that he had found a way to question Hanna’s decision without breaking the contract.
Spiritual contracts sucked. The elders knew their way around them, and their spirits were so corrupt that they didn’t even think this was against the spirit of accepting Hanna’s rulings. They would say they agreed with Hanna’s decision, then raise a thousand arguments that poked holes in it. But because they were only questions, they didn’t count, even if their efforts were in bad faith.
Rys needed to intervene.
“Let me get this straight,” he said, injecting arrogance and swagger into his voice. He even smirked at them for effect. “You want to be certain about what a dead man knew? There’s a reason a referee’s rulings are final.”
“Stay out of this, foreigner. This is a Kinadain matter,” an elder said.
“No, it’s my matter. Barul tried to kill me. The rules of the duel were to not do that,” Rys said. “If I can’t trust something that simple, how can I trust a damn thing else from you?”
The eyes of the elders practically popped out of their skulls.
Hanna nodded. “Lord Talarys is right. It doesn’t matter whether Barul attempted to deceive me or deluded himself that the duel really was over. His behavior impugned my honor and that of the Circle of Brethren. Allowing it to pass unpunished will invite retribution.”
Given the Circle of Brethren consisted of Saints, Rys wondered if Hanna meant divine retribution or the sort delivered by people. He didn’t know much about religion among the Kinadain.
“You do not get to decide that!” an elder shouted. “You are an upstart Sage claiming the authority of the Circle as your own. We are the elders of the dains, and we dictate the future of the Kinadain.”
One down. Rys felt the astral bindings of the contract snap into place around the elder.
A second elder sighed. “The contract, of course. No matter. Barul’s death and our refusal to speak on the matter will ensure that you cannot do anything against us. Let us consider this a draw.”
Two down.
“I will never allow somebody who tries to control us to have any power over the Kinadain,” the third said. “This duel is a mockery of everything the Kinadain stand for. I refuse to accept it.”
That made three.
Rys clapped his hands. “Right. Then you’re all going to stand down as elders.”
The elders stared at him in shock. For the first time since Barul’s death, Hanna allowed herself to smile.
“Are you a fool? We just said—”
“I don’t give a shit what you say,” Rys said. He chuckled. It hurt, but the sound made the elders flinch. “I thought you were supposed to be the scheming elders taking control of the Kinadain, but I got a trio of arrogant fools. Maria supports me. Hanna’s word as referee and Sage isn’t restrained. And, of course, I can say whatever I feel like. I didn’t agree to any contract.”
The last few words turned out to be the magic ones, as the elders realized they had been played from the start.
“This was planned,” one said.
Hanna smiled brightly at them. “Yes. It wasn’t intended to end like this, but we’ve known all along that the three of you are working with Compagnon. This is the end for all of your schemes.”
All along? Hanna was embellishing a little bit, as she had only agreed to help Rys recently. But she clearly enjoyed tormenting the elders.
“You can either leave now, and quietly accept your retirement and inability to speak of this,” Rys said. “Or, you can fight it. Like a certain someone did.”
All eyes turned to Barul’s corpse.
“You will regret this,” an elder said.
Then they left on their ponies.
“I wish people had to pay me every time they say that tired cliché,” Rys said. “I could at least buy some nice wine with their bitter tears that way.”
“I’m surprised you let so many people live to say that,” Fara muttered.
Hanna approached both of them. She sighed. “Well, it’s over. Truly over. I’ll need to work with Maria to ensure the next steps go smoothly. Other elders will try to oppose us, so we’ll need to use the evidence you gathered to destroy the reputation of those three.”
“That will scare the others into compliance,” Rys said. “Do you plan to become elder now? Of at least one of the dains?”
“No, that would be impossible. Elders are elected by the dain. That’s how we will oust these three,” Hanna explained. “Alsia will need to take their place. As Barul’s younger sister, she has the political backing to unite three leaderless dains. Once she is elected elder, she can handle Maria’s contract. She isn’t a Sage yet, but I will contact the Circle and have them promote her using my recommendation.”
Rys stared. “You can do that?”
“It’s how most elders become Sages,” Hanna said. “They train to become Sages and are often promoted upon request by other elders when their village elects them. But sometimes the Circle refuses, forcing a dain to merge with another or elect an elder without the Circle’s blessing. The latter almost never happens.”
“And you’re confident Alsia will be elected elder of three separate dains?” Rys tried not to sound insulting, as he knew nothing about the specifics of the situation.
“She’s a future Saint candidate,” Hanna said flatly. “Hence my wariness about using her as collateral. But Barul chose this path, despite many chances to back down.”
“I take it you don’t like this result?” Rys asked.
“Barul is dead. Alsia is being forced into a position of enormous responsibility, while being sent into your service. Your influence increased by an order of magnitude today,” Hanna said. “Even if you keep your word, I know that the future will be different. I can only hope that it’s a better future. Your actions so far have been positive. Maybe I made the right decision.”
Hanna left, taking Barul’s body with her.
Once she was gone, Rys nearly collapsed on top of Fara. “Fuck, this hurts a lot.”
“Rys!” she shouted.
The Lilim burst out of the mansion, their eyes practically glowing with lust.
Fara whirled on them as she carried Rys inside. “Don’t touch him!”
As his consciousness faded, Rys focused on the soft fluffiness of Fara’s tails. They wrapped around him as she pulled him inside.