The voice mocks as I twist and slice. I shift from stance to stance furiously, pulsing like mad and praying for it to end.
The girl remains crouched on the asphalt. I’m forced to stand over her and use only grounded stances instead of the flowing ones I prefer. Some part of my mind detaches as I descend deeper and deeper into fury. My good summer blazer is shredded and for some reason I can’t tell if I’ve been fighting for a couple of minutes or a few hours.
"Why am I fighting so furiously?" I ask myself. It's not just training, this goes deeper than reflex or instinct. I have to protect her, even if it means death. Why does the Underdark want her so badly?
RRRIP!
I suck in my gut just in time and yet a line of fire spreads across my belly. An over sized black claw has sliced me. I’m tiring swiftly. My defense is broken. Now their strikes will draw blood. This is not something I’m used to; Gladiators... or at least Berserkers who wan't to be Gladiators don’t fight this way.
My whip blade is meant for solo battle. For moving, weaving and driving. It’s an offensive weapon, not defensive. In this moment, that doesn't matter. I have to fight like a true Knight, standing in place and protecting a fair maiden.
A stinger flies out of nowhere and almost takes out my right eye. Instead it gouges out a a valley above my brow. The pain makes me close that eye for a split moment, enough time for a small dark-mutt to crunch into left shin.
I scream like a little girl. The pain is deliciously excruciating. My unconscious pulsing is so loud I wonder why no one has sensed it yet.
There is a moment of silence as the motley crew of daemon spawn crawls back and regroups. I check the Network. It is fucking demented that Knights have the worst 'sending capabilities of the Six Societies. No Society member is close enough for an uplink. Farsending would be a great tool right now
I hack up a gob of bloody phlegm and wheeze slowly. Somewhere during the haze of the frenzy, something had cracked a rib or two into my lungs. Every breath is agony and I can’t even call up energy to repair myself.
The mp3 player lies a foot away. Its screen is smashed but somehow it still faintly drones.
ok, okayyy
You will never stop it now
You need to drop it now…
Cause I don’t want no Robocop
You moving like a Robocop…
I wish I was Robocop. At least I wouldn’t feel this tired. My arms do feel as heavy as steel so there's that.
The darkling menagerie parts and a Daemon steps forward from behind them. It isn’t the best looking one I’ve seen, bound to a woman - an emaciated middle-aged woman with hollows under her eyes, corroded skin and teeth like a meth addict. Oddly the daemon's wearing a dirty lavender bathrobe and bedroom slippers.
It cocks its head and smiles grotesquely.
“Give usssss the girrl, Berserkerrr and we will ssspare you. Itsss just you and us herrre. No one would even know.”
My body is aching too hard to reply. Just when I think of a comeback, the kid murmurs something.
I spare a moment to glance at her. Her tears have left tracks on her cheeks but at least she’s not sniveling. If she's good enough to move, she might be able to make a break for it.
Her tiny voice whines what she must have been mumbling before.
“Please don’t give me to them. Help will be here soon. Spider is coming, she said to tell you to hold th’ ground.”
“Hold your ground,” I correct mentally, but she’s probably imagining things.
“I don’t know why they want you dead, and I don’t think help is coming, but I would die before I let them have you and…”
I have to pause for a second; every word I speak is like a five knives twisting in my chest.
“Even after death my ghost would probably still fight…Freedom and Honour!”
I wheeze sharply and try and cover up my condition by putting on a brave smile.
The Daemon claps slowly and sneers “Stupid fool, It’sss true then what they sssay. Common ssssensse is not common amongssst Knights”.
The little girl is looking at me weird now. A slight breeze ruffles her hair as she leans forward and squeeks timidly “Galahad?”
Before I know what’s going on she clasps my head between her grubby little palms and kisses me soundly on the forehead. Then she whispers.
“Rise, Sir Knight”
The Daemon shrieks, an order to attack. But then so do I.
My brain burns, my eyes feel as if they’re weeping tears of acid. Every nerve in my body has been torn out and replaced with an ice-cold inferno. It hurts so bad that my scream turns into a falsetto stream of forcefully expelled air.
There’s only one logical answer for how the girl has done what she has. My brain screams the answer
“Magus!!”
She’s a fucking witch-child!
… that that don’t kill me,
can only make me stronger
I need you to hurry up now,
cos I can’t wait much longer
Without warning the feeling reverses. It feels right. The rivers of ice become my friends. I’ve been recharged, and the pain in my left leg reduces to a dull throb. I open my eyes, which I didn’t notice were shut, and life springs out in HD. I was seeing through a murky, six-inch piece of cracked glass just moments before.
The damn mp3 player is still playing. To my new senses it's louder than before.
HD vision reveals that the Daemon is surrounded by an inky black cloud. That black miasma has tiny strands running to the other darklings. The same darklings that are less than two arms lengths away and crawling closer.
I also suddenly notice that somewhere between the Daemon’s parley and the witch child’s kiss, one of the dark mutts has managed to steal my whip blade. The idiot mutt’s chops are smoking; dark essence is reacting to the activated quicksilver.
Unexpected, a 'sending blares in my skull, extremely clear and crisp.
“WE ARE COMING”
“Who are you? I 'send back, with an eye on a darkmutt and a knot in my belly.
“SPIDER. HOLD YOUR GROUND.”
I grit my teeth. I hope I don’t have to resort to my fists. I’ve never been the pugilistic sort, and the mandibles on some of the dark beasts are pretty formidable. I can clearly hear the mp3 player going.
Do I still got time to grow,
Things ain’t always set in stone..
My eyes are on the blade when my new, HD, vision finds something new. A red mist surrounds its hilt. The same red mist still connects the whip blade to me.
My mind tugs at the mist in a moment of desperation and the blade instantaneously transmutes to liquid and slices through the mutt’s skull.
A burst of hope flares in my chest. With a healthy mix of desperation, experimentation and luck I loop the ribbon of quicksilver through the darkling horde.
I can’t even begin to understand how I’m doing it, but I continue to push the quicksilver through the air. My survival hinges on the glinting metal doing whatever the hell it’s doing. The horde hisses and bays as my blade slices through them.
I am using a whip blade without fucking holding it!
I should be more excited, but the first part of the battle took a lot out of me. Even with the tele-manipulation of my blade, I am doomed without backup. The darklings keep on respawning like a bad dream. The witch child seems content to doze in my lap as I kneel in the alleyway with the quicksilver ribbon flying around the both of us.
“You can’t win!” the daemon shrieks. “I told you. You are jussssst one, and we are Legionnnn!”
“And I am Spider, what of it?”
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