Her movements became jerky, almost like stop motion, each step a shot of agony across her features. She snarled. I could see the veins on her neck and face bulging, her head shaking violently. I couldn’t help but imagine a puppet on its strings, trying desperately to oppose the puppeteer.
It wasn’t working.
In that opening, I realised a truth I’d known above in the village, now confirmed: I couldn’t fight Melenith, not properly. She was a person. I didn’t want to hurt her, much less do worse. Even while my options grew limited, I didn’t want to raise my weapon against her.
Innocent blood on my hands was something I simply couldn’t accept. It went against everything that I knew about myself, and I would not cross that line.
I dared a glance at the root of the issue. Vines formed a tall column behind Melenith, writhing and twisting one over another as they kept boiling out of the pit. Getting into the core room would have me facing that jumbled tangle of thorns and grasping creepers together with the fall.
The sword did destroy the vines. I’d seen it already. But how to get into the fucking pit?!
The problem was the absurdly tall woman that barred my way. Her arm was a blade now, a jagged shard of metal fused improperly to her limb just below the elbow. Ragged tatters of flesh and skin hung off the stump and bled a shocking red. Her new leg was barely anything complicated, just a tangle of cables and hoses that powered rudimentary pistons. Vines still clung to that one, twisting and turning, transforming into new components.
She was being taken over by the infection right in front of my eyes. Already it was spreading up her arm and shoulder, chrome poking out through bleeding cracks in her flesh.
Tears streamed down her face as she fought for control. However terrifying she’d seemed to me, my heart went out to her struggle.
Anger turned my stomach inside out. This was a display of pure cruelty, not detached corruption. Whatever lay behind this whole thing was evil, pure and simple. Any doubt I might have still harboured against my quest dissipated in the face of that horror.
And, like that, I felt something draw taut in me, then snap. The terror filling Melenith’s eyes as the fight drained out ignited a powder keg in the depths of my soul. Vision turned red. Blood boiled. Ears whistled. I roared and burst forward, shield up, sword held low. In two strides I was back up the stairs, slashing at Melenith’s arm.
My goal was to get behind her. Either keep going for the large column, or cut off the tendril that held her.
For now I blocked her first attack, the [PARRY] skill guiding my shield as well as it had my sword.
Melenith still fought! Her arm moved lighting quick, but started slowly. I met the thrust of the attack on my shield, one leg braced down the stairs, weight on the other. I angled the blow away from me and her strange blade bit into the cobblestones, sparking on impact.
“Fight it!” I yelled. “You can fight it.”
Her next blow came so bloody fast. One moment her meat arm was at her side, the next her claws were nearly in my eyes. I dodged away and slashed on instinct. I cut a deep groove down the arm and Melenith screamed in pain.
No time for apologies. I was three or four steps lower on the stairs than her, confident that she was too tall to gain a good angle of attack against me in that position. If we swapped places, I’d be in the shit.
I deflected another cut with the shield and was horrified to see another gash on Melenith’s stomach, the thorn enchantment doing its job a little too well. The cut bled profusely. I was under no impression that the vine would let her go if I hurt her enough. If anything, that only spurred me to greater effort.
We danced on the narrow stairs. Cut. Deflection. Counter. Blood. Her hair glowed, wilder and wilder, until smoke burst out her nose. I dove aside as she vomited a stream of fire my way, the heat searing the side of my face. I smelled hair burning and skin cooking.
I wasn’t fast enough to get out of the way entirely. The firebreath caught me on the sword arm and I felt skin blister and cook. I screamed in pain and she lunged with her blade for my throat, the strike almost desperate in how sloppy it came.
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God, but she was fast! I didn’t get the shield up in time. Or not exactly in time. The rim slammed into the blade just as it passed my guard, and the point went wide, missing my ear by a palm’s width at best. Sparks flew from where the edge of her sword cut through the edge of my shield with a sound like a choking angle grinder.
I gritted my teeth and lashed out with the shield, bashing at her arm until I could see the cuts accumulating up and down her torso. Her eyes never left me. She kept her teeth clamped tightly shut. Her gums bled.
I ducked under a slash of her arm and took another step forward—or, rather, sideways up the stairs—to get within her reach. I slammed the shield’s pointed end in her stomach and she doubled over with the blow, air driven out of her. If I would’ve raised my sword just then, I could’ve cut off her head in one easy blow.
“I am not a murderer,” I growled as she tried to swat me back. “Don’t make me into one. Fight, Melenith!”
Was it working? Her eyes were filled with tears but her deep frown was still as angry as it could get.
All the while, the vines kept filling the room with their shadows. They’d reached the ceiling and were spreading out, like an inverted black waterfall. They covered the light coming down from above, shattering it to shifting shafts of light and shadow.
Of Melenith I could only see the glitter of her black teeth and the whites of her eyes as she slashed again and again, claws and blade working in unison, the pain shrugged off. The vines’ control over her sharpened blow by blow. Soon I’d either have to hurt her, or activate my skills to keep ahead of the fight. I didn’t want to, not yet, weary of what other surprise my head my way.
“Insect—”
Melenith’s voice hissed. It filled with the same kind of distortion as Eternity’s had back when it bit me. Cold dread ran up my sweaty back. The voice wasn’t hers.
“Submit, insect!” Blood spurted from her mouth as she clamped her jaw shut so hard and sudden that she bit off the tip of her tongue.
For a heartbeat, she stopped moving, hair floating around her in a red blob of promised fire. She twitched and trembled as if in a seizure. I seized the opportunity and darted past her. Not to the column. I wasn’t going to risk that sword stabbing me in the back.
I barely kept my feet on the smooth stone of the steps as I spun behind my enemy. My turn was anything but graceful as I pivoted and slashed towards Melenith’s back. The blade slammed into the thick cord of vine impaling her lower back. She screamed and the sound was nothing a throat could ever produce. The blade didn’t pass through, but it didn’t need to.
The vines shattered to black splinters of glass.
Melenith fell to her knees and toppled down the stairs, all wind cut out of her.
But she still lived. She writhed on the stone floor, like a woman posessed, or in the middle of a full body seizure. Her claws cut at her stricken shoulder, coming away bloody with each slash and gash, trying desperately to cut off the apendage. I could see black vines sprouting from between the chrome components, questing upward like weeds.
I leapt from the stairs and landed right next to her, barely stumbling.
“Help me, human,” she cried out. “Get it off me.”
I hesitated a moment. Then pressed my foot to the mechanical blade and held it steady. It took me three strikes to cut through Melenith’s bone and muscles, to finally release her. She clasped her hand to the stump of her arm and a fiery glow ignited between her fingers. The air filled with the stench of burned meat.
She screamed. Her eyes went wide. “Look—”
I spun and slashed at a lance of vines shooting my way. This too shattered to tinkling glass on contact with the sword, but already more were gathering around us. I had to work fast.
“Fuck!”
They had almost completely covered the ceiling. Like snakes writhing in a pit, the vines boiled one over another up there, tendrils drooping down towards us.
I turned to Melenith. “I’m sorry. No time to be gentler.”
The words came out in a rush. The sword went up as if wielded by someone else’s hand. I cut down with all my strength. This time I separated the metal part from her leg in a single cut.
I cut straight through skin, muscle, bone, muscle and skin again. The blade’s tip sparked off the stones beneath and blood fountained out of the wound. It coated my leg and my boots, steaming hot.
Melenith’s scream of pain was mute. I couldn’t bear to look as she writhed, hair coming alive with that inner light from before. I didn’t dare look away.
Not that I was given a chance to do anything for her, or to even turn and head for the source.
In the flickering daggers of light I caught sight of the last thing I could possibly want in that moment. Something large emerged from the stairwell leading down into the mine. It struggled out through the narrow door, its frame too large to fit easily through.
How’d it even get up here? Why?
I probably could’ve asked myself way more pointless questions and gaped like an idiot for a few seconds longer. I mean, why not give enemies the chance to fully rally against me?!
The hulks could copy my [ADRENALINE SURGE] while it was active. I assumed that was the case since they never used it while I wasn’t.
This guy, the bloody blacksmith from beneath, had no such issues. One moment it was just barely through the door, the next he’d flashed right to me, two fists like bricks swinging my way.
A shield is great if you see the coming blow. I didn’t see this one except in the moment where it blasted me off my feet in a double impact of bricks against my ribs—now cracked—and stomach—soon to be void. My sword slipped from my hands. Consciousness got punched out of me.
Pain exploded all at once, everywhere. I landed on the other side of the room, back cracking sickeningly against the wall. I couldn’t breathe, could barely see through the shock, and wondered, very honestly, how I was still alive.
The blacksmith turned red eyes towards me, pinning me in place with that laser focused gaze. He walked past Melenith, kicked her in the side to roll her over, then continued my way. Step by step, I could feel the vibrations of his steps through the wall at my back.
All I could focus on, in my dimming sight, were those four fists and their chrome shine.
I was going to die.