I sense my skin splitting, sense the physical damage as I catalog the increased pain. Logically, I’m aware that it’s only because of my armor and the angle of her blade that it didn’t travel farther and pierce my lungs.
I’m breathing, moving, functioning, so it can’t be a fatal blow.
Dusana continues her slide across the rocky ground, jumping to her feet behind me, her blade dripping with my blood.
She gives me a triumphant smile as I spin to face her.
I don’t bother checking the wound, even though her focus flashes to it as if she expects me to be worried about it.
I shake my head at her, a slow, deliberate movement. “You shouldn’t have done that.”
Malak was at his cruelest when he was in pain.
Dusana’s eyes widen with apparent surprise when I drop the sword I was holding, letting it clatter to the ground and leaving both of my hands free. My fingers flex around my medallion.
At the side of the cave, Gliss cries to Dusana, pure panic filling her voice. “Yield, Dusana! You know she can kill you. Yield and let her pass!”
But beneath the sound of her voice is an absence of noise that’s crushing my heart.
The Vandawolf’s chest has fallen still.
In the space of moments, my hope has died.
To Dusana, I say, “Donotyield. He is on the cusp of death and you have stolen the time I needed to save him. For that, you will pay with your life.”
Dusana’s expression falls a little, some of her confidence draining from her brown eyes, but my focus is not on her face any longer. It’s on the exposed spaces between her weapons. All the vulnerable places and all the chances I have to simply lay my hand on her.
No matter the damage she causes to me in the meantime.
Without another word, I charge at her, aiming for her shoulders.
She swings her sword and thrusts with her dagger, but my fists collide with her inner forearms, one after the other, knocking her arms wide and forcing her off-balance before I punch her to the ground.
My left hand closes around her sword’s blade as we fall, turning it to putty before we hit the dirt. I rip the weapon from her hands, flinging it off to the side before my right hand collides with her clavicle.
Her armor is filled with the same earthy energy as the sword. My only explanation is that it’s somehow organic, akin to flesh and blood, which in turn, makes it vulnerable to my power.
Even as she lands heavily on her back, my fists are crunching into her chest, caving the armored plates across her ribs.
I’m aware that she’s trying to stab me with her dagger. I can’t risk grabbing it with my non-powered hand, and I’d have to twist to take hold of it with my powered hand, so I let the blows land.
I can’t care how many times her blade pierces my skin.
If I’m experiencing pain, it’s only feeding my rage and making me stronger.
I have nothing but furious impulses, not even a care for my own life, and for the first time, I understand…
When I was five years old, Malak went on a rampage.
His sister, Milena, had supposedly been killed in a human uprising. It was said that she was the only Blacksmith he truly trusted. In his rage and grief, he stormed through the human population, killing indiscriminately.
I understand it now.
There’s nothing left of myself to pull me back from it. No other emotion. No honor. No empathy.
I’m suddenly aware that Dusana is quiet beneath me and I’m not sure when she blacked out. All I know for certain is that she’s still breathing because her chest is rising and falling, her breaths rattling loudly.
My fists become still where I straddle her chest.
