Book 6: Chapter 16: Masters of the Axe
Lesh’ro’zellan sat by his solitary campfire, and he contemplated. Campfire was a generous term for the handful of smoldering coals and hot rocks. He sat upon a partially petrified log, more stone than wood, and he gently caressed the smooth, polished handle of Belagog, his cudgel. His mind was in turmoil, his usual drive blunted, his heart and soul torn, and his contempt and hatred of the System soared to new heights. Things had been going well until earlier that night. He'd been set to isolate and slay Victor, had been ready to call him out and challenge his honor, sure the warrior would take the bait. That had been before Lesh saw him breathe fire that would give even a full-blooded dragon pause.
“A breath Core! A mighty breath Core. And the System wants me to slay him? For what?” Lesh spat into the coals, watched his saliva sizzle, and tried to contemplate his options. It had taken him more than a month to catch up to Victor’s army. He’d stalked them—no small feat with those shadowy flying scouts—for further weeks, and then, when they’d finally crossed that damnable frozen pass, he’d used every trick in his bag to slip by their encampment to follow the titan-blood further into these new lands.
It had been a surprise when the System offered him the conquest quest. Still, it explained why Victor had come to these lands with his army. Lesh hunkered down over his coals, adjusting his mottled gar viper cloak, peering out through the voluminous hood at the sickly mists that fought to cover the tiny island of warmth his coals created. Without the cloak, he’d have been spotted several times by the titan’s scouts, but it hid him well, and thus far, he’d managed to avoid slaying any of the soldiers that followed the giant warrior.
After he’d witnessed the epic battle between Victor and an entire army of undead, Lesh hadn’t felt right about piling on. He hadn’t thought it would be an honorable way to gain victory. Only a fool would presume that Lesh would jump upon a beleaguered rival, only a fool who didn’t understand Lesh’s pride, his honor, and his determination to be the best. Could he claim such if he had to fight his enemy when he was near death, surrounded by a horde of enemies? No, if anything, Lesh had been tempted to aid the berserker. He’d been tempted to try to fight to the center of those undead warriors, hoist the battered human, and fight free, giving him a chance to recover—before Lesh challenged him, of course.
That was putting aside the feelings that had begun to roil in Lesh’s chest as he watched Victor battle, though. He’d never seen such a contest, such a desperate battle that seemed so hopeless yet dragged on, one new surprise after another. He’d never seen someone, not even his mentor, Thov’kinal’rovessi, fight so artfully, so gracefully while surrounded by so many enemies. It was clear that Victor was made for war, made for the battlefield. He’d never looked afraid, never seemed discouraged or weary, even when he’d been drenched in his own blood and covered with wounds, one arm hanging limply by his side, the axe warrior had worn a grin, his eyes shining with excitement—eagerness. Then he’d breathed fire, such fire, that when it ended, Lesh had been surprised to find himself kneeling, mouth agape in awe.
“And the System wants me to kill this man?” He snorted, reached down, and poked at the coals with one long, black claw, shifting away some ash to expose the red heat. “No. Not yet, at least. I think I’ll watch this man for a while longer. I think I might try to puzzle out why you want him dead. Do you hear me, System?” Lesh spat again, hawking up phlegm from deep in his throat. He doubted the gods-damned System listened to him—doubted it would spare him a thought until he’d done its bidding. Still, it felt good to voice his disdain, his bitterness. Watching his mucus bubble on the coals, a new thought occurred to him. “Do you want him dead, or do you want me dead?”
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Victor stood at the center of his blasted wasteland, the remains of corpses and molten armor steaming and smoking in a wide circle around him as the Glorious Ninth smashed into the remnants of the reaver army. He was tired; the breath attack he’d pulled off had been exhilarating, incredible, but it had pulled all of his ancestor’s Energy out of him, leaving him standing at the epicenter with just his slowly replenishing Core to sustain him. He could still fight, but hadn’t he done his share? He chuckled at the idea, lifting Lifedrinker to rest on his shoulder while he watched Sarl’s troops use their discipline and fresh reserves of Energy to dominate the battlefield.
He wasn’t surprised when, amid the screaming fighters, crashing weapons and shields, and explosions of Energy, he saw Valla dancing through the combat toward him. She ran on gusts of wind that sparkled with bursts of lightning, and soon she was before him, concern in her eyes as she looked him up and down. They stood in an area of relative calm; the remaining reavers seemed to want to avoid the place he’d burned to ash, and the Ninth was driving them further west, away from the scene of his one-man war. “Are you all right?”
In answer, Victor smiled and shrugged, pleased that most of his wounds had been mended by his ancestor’s fire. “Thanks to my ancestor.”
“You’re an asshole!” Valla growled, and Victor, probably angering her further, couldn’t help laughing.
“I’m rubbing off on you!”
“You were going to fight to the death!” Valla didn’t look amused, standing before him, lightning dancing behind her eyes, Midnight naked in her hands, held ready, almost like she meant to swing the dark blade at him.
“I don’t know about that . . . I had some hope that my ancestors might step in. You heard me call out to them when I charged.”
“Some hope,” Valla growled and leaned close to him, her face livid beneath the eyeholes of her helmet. “And if they chose not to aid you? If you died on this field, you were okay with that? No thought of retreat? No thought of me?”
“I thought of you. You were in my mind the whole time.” Victor frowned. What more could he say but the truth?
“I was?”
“Yeah, of course. I was . . .” Victor sighed and turned, looking to where the Ninth was driving the reavers, further and further westward, toward the fifth cohort. He couldn’t see it from where he stood, but he hoped the Naghelli and the cavalry had been able to hold their own against the giant wolves. He hoped they’d come together and smash the remains of the reavers. He looked back at Valla; the noise of combat had lessened, and they were, surprisingly, quite alone. “I was full of regret.” He reached a hand, caked in dried blood, to her chin and tilted her face toward him. Her eyes were brimming with tears—relief, frustration, anger, fear? Victor didn’t know, but he thought they were beautiful. He leaned toward her and softly said, “I wished I’d at least kissed you.”
To his relief and immeasurable delight, she didn’t pull away, didn’t say anything. He touched his lips—probably disgusting to her, covered in blood and gore—to hers. It was a simple gesture, a soft pressure, nothing overly amorous, but it meant everything to Victor. Her lips were soft and warm, and she pressed them into his, and when he pulled back, she leaned toward him, eyes hungry. When he continued to straighten, though, she smiled with a corner of her mouth and said, “If you think that gets you out of trouble, think again.”
“Nah. What would I do with myself if I was out of trouble? I wouldn’t know how to act.” He looked inward to his Core, saw that he’d regenerated nearly a fourth of his Energy, and said, “Come on, let’s go help them finish this. I think I have enough in me to summon my banner again.”
Victor called Guapo using inspiration-attuned Energy, and the Mustang burst into being from a simmering, white-gold mist. He was beautiful, with brilliant, blazing eyes, a tawny coat, and a long, flowing white mane. Victor hopped onto his back and pulled Valla up behind him. Then, as they charged toward the ongoing battle, he summoned his banner. If they’d been winning before, driving the reavers across the meadow, when the soldiers felt Victor’s presence and the effect of the sun blazing over his shoulder, they truly began to slaughter the exhausted reavers and vampyrs.
Victor rode wherever he saw clusters of the huge gray vampyrs still putting up a fight, and when his banner’s light touched them, the soldiers of the Glorious Ninth bore them down, hacked them to pieces, and continued on to the next. Soon, the two cohorts came together, and Victor got his first good look at the pony-sized wolves that had been holding the cavalry in check. Their corpses littered the field, yet those that survived fought on mindlessly, rage in their eyes, and Victor saw that they, too, were undead; bones showed through their ragged fur, and the flesh, as often as not, was missing from their snouts, leaving their fangs exposed in perpetual snarls.
Once Sarl’s troops provided some relief and took the pressure off their flank, the fifth began to put their mounts to use, breaking free, whirling, and charging into the enemy’s exposed flanks. In just minutes, a strange calm fell over the blood-soaked meadow until, in the relative silence of soldiers catching their breath and the coughing wheezes of the dying, cheers began to break out, and the men and women of Fanwath celebrated another, hard-fought victory.
Sarl and Yarsha, the captain of the fifth cohort, began to bark orders, and their lieutenants passed them around, and soon, the field was busy with squads combing the piles of bodies for survivors and collecting their dead comrades. Other units began to pile the undead, stripping them of weapons, jewelry, and pieces of armor—many of the reavers still wore plate that was largely intact, and there wasn’t any denying its fine craftsmanship. With the soldiers performing after-combat activities, the System must have decided the battle was over because a sea of golden Energy motes began gathering in the little valley, and the soldiers’ cheering started again.
Victor, still sitting atop Guapo, his banner blazing at the center of the bloody field, felt Valla’s arms tighten around his waist, and she said, “I think I should hold onto you; maybe some of the ocean of Energy coming your way will bleed into me.”
“Hah! If the System would let me, I’d be happy to share.”
“I know you would.” She squeezed him harder, and Victor felt a different kind of warmth ignite in his chest, right next to his breath Core. He savored the feeling for a few moments, but then a cascade of Energy unlike anything he’d felt before washed over him, and he was made insensate, lost to the world, as rivers of golden light poured into him from all corners of the battlefield, lifting him into the air like a rising star, blazing in the night. Victor’s consciousness departed his physical form for a while, a sensation not unlike when he’d advanced his race and had visions of his ancestral past.
This was different, though; he didn’t have the feeling that he was traveling anywhere, be it through space or time. Instead, he felt like he was hovering between places, on the edge of universes or planes of existence. He felt presences nearby, beings he could barely comprehend as such and whom he could not fully fathom. In a way, it felt like he was being looked at, studied, and perhaps judged. He didn’t feel threatened—just as he couldn’t fully grasp those entities, he felt they couldn’t entirely interact with him. He was being glimpsed through a veil, and, in his titanic pride, bursting with Energy as he was, he shrugged and willed them to know that he didn’t give a shit.
Victor had the immediate impression that some of the entities departed. He felt the ones that lingered more strongly and, in the less crowded space, became aware that they were struggling with each other, a contest of wills nearly beyond his comprehension. As he hung there, suspended in that weird in-between, nothing but angles of light and strange swirling patterns to occupy his mind, the entities around him winked out, one by one, until he felt the looming presence of only one being. As if through a great tunnel, echoing and vibrating with the passage, a voice came to him. Despite its odd, reverberating nature, it was masculine and powerful, and it said, “I am Golgothaz, and I am pleased with your axe dance, young warrior.”
Victor opened his mouth and tried to respond, to at least say thank you, but he couldn’t form the words. The voice came to him again, “Do not try to speak; you haven’t the will to make your voice heard in this place. I can read your intent: you desire to give me thanks. Instead, I will thank you—when we masters of the axe felt your contest and your breakthrough, we watched your dance, and it was entertaining. Great spans of time often pass betwixt the occasions when I might consider myself entertained. I will give you my blessing, a mark upon your soul. It will help you to shape a destiny of true mastery with your weapon. Good hunting, young warrior!”
As the voice faded, Victor saw a point of light pierce the strange fabric of the place he hung in, and then it lanced forth, searing into Victor’s chest. It was painful but nothing close to the worst thing he’d ever felt, and as the burning sensation began to fade, so too did the limbo he hung in. Bright lights filled his vision, and Victor found himself lying on his back in the bloody grass of the battlefield, hundreds of soldiers encircling him, watching with rapt attention as he struggled to sit up. Valla was nearby, and she spoke, but her words didn’t register—Victor’s attention was on the System messages that filled his vision:
***Congratulations! You have achieved level 55 Battlemaster, gained 10 strength, 9 vitality, 4 agility, 4 dexterity, 3 will, and 3 intelligence.***
***Congratulations! Your mastery of the axe has advanced: Epic.***
***Congratulations! Your Breath Core has evolved beyond the seed stage. It is now an active Core.***
***Congratulations! Your Breath Core has advanced to Base 5.***
***Congratulations! You have gained a new Class Feat: Battlefield Presence.***
***Battlefield Presence: Your Battlemaster Class has allowed you to expand your presence on the battlefield. Any aura, bolstering, or debilitating effect that you radiate will affect an area twice as large as normal.***
As he finished reading the messages, a slow smile spreading on his face, Victor became aware of the cheering of the soldiers surrounding him. They were chanting, stomping their feet, and smashing weapons against shields as they thundered, “Victor! Victor! Victor!”
Victor leaped to his feet and saw that Sarl, Kethelket, and Captain Yarsha stood nearby. Of course, right next to him was Valla, and she wore a bit of a frown, probably annoyed that he’d ignored whatever she’d been trying to say to him when he snapped out of his trance. He reached down to rest a hand on her shoulder, then he snatched Lifedrinker out of her harness and held her high. Of course, the axe was happy to put on a show, bursting into furious yellow-orange heat, igniting the air around her blade, and sending black smoke into the night. The soldiers’ cheers grew louder and more frenzied.
Victor turned slowly, making eye contact with as many soldiers as he could, and then he brought the axe down next to his side, and the cheering died down. The soldiers wanted to hear him, and Victor couldn’t deny them. He felt terrific, fully replenished by the post-battle Energy, his high affinity allowing his body to make instant use of it, healing his wounds, banishing his fatigue, and replenishing his Core. More than that, he was exuberant about his gains, about having his ancestors act through him, and, most of all, about being alive with Valla by his side.
“That was a hell of a battle!” he roared. He probably could have said anything—announced he loved warm tortillas or that cold beer was best, and the troops would have gone mad with more cheering. In any case, they screamed their bloodlust and their pride, and Victor basked in it, fed off it, and nearly cast Iron Berserk and summoned his banner, but he saw the fatigue on the officers’ faces, and he felt Valla reach up to grip his thumb with her cold fingers, and he knew not everyone was as fresh and full of joy as he.
Victor lifted Lifedrinker and brought her down, and again, the soldiers ceased their raucous cheering. “I’m proud of you, soldiers! We’ve surely put a dent in the invaders’ armies. That said, we need to get back to the keep we captured. We need to secure this land, and we need to make plans for how we’ll keep up this momentum. Listen to your captains, your lieutenants, and your sergeants.”
He turned, figuring he’d summon Guapo and ride back to the keep with Valla, but some brave soldier shouted, “We love you, Legate!” Victor turned, trying to find the speaker, but he couldn’t make him out. He saw many eager faces meeting his gaze, many soldiers who looked ready to claim ownership of the words, so he sighed and smiled.
“Do you think I’d face down a thousand reavers for men and women I didn’t care about? You’re my soldiers, and I’m here to fight with you every inch of the way to that bastard green star! I’ll never leave any of you hanging. If I’m the only backup I can bring, then dammit, I’ll be there.” The soldiers erupted in cheering again, and Victor gave up trying to calm them. They’d settle down when he wasn’t around. He summoned Guapo, and after the glorious Mustang burst out of his puddle of sparkling Energy, he mounted and reached down a hand for Valla.
“Where will you go?” Sarl asked, shouting to be heard over the din.
“Meet you at the keep!” Guapo began to walk, and the soldiers made way for him, those close by reaching out to run their fingers over the great stallion’s silky coat as he passed.
“You need a bath,” Valla said as they finally broke free of the clamoring soldiers, and Victor urged the Mustang into a trot.
Victor twisted in the saddle and looked into her eyes. “Yeah. I’ll set my house up in the courtyard and take one. Maybe you should join me.” She looked down, and if the light were a bit brighter, he might have seen her pale blue skin darkening. She didn’t say no, though, so Victor’s grin broadened, and Guapo began to gallop.
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