Chapter 33: Maelstrom

The Duke scanned the ground in confusion. How had Motohara created a Grimoire with his name on it when his name had just changed?

“Thou hast power, boy, but I have thy Princess.” The Duke tilted his head playfully.

Shiori gasped as the claws digging into her back moved.

Motohara winced, then smiled and held up a single leaf he had picked up from the forest floor. With a flick of his wrist he sent the leaf flittering away. With a word he commanded a wind that cast every leaf up from the ground, hiding the leaf he had shown the Duke.

“A jest,” the Duke said, but he didn’t sound confident, “a leaf couldn’t bear a full written name. Not written so hastily. That is not your Grimoire.”

“The Yamato use symbols for names. Motohara has two symbols and fits on a leaf. I have a different name and a Grimoire now, father. I can beat you.”

“Art thou my match?”

Motohara gave no warning. He hissed a word that Shiori recognized from memory as the name of an Umbrae. The Duke had given to Motohara the names of his Umbrae for his mission. That was about to backfire on the Duke.

As soon as Shiori was released from the claws, a powerful wind carried her away. She clung to her book and screamed, but couldn’t hear herself over the wind.

The fight between Symphon and Motohara hadn’t been half as intense. Motohara had far more power now, and the Duke was a force of nature.

The forest was torn to splinters as the two combatants used the trees as springboards, clubs, and shields.

After some rough bumps, Shiori realized they were fighting over her as much as against each other. Neither wanted her dead, but both wanted to keep possession of her. The one who kept the Princess and stayed alive would win.

Shiori was done being a pawn.

“Down,” she yelled and found her feet solidly on the ground despite whirlwinds that should tossed her about.

She couldn’t follow the fight. Motohara and the Duke moved like lightening. As Shiori watched, they started using actual lightening as a weapon. And fire, ice, smoke, wood, dirt, and stone.

Would she hit Motohara if she tried a spell to disable the Duke? She could cast a spell in a wide area, but the Duke was clever. Anything she did to advantage Motohara might backfire and help the Duke.

“Stop Duke Praetor,” she said, but her words lacked power. Did she need to try harder? She didn’t know enough about magic.

An Umbrae shadow appeared and swept at her legs to maim her. Motohara banked off a tall oak and hissed the Umbrae’s name. I stopped like a statue.

The Umbrae screamed loudly enough to be heard over the two Speakers’ combat. Instead of tearing Shiori’s hamstring open, it’s own chest tore open and died, revealing a portal.

In horror, Shiori looked down into a portal leading to the Deep, the source of things like the Silence and far worse. The sight of the abyss dug through Shiori’s eyes and into her heart. She felt cold fingers reaching into her soul.

Symphon had faced a portal like this in the memory he had shown her during the Emporia. Had he felt this cold looking into the Deep? Had he heard screams, threats, and pleading from voices that sounded not just distant, but long since gone?

Shiori was pulled from her daze as the Duke appeared and knocked Motohara away with a scornful backhand. Motohara flew through a tree that snapped loud enough to hurt Shiori’s ears.

She had to do something. She didn’t know anything about Speaker battles, but it was clear Motohara wouldn’t defeat the Duke easily.

They began moving again. Their fight stirred the ground like a tornado around her. She was the prize. The shadows stood as pawns, pulled between Motohara’s and the Duke’s commands, dying by the dozens.

But Motohara had an advantage: the Duke was searching the leaves for the hidden, makeshift Grimoire. The leaves were plentiful, and Motohara gave the Duke little chance to find the one that bore his name.

She could only tell if a blur of motion was Motohara or the Duke by the flashy red that accompanied the Duke’s silk tailoring.

That was all she needed. “Burn silk!” she yelled. For less than a heartbeat she didn’t know if the spell had worked. She had tried to cast the spell as wide as possible.

She wasn’t as fast or skilled as Motohara. She couldn’t focus her spells at minute or fast targets. But there was only one person wearing silk.

The red blur representing the Duke lit up like a star. Between his speed and the wind, the flames burned hot like a furnace as every bit of silk on him ignited.

The silk burned and adhered to the Duke’s skin. He screamed, and in that moment Motohara struck. They were both mid-air when the younger combatant spun a makeshift blade of crude, sharpened stone he had formed during the fight.

The stone blade shattered on impact with the Duke, but it also removed most of Duke Praetor’s right leg.

Shiori stood, stunned at the carnage. But she had seen a fight like this before. She needed to act, not panic.

She saw her opening when the two Speakers hung in the air. “DOWN!” she yelled, focusing on the Duke. A sharp series of sounds rang out when the Duke hit the ground with enough force that Shiori was knocked clear from her feet.

Only after a second did Shiori realize those sounds were the Duke’s snapping bones.

Motohara floated to the ground. He had replaced his broken stone weapon with a wooden lance that looked torn from a tree trunk. With a wave, Motohara cleared the dust from the air.

The Duke lay crushed. Shiori gasped at the bloody scene.

But then the Duke laughed. “A fine show indeed. Didst thou know, my darling...”

Motohara ran the fatally wounded man through with the wooden lance.

“Impertinent,” the Duke said impatiently as Motohara tried to lift his skewered enemy by force. He tried to toss the Duke into the portal to the Deep.

With a word, the Duke shattered the lance into toothpicks. “Again I ask, didst thou know what profession your forefather Praetors practiced?”

The Duke’s skin didn’t look human. It was burned black where it wasn’t a bloody mess. The singed smell emanating from him turned Shiori’s stomach as she stood.

He shouldn’t be able to stand. Part of one leg was missing, and the other was bending at too many places. His body was shattered, yet he stood like on stage.

“Thy predecessors, the Praetors long since dead, were healers!” The Duke spoke before Shiori or Motohara could react. Red tendrils of pure pain lashed out from the Duke like from a nightmare monster squid.

One red tendril touched Shiori. Her head went white with pain. Her skin burned. Her legs were crushed. It was the Duke’s pain, redirected and sent outward.

After an eternity of agony she found herself on the ground. She needed to get up. She needed her head to stop spinning.

From where she lay she could see the Duke standing, a perfect specimen of a man in his prime. His clothes were in tatters but he was whole and healed.

The Duke stepped toward Motohara.

With a word, the Duke turned the world to fire. Every leaf within a kilometer blackened as he Spoke a word so powerful it made Shiori’s vision black out. A crown fire roared overhead, and Shiori had to kick away leaves that were burning her skin.

“Thy false little Grimoire is no more, Mores,” the Duke said in an incongruously conversational tone.

Shiori had only received a glancing blow from a red tendril of pain. Motohara had at least three wrapped around his body. He tried to scream so hard that he had run out of air but he still kept trying to scream through the pain.

Shiori tried to Speak, but it was more than she could do to keep air moving in and out. What would Symphon do? And with that thought, she accidentally reopened the connection to Symphon.

And Symphon was close!

He had been a world away hours ago. How had he gotten here?

With a battle cry that sounded from dozens of throats, Felthal soldiers charged into the maelstrom left behind after mere minutes of battle. Soldiers jumped over trees, charged through blackened leaves, and attacked the remaining Umbrae.

Umbrae fought and died as the soldiers leaned into the surprise attack.

They came from the direction Motohara had indicated led to the Path to Felthal. Symphon had brought a small army to her rescue!

The Duke raised his hand to smite the nearest Felthal soldiers. Before he could Speak any word of power, his arm fell clean from his shoulder.

In the same instant, Symphon appeared in a blur, sword in hand.