Delusion's Fall, Part 2

AREMFRID

With both hands on the hilt of my long-sword, I came crashing down upon the foe who was kept at bay by my weapon’s further reach. He was armed with a falcata and shield—classical—but I had learnt the ways of the two-handed blade in Lugustia, and have not forgotten its superiority over the outdated weapon that is the forward-curved armament my opponent wielded.

He scurried back, at a loss in front of my skill in face of his higher stage of ascendancy. Such is the power of experience and greater equipment, that it can dwarf innate strength and superior ascendency. I lowered my guard, baiting him into my trap. One without experience would think it the guard of a fool, all lowered and vulnerable, but little did the Gnobble know that from this position, I could strike him a moment he could not foresee. He was lured into my bait, thinking he could gain the hand over me, but I swiftly struck him from below with my blade’s false-edge, and he was thrown for a loop—a loop exploited by myself as I pressed onwards, graze his thigh, pierced his shoulder and threw him to the ground. Victory lies with me.

Us goblins, like all beings distinguished from mindless animals, have a warrior code of conduct—of honor, glory, but without mercy. It was not like the chivalry possessed by the humans whereby forgiveness and mercy brought honor, rather than victory and strength. It confounded me for a minute, ignorant of whether I should apply the pragmatic code of my kind and kill my foe, or to bestow a humanist mercy upon my vanquished enemy, and leave him to live another day.

Yet before I could decide and proceed onwards to my nephew, I felt a disturbance in the air, as I gazed to my left and locked sights with a rival most competitive. “Your king has fallen, and bitten the grass and stones below my feet. I shall grant you a final chance to relinquish your former master, and pledge yourself to yours truly.”

“…You jest, for the son of my brother Albar has never met defeat in combat,” I said as I raised my weapon once more, unmoved by the potential truth spouted by the adversary. I knew not whether my nephew would ever truly return, but whomever wields his body at the moment—Albaric—is no weakling himself, for he would have failed my trial at the forest back when we had first met. Surely, this fiend seeks nothing but to sow dissent within our hearts.

“Do the Ausmulii then consist of nothing but halfwits?” he retorted, shifting his attention to towards the ground I lingered on. “Stand up!” with a heavy bark, the scoundrel awoke his fainted underling who lay wounded before my very feet. I had subdued him, but now he arose a half-dead man ready to stir his body to destruction. Such is the Edekrag of one who shapes himself a Goblin King, but alas, no half-dead Gnobble would ever bring me to my knees as long as I remain alert, thus I made dust that what remained of the poor soul, and with poise, I turned back to the tyrant who had spared his subject no respite.

It will suffice to say that I had not tasted the bitter fruit of defeat in combat ever since that massacre at Alisdat. And this man—Thodbargild—was the first to make me experience the flavor once more. An unending flurry of heavy strikes from his blade and the continual bashing of his shield against my weapon was all it took for my old shoulders to crack and creak, as my guard faltered and gave way to a bash that struck true.

A voice echoed through the thicket. “Your tirade ends here, scum.”

It was not Thodbargild, but a person from beyond his rear, wielding the black, obsidian-like falcata of my brother. It was his son, and my nephew, standing tall, challenging the fiend who had bested me with a retrospective semblance to his past mien.

“Hold on, who are you?” Thodbargild asked puzzled and unnerved.

My nephew slowly approached—“Albaric”—he said as he did so, each step deliberate and calculating, for out of nowhere, one seemingly normal, consistent step turned out to be a lunge—a powerful one at that, causing Thodbargild to flail up his guard in a panic, instantly breaking, and my nephew drawing first blood. He maneuvered around, and arced his blade afresh at the tyrant as the foe in question jumped back, creating distance.

Steel clashed with claws, and claws met with skin as the fight turned into a death struggle rapidly. Thodbargild fought with cadence, cold, powerful strikes being his forte. He made use of his physical prowess and domineering demeanor to force open his enemy’s defenses with unrelenting offense, never giving up an inch of ground, and only taking mercilessly. On the other hand, my nephew—that is, Frasmul—has always fought like a wild beast, completely in tune with his instincts and gut feeling, providing only the best his athletic build can offer by maneuvering in seemingly unnatural ways. He could produce dive attacks so low that he’d remain half the fight with a dust-covered face, or he would evade attacks right at the final second as the enemy’s weapon remained a mere hair’s length removed from impact.

Never have I seen Albaric fight like this, which could have but one explanation behind it. “My boy... has returned,” I murmured as the tears began well up and accumulate on my eye.

Thodbargild’s falcata swung with deathly precision, each arc of steel forged to break the spirit of his foe, whilst his shield advanced like an iron wall, a lone man’s shield wall, denying any attempt at righteous reprisal. Yet my boy was no stranger to walls, nor to cages, nor to the suffocating force of a stronger arm; he slipped beneath the tyrant’s guard like a serpent, dashing to and fro, circling him as if the earth itself bent to his will.

BOOM!—

—A bash from the shield rattled Frasmul’s ribs, yet he did not falter; rather, he twisted with the blow, turning pain into momentum, and his falcata’s false edge flowed past the rim of Thodbargild’s guard, carving a deep gash across the tyrant’s cheek. The fiend howled in agony as his eyes flared with rage, for he had tasted his own blood, and the flavor was rotten. He answered with a whirlwind of steel, his strikes so heavy that even the rocks by the stream burst open beneath the force of his steps and echo of his strikes.

But for all his might, Thodbargild faced a foe utterly unshackled by convention. My nephew ducked so low, the dust clung to his brow, rolled beneath the shield as if he was dodging the stray branch of a tree, and with a surge of Kragnin through his veins, he rose behind the tyrant’s flank. He flung his blade to his other hand, and with his right-hand now at liberty, its claws exploded towards the adversary’s face. Blinded and in shock, he flailed his edge towards my nephew desperate for revenge. Ailing, he suffered, staggered, but did not fall, for his arrogant, prideful self-image would not allow Olfrik’s only descendant to be reduced to such disgrace.

With a final cry that ripped from his throat like the dragon’s howl that his great-great-grandfather slew in times gone by, the tyrant desperately raised his shield to my nephew’s onslaught, but to little avail. My nephew’s falcata crashed through it as though it were brittle bark, shattering wood and will alike, and in that very same instant of ruin, the obsidian blade found its mark, cleaving through brain and bone, lodging itself in the tyrant’s skull. Thodbargild’s roar died into a gurgle, his frame shuddered once, and then collapsed upon the cold, bitter, woodland dirt, for his reign of oppression had been silenced at the hands of the son of Albar.