Book Two - Chapter Twenty-Seven

Lusya and Ander had stopped by a large, isolated tree on the side of the road, waiting under its canopy of branches for the bandits to approach. They had left the carriage some ways back, with the horses tied to a stake Ander had driven into the ground.

Although the sun had already dipped halfway below the horizon, dying the sky a vivid spread of reds and pinks and leaving only the dull orange vestiges of its light to see by, the bandits showed no sign of halting or slowing in their approach. Their pace was steady, though not quick. Still, it wouldn’t be long before they were visible. Indeed, in a matter of seconds, Lusya could see six shadowed forms on the horizon.

Most rode horses, but two were on foot. Based on their size, those two seemed to be tiransa. Riding horses was awkward for tiransa, and some breeds could not support their weight. With motomancy of their level, they could keep pace for some time, as long as the horses did not move at full gallop.

At first, the group continued on, their approach unchanged. As they neared, however, they began to slow. One of them pointed at Lusya and Ander and shouted something that was unintelligible over the distance. The other riders drew their horses to a stop. For a couple minutes, the six stayed in place, looking at each other. Lusya could just make out a few mouth movements. It seemed they were having a conversation she could not hear. Then, the riders dismounted, and the group of six walked toward Lusya and Ander, slow and cautious.

None of them were strong enough to threaten her. Even Ander might have been able to take one or two alone, were he not injured. Still, in numbers, they had the potential to be problematic. She would keep her guard up until they were dead. The last time she had underestimated a weak opponent, Ariya had almost been ruined.

“Avoid the one in the center,” she said to Ander. “He is stronger than the others. Too strong for you to fight while injured.”

He nodded. “Got it.”

The bandits stopped a couple dozen feet away. She recognized them as the ones who had been clustered around Gisala back at Nearfield. There were still no minor-rank demons, strengthening the theory that only Gisala could handle them. She recalled having learned some these bandits’ names back then, including the short-for-her-kind tiransa woman, but she hadn’t made much of an effort to remember.

“It’s you,” that same woman growled. “The one who killed Ashash and the others.”

“If you are not prepared to see comrades killed, perhaps you should consider a different line of work,” Lusya replied.

“Don’t you mock me!”

Lusya tilted her head and blinked twice. It had been a rather straightforward suggestion. Although, on second thought, perhaps there had been an element of derision there. How odd. Mockery was something she seldom engaged in. She could not remember the last time, in fact.

“You’re gonna pay for last time,” the woman said. “You’re gonna curse the name Alima as you bleed out.”

Oh, so that was her name. It did sound familiar, now that she had said it.

“I don’t suppose we can convince you to go straight and let this end without any bloodshed,” Ander said, stepping forward.

A human man at the center of the formation, the apparent leader, let out a derisive snort. “Yeah, we’re gonna give up when we’ve got three times the people.” He waved a hand low, indicating Ander’s leg, bandaged and bound in a makeshift brace. “Shadowlands, kid, you barely even count. Maybe you ought to give up and run away.” He sneered. “Not that you’ll get far.”

Ander sighed, unfazed by the implicit threat. He frowned in obvious disappointment. “I tried. You’re going to regret this.”

The man waved a hand in dismissal. “If thinking that makes you feel better at the end fine.” He shifted his gaze to glare at Lusya. “Just tell me one thing, and we can maybe make this a little quicker for you. Did you take down the two groups who never came back?”

“It has to be her,” Alima said, snarling at Lusya.

The other tiransa, a man, nodded. “She’s obviously coming for us.”

“No doubt,” a human woman said.

“I do not know what you are referring to,” Lusya said. “However, we did dispatch one troop of your comrades.”

“Sounds like at least one more group got taken out,” Ander said. “It could’ve been that demon. Or maybe the kingdom finally took action?”

“Whatever, doesn’t matter really,” the leader said. He grinned and stroked his short brown beard. “We’re killing you either way. Then Boss won’t have to worry about you or the girl, and we’ll be free to live as we please.”

“What’s your goal here, anyway?” Ander asked. “If you were roaming around more, I could kind of understand, but it seems like you’ve been holed up here for at least a month. It’s a dead end. Even if we fail—and we won’t—someone else is going to crush you before summer’s over.”

“That’s where you’re wrong pal,” another human man, this one thinner with a shaved head and face, said. “We’re not gonna let that happen. Boss has a plan, see.”

“I guess there’s no harm in telling a couple of corpses,” the leader said. “With the power Boss’s given us, the slaves we keep, and the money from the ones we sell, we’re gonna have everything we need. Boss has even got a plan for growing food. Soon, this is gonna be our own little country. Ostia won’t stand a chance of beating us, and we’ll fight off the Sacred Knights too. It’ll be our own little land where no one can tell us how to live.”

“How foolish,” Lusya said.

He glared at her. “What was that?”

“Your plan is idiotic,” she said. “It is based entirely on false assumptions and doomed to failure.”

“For one thing, if the stories are anything to go by, a single Paladin could beat you all, if things get that bad,” Ander said. His tone was not mocking or condescending. It was a matter-of-fact explanation. “This isn’t going to work.”

There were other factors. Ostia’s army probably could win through sheer numbers, for example. But the Sacred Knights were the primary factor. There had been so-called bandit kingdoms before the Knights’ rise to prominence. Even when the Odessian Empire had dominated much of Ysuge, there had been pockets where local leadership had been weak enough to be supplanted by thugs or warriors without masters.

It was debatable how different such kingdoms were from any other nation. They tended to be more aggressive, with less regard for diplomacy or their neighbors’ sovereignty. Aside from that, however, in order to survive, the successful ones had ended up needing to adopt proper laws, power structures, and other trappings of a functioning society. That was beside the point, though. That had been centuries ago, in a very different world, and still many had failed. Now, the Sacred Knights influence reached from one sea to the other. While they were not always consistent, they often acted as peacekeepers and law enforcement. And, of course, they always tried to prevent war when possible. They would not tolerate a group of criminals declaring war on Ostia, and it would not take a Paladin for the Knights to win.

The leader grimaced then shook his head. “You’re wrong, I believe in the boss. But even if you’re right, I don’t care. Even if it’s just for a couple months, we’re going to make it happen.”

“I guess everyone has their own goal they’re fighting for,” Ander said. Under his breath, but loud enough for Lusya to hear, he added, “Even if it’s a stupid one.”

“Is that not the thrust of your ideology?” she asked.

“I guess it kind of is,” he replied, scratching his head, “but it does depend on what you’re trying to achieve and how. If they want their own country, I guess I can’t fault them. Even the thing about not caring how long it lasts would be kind of admirable if they weren’t killing and pillaging to achieve it.” He sighed. “But they are. We probably wouldn’t be having this conversation if they weren’t.”

“I see.”

So, he did not take issue with their goal itself, merely their means to achieve it. And it was for that reason that he could not look past how foolish it was. Interesting, how context could change a mortals’ ideals. Doing what one believed was right with intelligence a secondary consideration was something Ander strove for, even admired, under ordinary circumstances. Although, this may have been less a change, and more an additional layer she had not yet seen.

The leader of the bandits groaned. “Enough talk. You can surrender and we’ll kill you quick and easy, or you fight, and we make it hurt. Your choice.”

“You are incapable of killing me, and I will not allow you to kill Ander,” she said.

The leader chuckled. “Yeah, right.” His eyes seemed to sparkle, even in the dark. “I just thought of a great idea. Why don’t I show your body to that girl? I wonder—”

She was in front of him in an instant. She punched him in the face and released a shockwave as she felt bone and cartilage crumple beneath her fist, blood splashing onto her knuckles. The leader went flying backward, spinning end-over-end in an uncontrollable tumble.

He landed on the ground in an unmoving heap. He was still alive. His durability enhancement was sufficient to survive a blow from her. The blow would, however, have taken him out of the fight for a while.

“You bitch!” Alima roared.

She charged forward and swung the massive axe she held at Lusya. Lusya moved away, allowing the weapon to slam into the ground with a spray of dirt. Before she could counterattack, the thin man lunged at her with his sword. She batted the weapon aside with her hand and kicked at his chest. He managed a hasty guard. The blow knocked him away, but he was uninjured. His intervention had denied Lusya the chance to attack Alima, but that mattered little. The tiransa woman was the weakest of the group by a significant margin.

One of the human women of the group, with blonde hair, and the tiransa man rushed forward together, attacking Lusya from opposite sides. The former thrust a spear forward, while the latter swung a massive sword.

Ander rushed in and warded off the woman’s attack, while Lusya dodged the tiransa’s. She swept his legs out from under him and kicked him away, then followed the momentum of her kick to whirl and land a vicious, shockwave-enchanced punch to the woman’s stomach, launching her away. Ander moved behind Lusya, his sword held at the ready.

The final combatant, an unusually tall so-called red-haired human woman wielding a war hammer, ran forward, perhaps thinking Lusya distracted, and swung the massive weapon down at Lusya’s head. Lusya sidestepped the attack, raised her leg high, and brought it down on the woman’s elbow. The snap that followed was drowned out by the woman’s howl of pain as she collapsed to the ground, dropping her weapon to clutch her injured arm with the other.

Ander took the opportunity to weave around Lusya and stab at the woman’s eyes. Her eyes widened, and she threw herself to the ground in a desperate dodge. It worked, but she was prone, with one arm unusable and the other pinned underneath her, as it had still been holding the broken one.

Before Lusya could finish the red-haired woman, Alima charged at Lusya with a great shout. The tiransa woman swung her axe through the air, but Lusya jumped over the blow and kicked her in the throat, driving her away.

The tiransa man had recovered by then and was upon Lusya. Ander lashed out with his sword, forcing the man to parry the blow rather than attack. Lusya used an air jump to stay in the air in order to punch the man in the head, sending him rolling head over heels away.

She noticed Ander wincing, briefly taking weight off his injured foot for a second before he corrected his stance. She wasn’t the only one. The thin man and blonde woman were on the attack once more. The woman was going for Lusya, but the man ran at Ander.

Ander parried the man’s sword strike, but once again winced in pain, his injured leg buckling and forcing him to retreat. Lusya batted aside the woman’s thrust, crouched under the swipe that followed, and launched a high kick into the woman’s jaw, launching her high into the air. The woman wasn’t at the level of aerial movement, so that had her incapacitated, if only for a few seconds, and the fall would not be pleasant.

Following that motion, Lusya jumped back in a flip to bring her heel down on the man’s shoulder as he clashed against Ander’s guard. The man cried out as the blow drove him to his knees. Ander immediately followed up with a slash aimed for the man’s face, but he blocked it on his arms, suffering deep gashes along them, but surviving. As she landed, she smoothly flowed into a punch that launched him away from Ander.

“Are you well?” she asked.

He nodded, retreating a bit behind her once more. “You know, the way you fight would be kind of pretty if it weren’t for all the…violence.”

She had been told that before. The dance-like grace of her movements and transitions between them—courtesy of Danfia, whose name meant “beautiful dance”—had drawn such comments before. Sometimes in mockery, other times in praise. This seemed to the latter. It was not unpleasant, but she did not have time to respond.

Alima charged again. She swung her axe down. Lusya sidestepped, weathering the spray of debris that followed, and grabbed the woman’s wrist. Lusya threw a powerful, shockwave enhanced punch into the woman’s stomach. With Lusya holding her in place, the full force of the blow surged through Alima’s body.

The woman crumpled to her knees, spitting up blood. The red-haired woman was on her feet again, running at them. She had discarded her weapon, functioning fist raised for a punch. Ander leaped forward and struck. The woman shifted to block the blow on her forearm, her enhancement getting her off with a mild cut.

Lusya grabbed Alima’s head and twisted until a loud crack signaled the snapping of her neck and the ending of her life. With the red-haired woman also injured and unarmed, Ander seemed to have her in check for the moment, driving her back with repeated strikes.

The blonde woman—who had landed at some point—tried to intervene, but Lusya drew her dagger and threw it at the woman. The blonde woman had no problem blocking the weapon on the shaft of her spear, but doing so gave Lusya plenty of time to rush behind her and kick her in the side with a shockwave, sending her away and cracking a couple ribs.

Ander stabbed at the red-haired woman’s chest. She twisted, and his sword pierced through the shoulder of her already injured arm with surprising ease. The pain of her injury must have been distracting her from maintaining her enhancement. What an amateurish mistake. A proper motomancer didn’t need conscious effort to do that. Lusya’s persisted when she was asleep. The red-haired woman howled and threw out a wild punch. It caught him in the face and drove him back, but he didn’t appear to be injured at all. Lusya rushed forward, kicked the woman into the air, then jumped up to kick her away.

This was going to take much too long at this point. Their durability was sufficient to withstand some pummeling from her, and Ander limited her options. Though he was performing admirably as support under the circumstances, his injury meant she couldn’t afford to leave him to his own devices. She couldn’t stray too far in her efforts to finish things.

Under ordinary circumstances, these weaklings wouldn’t have called for such measures, but she was done using time on them. Besides, with their numbers, continued combat did give them a chance to get lucky, especially with darkness fast approaching. Lusya had good night vision, bolstered by her sense for Malice, and the moon and stars were plenty to see by on a clear night, but it was a small extra obstacle. She doubted the enemies could do much to her regardless, but Ander was a different story.

“Lunera, Miudofay.”

She called her Blades to her hands. She had been practicing using them both at once, and a fight with enemies she so outclassed was a golden opportunity to test the technique in combat.

The thin man had gotten to his feet and was rushing at Ander. Lusya swung Lunera, Miudofay following close behind, connecting the space in front of and behind Ander, and sending out a wave of flame as the rift formed.

A wave of violet flame erupted from Miudofay’s blade, only to vanish and reappear right in front of the thin man, giving him no time to react before it incinerated him. His sword, glowing red hot, dropped to the ground into a pile of ashes. Ander took a step back in surprise at the unusual attack.

The tiransa man and the red-haired woman had just collected themselves from their last exchanges, but they likewise froze in response. It was just for a split-second, but it was enough. Lusya used Lunera to appear in front of the man and strike with Miudofay, slashing through his abdomen to kill him. It was slightly faster than slashing again with Lunera as she had been. Against these opponents, it made little difference, but the milliseconds might be useful someday.

She warped to the red-haired woman, but then sensed the leader moving toward her. He had recovered, it seemed. She turned and parried his strike, then kicked away the woman when she tried to attack, almost in one motion. The leader snarled at Lusya, such as he could. Her blow had crushed his left eye, broken his nose, and caved in his skull around them. Blood streaked down the left side of his face, and it could not move properly. Some might have found such a visage fierce, but the way only half his face obeyed him made his expression look rather half-baked to her.

The blonde woman tried to attack from behind, but Ander put himself between them and turned her spear aside, then forced her to retreat with a slash. Lusya shoved the leader away, then opened a rift, connecting the space in front of her to that behind the woman.

The blonde woman moved into the rift as she backed away, appearing in front of Lusya. The woman had an instant to sway as if sick before Lusya lopped off her head.

Lusya turned and flung Miudofay’s flames at the red-haired woman. She tried to move to the side, but Lusya swung Lunera horizontally, expanding space along that axis, causing the woman to cover less ground than she thought. She stopped, thinking herself safe. Not a second later, her eyes widened, and the flames engulfed her.

Good. That usage of Lunera had seemed obsolete for a while when she had learned how to open rifts. It was worse for movement, and she had not been able to find any meaningful way to affect enemies with it when she had to attack them in close quarters anyway. In combination with Miudofay’s flames, however, it seemed promising.

The leader was right behind her. She had neglected him a bit more than she should have perhaps. He was poised to strike. She started to turn, but she knew she didn’t have time to defend. It didn’t much matter. The sword struck, slicing through her cloak and blouse and throwing her forward. It had not broken the skin at all, and she would have recovered before he could follow up.

Ander lunged between them and swung at the leader. The leader batted the blow aside and kicked Ander in the shin of his injured leg. Ander cried out and lifted the leg on reflex as he pulled it away. Overextended and off balance, he was helpless, allowing the leader to thrust his sword at Ander’s chest. Lusya was moving toward them. She was faster, but the leader had much less distance to cover. His sword hit Ander. The blade struggled against Ander’s enhancement, but it managed to pierce his skin nonetheless, pushing deeper and deeper inside. Lusya was upon the leader in an instant, Miudofay wreathed in flame. She slashed the black blade through the man’s head. She kicked his body away before it could crumple, then banished her Blades.

The sword, not lodged in far enough to stay in place, slipped out of Ander’s wound as he fell to his knees, then forward onto his stomach. She knelt and rolled him onto his back. Blood was already soaking the front of his shirt, his breathing pained and labored. The sword had not been able to pierce straight through, but it had dug in deep. There was no doubt that it had struck something vital.

“Why did you do that?” she asked. “He did not significantly injure me. He would not have been able to harm me. And I told you not to fight him.”

Ander let out a hoarse laugh that quickly gave way to an agonized gasp. “Call it a reflex. I was moving before I really thought about it.”

“I will fetch the supplies,” she said.

He grabbed her hand before she could stand. “We don’t have anything that can treat a hole in my heart, Lusya.” He gave a weak smile. “Pretty sure one of my lungs got pierced too.”

“You are dying,” she said. “Why are you smiling?”

“Who knows?” he replied. “I leaped before I looked because it felt like the right thing to do. It’s not a bad way to go out.”

“You were trying to protect me.”

He nodded. “Yeah. It was stupid, but yeah. You know, I don’t mean to brag, but people actually say I’m something of a prodigy.” He took a long pause. “My teacher, Master Gerad, he said I was better than some Academy graduates. So I figure, I can’t waste that talent. I have to use it to help, wherever I can.”

Gerad. A high-ranking former Sacred Knight from Bulice.

“Gerad Verbum, the former First Paladin?” she asked. “That’s your teacher?”

Ander nodded. “That’s the one.”

It must have taken a lot of talent, money, or both to get a retired Paladin as a teacher, let alone one who had ranked first. There were so many questions that brought up, but she couldn’t bring herself to ask any of them.

“Your efforts are wasted on me,” Lusya said. Something felt off. Something in her throat. Her voice sounded strange. “I cannot appreciate your fruitless actions.”

He chuckled. “That’s okay. I didn’t do it to hear your thanks.”

“I will not…I cannot mourn you.”

He laughed again. “Hey, I guess you and Ariya were wrong. Still…” he reached a hand up toward her face, and gently wiped away a bit of moisture that had appeared around her eyes. “…who knew demons were such bad liars?”

Her eyes widened, her lips parting slightly, though no gasp of air escaped. He lowered his arm to his side, closed his eyes, and went still.

“How long did you know?” she asked to no response. “From the start? Answer me! You can’t die right after saying that.”

All the pieces fell together in her head. Why he had approached them in the first place. Why he had been so fixated on traveling with her and Ariya. His constant probing. It all made sense. It all made him more foolish. This Sacred Knight-to-be had gotten himself killed trying to protect a demon far beyond his strength.

She brushed more water from her eyes, but it was soon replaced. She knew what they were. Tears. She had shed tears before. There had been times, early in her training, when she had shed them in pain. She had cried when Father had died. There had been at least one other time, hadn’t there?

That was why were voice had been hoarse too. But she did not sob or weep. Those things, she could not recall ever having done.

Why had this happened? She should have been able to prevent it, by all rights. She could have insisted Ander stay behind. She could have restrained him for his own good if it came to that. She could have paid closer attention to him, the leader, or both. Why hadn’t she?

And why was she spending so much time and effort thinking about this? She didn’t have time for this.

She stood. “Miudofay.”

She understood cremation was the preferred means of funeral for those in the north. It had also been how Father had sent off certain subordinates, though most demons cared little for such things. Every now and then, she found herself wishing she could have done the same for him, but she had not had the chance.

“Farewell, Ander, you fool.”