In the center of the sea of shadows, slowly being dispersed by the wind and rain, I clashed with Barak Bloodbraid. He was fast, but I was faster. And by now I had mastered the art of evading the attacks of bigger, stronger and stranger enemies than those of a man consumed and changed by the powers he had failed to control. Rain mixed with blood ran over my face, dropping to the ground in a slim but steady stream.

My blade met the claws, slapping them away. I was careful, nonetheless, testing the creature. There still was the pressure in my head, there was still pain and rage boiling in my heart, waiting to break to the surface. It was the feral part of me that wanted revenge for the deaths I had seen. The part of me I had thought to bury forever in the depths of the Abyss. I ducked under a wild swing of the sword of shadow, carelessly swung like a man trying to chase away a fly.

We clashed again, and I got the distinct impression that my enemy was not completely here, not concentrated on the fight for a hundred percent. His eyes rolled in his skull, and every now and again his head tilted and turned, as if to understand something meant for his ears only. He was either battling with the sensory overload of the song of the Wyld, he no longer had protection against, or he heard other voices.

If that was the opening Veneir’s sacrifice would give me, I would take it. I drove him back with a couple of wide swings, watching his feet. I saw him putting the weight on his right foot as he stepped back, so I pivoted around his left, bending back as his claws reached for me. His left side was wide open and I gripped Kingsbane on the blade as a half-sword, ramming it into his liver. Black ichor burst from the marbled flesh, running along the fuller of my blade.

I changed the grip on my hand and pushed. Ran him through completely. Not a sound escaped the mouth of the beast. Not a spasm of pain shuddered through the flesh. It seemed as effective as piercing a sack of grain. But I was not done. A second later my [Ghost Strike] hit the same spot, as he had not moved, ice and cold freezing the ichor and the flesh, lumps of frozen stuff clumping together and crumbling away. At the same time [A Murder of Crows] erupted out of my cloak. The crows wrought out of shadows assaulted Bloodbraid like cloud of diving raptors. They were hungry for the enemy, their rage and lust for revenge vibrating in my spine as they clawed went after the man who had played a part in their demise.

Where the crows picked apart the flesh the usual trail of shadowy smoke rose from the wounds, but the smoke just retracted back to merge with the flesh again, closing every wound the crows had afflicted.

I cancelled the Skill. Useless. I could not use the forces of shadows to fight a shadow. I ripped out the sword after turning it once and swung it back to go for his head. A scream reached my ear from somewhere. Oh, it was my own. Kingsbane flashed through the rain, even as Barak turned to me.

He fell back, bending at his waist like a man with not a bone in his body. Kingsbane slashed just over his face, missing his nose. He snapped back upright and slapped me with the back of his hand. The air tumbled and turned around me as I flew back, my chin cracking, numbing me with pain. I slid through the mud for a foot or two.

His misshapen body loomed over me, his face twisting from rage to a sickening grin, sharp and pointed teeth glistening in the rain. “What an underwhelming little creature you are.” He snickered, licking his lips with a tongue much too long. “How dare you to interrupt my little talk with his Darkness.”

A kick slammed into my side, driving the air out of my lungs, making stars dance across my vision. My head slammed to the ground as he kicked me again, ribs breaking under the force. I saw the silvery glittering of a chain snaking through the mud just now reaching the edge of the fog. Zero. His head rose up, turning, fixating us. His head went down into the grass and mud again and he sped up, slithering as fast as he could.

Suddenly, Barak fell to his knees, grunting and screaming, as his shoulders bulged and grew bulbous sacks of flesh. They ripped open under the pressure, thin tendrils and tentacles writhing out of the sacks of blood. They felt around, grasping and waving, as if exploring their new surroundings. Those tentacles, glistening and oily as they were, strongly resembled those of the ink-creatures of the depths, the creatures of the Dragon of Darkness.

I heaved myself to my feet, leaning on the cross-guard of Kingsbane, my hand pressed on the broken ribs, my breath whistling shallow and sick. I activated [Reinvigoration]. New strength flooded my tired and broken body, new clarity washed away the mud in my brain.

Zero shot through the air as he activated his [Chain Lash] at the same time I raised Kingsbane and activated [Ghost Strike]. Zero’s bladed head cut through the tentacles, severing a few of them, and slapped against flesh below, burrowing his barbs firmly into the shoulder of Barak. Kingsbane fell on his head with every bit of strength I could muster.

I cut his face in half, cleaving the left side clean of. The trailing [Ghost Strike] hit the shoulder, shards of ice erupting with not much impact.

And yet he rose, staring at me with his remaining eye. More tendrils grew out of the blood and brain in the open wound, writhing where the half of his head had been. I stumbled back. This was beyond mortal means. Beyond my means.

He lunged for me and this time he drove me back. I ducked the sword he wielded, for my parry would do nothing to stop it, and desperately tried to cut and slap away the tentacles and claws. He drove me over the isle as I desperately twisted and turned, ducked and parried. Acid flew, sizzling wherever his tentacles found uncovered skin of mine, his claws raked over the tattered remains of my chain shirt. My sword chipped away at his flesh, cleaving away parts of his body, but he ignored every hit, just took them, slowing me down even more as I had to wrangle my sword free again.

Back and back he drove me, Zero constricting, slapping and cutting the beast of shadows from behind, unable to stop him. Every time he tried to trip his legs or bind his arms, tentacles wrestled with the chain as if controlled by another force. Zero now was wrapped around the head of Barak, cutting deep into the intact skin of the half-head, but not for a second did Barak hesitated in his assault on me, even with his vision obstructed.

“Slippery.” Barak said with a voice of grinding tombstones, not a speck of emotion left in the man. He threw his sword at me, and I evaded it, but in the air, the turning sword changed into a mass of grasping shadows, falling over me like a living net.

Immediately, I activated [Breaker of Chains], the net exploding into nothing, the shadow racing back to Barak. But the distraction had been all he needed.

His claw gripped my spine, his arm sunken elbow deep into my stomach. He lifted me up until we were face to half-face. He snarled. The pain in my belly was too overwhelming to even feel it properly. I was done and was losing consciousness fast. Last chance.

“[Unchained Ancestors]…” I murmured with the last strength I could muster, lowering the last, flimsy barricades around my mind, if they even were still in place.

Time froze. Not in reality, but voices spoke with the speed of thought, as my mind floated away, just a passenger on a ride to the hells. I was forced back into a corner of my mind. Nothing around me but sounds.

“Imbecilic fool.” A cold voice sneered, cutting through the other whispers with cold arrogance. “You dare summon me after what you have done? I will slit your own throat and end this torment.”

Out of the void I was floating above stepped a man I knew all too well. Wearing the matte-black armor and regalia of the Lord Commander of the Ravenguard, with his salt and pepper hair and his intense eyes burning in his sharply cut face. The Betrayer. The Regicide.

“I knew you to be inbred and greedy, but how someone …” He started to berate me, but suddenly whirled around, fixating something outside of my world. “The darkness.” He spat. “It is free?”

He balled his fist, throwing his head back in a bellow of rage. “Have I not given enough?” He roared. “The one vow that still holds true. Bound by my oath even now? Damn you, Ravenspawn!” His eyes flashed at me, full of hatred. “The one enemy I cannot ignore.”

I floated in the back of my head, just watching him enter my mind, taking over my body. I returned to my senses alongside him, but with no control whatsoever.

“Pain.” He smiled with my lips. “How I missed you.” He grinned my blood-stained teeth at the creature of darkness, that still held me up by my spine. “Zero!” He said, looking to the chain with my eyes, fondness spreading through my head. I felt it as my own. He raised his sword “And Whisper. The day gets…”

Barak snapped my spine with a flick of his wrist. Immediately my struggling limbs fell still, hanging as if dead. The Betrayer just grinned at my tormenter with my face, while I felt the snapping and the pain snuffing out as I ceased to feel anything below my torso.

“Good.” The Regicide smiled. “Break him. But I will not allow you to walk the earth.”

I felt the thoughts of the Betrayer racing through my mind, exploring the Skills I had and dismissing them instantly. Forming his thoughts into a blade itself, wielded by determination and fervor, hardened in the hate and willpower of a man who had cheated death not once, but twice, to hold onto a vow to fight back the very darkness that now stood before him.

Kingsbane flashed horizontally through the air, raindrops shooting away in the wave of air. I could not see it. The muscles in my arm burst under the force of the swing, as my body was not used to swing a sword with a force like that, my shoulder pan splintered into a thousand pieces. Kingsbane, or Whisper as the Betrayer had called it, went flying as my hand lost all strength. It had passed through the neck of Barak Bloodbraid with no resistance. Nothing had happened.

“The weakness of all marionettes.” The Betrayer sneered through my teeth at Barak Bloodbraid, contempt and arrogance thick in his voice. “Cut your strings and you go down.”

Behind Bloodbraid, a wave of darkness and shadows exploded with immense force, stuff of shadow and darkness erupting from his back, as if driven out by a force of nature. In an instant, the tentacles and black veins evaporated, drifting away in a fine mist in the wind and rain.

A man remained. Just a man. The beast and the shadows were gone. I fell down, no longer held up, while Barak swayed on his feet, too stubborn to die. But he fell to his knees. Because a man with half a head was dead, even if he could not believe it yet.

I lost consciousness again, as I snapped back into the painful wreck that was my body, my innards spilling out of my belly. The Regicide was gone. My last thoughts were trying to enter meditation, to enter my Demesne. One last race. One last struggle for survival. I needed to mend my body.

I made it in time.