Elephant Pond 18:

The thousandth and the last (1)

“A Slayer?!” Typhon exclaimed. He tensed at the word even as he held his right arm steady.

“Yes, a Slayer,” confirmed Vigram with a smug smile, relishing the reaction,

“Why are you here? Who could have possibly afforded to hire you for weeks at a time?”

“Don’t ask me; even I don’t know your buyer’s name. I was just as surprised as you are now, when I got the offer. Whoever it is, they’re obscenely wealthy or at least backed by deep pockets willing to wager several large fortunes for a chance to get their hands on your kind.”

Morgan’s father hadn’t moved from where he stood next to the railing since the conversation had begun. But he remained alert and wary of every move the Harcovian made.

Inhaling slowly, Vigram stepped closer to Typhon. Morgan’s father scooped his spear up and got to his feet. When Vigram did open them his eyes were still grey.

Tide Reaver’s winds having pushed off all of the limbs and blood covering the deck from D’s earlier massacre, and all of the deceased had already been thrown overboard. So the only spilled blood that remained had already dried in the midday sun.

“Smells like you and your friends have been having a grand old time. A shame Dagon ordered me to protect his ship. I could feel the Harcov bane edging closer with all this sitting around I was forced to do, so squashing your little resistance would have done well to stave it off,” he said. .

“You’re fine being ordered around by dull men?” demanded Typhon. “You’re perfectly fine with working with them to sell your fellow tribesmen to the people that slew the entire onyx tribe? Do you not think it should be us against them?”

“I don’t care for politics or imaginary loyalties to men I’ve never met before. I am one of the Blood Mother’s Slayers, just a soldier; drawn to war as you are bound to peace. So let’s just get to killing each other.”

“I don’t have anyone with me that can finish you off-”

“If you can’t fight your own battles then just curse your weakness with your last breathes” Vigram interrupted.

“So, I will just kill you myself,” Typhon finished.

Vigram’s eyebrows raised and he chuckled, scarred lips curling into a smile within his helmet. “If you’re willing to pay that price, then I’m more than happy to oblige.” He hefted the giant axe from his back and spun it in his right hand. “May the day’s bloodshed enamor the Blood Mother.”

“Wind Armament: Gale Fang,” Typhon commanded. Tide Reaver sprung to life just as it had before, white runes glowing along its golden shaft as it expelled howling winds. And then they condensed to form a grey-glowing rippling cloak of air around the spear and snaked up Typhon’s arm all the way up to his shoulder. Vigram grinned at the show of power, cracked his neck and stretched his shoulders as he prepared himself.

Typhon’s fight with Gellend was the first time Morgan had seen a Harcovian fight and use their blood frenzy, so Morgan couldn’t help but compare the deceased Blade to the Slayer. But the fact that they were comparable at all worried him.

Gellend’s sword strikes had been so fast that they had become hardly perceptible blurs. Vigram’s axe swings were much slower, and as such had barely half the visible distortion. But his swing did move the air without Blood Frenzy or wind magic behind it, just on raw strength alone.

In place of showers of sparks, their clashes were small power struggles as their weapons met they grated against each other from the prolonged friction. If this was how close Slayers were to Blades without their Blood Frenzies, then Morgan didn’t want to see what Vigram could do, with it.

But until that moment came, if it ever did, Typhon continued to wail on the Slayer. He was pushing him back with fast and vicious spear strikes that the Harcovian found growingly difficult to parry and block. One of Typhon’s blows could end the battle at any moment now.

“Please, Typhon. Don’t throw everything away for him.” Maya said, her voice cracking.

She was on the brink of tears while Typhon pushed harder still, forcing Vigram into a purely defensive position. “I have to do this.”

“Just wait on D or Vella or Tibbles, even. They’ll help you!”

“They can’t!” he shouted back. “This man is the last one. He’s the last man standing between us and our freedom. Becoming one of the Burdened is a fair price for that.” Swinging his fastest and heaviest blow yet the wind cloaked spear batted away the Slayer’s axe, destroying Vigram’s guard, and leaving him exposed to any attacks that followed.

And Typhon did. As he thrusted the spear at Vigram’s throat, Maya yelled out: “I don’t want to go home without you again!”

He twisted Tide Reaver by its shaft with quarter heartbeat to spare. The blue spear head had stopped at the side of his neck a hair’s breadth off. Morgan understood his father’s point but he still shuddered as the wave of condensed air meant for the Slayer’s neck flew from the tip of the spear and cut the ship’s mast in half.

Vigram backed away, cackling gingerly as he watched the upper half of the towering wooden structure behind him topple. It slammed onto the deck, caving in a section of the floor boards and crushed engraved railings before sliding off into the sea.

The Slayer had no more room for over confidence.

“You’ll die in the dark,” a voice said, drawing Morgan’s attention towards Daiah’s Locker behind them.

There Dagon sauntered towards D as nonchalantly as he would approach a friend. In his left hand the Murk Blade belched black clouds onto the beige deck as he spoke: “You’ll die burning and bleeding out, screaming into the silent void your little friend made.”

D’s giant peels jabbed at Dagon, slicing long incisions into the deck while smaller peels scurrying at the pirate’s legs. But Dagon remained undeterred as began sprinting towards D. He fired his flaming wide-shot from his special pistol, burning away the peels low to, while he cleaved through the others with Morgan’s sword. Ransom meanwhile, covered him by shooting the giant paper peels, igniting them with white flames that consumed them in seconds. With the looming peels largely occupied by Ransom; slicing, shooting, dodging and ducking was enough for Dagon to steadily close in on D.

That was until a wave crashed into the Burning Lady’s left side, rocking the ship enough that Ransom’s next shot flew into the sea rather than the peel he had intended.

Following the motion of D’s hands, new paper peels sprouted from the thinning mid-section of the ship and reared back, like snakes preparing to strike. Simultaneously, dozens of smaller peels rose up from the deck behind and around the druid, surrounding him with beige peels that swayed in the wind from Typhon’s Wind Armament, like a field of tall dried grass. “Why did you stop? Afraid to fight me on your own?” taunted D.

Without Ransom’s support, Dagon’s odds of fending off the peels long enough to making it to the druid were slim and he knew it. So he tightened his grip on the Murk Blade and an ink cloud exploded outward, enveloping him and the half of the ship he was standing on. It reminded Morgan of the way the ink had filled the Deep Forge when he had first tested it.

Despite knowing everything the Murk Blade could do, Morgan couldn’t guess what Dagon’s play was. The pirate himself couldn’t see within the ink clouds or out of it, nor would he have a way of even leaving since the black space deprived you of your sense of direction. However, D chose not to find out at all and sent peels after him. Large and small, they penetrated the palpable darkness, slowly picking it apart with dozens of jabs at a time but none returned blood-stained.

Dagon emerged from the cloud, running along the right railing with the Murk Blade still spewing clouds onto the deck.

As Dagon hopped off the railing, D immediately began to chant while he watched the pirate dashed towards him. Dagon aimed the blade at D and fired a quick shot of ink cloud. A large peel intercepted it with ease. The projectile was far from fast so D was able to block the entirety of it, but they were slow to fall. So as Dagon followed up with more of them each became a blind spot that lingered in the air for several seconds at a time before pooling at D’s feet like black fog.

The peels immediately around D worked meticulously, either stabbing at the ink clouds or trying to swat it away. But with a dozen paces left between them, Dagon shot another, larger ink cloud that covered the druid’s body completely and gripping Morgan’s sword, leaped in for the kill.

Off of timing alone, the field of peels around D jabbed forward, exactly where Dagon had jumped forward to. They would have connected too, if the pirate hadn’t already anticipated the attack. He rolled to the side of the attack and then slashed through it, after which he continued forward to deliver a horizontal slash to the cloud.

The blade’s serrated silver edge dichotomized the black cloud, parting it to reveal the wound Dagon had imparted on D from the right side of his hip all the up to his left shoulder. The Druid’s legs buckled as blood gushed from the wound and his eyes closed as he fell into the ink clouds at their feet.

Morgan covered his mouth as he struggled to hold back a scream. Maya sighed and hugged her son and daughter.

Dagon prodded where the Plain Walker had fallen into the ink clouds, with the Murk Blade, feeling around for the body. His back was turned to them so Morgan didn’t see his reaction until he turned around. “He isn’t there.” he shouted at Ransom.

Hardened peels broke out of the deck behind him, splayed out like an opened rib cage. D alighted behind the pirate, freshly bandaged. He must have completed the spell to do it while within the ink cloud.

“How did yo-,” Dagon exclaimed as D’s wrapped hand grabbed him by the face, the first time Morgan had ever seen his cold sea green eyes widen in surprise.

“My little friend told me how to cheat the dark,” D. With a gesture from his free hand wooden peels lanced up, through the ink at their feet and flew at Dagon.

Paper-thin but razor sharp they sliced deep gashes into his legs and penetrated his left arm mid swing. “Entomb!” D proclaimed. Rising up from below the ink clouds, wrappings like his own rose up and encased Dagon, pushing the Murk Blade’s hilt out of his hand as his arms were restrained at his sides.

Ransom had been firing shots at D the entire time, but Typhon was denying him. He had been weaving the motions he needed to make the waves into his assault on the Harcovian, to disrupt Ransom to the best of his ability.

Fiore hopped up from where she knelt with the other pirates. Captives turned around to intercept her as soon they noticed but they never stood a chance. Bare-handed but armed with her blood frenzy Fiore dashed through the crowd, weaving between captives and evading weapons with lethal intentions behind them. Those that came close, she punched and others she simply pushed over the railings into the water, including Tibbles, till she found and tackled the man holding her bow and quiver. Sitting on top of him, she wrestled them from his grip and granted him a quick arrow through his right eye for the trouble.

Now wary of Fiore’s involvement, Typhon made one more effort to save him. Twirling Tide Reaver once more, he sent a wave at Daiah’s locker instead as rather than trying to work against the rocking like Ransom; Fiore opted to avoid it completely. The Blade jumped inhumanly high and poised herself perfectly in the air, while she took aim at D.

Typhon’s wave struck the ship first, slamming into its left side, tilting The Burning Lady just enough to the right that D barely slid out of the arrow’s path. But Dagon didn’t. He was fixed in place by his bindings. Unable to move, he could only watch as the blood charged arrow left Fiore’s bow and threaded a red path through the air before it pierced the peels binding his right arm to his torso.

D raised his hand to bind him again, but Dagon was a faster draw than the druid was a caster. The pirate pulled his pistol from its holster, a moment ahead of D’s peels, fired and kept firing incendiary spread shots till his pistol was empty and the front of the Plain-Walker’s body was covered in white flames.

D dropped to his knees and shed his wooden armor before the flames could reach skin. He raised new peels to defend himself while Dagon reloaded, both of them preparing to continue the fight.

From the bird’s nest atop his ship Ransom turned his rifle to point it in the sea smiths’ direction. “I’m getting tired of your meddling and it’s time that Slayer proved his worth,” before Typhon could fire another wave he aimed and pulled the trigger.

Maya tried to move Morgan out of the way while he just blinked, unsure how to react as he realized the bullet was headed for him. Then everything briefly flashed white and went out of focus.

The only thing Morgan could tell for certain was that he was lying on the deck in his mother’s arms. That and something warm was dripping onto an already burning spot on the left side of his chest. He looked down at his chest as his vision came back and saw the embers of white flames dancing on his skin and the tail end of a bullet poking out of his chest. Then he looked up and saw where the blood was coming from.

His mother was crouched over him. There were white flames burning in the hole in her throat as blood dripped out. Tears had welled up in her eyes as she gasped for air, choking on the blood and flames that refused her oxygen. Even then she smiled down at Morgan, relieved as she collapsed onto him and Tory screamed.

“Maya?!” Typhon cried out.

“Mother?” Morgan asked. Typhon almost ran to his wife, but Vigram pulled his attention back to the fight with an axe swing that Typhon barely managed to parry it time and the battle continued. “Morgan!” he shouted. “There’s no time for you to panic. I need you to stop the bleeding or get some bandages…or something!”

“Mother…?” he asked again with a shaking breath. Her struggling gasps had stopped entirely.

“Morgan, do you hear me!?” Typhon yelled at the top of his lungs.

“Mother is….she’s already dead.”

Typhon cried out like he’d been wounded as well, dropping his spear. Then he wailed; a savage guttural shout that consumed all the air in his lungs until he collapsed onto his hands and knees, spent and broken.

Vigram didn’t attempt to attack him. He simply stepped back.

Morgan pushed his mother’s corpse off him as gently as he could and laid her down. Tory held her mother’s hand as she sobbed.

When Typhon stood up veins pulsated over his brow as he collected Tide Reaver and activated the Wind Armament again, surprising even Vigram. The condensed air bloated larger than it ever, spilling its magic into the air as Typhon began walking forward, eyes locked on Ransom. Morgan could tell his father was holding nothing back.

“Step aside,” he said to Vigram. “I have to kill the man that just murdered my wife.”

“You don’t have time for that, sea smith. I am here,” said Vigram, before he took a slow deep breath, savoring the scent of Maya’s blood. And crimson blossomed within his eyes.

“I have one murder in me,” Typhon stated, unfazed by Vigram’s Blood Frenzy. “I have to kill him. Even if it’s the last thing I ever do.”

“It sounds to me like you have forgotten your own words. Wasn’t it you that claimed you valued the lives of your wife and children more than anything? Well your wife is gone.”

Typhon tore his gaze from Ransom with considerable effort to glower up into the Slayer’s crimson eyes. Then Vigram continued, “But you’re still the only thing standing between the pirates and I, and your children that are still here.”

“You are right. This spear is reserved for your heart. A hundred daggers or bullets; either will have to do for him.” he said looking up at Ransom again.

Vigram smile returned wider than ever. “Good, very good. You’re here now, truly in the moment. Come then, let’s fight to the glorious end.”

A blood charge that easily dwarfed any of Gellend’s ignited on Vigram’s axe and Tide Reaver’s Wind Armament surged as the tribemen vied for each other's lives.