Oathbreaker: A Dark Fantasy Web Serial-Chapter 26Arc 8: : Thorn Duel

I said brave words to Vicar, but the honest truth was that I was scared.

The last time I feared death at the hands of man or monster, I’d been twenty and had already slain more men than I could count. I’d been seventeen when I left the Herding with Rosanna and Lias. Twenty years, and hardly a year had passed in all that time where I hadn’t lived on the edge of a sword stroke, hadn’t fought and bled and risked my life.

I did not believe I was unbeatable — far from it — but after a time the fear of death faded into reflex and muscle memory, became an almost welcome thrill.

But I was not above fear. I felt it in that moment Emma stepped onto the narrow bridge of slick stone. Fear for her, and of the idea that I’d made a terrible mistake, that I might have to watch her die right there in front of me while I stood back and let it happen. I looked on, arms folded and my red cloak draped over my shoulders, its weight providing no warmth against the chill in my veins and the coiling serpent of unease moving through my chest.

Vicar, who lay on my shoulders, must have sensed my nerves. But he was not one to provide empty comfort, and his attention also fixed forward as the two combatants took their place.

“Should I win,” Sham Dulaan said as he lifted his flamberge up so its tip aimed out over the water, “Then neither of you shall ever leave this place. The Headsman will die here, devoured, and Nath’s godchild shalt take her proper place amongst us.” With a chilling smile he added, “You will make a most excellent Thorn Sister, once the proper modifications are made.”

“He’s trying to unsettle you,” I said. “Keep your aura steady.”

“I know that,” Emma snapped without turning. “Don’t distract me.”

I fell silent, slamming a lid down on my own nerves and letting her focus. Ser Sham remained at his side of the bridge, sword uplifted, its weight steadily balanced in but a single hand at breast level. Showing off his strength. That sword would have taken a strong man two hands to wield.

I had more advice I wanted to give. We faced a foe with an unfamiliar Battle Art, possibly more than one if his powers worked similarly to mine. We were in terrain he’d prepared, so his abilities would be more potent and less predictable. I wanted to tell her to move fast, to get into his reach and remove the advantage of his larger, longer weapon.

But I had to let her focus. I needed to wait, and have faith. Never my strong suits.

Emma lifted her sword two inches, angling the gentle curve of the blade over her extended left thigh. She was ambidextrous, and held the blade in her left hand then. Her right moved behind her hip, out of sight from the Briar Brother.

She pricked her own flesh with the claw on her gauntlet’s middle finger, the sharp tip sinking deep into the unarmored palm.

“Never lead with your Art,” I muttered under my breath. “Come on, Em, we trained for this.”

Sham began to walk forward. The pointed toes of his steel-shod shoes clapped against the stone bridge, ringing along with the rhythmic clanking of his immortally fine armor. His pace was calm and steady, his sword still aimed out over the water like some kind of dousing rod, his yellow cape dragging behind.

Clip, clank, clip, clank—

Emma did not move forward, instead holding her position near our side of the bridge. I watched her tense, her stance tightening, almost like she was a living coil waiting to snap. Sham placed a single sabaton onto the center of the bridge, where its shallow arch reached its apex.

Emma struck there. She flung her offhand out, sending tiny droplets of blood scattering through the air. Some of them landed on the bridge, causing Sham to pause. He glanced down at the tiny stains, perhaps sensing danger.

Shrike Forest was Emma’s favored technique and the iconic power of the Carreons. By “planting” droplets of her blood into the ground, she could cause phantasmal spears of screeching scarlet iron to burst forth and impale a foe, newborn trees grown from the seeds of power in her veins. It was her most dramatic and effective move, difficult to defend against and brutally lethal if it caught someone off guard.

There were limits. Once her blood was spilled, she had to activate the spell before it started to dry or it would become useless to her. And unlike normal phantasms, hers did not simply weary her spirit but her body as well if she lost too much blood.

Sham was not unguarded, and Emma did not waste her favored technique trying to end the fight early. Instead, the droplets of blood on the bridge remained still. Those that flew out to the sides of the bridge, however, remained floating in the air instead of falling. They spun and boiled, minuscule bubbles of red liquid holding their elevation in defiance of gravity. Sham’s attention was turned downward, and he did not notice them.

Emma had flippantly dubbed the pseudo-Art Touch-Me-Not, a name they earned then when Sham’s sword brushed one of the levitating seeds. In a violent chain reaction, the droplets of blood erupted on either side of the Briar Brother. Each one detonated like a tiny bomb, sending out a rain of tiny but incredibly sharp darts in a scatter over the bridge’s surface. Most of them went random directions, but a score and more hit the elf and sunk even into the hard blue steel of his armor, punched into his neck, bit into his temples and cheeks. He recoiled, throwing an arm over his face too late.

Then Emma moved, dashing forward fast as the bird from which her ancestors took their moniker. Moving low, she traced an upward cut with her saber at the elf as he stumbled back, off balance, trying to catch his unprotected face. He flinched back, and her sword carved a slash over his breastplate that sent out a scatter of sparks but did little more than scratch the steel.

Snarling, Sham retaliated with a sweep of his flamberge that could have cut a man cleanly in two. I heard the hum of wind at the sword’s passage even from a distance. Emma ducked, letting the spiked blade shear off a few strands of black-brown hair but managed to avoid having her skull bisected.

I tensed and had to almost physically restrain myself from calling out a warning, clutching at my own wrist and squeezing tight enough I felt the pressure of my own grip even through my bracer. But Emma must have sensed the danger, because rather than taking advantage of the opening from Sham’s reckless swing she leapt back.

Sham drew his empty left hand back. He’d gone in for a grab after swinging, using his terrifying sword as a distraction for his true counter. Several long vines the color of diseased blood had appeared around his gauntlet, wrapping over his forearm and wrist to reach past his flexed fingers. The ropes were each half as thick as a finger, cords covered in sharp barbs with tips that reminded me of bodkin arrows. They slunk back as their prey moved out of their reach.

Emma regained her stance and rolled one shoulder. “Good try,” she quipped.

Sham smiled. “You as well.”

His shoulders, neck, and skull were covered in glowing red thorns like he’d just been attacked by some kind of fiendish porcupine, but even as I watched the phantasms were fading to leave bleeding holes where they’d pierced him. He didn’t look terribly distressed at the injuries.

Emma studied her opponent, her gaze lingering on the shallow mark she’d left in his armor, then ran the palm of her right hand over the flat of her sword to leave a streak of blood across it. I felt a surge of power from her, like a brief flash of heat, and Mara’s Talon began to burn with a scarlet light as she sheathed it in aura.

“Now I can cut through your steel,” Emma told the Briar Brother “Shall we dance again, Ser Elf?”

Sham flexed his left hand, causing the thorny vines to writhe eagerly and grow several inches. “Why didn’t you do that before?”

“I wanted to take one of your eyes,” she told him.

He hummed appreciatively, then flipped his flamberge back and over one shoulder. The briar vines embracing his left arm slithered through the air like living serpents, almost as though they were scenting their target.

“That is not his Art,” Vicar said to me. “Just a tool trimmed from this domain.”

I’d guessed the same. Those vines didn’t have the scent of phantasm, which made them very real and in a way even more dangerous. It also meant Sham Dulaan had yet to reveal his true ability. Was he toying with her, or picking his moment?

If the former, he did not keep up the charade for long. Once more he began to step forward, perhaps confident now that he’d gauged her strength and didn’t need to be as cautious. This time his steps were alarmingly quick, his pace increasing with each step as he stomped forward with the threatening clatter of steel. Emma tensed, changed her guard so the red shimmer around her blade blurred through the air. It left oily red streaks to mark its passage that faded into curls of bloody smoke.

She struck low, aiming for the elf’s delicate ankles, but his return swing was anything but delicate. The thorned flamberge made a sound almost like a cough as it swung, turning Emma’s sword and nearly causing her to stumble off the bridge as the force of that blow wrenched her weapon to the side. Sham struck again, and again, his swings steady and rhythmic and preternaturally swift. Each blow was a deadly one, no energy wasted on clever feints or sudden ripostes. He struck to kill, forcing Emma to keep stepping back and dodging as much as parry in order to avoid losing her weapon.

Sham might have appeared like one of the more classical elves, lithe and elegant, but he fought more like a ruthless juggernaut. The shrieks and clangs of steel echoed across the valley. Worse, the bridge wasn’t more than five feet across, giving Emma no room to get past her opponent or navigate around him, forcing their fight on a straight and narrow line.

I should have fought him, I thought with growing trepidation. We’re better matched.

Emma was finally forced back to the end of the bridge. I bared my teeth and clenched my fist in anticipation, hoping here the fight might spill back into the woods where my squire would have more room to navigate. Only, as the heel of her boot met the line where stone and the writhing moss of that supernatural realm met, thorn-coated vines suddenly burst forth and grasped at her.

“Emma!” I shouted, unable to help myself. But it was too late. The vines caught at her ankle and leg, stopping her and nearly tugging her feet. Emma snarled out a curse and swung her blade down without hesitation, coming close to shearing her own flesh. The hungry vines fell away, writhing like dying serpents, but more were appearing to form a barrier. They grasped at her sword and the hand that held it, wrapping them up.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“Where are you going?” Sham asked in a darkly cheerful voice even as he swung.

Emma released her sword, letting the vines have it as she dove forward into a roll beneath Sham’s swinging arm. He missed, barely, and turned even as she regained her feet. She was panting, her face covered in a sheen of sweat. Her opponent didn’t even look winded.

“How will you fight without your pretty sword?” He asked as he flourished his flamberge.

Beyond banter now, Emma backed away from the Briar Brother at a half crouch, her steps cautious on the bridge’s mossy stone. Black water rushed beneath. It sounded louder now, as though the river were a living thing eager for one of the combatants to drop into it.

Sham lunged forward, sweeping out with his sword in a wide arc that once again made wind whistle around its passage. Emma did not dodge this time. Instead, with a shriek of rage, she thrust out her wounded right hand and made a spear form in it. Eight feet long and barbed all the way down its length, the phantasm erupted into being with the same strength as a siege engine firing, its forming providing it a brief lived momentum mere human strength couldn’t have replicated.

The shrike spear caught Sham just below his neck, punching through his breastplate and lodging into the bone of his collar. He flinched back, fouling his swing and shearing off a cluster of sparks from Emma’s pauldron. The blow still knocked her back and she rolled onto the bridge’s edge, nearly tumbling over.

Sham reached a hand up to the shimmering scarlet spear lodged into his shoulder and grasped it. With a jerk, he snapped half the thing’s length off and hurled it at the girl. She was just starting to rise and flinched as her own phantasm embedded itself inches from her left eye.

“Is this all you can do?” The elf asked. “Disappointing.”

“Not all,” she gasped. She managed to find her feet, favoring her right shoulder.

“Her arm is broken,” Vicar muttered.

He was right. When Emma used her Art, the pikes that formed from it erupted from affected surfaces with incredible force and speed. She could generate them from the ground and rip them free to use as weapons, but this time she’d activated the technique directly from her palm. The force of her own magic had snapped bone.

“Will you interfere?” Vicar asked me.

I was on the cusp of it, but… something held me back. The look on my squire’s face, perhaps. She did not look beaten.

“Not going to show me yours?” She hissed at the faerie knight.

He only smiled as he turned. “You rely on your magic too much, child.”

He was right. Emma wasn’t as strong a swordsman as Sham, and her magic hadn’t sealed the duel on its own. Arts are only tools. The more refined one, used more cleverly, can decide a battle if employed at the right moment or used to overwhelm a less skilled foe. They granted a skilled adept an edge, but they were only accoutrements to one’s abilities. In this regard, Emma was actually the better adept than me — I was a blunt instrument, using aureflame to enhance my physical prowess and terrify opponents, but in the end my fights were usually ended with with a blade, not spiritual energies.

She’d already been wounded and was flagging, and yet… Emma was in many ways more dangerous in that state.

She regained her feet and recentered herself at the middle of the bridge. Sham turned his back to me now, facing Emma as he laid his sword casually on one shoulder. The vines wrapped about his left arm— emerging from within his gauntlet, I realized — writhed hungrily as he flexed long fingers tipped in black nails.

Between the two, more floating droplets of blood tumbled lethargically through the air. Sham noticed them this time and chuckled. “Cute, but I’m afraid those aren’t strong enough to kill me.”

“Best hope you don’t lose an eye to them,” Emma said with a feral grin, though her expression held no humor. “Would be awfully embarrassing.”

Despite her bravado, her injured arm hung limp and she seemed to be struggling to catch her breath. Sham twirled his flamberge twice, turning the hefty blade easily as if it were a dagger, and crouched with the point facing forward. In my spiritual senses, he suddenly flared with unseen power. It felt like a cold wind against my face, one that carried the verdant stench of rot.

“Perhaps I shall let you see it,” he all but whispered, his voice ringing with the unnatural volume of aura. “One of the Briar’s gifts.”

Then, with an odd sort of gentleness, he let the point of his sword drop and touched the surface of the bridge. And its surface roiled.

It was only then I saw the trap, and to my dismay I realized in that same moment Emma must have missed it too. Wherever one of the Briar Brother’s blue sabatons had stomped down on the bridge’s surface, he’d left a patch of living moss. They formed dark stains where he’d walked, evidence of his confident advance from earlier.

Now they grew, and more of those wicked vines burst forth from them. These were larger than those on his hand, covered in snapping mouths with needle teeth from which purple tongues lashed out. They grasped at Emma and bit at her, several wrapping around her wounded arm and pulling savagely. She cried out in pain and stumbled.

Sham flicked his sword to one side and started to walk towards her again. “I see you and I fight in a similar way. But I’ve had more practice, child.”

“I am no child,” Emma hissed. With a scream of pain and rage she wrenched her broken arm free of the vines, tearing them in the process. This did not kill them, however, and to my horror they started to wriggle over her arm, seeking gaps in the articulated plates of her armor. If those got through and into her skin…

I uncrossed my arms and took a single step forward. Even if she despised me for it, I couldn’t just watch while she—

In that moment, Emma looked up from the monstrous vines on her arm and smiled at Sham. She whispered something I didn’t hear, and flexed the empty fingers of her left hand.

“Clever,” Vicar said. “Nath prepared her well.”

“What…?” I didn’t understand at first, but then I saw that Sham had stopped. He looked frozen, and I realized he was trying to move, his limbs trembling with the effort.

Emma hadn’t just been throwing her precious lifeblood around randomly. Near where she’d started the fight, where Sham stood then, there was an irregular line of red smeared on the bridge’s surface. The line was thin, with jagged edges pointed inward. It formed a circle.

Not Emma’s blood. The faerie’s own, taken from him when she’d stabbed him through with her spear, from all the small wounds her Touch-Me-Nots had made earlier, dripping onto the bridge through the fight.

“How?” Sham asked, his voice low with fury.

Emma winced as the vines on her arm squeezed. “My phantasms contain my own vitae. When it mixes with another’s, I gain some control over both… I think yours works similarly, yes?” She glanced down at her right arm, where the writhing, toothy vines continued to bite for purchase. “These grow larger when they get into me, don’t they?”

She’d drawn a circle made from the elf’s blood, as well as her own. A binding circle. It wouldn’t have worked on a human opponent, but Vicar was right. Emma wasn’t just a disciple of House Carreon, but of the Briar Angel herself. She knew their ways.

“Little bitch,” Sham said dispassionately. “My weed will grow through your bones and you will become my plaything.”

“You’ll have to get out of that binding circle first, faerie. Here, let me make it more challenging for you, since you seemed so dissatisfied before.”

She flexed her fingers again, and no less than seven shrike spears erupted from the ground. They were aimed inward, rising up to form a narrow cage around the elf. One punched through his left arm at the elbow, another through his hip, and a third scraped flesh from his temple.

“How?!” He raged as he struggled against the pikes and found them firm. “I know how the Carreon magic works, you can’t make these from another’s blood!”

“It’s not all yours,” she told him.

“Forget something?” I asked from where I observed from behind him, feeling a surge of satisfaction with my apprentice.

His eyes flicked back to me, then widened as he realized what I meant. The floating droplets of blood in the air that he’d dismissed as a threat had fallen at some point, raining down around the circle he was trapped in to create seedbeds for Emma’s Art to emerge.

“Leave me in here if you wish!” Sham said with a cruel laugh, “I will break free from this shoddy circle soon enough, and my weed will still take you.”

True enough, the snapping vines were growing up Emma’s arm. They were getting dangerous close to her neck, her exposed cheek, almost reaching an eye before she cringed just far enough away. One of them had managed to find a gap between the plates between elbow and upper arm and was trying to wriggle in. She winced, and I guessed it had found flesh. My heart almost stopped at the sight.

With a deliberate, almost hesitant movement, Emma used her uninjured left hand to grasp that one weed and pull it. It did not let go, and several of the vines eagerly went to the new hand.

“That’s checkmate, I’m afraid.” Sham looked relaxed despite his own predicament. “Once they’ve found skin, you’re done.”

“I think…” Emma let out a nervous laugh as the weeds continued to grow over her arms, almost covering them now. “They will find my blood… a bit too sharp for their taste!”

With a sudden exhalation of agonized effort, she curled her arms inward almost as though flexing and flared with ruddy light. From every seam in her armor, from every gap and joint, small spikes and hooks of shimmering red aura burst forth. The weeds were impaled, sliced, sheared off her limbs as her own burning blood cut at them.

Once the vines had fallen off, Emma staggered and fell to one knee. She was covered in spikes, a reverse iron maiden painted all in red. She gasped for breath, struggled to rise for a moment, then managed it with a steady effort that set her face into a rictus. Some of that coat of spikes she’d created as armor over herself had emerged from her head, shimmering thorns hovering dangerously close to one eye.

Half phantasm, half blood. How badly had she just mutilated herself underneath her armor? How much more blood loss could she take before fainting?

She stumbled closer to Sham, avoiding more of those patches of writhing vines forming a line across the bridge’s center. She drew dangerously close to him, though with his sword arm trapped in the cage he could not swing at her. His head was forced up, one of the pikes running just under his jaw so he could not move his neck much.

“Do… You… Yield?” Emma gasped the words, each one an effort. “Or must I… Leave you in there?”

The armor of thorns was already starting to dissipate into red and black mist, veiling her in a threatening shroud of phantasmal vapor. Her eyes were red as well, glowing from the amount of aura she’d burned.

“If I escape,” Sham said calmly, “I will kill you. You have no more strength left.”

“That circle will bind you until broken,” she retorted. “And if anyone helps you, the victory will be mine. I received no aid, after all.”

She didn’t look at me, but I sensed the strength of her satisfaction at that fact.

Sham considered a moment, then sighed. “My, my, but you are a wicked little creature.”

Emma bared her teeth. They were stained red by her own blood. “Do you yield, ser?!”

“I yield,” Sham said. He did not seem angry at the statement so much as surprised.

All at once, the writhing thornweeds on the bridge withered and died, turning to gray husks in a matter of seconds only to then scatter into black dust on the breeze. Emma silently limped around the binding circle, leaving the Briar Brother trapped within. Her own phantasms vanished, leaving Sham standing briefly inside a cloud of scarlet vapor. She retrieved her sword and shuffled over to me, sweating heavily and breathing through her mouth from strain.

When she drew close, she hissed out her words in an angry whisper. “Do not try to help me. I will not fall.”

“I would not dream of it,” I said. “Well fought.”

Sham had been the stronger opponent. I would have struggled against him if we’d battled, I felt sure of that. It might have been pyrrhic, but Emma still got the better of him. I would let her stand on pride, for a few minutes at least.

Sham rolled his neck and touched the bleeding wound on his temple before turning to us, running his own blood through his fingers in bemusement as he spoke. “Your squire has proved her mettle, Headsman. You are free to pass my bridge, but I can make no assurances as to what lies before you.”

Meaning the Briar Brother’s masters might still decide to just kill us. Fair enough.

“You’ve lost a lot of blood,” I said to Emma. That trick with the thorn armor had wounded her badly, and she still favored her broken right arm.

“I’m not staying behind,” she snapped.

“And I wouldn’t let you,” I assured her. “Not here.”

“Stop fretting about me,” Emma said with less rancor. She sighed and straightened with a grimace. “I still have my sword arm and enough blood to walk. Let’s go.”

Sham remained trapped in the makeshift binding circle as we passed him. He would free himself eventually, and probably try to kill us again, but for the time he did not impede us. I had to resist the urge to slow my pace, knowing it would just insult Emma. She grit her teeth and kept up, only a few paces behind me. Her control over her own blood would keep her from bleeding out any time soon, and she healed quickly. Not Alder Knight quick though, and her injuries needed tending to. If only Lisette were there…

But she wasn’t. If we were lucky, the others were safe and hadn’t been pulled into the Wend’s riptide. No choice but to keep moving forward, and see what waited for us.

If I’d known what waited for us, what I would learn at the end of that thorn-lined path… Would I have chosen differently? Too often in my life, I’d been more content in ignorance.

Some things are hidden for good reason. Truth can be a terrible curse.