(THOB) Chapter 148: Do You Need Help (Patreon)

Ezril froze then recovered in time to side step the girl’s attack. In the times he’d been fighting the Merdendi this was a first. The fact that they’d never brought children to the battlefield was one of the things that had made him doubt the realm’s reference to them as savages. No. He shook his head, strands of hair that could just as much have been white as they could have been black cutting across his view. For some unknown reason he didn’t want to believe they had begun sending their children into war, because if they had, then it was the realm that had forced them into such an action. She might be like Levlin, he tried to convince himself as he stepped away from her attacks, weaving away from a stray blade. A foolish child seeking the glory of war. But she couldn’t have been older than her seventh winter.

She threw herself at him with a snarl, knife poised for his stomach. This time, when he sidestepped her, he drove the hilt of his Sunder against the back of her head, letting her crumple to the ground as she dropped, motionless. He could only hope he hadn’t employed too much force as he turned in the direction he had been heading, where booms of sunstrikes continued to echo at random intervals.

Ezril made it to his destination, his only obstacles being wandering attacks and a few annoying corpses that stumbled onto his way.

The sight he beheld almost consumed his attention. If he were not in the midst of blood and death, he would’ve lost all of his focus to the fight ensuing before him.

Reverend Bratvi fought alongside two other Most Reverends and the High blade, holding off a one armed man who fought them off with a sword. There was no debating the man’s identity. The way the High blade and the Reverends moved almost had Ezril convinced they’d been fighting as a team for years. Each time one man attacked another was there to defend, switching positions as was necessary and keeping their opponent unable to advance. At a point the one armed opponent’s strike carried the High blade far enough from him and as the man came to a stop, swords crossed before him, Ezril’s scars thrummed. He could barely blink when one of the Reverends tracked back to the aging man, shoving him away just as the white sheen of thin light came down on him.

Everything else followed, the expansion of yellow, the thunderous boom, and light erupted.

It disappeared in its thunderous explosion and Ezril winced. The Reverends would need help if they were to survive this fight with one man down. This was Berlak. The plan they’d hatched didn’t seem to be going well, and though it was yet to be Olufemi’s turn to present himself, seeing as two of the other Reverend’s had yet to arrive, Ezril deemed it would cause little harm if he were to give them some form of support.

He’d barely registered his next action when Reverend Bratvi stepped out of reach of Berlak’s blade and a reverend replaced him, striking with cracked Sunders. His arms were exposed, and his cassock rendered sleeveless and riddled with patches of burned fabric. Berlak reacted with lightning speed, dashing the attack in one swing as he ducked beneath another from a different assailant. He stepped forward immediately, face contorted in a livid scowl as he struck the Reverend who defended with crossed cracked Sunders twice in annoyed rage.

The High blade attacked with another Most Reverend in toll, forcing Berlak back just as the priest’s Sunders shattered under the blow and Berlak’s sword bit into the flesh of his shoulder. Surprisingly, Berlak took his sword with him as he was forced back, ripping the inflicted wound apart and leaving a far messier cut than it should have been.

Wait, Ezril panicked as he extricated himself from an attack he didn’t know if it was stray or intended. By the time he found himself evading another, he was all but certain he had caught someone’s attention. He dodged two more attacks before easily dispatching his opponent with a cut across the chest as his attention returned to what had garnered his surprise.

The Most Reverend standing with only hilts in his hands as the others forced attacks against Berlak, pushing him back, had been the man who’d saved the High blade.

As Ezril wondered at the possibility of the truth, a maddened cry erupted to his side. Berlak forced a blow that had his attackers distancing themselves from him as the sound drew his attention. Whatever the man saw angered him more than whatever the Reverends had been doing. A sunstrike exploded in its direction and the man roared his anger.

Out of nowhere Olufemi thundered towards them, carried in a blind rage, wielding Sunders Ezril couldn’t recognize. Whatever they were, they were not his. Berlak roared again but Olufemi never faltered as he ran forward. He swung the Sunders above him in an arch. A moment later the light struck but even Berlak was far from satisfied as he marched on. Olufemi emerged as the light extinguished with cracked Sunders crossing them absently above him as another sunstrike dropped right on top of him. This time, when he came out of it, his sleeves where singed all the way to his biceps as he discarded the hilts in his hands and drew on his Sunders.

He and Berlak met in a flurry of attacks, each seeming to discard of the idea of defense, weaving past each other’s attack to drive a killing blow of their own. Battling it out, they seemed carnage personified and even the Most Reverends seemed unwilling to step in. Ezril couldn’t blame them. The only other person he knew who could fight with such precision and destruction was dead.

With the pain of the thought Ezril turned as his scars shrieked and parried another stray blow. The blow sent him soaring across the battlefield and into Bratvi who sidestepped him easily.

Ezril scrambled to his feet quickly, ignoring the pain that came with the fall and the continued thrum in his shoulder as the light struck around Berlak and Olufemi. Illuminating the evening that seemed teetering on the edge of darkness.

Bratvi spared Ezril a simple look which he ignored as an Broken emerged from the place where he had been struck. Ezril tasted iron and spat to the side, surprised to find more blood than spittle.

“Do you need help, child?” Bratvi asked as he rose.

Ezril thought to ignore the man’s threatening brogue. It only served to make him sound as though he would rather strike him down than help him. Instead, he shook his head. Keeping his focus on the Broken as another fought off two King’s guard behind it, he said, “Bring their king down.”

He launched himself at the creature before Bratvi could reply and met disappointment at how easily he was parried. The force of the blow forced him to step to the side. The beast came at him again and he evaded its attack, feeling the poison of fatigue seeping into his muscles. He frowned as he struck at the beast and missed. A year ago, this fatigue would have come long before he’d run into Berlak and the Most Reverends. To be tired now was a bad position, but he knowing it could be worse kept him going.

He sparred with his assailant a while, trying to get a feel of how it fought without losing an arm or both, while ignoring the crushing weight of the cuts it added to the others he had already garnered on the battlefield. Standing apart, they darted towards each other. He, however, drew short as a body sailed past him. A cascading blur of red trailing after it. His scar deepened its pain in a new ring that told of a different problem. He knew enough to understand what it entailed, but he didn’t need its warning. He turned in time to deflect the blow that came from beside him, turning the point of his Sunder down and letting the attack slide off it and strike the bloody dirt rather than take the blow head on.

Stepping back, he prepared himself to face two Broken.