(THOB) Chapter 151: A God (Patreon)

Ezril saw the moment the fight was decided. The climax to the torrential build up. Olufemi swung the Sunder in his left hand. A downward stroke designed to take his enemy’s head. Berlak reacted as fast as the stroke itself, his longsword striking the Sunder from Olufemi’s grip, taking away the priest’s advantage. But Ezril had seen such decisions before. Olufemi had intended it. The strike, although intended to take the man’s head, had never truly been expected to. Not a feint. A sacrifice.

Olufemi’s second Sunder came from the other side in an upward swing. The enemy reacted instinctively. Without illumination his movement was as instinctual as everything that had happened so far. And just as precise.

His sword came down almost immediately, the speed matching Olufemi’s, however, not the power. The clash sent the longsword flying just as the lost Sunder, and Olufemi brought down his Sunder with a might.

Berlak bit back on his pain, jaw clenched in what seemed to be endurance. Olufemi’s force came to a halt. His downward swing suspended as the edge of his blade came to rest in the palm of Berlak’s only hand.

Berlak had been fighting priests with arguably more experience than Ezril was old. Yet, for all their determination, all he had to show for it were a few scratches here and there like a man who’d taking to shaving every inch of skin he had only to find out he has no gift with a razor. He had crossed paths with at least eight Sunders and this was all they could do?

Unacceptable.

If cuts won’t stop him, Ezril frowned, tightening his grip on his Sunders as he felt the cold pain of fire burn a trail onto his shoulders. Then we’ll watch him burn.

Jugen always said that when fighting as a group there are times when they would have to surrender the bulk of the battle to the hands of their mate. Best to leave the competent to fight alone than to step in and hold him back. Still, it is imperative that even then the less competent never forget that he is part of a team. It never stops being a group fight. If they could remember that, then should the competent prove not sufficient enough, identifying the moment to step in, and taking it without hesitation could decide any battle.

Under the duress of pain Ezril darted forward. The hilt of his Sunders chilled his hands in its cold grip as metals inferior to that of Asmidian origin succumbed to pressure and the cracks in his Sunder glowed a soft golden. Each step less precise than the next, he ran into Olufemi’s war.

He saw his enemy brace for the impact as he approached. The man knew well enough about fights to know that if he could withstand the strike with his back, it could well decide everything.

Ezril brought down both Sunders with a fury, drawing two lines across Berlak’s back. Releasing Olufemi’s Sunder, the man staggered away. His mouth opened in contorted rage but no sound came from it.

No. There had been sound. Only, it hadn’t been loud enough. Not enough to overshadow Ezril who stood still screaming from the pain in his shoulders.

“Impossible!” Berlak roared, and this time he was heard.

His voice was nothing Ezril had expected from a man with a rugged face and so many scars on such a built body. If anything it was something he would have expected from someone like Levlin. It was a soft voice, like that of a person who’d never found need to lift his voice a decibel above a normal conversation. A voice that was only raised to match the crescendo of a demanding choir.

And yet, it held command. Behind it was a reality that everything bowed in its wake. An authority that all obeyed not because they wanted to, but because they didn’t possess the power not to. The power it came with wasn’t the kind that was given. It was the kind that was taken.

Ezril buckled under the weight of the voice. Or perhaps it was the pain in his shoulder, he didn’t know. He braced himself for the collision with the ground but it never came. Olufemi caught him under the arm before he dropped and kept him on his feet.

“You cannot harm me!” Berlak continued, a drop of blood falling to the stone floor behind him. Ezril wasn’t sure if the man was commanding it or reminding himself. “I am a god,” he continued. “The weapons of mere mortals can do nothing but scratch the surface of this pathetic vessel. Not until I have found the moon and retrieved her from where she’s lost amongst you.”

Ezril couldn’t hold back his frown. A god had come to wage war on the realm in search of the moon? The insanity only served to anger him, and the anger helped fight the pain he was feeling.

“The moon is in the sky!” he bellowed. “Not amongst men!”

Berlak scoffed, his lips curling into a scowl. “What would you know, mortal. This is a matter beyond your comprehension.”

No, Ezril realized. Not the moon… “…Medra.”

“How do you know that name?” Berlak hissed.

It was funny how even though the words had been barely a contained whisper Ezril could still hear the authority and the malice balled up in it. It was so compelling he almost answered. He remembered one of Lenaria’s stories of how Berlak, the sun god who wasn’t truly a god, had quite the obsession for Medra. How he watched over her like a brother. The truth he’d come to learn was that while people where know to worship the sun, they didn’t believe in Berlak. The god wasn’t the god of the sun but more the god of light. No one worshipped the light, but since it was attributed to the sun, some of their belief spilled to Berlak.

“Rin always thought of him as a minor deity mooching off of the true sun god,” Lenaria had once joked.

“How do you know that name!?”

Berlak’s voice dragged Ezril from his reverie. He looked up at the man and smiled, still leaning on Olufemi, though not as much as before. Then his smile widened, still able to taste his anger. Rin, in all he’d heard of her, had spoken of Berlak like one would a spoiled child, and if that were true, then what he was about to do would tip the scale of the fight. But he wasn’t really sure in whose favor.

“It wouldn’t matter,” Ezril told him. “With the little power you steal from the god of the sun you wouldn’t be able to find her even if I told you where she is.”

Berlak rose to his full height, showing no more signs of pain from his injuries or anger from Ezril’s words. But when he spoke, his words were no threat. “You will tell me what I need to know, human, or I will burn it out of you.”

Olufemi moved before Berlak, leaving Ezril moving a step too late, consigning him to the continued role of support.

Berlak slapped Olufemi’s swing to the side, ducked to the left and evaded Ezril as he came up behind Olufemi with a thrust. In sync, Olufemi returned a slash to the chest as Ezril spun behind him to take Berlak from his armless side. Berlak took the slash to his chest, letting the point of Olufemi’s Sunder trace a thin horizontal line across it and stepped farther to the side, leaving Ezril with nothing to attack when he came around. Olufemi, however, continued his assault, each strike left to be parried by their opponent as Ezril continued to be annoyed by Berlak’s insistence to avoid his every blow.

This was his domain. The darkness was where he was meant to stand at the pinnacle of all things. Truth dammit I can see in it! He struck out again only to be avoided as Berlak, kept on the defensive, defended against Olufemi’s Sunder with his bare hand. Why are they still above me?

Worst was the fact that he could feel the steady burn trailing a path down his chest, leaving a cold trail of burns that would be covered in scarred tissue before a third day. He could attribute being the weakest of the three to being held back by the pain. But regardless of how practiced a liar he was, this lie was one he couldn’t fall for; on more than one occasion he’d burned colder and faster than this. This pain slowed him, but not enough to make a significant difference.

Berlak remained on the defense, parrying and evading. Their strategy deprived him of the chance for a counterattack but this was going nowhere. At this rate one of them would succumb to fatigue and somehow Ezril doubted Berlak was capable of such. They had to end it. Which meant they had to find a way to hurt him.

The idea came to him as Berlak stepped away from his thrust, taking a cut from Olufemi’s Sunder against his shoulder. It was as if they were reading each other’s movement. Fighting in the night, surrounded by darkness he hadn’t thought to seek them out. During the day, it was an unconscious act to seek out the wisps because they were unavoidable in the light. At night, he had to see it consciously. The darkness they fought Berlak in, and the haste of the battle, had him ignorant of it. But now that he was aware, he would find it. And maybe the phantoms they presented would help. All he needed now was speed. After all, what use was it to know what a person would do if he wasn’t fast enough to respond to it.

His gaze darted to the man’s face, then his shoulder, eyes seeking what should be and a glimpse of what would come. Berlak deflected another of Olufemi’s blow. Distracted, Ezril didn’t see the hand as it came at him with lightning speed. A flash of pain erupted from his jaw as the blow sent him a good distance away. He came to a halt surprised to still be on his feet but almost buckling from the pain in his jaw. Olufemi stepped up easily, preventing Berlak from following up with another attack.

Ezril took a hand to his chin, working his jaw from side to side. Each movement brought an extra sting to the persistent throbbing. Satisfaction at knowing it wasn’t broken was easily overpowered by the daunting realization that Berlak had no wisp. Not even a sliver of the tiny shadows, translucent or otherwise.

Impossible, he thought.

No, he chided himself. You face a god now, nothing is impossible.