25. Show of Force

Hyena and Snapjaw weren’t going to hold up for long.

Hyena threw a punch and Hulda sidestepped. Quick as a whip, the spear launched itself in a counterattack. Snapjaw stepped in and absorbed the blow with one of his chitin-plated forearms, but it still managed a substantial cut before spinning away.

despite their size, Hulda corralled them like sheep. The spear spun around them in dizzying patterns, forcing them to focus on staying out of its way rather than fighting her. One missed dodge could prove fatal.

Kiren fought his way back to his feet, slipping in a puddle of bloodsoaked mud. He’d managed to patch up the hole in his stomach reasonably, covering it in chitinous mass.

Hopefully, if she tried that trick again, it wouldn’t work.

He glanced towards Jarl’s house. The door swung in the breeze, cut open. Lace was inside.

Lace might have the book already.

A howl made Kiren turn back around. Hyena had been hit in the back of the knee, throwing him off balance. The spear zipped around to his front and dove for a finishing blow. Snapjaw rushed to protect his partner, but it was too late.

Hyena only had time to throw up a meaty hand to protect himself.

The spear bored through his hand and into his chest, pitching him backward. He hit the ground with a heavy thump, throwing up bits of mud. The spear lodged itself deeper inside him as he howled and yelped.

“Unmaker’s bony tits,” Kiren swore.

He set off in a run towards Hyena.

They weren’t his friends. He didn’t even know them. But he’d hired them for a job, all three fully knowing that they could have bailed any moment, and they’d stuck around anyway. They’d been true to their word.

Now it was on him to make sure they didn’t regret it.

Or at least make sure they could stick around to regret it.

Snapjaw struck Hulda with a backhand and she went tumbling. He knelt in front of his friend and with a forceful pull dislodged the silver spear. With a roar that shook the ground, he held the spear in front of him and bent with all his might, the muscles of his arms bulging against his leathery skin.

The spear snapped with a metallic twang. He threw away both pieces and they landed on the ground some distance off, vibrating dully as they sank into the mud.

“Saeed, you’re okay,” Snapjaw said, taking Hyena’s hand off his chest and pressing his own atop the wound. “You’re okay, hear me? Don’t worry about a thing.”

Kiren ran past both of them. There was nothing he could do to help, except…

Hulda was getting back up.

He had to make sure she stayed down.

Her back was twisted at an odd angle and her face contorted with pain as if the spear snapping had caused her physical distress.

Kiren went in for a punch.

Hulda threw up a hand, holding up a shaking finger. A tiny sliver of silvery metal rested atop it, no larger than a fingernail.

She flicked it.

Kiren felt a sharp sting in his throat. Suddenly he couldn’t breathe.

Burning pain mixed with a sensation like a bug crawling around his throat. He coughed blood and clawed at his neck, but the piece of metal wouldn’t come out, slicing open his flesh faster than his Power could mend it.

“You don’t deserve this,” Hulda spat. “You’re not good enough to see my best. A bunch of lowlifes. You think you could beat me? Me? Hulda Ludenhaas, matriarch of the greatest noble family of Aribel!”

Kiren’s vision tunneled. Blood foamed with saliva at the corners of his mouth. The taste of copper was so strong that alone would have been enough to make him queasy.

Both halves of Hulda’s spear slowly rose up out of the ground. Intense vibrations shook off the mud.

Hulda let go a yell that echoed between the buildings surrounding the street.

The spear shook violently, splitting apart. Two parts became four, four became eight, eight became sixteen. Before, there were thousands of tiny flecks of metal hovering in the air, just like the one digging its way through Kiren’s airways.

Oh, fuck.

The process left Hulda panting, forehead beading with sweat. She propped herself up with her good hand against one of her knees and stood.

Kiren reached through the incision in his neck with two fingers. He gagged at the sensation, but he searched around the cartilaginous inside of his throat until he found the shard of metal. He pulled it out and tossed it away, immediately hurling a stream of blood onto the ground.

“Hyena… Snapjaw…” he forced out. “Run…”

“Time to end this,” Hulda hissed, metal flakes swirling around her uninjured arm as she held it up towards Kiren. “Once I’m done, you won’t be anything but a side note in my story.”

“Dear Hulda. You’d think, after such a long career, that you’d learn to stop monologuing.”

A black streak shot down from a nearby rooftop.

Kiren was lifted off the ground. Everything lurched, and a moment later he was rolling across the street.

He came to a stop on his back, looking up at a set of black robes, Excelerate’s tired face peeking down at him over a red face mask.

“I am going to have a word with you after this,” he said. “The both of you. Where is Lace?”

Kiren nodded towards Jarl’s house. “In there. Getting the book…” He spat blood. “...For Hulda.”

“Go fetch her.” Excelerate pulled up his mask. “I’ll deal with Ludenhaas.”

*****

“You’re stalling.”

“I’m not, I swear,” Jarl said with a grunt. He reached his arm inside the blackened chimney, prodding around the brick column. “I just… can’t quite… reach…”

“Stop messing around,” Lace said, “I don’t want to have to get serious.” She placed the end of the gale-staff against the back of his neck.

“Found it! I found it, no need to go overboard, Hero lady.”

He backed out of the wood furnace and held up a square object wrapped in oilcloth. She took it from him and unfurled it.

Inside was a thick book, leather-clad and slightly dented, with a metal clasp to keep it closed. The spine read: The Creator’s Last Living Testament.

“This is it,” Lace whispered.

“I deciphered some of it,” Jarl said. “I’ll admit, it’s a tough nut to crack.” He clicked his tongue. “I learned enough to know you Heroes are up to some dark shit, though.”

“Leave,” she barked. “Don’t come back for at least a few hours, until it’s settled.”

“But—”

“Go.”

Jarl shrugged and hurried out of the open door, not glancing back even once.

Once he was gone, Lace broke a chair and used it as kindling for a fire inside the fireplace that she lit by striking her staff against the rock, creating sparks.

She placed the staff beside her and held out the book over the flames.

“Drop it,” she told herself. “Burn it.”

Voices inside her head wore away at her confidence.

It contains some of the Ludenhass family’s deepest secrets. In the wrong hands, this information could topple us. Hulda.

I suppose it wouldn’t change anything if I told you she’s a criminal. Kiren.

You Heroes are up to some dark shit, though. Jarl.

“Heroes have to make tough choices,” Lace said. “It doesn’t matter if Hulda has demons in her past. I watched Excelerate kill a grieving man in cold blood. She has to be better than that, at least.”

She held out the book.

Let go.

“Lace!” a voice called from the hallway.

She looked back.

There he was.

“Kiren.”

The front of his shirt was soaked in blood and his throat was covered in patchy, scaly skin. He breathed in ragged wheezes. He had one hand on the doorway, head hunched like a fighting dog about to pounce

Lace picked up the gale-staff and set the book aside.

*****

“I will say, you work fast,” Jorge said, circling a wounded Hulda. “It took you, what, a day, to win my apprentice over to your side?”

“Less,” Hulda said with a blithe smile. “She didn’t need much of a push. She’s absolutely starving for guidance.”

Jorge clapped his hands with ironic slowness. “Good work, Ludenhaas.”

He reached behind his back and checked the knife strapped to a belt hidden by the folds of his robe. He loosened it a hair to make sure it would come out quickly in a pinch.

“I was willing to overlook your schemes back then. Live and let live, you know? Heroes can’t be too picky about their company. Now, though? You took it too close to home.”

“Good,” Hulda said. Her multitudinous spear fragments aligned themselves around her like a dome, spinning slowly. “I’ve always wanted to kill you. You might only be half Router by blood, but you got all of their worst traits. The Guild will be purer without you.”

“I didn’t say anything about killing. You sure went there quick, though.”

Hulda growled.

Jorge dropped into a low stance.

About half of the spear fragments split from the main grouping and shot out at him like a cloud of angry wasps.

Jorge’s limbs lit up with energy. He settled on a point near the edge of the street, took a step to the left, and his body knew exactly what to do. Everything around him blurred, his vision narrowing to a single point right in front of him, every step jolting his body.

He counted the fraction of a second it took to travel that distance. He came out of the burst of speed, standing at exactly the point he had predicted.

Actually, he was about a quarter meter off.

He’d gotten rusty.

Hulda’s attack missed by a wide margin, the fragments dispersing and returning to the central mass. The thousands of fragments began to move rapidly, creating a spinning blur of a shield that protected Hulda from all angles.

The famed Ludenhaas battle art. Even with my speed, if I try to get through that I’ll get ripped to shreds.

Jorge had one advantage, though. Hulda was badly hurt. One arm was twisted in an awkward angle, pinned against her chest, and her lip was swollen and bloody. Besides, from what he knew about the Ludenhaas, their weapons were a part of them. To split her spear like this, while an effective defense, certainly took a toll on her body.

She had the power, but he had the stamina.

All he had to do was play with her, run her dry, then go in for the finish.

Hulda slowly shuffled around to face Jorge, breathing heavily.

I still have to be careful. Cornered wolves bite the hardest.

He plotted out a curved path that would skim him past Hulda’s defenses and executed the move in a fraction of a second. Just as he had expected, the fragments rose in a hissing cloud, too slow.

While using his speed, he was as good as blind—too much acceleration, too much wind. This was something few knew—and he liked to keep it that way. Even other Routers didn’t come up against this problem—they didn’t run fast enough for it to become one.

Jorge prodded at Hulda’s shield several more times. Each time, there was a response. Each time, it was a little more languid, and the fragments gave up a little sooner.

Ludenhaas spirit weapons responded instinctively to any danger against their owner, so even attacking Hulda from her blind spot would be no use.

That could be used against her, however. Whenever he feinted, the fragments would surge outward, and her shield would weaken. If he could goad her into attacking, then skirt the side to draw a response...

That could be enough to slip through her shield.

Jorge grinned to himself behind the mask.

Sounds like a plan.

A shard of cold agony shot through his left leg and he cried out. More stabs of pain all across his legs.

He looked down. Spear fragments zipped out of the mud—dozens in all—and embedded themselves into his flesh.

Jorge sank onto one knee, gritting his teeth.

That sneaky bitch. I wasn’t goading her… It was the other way around. She must have scattered these across the street while I was focused on her attacks.

The fragments were still wriggling around in his flesh, tearing apart the muscles of his thighs and calves. He tried to dig some loose, but it was no use. There were too many.

Hulda smiled.

A sizeable chunk of her shield detached itself and flew towards him.

Disable his legs, then finish him off. Not a bad strategy.

Except Jorge’s Power didn’t work through his legs. Not really. Everyone thought that the Routers just ran faster than a normal human, but that was untrue.

His Power flowed through every fiber of his being, like an unseen force. At that moment, it was a raging fire within him, setting his teeth chattering.

The fragments closed in around him in a half moon formation. He could hear them rustling like brigandine as they bumped into one another.

Jorge closed his eyes.

He pushed off with his legs, disregarding the pain.

He discharged the energy within him and shot into the air.