Ascalon

A frigid wind blasted across the calm surface of the still lake. It was the kind of wind that made you realize that there were tiny holes in your jacket, holes that could not be covered. Thankfully, Gordon’s overcoat was no such coat. Its thick leather material completely blocked out the cruel wind. Only my face remained exposed.

But that one gap in my defense was enough to make me realize just how cold the lake was.

The wind couldn’t have been blowing for more than half a minute.

Yet my face already felt like it was frozen solid.

My skin prickled with stinging pain.

Frostbite couldn’t have been far away.

First comes the pain, I thought, remembering a rhyme my mother taught me as a kid to discourage me from spending too much time outside in the winter without the proper gear. Then comes the numbness. Then comes the pain with again with blisters and redness.

I stared at the surface of the lake.

Despite the tempest howling above it, the lake's silvery surface remained calm, unbroken, like the surface of a brand new mirror, polished to perfection. Oddly enough, it almost seemed like it was frozen in time. Almost, because there was one thing that did affect the surface of the lake.

Esther shifted her foot slightly to the right. A cascade of ripples erupted from the sole of her boot. They spread across the water like an earthquake, distorting the lake's surface into a blur of muddled colors in a kind of hypnotic dance. I took a step to the side as well. More ripples. This time, the distortion lasted for an unnaturally long time.

Something's odd about the lake, I thought.

Esther stood twenty paces from me. She looked equal parts stunning and terrifying in her new black and white dress. It rustled about in the wind like she was some kind of banshee. She stared up into the cloud-woven sky, her nutmeg eyes lost in distant memory, her focus far from the battle before her. Her left arm was still outstretched in front of her, palm facing up. Beneath our feet, the Night Terror’s melody plinked on with no signs of slowing down. Its metallic notes made it impossible to relax the mind.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Esther said.

Her voice was still hers, not distorted in any way.

"The lullaby? No, I hate it," I replied. "It's creepy."

"I meant the night sky."

"Oh. Well, that makes this lake one heck of a place to fight," I said.

“So beautiful,” she said, now looking directly at me. “And yet I feel nothing right now.”

Her voice was cold now. I noticed an edge not present moments before. She sounded quite angry, angry enough to kill someone.

I tightened my grip on Kairos.

"As for the lullaby, it soothes me," she continued. "It was the only thing I remembered when I first awoke in this nightmare. My only clue to who I was as a person. Without it, I forget who I am when I wear the Night Terror's veil. I need the song, do you understand?"

I stared at the swordspear planted into the heart of the lake, the one responsible for producing the lullaby. An idea came to mind. If the lullaby really did calm her while she was the Night Terror, removing the swordspear would likely enrage her, cause her to not see things clearly. An enraged opponent might be just what I need to win this second duel. But she told me this weakness up front. It could very well have been a gesture of goodwill to help who she believed to be the weaker duelist as much as it was a stern warning.

"I understand," I said.

Esther’s six red javelins began to quiver behind her as if they knew blood was about to be drawn. She took two slow steps toward me and raised her right arm in front of her as if about to command her javelins to strike.

I immediately started a quick checkup of my magic and my equipment, something I realized in alarm that I had yet to do.

I kept a close eye on my opponent as I hastily cycled through my two main barriers, my emergency barrier, and my main barrier. Both flickered into existence one after the other. Each of them felt stable, good news since I would need them.

Next, I tapped my Titan Vambraces together. They activated, bracing my arms like the world’s most comfortable steel bracers.

Lastly, I activated my Spider Boots and hopped up and down a couple of times. They made each landing feel like I was wearing the world’s most comfortable pair of insoles.

All my gear is working, I thought.

Esther’s javelins began to whirl slowly around her like a merry-go-round of death.

Just a few more seconds, I thought as all the hairs on the back of my neck suddenly stood up.

Though she stood as still as a statue, I knew she was about to make her move, I could feel it in my gut, that terrible gnawing feeling you felt before something bad happened.

There was still one thing I needed to do.

My last order of business was to prepare a strike alteration for Kairos. A strike alteration was a simple semi-permanent magical application that allowed me to strike with tremendous force when activated. It was a lot like strapping a bundle of magical dynamite to Kairos, only a lot safer since I could control the exact direction the explosion went.

The one I prepared was a standard triple-strike alteration, one I would be able to activate three times before having to reapply it. I could have prepared a single strike alteration, which was three times as powerful, but a triple-strike was way more versatile. If Esther had an easy way to mitigate a single powerful strike, I would be out of luck since preparing a strike alteration mid-battle was something I wanted to avoid since it did take a few seconds to make it and a few more to apply it properly. Depending on how stalwart Esther's defenses were, I could be in big trouble without a strike alteration since I would have to burn through a lot of magic to do any significant damage.

My breath came in shaky bursts as I hastily attached the completed alteration to the edge of Kairos’s blade.

A moment later, my emergency barrier suddenly flickered into existence.

The next thing I knew, I was engulfed by a massive fireball.

Oh, I'm dead, I thought.

But when I realized that I was still conscious longer than a second after the fireball hit, I knew that my barriers had worked.

Never mind! I thought. I'm still alive!

From what I could feel, whatever had just hit my barrier was many times more powerful than Priscilla's lightning-empowered spikes. Yet my barrier held firm. My magic was working as intended. More than that, the energy I had absorbed from the attack had given me a tremendous amount of free magic, about a quarter of what my barrier could hold.

My barrier acted a lot like a rechargeable battery. Whenever it blocked an attack, be it physical or magical, it absorbed a huge portion of the energy and temporarily stored it as free magic.

Free magic was magic that existed outside of a mage and could be used without incurring manaburn, the great limiter of all magic-users. Essentially, my barrier gave me a potentially unlimited supply of free magic so long as my opponent chose to carelessly throw their attacks at me. That was my gimmick and I Ioved it, because by the time most people realized what was happening, I had all the magic in the world to end the fight with style.

My body tingled with electricity as I could feel the free magic from the barrier waiting restlessly at my fingertips, longing to take shape and be unleashed. This didn’t distract me from the fact that Esther had attacked me without warning.

“Speaking of cheap shots,” I growled. “You! You’re just as bad as me!”

Evil laughter filled the air.

I was taken aback.

It was a really good evil laugh, not something I expected from someone as good-natured as Esther.

The Night Terror’s javelins abruptly stopped moving. She brushed the ones floating in front of her to the side as one would brush aside a doorway curtain. They floated obediently to their vertical positions behind her, three to her right, two to her left.

She began to walk toward me at a leisurely pace. There was a wicked grin on her face.

“It’s only fair,” she said, her eyes wild with excitement. “That barrier of yours can withstand a full-power attack from Ascalon. How peculiar."

Ascalon, I said. That name sounds so familiar.

My eyes widened in horror.

My heart skipped a beat.

It all made sense now, why Esther was so darn good at fighting, why she had such a powerful Remnant.

“Wait, you’re telling me that is the Ascalon, the legendary dragon-slaying Remnant of Sir George?” I said in a shaky voice. “I knew he had a successor, but to think I might be fighting her myself.”

Esther stopped walking. She frowned.

“Is that who I am?” she said, sounding just as surprised as me.

“If you are Sir George's successor, that would make you no mere dragon hunter, but a dragon hunter ace. A dragonslayer. Possibly even the Hero of Wyrmwood. We read about you in our history books. None of this rings a bell?”

"That can't possibly be me," she said quietly. "I'm quite certain."

"Oh," I said, wondering if there was something specific she remembered that would rule out the possibility of her being a legendary hero. "Well, good, then. That means I actually have a chance of winning."

"I don't know about that," she said cheerfully. "However, I want to hear everything you know about the dragon hunter guild. I've been dying to remember more about them."

I nodded vigorously.

“Will do,” I said.

Esther clapped her hands together. Then she lowered her clasped hands onto her stomach.

“Well,” she said. “If one javelin won’t work-”

Esther lifted her right hand high into the air. Her remaining javelins snapped into the air above her shoulders and pointed toward me like a brood of vipers ready to strike. They hummed with deadly power.

“Five certainly will.”

I was a bit taken aback by the boldness of her statement.

Then I nearly laughed out loud.

I was going to be okay.

Because unless Esther had something in her arsenal that could work around my barrier, which almost nobody did, not even the Seraphs, she could only play right into my hands, even with a ridiculously powerful Remnant like Ascalon. There was no way she would be able to defeat my barrier through brute force, not in a million years. And if my guess about her battle plan was correct, it would only be a matter of time before she ran out of ammunition. A battle of attrition was where I shone the best.

I was tempted to tell her about how powerful my barrier was given how badly I was stomped in the last duel, but I restrained myself. I really wanted to win this duel, and I would need every advantage I could take versus someone as dangerous as her.

I’ll tell her after, I promised myself.

“Do your worst, Night Terror,” I said. “I lost the last fight, I'm not losing this one.”

The Night Terror closed her right hand and pointed one finger up into the dark night sky.

I frowned.

As I tried to figure out why she was pointing up into the sky, I noticed that her entourage of javelins was nowhere to be seen.

Oh boy.

I looked up.

I immediately wished I hadn’t.