Chapter 24 Lily #4
I felt my muscles start to tire for the first time because, every second, there was another sword swiping at me. He was overwhelming me with his attack, knowing I would falter at least once and then the sword would hit its mark.
He backed me up farther into the castle walls, and soon, I had nowhere else to go and no other choice but to block, over and over, my back to the wall, a mixture of sweat and blood on my face.
The creatures started to crawl up his body again and claw at his face.
I just had to wait long enough until he was overpowered and forced to rip them off.
His red eyes were locked on mine as he slashed with both of his swords, ignoring the two orcs on him that reached for his face, determined to make me break before he did.
But I would never break.
One of the orcs finally jabbed a dagger into his chest, making it only an inch into his hard exterior, so he tried again and again, impaling a little deeper each time.
There seemed to be enough damage this time because the demon screamed and thrust his body, trying to throw the monsters off his shoulders like they were annoying insects.
I made my strike, bringing my sword down on his core and feeling it bounce off like he was made of stone. I made another attempt, spearing him with my sword and cracking the wall that protected his interior.
He turned back to me, and I rolled out of the way away from the wall, putting space between us before he barreled down on me again.
With blood oozing from his severed arms, he rushed me once again.
Then he halted mid-step, a dagger suddenly appearing out of nowhere and impaling him in the eye. The black liquid immediately started to drip down his face, and he reached up to grab the dagger by the hilt.
I turned to see who’d thrown it.
It was my father, simultaneously engaged with the other demon that he and Hawk had both attacked. “Defeat him, Lily.”
I snapped back to the demon who had just yanked the dagger out of his eye and ran forward, focused on his right arm. I wasn’t sure if I’d have enough strength to slice off the limb from the shoulder, so I focused on the wrist, bringing my sword down in the hope of a clean cut.
The blade sliced straight, and his sword clanked to the ground.
Another blood-curdling scream issued from his lips, and he lunged at me with the dagger he’d just removed, moving quicker than he had before he’d dropped his massive blade on the ground.
I couldn’t block the small knife, could only dodge left and right, preventing the tip from penetrating my cheek multiple times.
I finally managed to sidestep and fake to my right so his dagger went the wrong way, and then with speed I didn’t think I could produce so spontaneously, I spun and brought my sword down to slice off the hand that gripped the dagger.
He still had two arms but lacked hands for either of them, had no ability to hold a weapon. But he was still monstrously bigger than I was and a threat until he was killed. He bled from all four extremities as he looked at me with one red eye, his rows of teeth glistening as he widened his jaw.
He started to slam his arms down to the floor in an attempt to crush me, knock me out cold from the speed of his attack.
All I had to do was survive this. All I had to do was live long enough to cut my blade through his black heart, and it would be done. So I kept my focus, dodged his bloody hands, gripped my sword extra tight so I wouldn’t drop it. I started to time his swings to find the right opening.
And when it arrived, I threw myself forward and slammed my sword into his chest, hitting the crack I’d previously made and driving my blade in deeper.
Without waiting to see if blood began to pour or if my attack was successful, I rolled away so he wouldn’t be able to strike me.
I ran for one of the blades he’d previously dropped.
Without Callum’s gift of strength, I would have barely been able to lift it, but I held it in a single hand like it was weightless.
But by the time I turned around to face him again, he tumbled forward and collapsed, my sword still sticking out of his chest where the blood continued to ooze. The brightness in his remaining red eye had gone dark.
I panted as I caught my breath, the first time I’d been allowed to pause for more than a split second. I felt the hair close to my scalp drenched in sweat. My armor felt constricting, trapping all the heat right next to my body.
But then I turned to survey the rest of the battle—and it was chaos.
My father, Hawk, and Callum all handled the demon with the wolf’s head, along with the servants who served me.
But they looked infinitely more tired than I was, and bloody too.
Viper, Aunt Eldinar, and Uncle Ezra handled the skeletal one, and then I watched Uncle Ezra be knocked fifteen feet away by a single punch.
I pulled my sword out of the demon’s body and rushed to my father’s side. “Help them,” I said as I arrived with my sword in hand. “I’ll take care of him.”
“Pretty wants to dance?” the wolf said with a cackle, unbothered by the servants that gripped his legs and climbed up his back, like he didn’t even notice.
“I danced with your partner over there, and he couldn’t keep up.”
His eyes shifted behind me, and he spotted his dead comrade, his toothy grin tightening into a snarl before he looked at me once more. Then he issued a low growl, sounding exactly like a hungry wolf.
Callum and Hawk left to help Viper and Aunt Eldinar, because it didn’t seem like my uncle had returned.
“Go,” I said to my father.
My father kept his eyes on the wolf. “They have enough people. It would be my honor to fight beside you, Zunieth.”
I didn’t have the opportunity to feel everything I should have felt when I heard those words, not when the wolf rushed us with his black sword, swiping over where our heads had been a moment ago. We instinctively ducked and separated, dividing our attack to draw his attention to two points at once.
The wolf seemed more interested in me, and he issued a flurried dance with his sword that was so fast I wouldn’t have been able to keep up as a mortal with average strength.
I was amazed that everyone in my crew had survived this long.
I was a match for these demons, but it was still the toughest battle I’d ever fought.
My blade blocked his at every turn, and my footwork was focused and kept me in the right place at the right time.
I battled him with my sword but also my position, always keeping my body in a place where I could dodge or deflect if needed.
But he was so fast with his blade that all I could do was block, even when he had only one set of arms while the other demon had had two.
But it allowed my father to cause damage, to stab his blade wherever he could get access and let the river of blood flow.
The wolf released a savage howl before he turned back to my father and barreled down on him with all his speed and strength, unleashing lightning-fast maneuvers with his sword that I feared my father wouldn’t be able to match.
But match it, he did.
He met every hit with his sword, sidestepped and ducked the blade at the right times, his stare so focused he didn’t seem to take a breath. He caught the sword in his vambraces once and then sliced the wrist of the wolf in a split second.
Another growl released, and then he screamed at my father before he swiped at him with his bare fist.
My father ducked and sidestepped, but he continued to be rushed, unable to raise his blade.
I unsheathed my blade then hurried to one of the orcs, climbing up his body without permission or explanation, and when the wolf ran by, I jumped forward, straight onto his back.
I pulled out the blade from my scabbard and then jabbed it straight into his spine, pushing down once and almost rolling forward when he came to a halt.
Then I had to use my boot to shove it the rest of the way, hitting him in the heart through his back.
He stopped, swayed, and then fell forward as he collapsed.
My father didn’t wait for me. He took off for the other demon, who’d just thrown Hawk aside.
My brother lay there and didn’t move.
“Hawk!” My father sprinted to him and slid across the stone on his knees until he reached my brother’s body. He grabbed his face and then checked his pulse. He glanced over his shoulder at the fight. “Lily.” With wide eyes that showed the rage and pain of a broken father, he yelled, “Kill him!”
I let my father handle my brother as I joined the fight with Callum and the others.
Callum’s eye was black from where he’d been struck in the face, and blood continued to drip onto his right hand like he’d been injured through his armor. Viper was always pale as a vampire, but he looked barely conscious, sometimes swaying from exhaustion or an injury I couldn’t see.
I jumped into the battle and drew the attention of the skeletal demon to me. “Two down, one to go.”
He didn’t seem to realize that he was the only demon left, that the Covenant of three had been reduced to one.
“How is something so small so powerful?” He lost his interest in the others who had been battling him this entire time and focused only on me.
His blade was black like the others, thicker and heavier than mine, and despite his skeletal appearance, I knew he was strong.
Otherwise, the six of them would have killed him already.
He issued a bony smile before he came for me, ignoring everyone else who had been fighting. Like the others, he attacked with his sword with supernatural speed, every strike meant to kill, not wound.
All I could do was keep up while I learned his tactics.
Callum and Viper came into view from the side, the two of them working together to carry an enormous stone that neither man could carry alone.
They swung it several times, and then on the third swing, they threw the boulder hard and it struck the demon in the side, making him tumble slightly from the collision.
I’d been prepared for it, so I rushed forward in his momentary distraction and released my flurry of blows that he was forced to block.
Now I was the one who pushed my advantage, the one who drove him back as he kept up with the dance of my blade.
Despite my exhaustion, I didn’t let up in speed or strength, knowing even a single lapse in either would give him the upper hand again.
Just as my father had taught me, when our blades clashed together, I spun my blade over his and forced it down. Then I brought my knee up and forced my elbows down into his arm, using my body as the weapon to crush the bones in his arm.
He screamed at the multiple fractures I caused.
I slammed my elbow against his hand and then struck it with the hilt of my sword, breaking the bone there too.
He screamed again as he dropped his sword.
Just when he dropped down to grab it, I kicked it hard, sending it sliding over the stone to where Callum and Viper stood, swinging another stone aimed at the demon I faced.
On the third swing, they released it again, the stone crashing into his leg bone and sending him tumbling because he didn’t have his arm for balance.
Since he seemed to be made of bone instead of flesh, I didn’t know if he had a dark heart like the others, so I ran to where he’d landed on the stone and brought my sword down like it was an axe about to split a piece of wood in two.
I sliced straight through his neck bone, and his head rolled away.
His eyes still moved and so did his mouth, but then all of his features went still.
The exhaustion finally hit me because I was officially allowed to feel it, and I dropped to my knees to catch my breath. My fingers released the hilt of my sword, and I listened to it clang when it hit the stone.
Callum ran to me and kneeled down. “Xivin, are you hurt?”
“No. Are you?”
“No.” He turned to look at where my brother lay on the ground while my father kneeled over him.
“Is—is he okay?”
Callum continued to stare at them. Aunt Eldinar kneeled at their side and helped my father remove the plates of armor over my brother’s chest. “I don’t know.” Then his eyes found mine again, full of trepidation. He got to his feet then extended his hand to pull me up.
We walked over and found Hawk lying there, blood soaked into his uniform.
Aunt Eldinar cut the fabric apart with her dagger and exposed the gash he’d received around one side of his ribs.
“Oh no…”
Aunt Eldinar immediately cut the fabric of his uniform into pieces of gauze and then secured it around his chest, applying pressure to the wound to stop the bleeding. “We have to get him back immediately. Movack will be able to slow the bleeding until we can treat him.”
Callum suddenly took off into the forest.
Viper and my father helped Hawk to his feet. He was still conscious but too weak to actually say anything.
Callum returned with a pile of branches and dropped them on the stone. Then he started to arrange them into a rectangle. “I need material. Cloth, clothing, anything.”
My father immediately removed his cape and handed it to Callum.
Callum worked quickly to bind the various branches together into a single hard structure, and then he used my father’s cape to tie around it, to create a small hammock for my brother. “We’ll carry him in this.”
They lowered Hawk back to the ground on top of the hammock, and then my father and Callum picked up two different sides before they lifted them again.
“We have to hurry,” Dad said. “Can you run?”
“Yes.” Callum led the way from the castle and down the steps, moving quickly but cautiously so my brother wouldn’t fall. Uncle Ezra and Viper gripped the other ends, all four of them carrying my brother to lessen the load overall.
We ran to the forest and left the castle behind, not stopping to take one more look at the horrible and dark place that housed the souls of those who were greedy…
or evil. The servants and monsters remained behind at the castle, and without a god or a Covenant to lead them, I wasn’t sure what purpose they had.
What would become of this place?
Would this be the end?