Chapter 24
They negotiated terms ahead of time—no replenishing of strength from flames or restrictions on which forms they could or could not take.
The winner would be declared when the other party conceded defeat.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Saer could not invoke his hierarchical power or Runeak’s true name to control her.
She demanded a true test between them without safety nets.
They didn’t delay. Runeak was arguably the least patient of the Daemoenica, though Saer held no desire to wait.
Runeak left her armor in place, but didn’t don a helmet. She exited the tent, and Saer heard her low but commanding voice speaking the local language, presumably to spread the word of their impending clash and to ascertain her soldiers cleared the sparring field she had in mind.
While Runeak occupied herself, Saer pulled off his hooded cloak in preparation.
Under, he wore a simple sleeveless top woven from hemp and similarly made trousers for his legs.
After an internal moment of debate, he pulled the shirt up and over his head, leaving him only in loose fitting pants and leather-tied sandals.
Saer rolled his shoulders and his neck, then lifted the tent flap and stepped out into the afternoon sun.
Two guards waited to escort him. Their dark eyes lit up with excitement as he approached, though the pair schooled their faces to careful neutrality.
The atmosphere beyond and around them buzzed with activity and excited voices.
Groups of soldiers hurried towards the sparring grounds on the outskirts of the encampment.
In the span of minutes, word had traveled of the upcoming entertainment.
One of the soldiers at the tent entrance reached out to grasp Saer’s elbow, but he pulled away. Jerking his chin instead in the direction the crowds headed, he spoke in their language to the best of his ability. “I follow. Show me.”
The guard shrugged and beckoned, taking the lead, though his partner remained at his back to flank.
Saer ignored any whispers, stares, and fingers pointed his way, preparing his mind for the fight at hand.
He held no doubt Runeak learned more tactics through the centuries.
Their first battle might as well have been a toddler’s flailing skirmish in comparison to what they each knew presently.
Saer’s heart thudded light and quick in his chest, flutters of anticipation.
He excelled at combat, though he didn’t tend to seek it for sport or relish in it—certainly not in the way Wrath did.
But Lucifer created him as the pinnacle of physical prowess. He would defeat the Fifth. Pride did not doubt.
Runeak came into view, at least three hundred feet away, directing the final steps of her makeshift arena. On the borders stood racks filled with both practice and true weapons, archery targets, and soldiers.
The oval sparring field carried a false impression of tranquility when Saer stepped to its edge. The muttering intensified, and Runeak glanced to confirm his presence, then raised her hands, calling for quiet.
The escorting guards shuffled away to join their comrades.
Walking to the center of the crushed grass meadow, Runeak addressed her people, somehow managing audibility without shouting.
Though he couldn’t understand all the words she spoke, Saer paid close attention to the humans’ responses.
Reverence shone in their eyes and body language, so different from the harvests he had taken in the recent past. An air of solidarity hung between Wrath and her soldiers, bereft of deceit.
They saw her as their war leader, and they would follow her blindly into battle wherever she went.
This was how Wrath harvested alone.
A great cry rose from all around at the end of her address, strong enough to vibrate Saer’s ribcage. If anyone else evoked such a response, they might have smiled, but Runeak only stared, then turned her head to nod at Saer.
He stepped onto the field, weaponless.
Tense silence rolled through the audience.
Runeak prowled to one of the weapon racks.
From his vantage point, Saer discerned her picking up a few different items and placing them on her person, though he couldn’t tell their shapes.
She came away with one final armament in her hands, a metal sickle on a short wooden handle which she grasped with her right palm.
The posterior of the blade attached to a long chain with a weight at its end, and these links Runeak coiled around her left hand and wrist. She stalked back onto the grassland until she stood ten paces from Saer.
She addressed Saer in low, guttural syllables, using the first language they’d ever known, “Your move, Eldest.”
Saer offered the barest nod of acknowledgement, then slid a foot back into a more rooted stance.
Susurrations percolated at the borders of the meadow.
The whispers shifted to gasps as Saer thrust a hand forward, balled it into a fist, and pulled back towards himself with inhuman speed. He wrapped a metaphysical tether on Runeak’s brilliant, Hellsfire core, then wrenched the heat towards himself, intent on weakening her from the start.
Runeak’s expression didn’t change. A picture of calm ire, her shoulders tugged forward, but her will rose to match Saer’s.
An invisible rope of precious heat stretched between the dueling pair, and she gripped onto it with equal strength while, at the same time, she unfurled the long chain from her left arm with practiced ease.
Saer redoubled his efforts to pull on her innate fire while Runeak’s jaw tensed. The demoness swung the sickled end of her weapon in wider and wider arcs. Then the wicked blade hurled through the air—directly at Saer’s chest.
The tug of war snapped. Saer’s concentration shattered as he ducked and rolled forward to avoid being skewered by Runeak’s weapon.
The audience cheered.
Runeak attacked a second time, aiming the weapon at Saer’s leg. He dove once more, scrambling further away. He couldn’t see her, but his heat sense told him that she closed the distance.
Great Hells, she was fast.
Wrath swung the sickle a third time at his shoulder just as he pulled himself to a stand. Saer snarled and snapped his left hand up, catching the weapon’s handle. He jerked back, using his weight to rip the chain away. The tether loosened in his grasp. Runeak had let go.
She gave no chance to celebrate.
Wrath pivoted and thrust with movements as smooth as slicked oil.
A burst of agony erupted from Pride’s upper left abdomen. He roared, stumbled, and looked…
The handle of a dagger protruded from his stomach.
Burning Hellsfire ichor spilled around it, draining him. Runeak reached for yet another weapon at her hip as she closed the distance. She had drawn first blood.
The crowd shouted its appreciation.
Her blade felt cold in his hand when Saer grasped it. He pulled the knife free while dodging and shoving a burst of fiery energy into the steel. Scarlet fluid sizzled, smoked, and crisped as he cauterized the wound, biting down on his scream of pain. The humans gasped.
It took less than a second. Runeak advanced, swinging a long, elegant sword. The sickle Saer took shot up as he deflected Runeak’s downward strike. He flipped the blood stained long knife in his right hand.
The two faced one another, Runeak with a two-handed sword and Saer with a chained sickle in his left grasp, a knife in his right.
They circled.
“I wanted a fight, not a slaughter.” Runeak punctuated the bitter statement with a thrust of her blade. Saer parried.
“Human weapons aren’t my preference.” Saer countered another attack, then sliced forward with the knife he’d taken. It caught her arm, shaving mostly through armor but taking a bite of flesh with it.
For the first time since reuniting with his sister, a faint smile touched her face, visible more in her eyes than her mouth. “No one has drawn blood from me, in single combat, in years,” she purred.
Another strike. Another counter. The crowd grew restless.
Saer remained in his circling crouch, ignoring his throbbing abdomen. “You sound far too happy about it.”
The hint of a smile faded, swallowed by Runeak’s usual haunting stoicism. “Learn to embrace pain, Saer.” The sword flashed downward, and Saer thrust his weapons above to clang against the blade before it cut through his skull.
Saer’s snarling face spanned inches from Runeak’s, her obsidian eyes locked to his. “You don’t command me,” he growled.
“It will make you a better fighter.” Runeak shoved Saer away.
He dropped the sickle, using the split seconds it fell to slam his palm into Runeak’s elbow while also slashing at her same wrist with his knife.
Wrath grunted, dropping her sword as blood spilled fresh from her forearm. Their audience shouted and gasped.
Saer couldn’t help smirking when the Fifth backed up to recenter. “I seem to be doing fine,” he gloated.
Runeak growled and reached across her body to unsheathe her final weapon, a long-bladed knife matching one which Saer now wielded. She flipped the weapon to solidify her grip and lunged forward.
A flurry of slashes and slices punctuated by grunts and the clanging of metal rang out. Sharp cries and hisses of pain left one or the other as the blades laid wounds on their opponents’ skin, none deep. Back and forth, pivoting and dodging with inhuman grace—a dance without music.
Runeak twisted her arm and dug her knife’s blade under Saers’ hilt, wrenching the weapon from his grip.
He dove for the knife, but the demoness stopped him with the point of her blade under his chin, forcing him to swallow through heaving breaths and back up as she pushed forward.
A new well of blood dripped from Saer’s throat.
His torso and arms were littered with various cuts.
“Do you yield, Eldest?”
His single-worded response came as a grated whisper. “No.”