Chapter 54 - Lyra
Lyra
The shock on his face is immediate. Genuine, startled, almost offended. As if he didn’t actually expect me to fight.
Then, his training takes over. He pivots, blade sweeping up to meet mine. Light slams into light with a sound like glass breaking as sparks of luminth scatter between us, burning tiny holes into the ground where they land.
Twisting my wrist, I try to slide under his guard and slice at his side. He steps back smoothly, using his height to his advantage, and his blade flicks in a precise arc aimed at my shoulder.
I drop low, feeling the wind of it graze my hair. The blade would have cut through armor, through bone, through everything. There’s no restraint to his movements, no hesitation.
He’s trying to kill me.
Rolling across the dirt, I come up on one knee and fling my left hand out.
Luminth bursts from my palm in a wide, flat shield.
Vaelion's blade hits it before skidding away, knocked off course.
My father drives forward with relentless precision.
His blade thrusting, cutting, forcing me back, step by step.
Every strike is a lesson he taught me, turned on me as he attempts to wear me down.
My boots slip against the mud, and I barely manage to catch myself. My forearms ache from blocking. The luminth shield flickers, my concentration straining.
He doesn’t even look winded. “You were always such a disappointment,” he says as we circle. “Cindral agreed with me.”
My blade clashes with his. I’m panting. “I’m aware. He was particularly disappointed when I killed him in the Veilspire.”
He didn't know. My father stumbles, his eyes widening for the barest moment, and I use the opening to slash toward his throat.
Blocking me with a minimal movement, he counters with a brutal kick to my knee.
Pain explodes in my right leg, and it buckles.
Gritting my teeth, I use the fall to spin and avoid the blade that whips toward my ribs.
I come up breathing hard, blades held tight. And all the while, he watches me like a craftsman, assessing for flaws. “It’s a pity. You could have been my heir, you know. If you weren’t the by-blow of a lowborn whore.”
The words detonate something in me. My luminth surges so violently it makes my palms burn. “She had a name,” I hiss. “What was it?”
He shrugs, almost indifferent. “I can’t remember now.”
“That’s a lie.”
His mouth stretches into a smirk. “You’re never going to know. Almost the same thing.”
The scream that tears out of me is not articulate. It’s wordless, and shrill, and it burns my throat as I thrust both hands forward and release luminth in a concentrated blast.
A beam of pure light slams into his chest. He staggers, his boot sliding back, and I don’t let up. Sprinting, I grip my blades in my hand and close the distance before he can fully recover. I slash left, right, low, then feint high and pivot to strike at his weapon arm.
He manages to block me, but it costs him more movement now. His guard is tighter, and I watch as his stance shifts. He started out almost amused, but any humor has vanished from his face now as we circle.
“You dare?” he snarls at me. “After what I’ve given you?”
I’d love to list all of the things he's given me, but I'm finished with speaking. Slamming my shoulder into him, I use the armor’s weight as leverage and he grunts. For a heartbeat, we’re chest to chest, blades pressed against each other.
There are no flames in my father's eyes. Only the faintest glow, as if the fire is going out.
“You were made for this.” He almost sounds out of breath. “To end the war, Lyra.”
I swallow. “I am ending it.”
He shoves me back with a burst of luminth from his palm.
I fly back and hit the ground hard, the impact driving the air from my lungs as I roll over.
Mud fills my mouth. Coughing, I spit it out, and scramble up as his luminth blade forms again.
Longer now, far longer than my own blades, and heavier.
He’s counting on my tiredness. And I feel it, feel my energy slipping and my body beginning to ache.
He advances with a ruthless rhythm, his blade slicing patterns in the air that corral me. I block each one, my blades sparking. Each impact sends a jolt up my arms, pulls a little more from me. When I push back, putting every inch I have into it, he takes a few steps, giving me a moment to breathe.
He’s older. Stronger. More practiced. He’s fought this war for thirty years, and I didn’t leave the Sunspire until a few weeks ago. If I keep meeting him head-on, he’ll wear me down.
I need something else. In the distance, over the crush of bodies, I catch a flicker of shadow. Kaelen’s erevas is unmistakable. Figures rise amongst the battlefield like living sculptures, dark voids of shadow that twist and move, easily doubling the Darkwielder headcount.
Voids.
If luminth can be shaped into weapons and shields, then it can be shaped into something similar. He just never thought of it. Lightbringers encourage obedience, not imagination.
I backstep hard, letting my father’s blade slice empty air inches from my chest. Dropping my left hand, I turn my palm over, and pour luminth into the ground. Not a blast, but a seed.
Light spreads across the ground in a thin, glowing line of molten gold, drawn in a circle. I sweep my hand and the line completes, encircling us both.
My father pauses, eyeing the ground. “What are you doing?”
I narrow my own gaze at him. “It seems there were some things you didn’t teach me.”
Then I pull.
The circle flares. Light rises from it in a rush, swelling into shapes as I hold my breath.
Three, then four, and finally six figures of condensed light, their edges shimmering faintly. They stand in a half-ring behind me, mirroring my stance.
The expression on his face is almost gratifying.
The Voids move when I move. When I step left, two of them step with me. Their hands are shaped into blades of light, cruder than the complexity of Kaelen’s inventions, but sharp enough to cut. Testing, I pass my hand through one. It doesn’t hurt me.
For the first time, I see hesitation in my father. He’s never fought me like this.
He sweeps his arm, and his luminth explodes outward in razor-thin discs of light that slice through air toward me like thrown blades. The same weapon he threw at Kaelen’s mother, cutting her throat on the rampart of Umbraxis.
My Voids react on instinct, stepping into the path. Discs hit them, carving chunks of light away. Two constructs shatter entirely.
I grit my teeth and press forward. The remaining figures surge at him. He moves like the commander he is, pivoting, slicing, dispatching them with brutal efficiency. Each cut is clean, and I lose another. Then a fourth, leaving only two behind.
But each moment that he’s distracted is a moment he’s not cutting me. And I use it.
I dart in under the cover of the final two Voids. My daggers flashing, I slash at his ribs. My father blocks. But his blade is angled wrong, distracted by a Void, and my right-hand blade skims his side.
It doesn’t cut flesh the way steel would. The way I know Kaelen’s Voids do.
It burns. His armor smokes where my luminth touches it, the gold blackening along the edge. And my father hisses, a sharp, involuntary sound.
His eyes snap to me, furious. “You—”
I don’t let him finish. Twisting my wrist, I drive my left blade toward his right forearm, aiming to disable the hand he relies on most for his luminth.
He jerks back, barely avoiding it, and counters with a knee to my abdomen. My armor absorbs some of the blow, but not enough, and I stumble with a choked gasp.
A sharp palm strike hits my chestplate, throwing me back again. And I hit the ground, my vision flashing white and nausea twisting my stomach.
For a second, I can’t breathe.
For a second, I’m eight years old again. Sprawled in the training yard, my ribs bruised, and his face leaning over me.
Get up.
Forcing ragged air into my lungs, I roll to my side as his blade slams down where my head was, carving a deep, jagged cut in the ground.
I scramble up, limbs shaking. He will not stop.
“Yield,” he commands, his voice hard. “This is your last chance.”
The audacity of him asking now. His refusal to name my mother. The flicker of interest in his eyes at the Voids, the expectation of obedience after everything he’s done. Not just to me, but to Eres, and Darian, and Kaelen—
“No,” I rasp.
But I’m fading. I have to end it. End him, even if it means that I go with him. His soldiers won’t allow me to escape.
I don’t shape blades this time, as I always have. As he’d expect.
I shape a spear. Long, and heavy, and I hurl it at him with every ounce of rage I have. My father raises a shield of luminth. A perfect, curved barrier that catches the spear and shatters it into sparks.
But the sparks aren’t random.
They’re mine, and I want them back.
I reach out and pull the scattered pieces of luminth back to me, drawing them into the air around his shield. They swirl like embers from a fire.
And then they tighten, forming a net. A lattice of light that wraps around his barrier, clinging, tightening. I pull more luminth free, throwing it across the space to strengthen it, keeping some that connects to the net like rope.
My father’s eyes widen as he struggles. His arms are pinned. He can’t cast, not like this.
I yank on that rope.
The net constricts. His shield strains, the edges trembling as I press down on him. His snarl echoes from beneath the flickering light as he focuses on breaking free, his attention distracted for a brief moment.
And I slide in. Not from the front, but from the side. Low and fast, sliding across the mud we’ve built into a slick, slippery mess. My right hand shapes a dagger. My left stays open, ready.
Commander Vaelion pivots to meet me, his blade sweeping. Not taken in by the trick as the net breaks apart. I come up inside his reach, too close for his long blade to be comfortable.