Chapter 35 - The truth.
The cracked stone slabs of the arena hung suspended over an endless starfield. Stars spread everywhere, above and below, behind the tilting columns around which great colorful nebulae slowly turned.
Aren stood in the center of the grounds, a one-handed sword hanging at his side, his focused gaze fixed on the far edge where Ursus stood perfectly still among the protruding columns.
The bronze plates of his armor caught the starlight in thousands of tiny points, and the blue flame of his eyes burned steadily through the slits of his war helmet.
The hammer's hilt was gripped tight in both hands, and in that silent, slowed moment there was only the steady, deep sound of Aren's breathing.
The hammer suddenly tore loose as Ursus threw it with a sharp twisting rotation of his body, sending it straight at Aren, the weapon spinning through the air with a heavy thrum, closing the distance fast.
Aren held his ground, knowing from experience that Ursus would follow up with a simultaneous attack. When the hammer was at the last possible distance to evade, Ursus launched himself high into the air straight at Aren, who threw himself sideways in a sharp roll, and coming out of it immediately pushed off again, clearing the warrior who crashed down with a thunderous impact.
The bronze figure dropped onto the stone floor with its full weight exactly where Aren had been coming out of the roll, the impact sending a deep resonance through the slabs and scattering small chips in every direction.
The next moment Aren was behind Ursus, driving his sword into the gap between the chest plates with a short sharp thrust, finding the unprotected joint, and blue energy burst from the wound in short electrical arcs along the edges of the metal.
The return sweep of a broad arm came instantly, forcing Aren to leap back and let the fist pass, and without pausing for a moment he kept moving in fast steps until there was enough space between himself and Ursus.
Ursus rose from his knee, turned his back to Aren, and moved toward the column the hammer had struck, which had left a deep gouge in the stone.
With one sharp pull he wrenched the weapon free with a dull crack, took the hammer in a two-handed grip, and moved toward Aren unhurriedly.
Using the pause, Aren scanned the arena floor and noted the hilts jutting from the stone, several dozen of them scattered with no apparent order.
He remembered that each blade, when pulled from the stone, granted its own particular property. One created lightness, a fine motor precision, another imposed density, amplifying raw muscular force.
From the corner of his eye he caught Ursus's new movement, drawing the hammer back along his right side and slowly rotating his torso half a turn, shifting his weight onto his back foot.
Aren recognized the setup instantly, running through every continuation he knew. A circular spinning blow was possible, or a vertical downward strike, or a diagonal upward one, and each option meant a different line of retreat and a different position.
The circular blow was too probable, and a counter would mean accepting unacceptable risk, so Aren decided on a right-side evade with an immediate break of distance and no counter.
Ursus lunged forward with a sharp shoulder thrust while Aren stepped back, holding his balance and clearing the reach, then waited for the familiar delay, that exact pause before the final blow he had learned across hundreds of loops, watching for the moment Ursus accelerated.
The hammer surged upward from below, gaining speed with every fraction of a second.
Aren rolled right, leaving the danger zone before the hammer completed its arc. The blow landed where he had been standing, splitting a wide deep crack from the stone floor.
Coming out of the roll, Aren kept backing away until enough distance had formed between him and Ursus.
Aren stopped, sword ready, tracking Ursus's position.
No circular blow… he went for the upswing instead… fine, the main thing is he didn't reach me… I'll get another shot.
Ursus turned slowly, then shoved off hard, breaking into a heavy, driving run.
Aren knitted his brows, reversed his grip and threw the sword at Ursus, forcing him to knock it away mid-run. In that same moment he leaped toward the nearest blade jutting from the stone, yanked it out sharply, and felt his physical strength surge immediately.
The next second Ursus was on him with the hammer swinging at his back, but Aren spun a hundred and eighty degrees and struck the hammer's head with his sword at precisely the right moment, hard enough to deflect the blow, sending the hammer aside and into the stone floor.
Aren used the rotational momentum the parry had stopped, then pushed off the floor, came at him from the side, and drove a full-force chopping attack into the chainmail at the inner part of Ursus's elbow, cutting halfway through.
Feeling the blade catch, he immediately kicked off Ursus's body, abandoning the sword and clearing to a safe distance before Ursus could release the hammer's hilt and try to grab him by the throat.
While Ursus worked to pull the blade from his elbow, Aren had already yanked another sword from the stone, but felt nothing.
What?… What does this one do? he thought.
Aren jerked his head up and stepped aside from his old sword, which Ursus had thrown back at him. The blade sailed off into the void, and Ursus straightened, taking the hammer in both hands again.
Damn… I cut halfway through his inner elbow, and he's holding the hammer with that arm like nothing happened…
Aren noticed the faint blue glow seeping from Ursus's wounds.
No blood, just energy… and under the helmet there's nothing but black emptiness and burning eyes… Is there even flesh under that armor?… So counting on damage to tendons and muscles is pointless… the only option is to just… sever.
Aren tightened his grip on the sword, bent his knees, and readied himself for Ursus's next attack, which did not take long to come.
Ursus launched sharply into the air and brought the hammer crashing down exactly where Aren had been standing.
He jumped forward, passing under the descending Ursus, then spun sharply and immediately arched backward, letting the unexpected hammer head pass over his face, as Ursus followed the landing with a horizontal sweep in a sharp backward turn.
When the head passed, Aren straightened, immediately ducked and dove between Ursus's legs, calculating that this would clear any possible continuation of the combination and put him behind the opponent.
Once behind Ursus, Aren landed several chopping blows on the backs of his knees, breaking through the chainmail.
Ursus stayed on his feet, spinning back instantly with a counter.
There was too little space to maneuver, and Aren instinctively raised his sword in a block, realizing in that same instant that he had miscalculated and that this blow would likely be fatal.
Suddenly the hammer struck the blocking sword and bounced back, and Ursus himself twisted in the opposite direction, nearly losing his grip on the weapon. A sharp, ringing, resonating sound of metal spread across the entire arena.
Aren felt no vibration, no shockwave that should have traveled through the sword and through his entire body, and the blade itself was undamaged.
He immediately pushed off and stepped back several paces, then turned a surprised look at the sword in his hand.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
What the… wait… the effect of this sword is absorption… no… deflection of kinetic energy?…
Memory brought him back to that evening when he and Leo had read together the scouts' notes on Aisengard, the section on kinetic energy.
Aren raised his cold, focused gaze to Ursus again, studying his slow movement.
He was straightening slowly, gripping the hammer tighter, then moved toward Aren in heavy, even steps. Blue energy bled from all his wounds in thin streams.
Catching Ursus off guard, Aren lunged sharply forward, closing the distance himself.
Ursus threw the hammer forward on instinct, but Aren immediately deflected the blow with his sword, sending Ursus's hands and the hammer back the other way.
With a sharp upward rotation he severed the left arm through the already-cut elbow, and the severed arm fell aside together with the hammer.
Ursus immediately swung the outer side of his right arm in a broad horizontal sweep, but Aren evaded, arching backward, and using the momentum of that arch landed a chopping blow on the inner elbow joint of the right arm.
He tried to pull the sword from the cut before it could catch, but Ursus used that brief delay, lifting his leg and kicking Aren in the torso with full force.
Aren flew back several meters, losing the sword, and rolled across the stone floor.
He spat blood, rising slowly, feeling several ribs crack again, while Ursus, slowed by the damage, worked his elbow, shaking his arm to try to knock out the stuck blade, having lost the use of his other hand to pull it free.
Rasping, Aren crawled toward the sword jutting from the floor a few steps away. Reaching it, he pushed himself up onto one knee with great effort, grabbed the guard with difficulty and used it to steady himself, then with a cry of pain forced himself to his feet, feeling burning pain in his ribs.
Ursus looked up and saw Aren, screaming with fury, wrenching the hilt toward himself and ripping the blade from the stone.
Aren knew what this sword's effect was, and the next moment all his wounds closed and his broken ribs knit together.
Ursus let out a deep rumble from his chest, then slammed his one remaining arm into the nearby column.
Cracks ran down it to the base, and from the impact the blade stuck in his elbow finally dropped to the floor.
They stood in silence, looking at each other with equal resolve, though in Aren's eyes there was also fury.
Ursus clenched his one fist. Aren gripped the sword. Then both of them charged at once.
Aren ran at the one-armed Ursus with a snarl, who swung his fist and struck the floor instead as Aren dove into a slide across the ground, slipping between his legs.
Rising sharply behind Ursus, Aren struck the already-damaged inner knee, cutting deep enough that Ursus finally dropped to one knee.
In the same second Ursus swung his arm backward in a half-turn, and Aren ducked, then immediately landed a chopping blow on the exposed elbow joint, severing the one remaining arm.
Immediately after, Aren threw himself forward with a roar, his whole body behind it, forcing Ursus to lose balance on his one knee and crash onto his back.
Standing to the side, Aren drove the sword into the area of the severed shoulder with a furious cry, angling the blade so it passed straight through to the chest.
Holding for a moment, Aren slowly released the hilt, leaving the blade there, then dropped to the stone floor, breathing hard, his eyes wide and fixed on Ursus.
Several moments of silence, broken only by heavy breathing, passed over the arena. Then Aren clenched his teeth.
"WELL?! HOW'S THAT FEEL?! LIKE DYING SLOWLY?! HUH?! LIKE BEING HELPLESS?!"
No answer came, and Aren, still burning with rage, shoved himself off the floor.
He ripped the sword from Ursus's body, climbed onto his chest, raised the blade above his head point-down, aimed it at the exposed throat, and with a roar drove his entire weight behind it, plunging the blade through.
At the end of the strike his face was right up against the front of the helmet, and they were looking directly into each other's eyes.
Aren, carrying in that moment the full accumulated weight of it all, everything lived through suffering and hundreds of deaths, breathed hard, his gaze locked into Ursus's cold, accepting eyes.
"WHY… WHY ARE YOU LOOKING AT ME LIKE THAT?!!!" he screamed directly into Ursus's face.
After a short pause, Aren drew a ragged breath, not letting his gaze leave the visor of the helmet, and kept going.
"ANSWER ME! ANSWER ME NOW! WHAT IS THE POINT OF ALL OF THIS?! WHY IS ALL OF THIS HAPPENING?! WHY AM I HERE?! WHO… WHAT?!"
In one flash, the seer's words blazed through his mind.
"Do you really think you're human?"
Aren drew a deep, heaving breath, then screamed at the top of his voice, nearly breaking it.
"WHAT THE FUCK AM I?!!!"
Aren's scream echoed across the arena and out, fading into the silent void, and then silence fell over everything.
Aren gripped the hilt of the driven sword, his head bowed, his face hidden beneath his fallen hair.
The silence felt unbearable for Aren, as emotional and physical and even phantom pain blurred together in his head.
Then a sound came from beneath Ursus's helmet, filling Aren's mind with a single phrase.
"The… cure…"
Aren slowly raised his head, fixing Ursus with a look of pure shock and confusion. He found no words, unable to believe what he had just heard.
Then the entire arena around him began to crumble and dissolve, as Ursus simultaneously began to dissolve beneath him.
Slowly the space filled with the familiar white light, until the next flash swallowed everything.
Meanwhile in the Great Forest, at the exact moment Aren drove Ursus's claw into his own chest, time stopped for everyone with a flash, as Aren began passing through a hundred hellish deaths in another space.
When it was over, time resumed its flow, and the flash of light that had come from the enormous dire bear, defeated by Aren standing on top of it, slowly faded.
Bernard, Edith, Alistair, Arswald, and the others slowly lowered the arms they had raised to shield their eyes.
As the light faded, a wave of energy passed across the clearing, and every fire in the forest went out at once, leaving only charred trunks and rising smoke.
In the middle of it all, a thick, shimmering radiance spread from the center of the clearing.
Aren stood with his head bowed as the body of Ursus in the form of the enormous dire bear dissolved slowly beneath him into colored energy that streamed into the runic tattoos on his body, simultaneously restoring flesh to his half-exposed skull, returning muscle and skin.
Everyone stood in complete paralysis, watching as the body of the dead Ursus was entirely absorbed by Aren's body, until he had fully recovered physically, still staring somewhere downward with hollow eyes.
Bernard exhaled a deep, ragged breath as he rose from behind the root, then stumbled into a run toward Aren, passing the bodies of the fallen, scattered weapons and armor, charred branches and toppled tree roots.
Reaching him, he grabbed Aren by the shoulders, bending slightly to look into his eyes, and gave him a small shake.
"Aren!... Aren, can you hear me?... Hey!"
Aren slowly raised his head and looked into Bernard's eyes.
Bernard saw emptiness and pain there that Aren had no words for.
For Bernard everything else ceased to matter, because Aren was standing before him alive. He pulled him in sharply and held him tight, his gaze aimed somewhere forward, eyes wide, trying to fully accept that the worst outcome had passed.
The others watched from where they stood, feeling both relief and a dull ache in their chests.
The wind slowly moved Aren's hair as his gaze, looking out from over Bernard's shoulder, drifted into the void.
Aren slowly pulled away, and Bernard looked after him, but said nothing.
He walked past, moving slowly through the bodies and fallen branches, then stopped, taking hold of a root lying nearby.
Tossing it aside, he uncovered the partially burned body of Elen, lying on the ground with open eyes and a slightly parted mouth, blood dried inside it.
The pain on Aren's face was beyond any words.
His lips parted slightly, but no sound came, no word, only the heavy silence of understanding.
Aren slowly lowered himself to one knee, carefully raised his hand and closed Elen's eyes, then pressed one hand against his bent knee and bowed his head.
Bernard approached slowly from behind, watching all of this, then clenched his teeth, but could not hold back his own tears.
Gusts of wind moved the strands of Aren's hair, hiding his eyes but leaving exposed his pressed, trembling lips, a tear running down to them.
After a moment like that, Aren slowly rose, turned, and walked forward without stopping.
"Aren, where are you going?" Bernard called, turning after him.
"Get out of here. I'll follow." Aren answered without turning, still walking.
Bernard quickly wiped his tears with the back of his hand and went after him.
"Like hell! Stop!"
He grabbed Aren's arm and stopped him, but Aren went still without turning.
"We need to go back! All of us together!"
Aren was silent for a moment.
"I have unfinished business."
Bernard held the pause, taking in what he had heard, then silently let go of his arm.
"Then I'm coming with you."
He came alongside Aren and walked with him, and Aren gave no reaction, simply continued walking.
The ones remaining watched them go in confusion, until Alistair turned to the group.
"We need to head back. Arswald, help me lift the que—"
Edith cut him off sharply before he could finish.
"No. We wait for them."
Everyone looked at her with surprise, and Alistair paused for a moment, then took a deep breath and nodded slowly.
Bernard walked beside Aren in complete silence, taking note of the blank, cold state he was in.
They moved through the burned and fallen part of the forest where Aren and Ursus in the form of the enormous dire bear had raged not long before.
Bernard saw shattered and splintered giant trees, claw marks everywhere, blood spread across fallen trunks and torn earth.
All of this continued until Bernard paused for a moment, seeing that they had come out into a large open space.
At its center rose the Great Tree, enormous and vast in its girth, with a thick, dense canopy reaching high above.
Aren continued forward without breaking his stride, and Bernard hurried after him.
Reaching the tree, Aren stopped and raised his head, his gaze going to the branches towering high above. Then he lowered his gaze to the trunk before him, breathed in deeply, exhaled slowly, and raised his hand, pressing his palm to the bark.
Bernard did not yet understand what was happening, but he saw Aren's tattoos light up, and from his palm runes spread across the entire crown in countless lines, tracing each branch and each limb with their glow.
Aren closed his eyes and focused, until a loud and solitary sound of a falling drop rang through his mind.
Aren opened his eyes and found himself in the deep dark space he had seen before only in dreams.
Ankle-deep water was underfoot again, completely still.
Aren raised his head, looking at the dense fog above him and the single white source of light shining high overhead.
Then behind him came a deep, low, ancient voice, inhuman in its nature.
"And finally… you have come."
Aren turned slowly and saw before him the familiar silhouette he had been expecting.
In the shadow stood a colossal silhouette with a deer-like frame, crowned with two pairs of enormous antlers. Three glowing eyes looked out from the darkness, one of them set at the very center, and behind the creature stretched an enormous, monstrous tail.
Next chapter: Chapter 35: Titan.