Artist
Artist
His reaction said he hadn't sensed anything until that moment—that he'd only just barely caught on.
Watching it, Aslan figured the thick venomous haze had badly dulled his detection range.
Even Tiyamal's exceptional tactile sense would fail in this drifting poison, and Fay's sharp senses would lose their way inside the heavy murk.
It couldn't be helped.
This outcome was set in stone the moment they'd failed to read the Artist's intent from the start.
The fact that they hadn't been ambushed was the only consolation.
Facing Aslan, who let Seobsaeng hang low, the Artist spoke abruptly.
"Impressive. I thought I'd fooled your eyes reasonably well. How did you notice?"
Aslan didn't answer. He sealed his lips as if the words themselves were beneath him and simply let the Kal-blade hang.
Nothing to ask, nothing to answer. He only sharpened his gaze and readied himself for battle.
At that response, the corners of the Artist's mouth lifted as if in regret. He turned his head toward Ereta.
"It's been a long time, Ereta. Have you been well?"
Unlike Aslan, Ereta had plenty to say.
"Where did you send Mother?"
Killing intent and hostility bared openly, nothing like her usual self. Murder woven into it all.
The Artist let out a laugh at the sight of her.
"Crawling around somewhere down below, most likely. Care to go check?"
Ereta ground her teeth and raised her axe. The Artist stretched out both hands and offered a smug grin.
"A joke. As the Spider, she's probably crawling around down there looking for Verdict right now. You're after the same thing, aren't you?"
"I asked where Mother is!"
"How would I know? The one crawling around down there is the Spider, not me. Well, if she finds it, she'll either come back on her own or try to absorb it to restore her strength. Either way, I'll make an effort to kill her cleanly."
He spoke as though dispensing favor, then added lightly.
"Ah, of course, I'm not convinced she'll actually find it. You lot seem far more likely to succeed. That's why I've been following your trail all this time."
Looking at the party—spears leveled, fists raised, stances set, bows drawn and arrows nocked on strings—the Artist smiled softly.
"When I design a plan, I prepare contingencies with great care. So I can borrow another method if something goes wrong. That's why I'm here, and that's why you're there."
So don't worry. He added those words as he casually drew his weapons.
A magnificent white-iron mace. A shield of white iron even more ornate.
Stopping the spinning mace that whistled with wind, the Artist spoke through a gentle smile that starkly unveiled ferocity.
With a sneer of savagery, he mocked.
"Whatever becomes of the fire-weaving Spider, I'll send her along to your side soon enough."
"Shut up!"
Kwaaang!
Ereta loved her mother far too fiercely to let that provocation pass. Without knowing which way her emotions had tipped, she lunged, swinging her axe.
The floor caved in beneath the furious arc of the axe, and the priests standing behind the Artist surged forward all at once.
"Oh, shit—!"
At Angie's startled voice, the party raised weapons and fists to meet the priests head-on.
Claaang!
Angie's fist hammered a priest's torso. Fay's Kal-blade swept away javelins that came for Angie's exposed flanks. In that same moment, Tiyamal's arrow flew with an air-splitting shriek and punched through a priest's shield.
It pierced through. But the priest did not fall.
The one Angie had hammered also stayed alive. Fay was clutching the wrist she'd used to deflect a javelin and grimacing.
Their toughness and strength were in a completely different league from the priests of Cosmic Inevitability they'd faced before.
Even Rumel's spiraling spear-thrust stopped after gouging out little more than a bit of flesh. The priest counterattacked, utterly unconcerned.
Richard knocked the incoming spear-blade aside with the white-iron bracer on his wrist, but the attacks kept coming without pause. Rumel and Richard faced the priests with strained expressions.
Just as confusion gripped the whole party, Aslan drew out a single feather and faced the charging priests. He murmured.
"Pure."
In answer, the flame of the ancient god bloomed.
The feather became a greatsword. Aslan's foot scraped the floor as he moved. The moment the laid-back blade blazed bright—
"Moon Splitting."
The arc of the Kal-blade stretched out and bifurcated an onrushing priest. A wet crack. Poisonous fluids scattered among flying entrails—foul, but Aslan paid it no mind and shouted.
"Tighten up! Fight them together!"
"Ngh, what about Ereta?!"
Angie's cry—she blocked a priest's strike with her forearm, clutched her broken arm, and kicked back—made it plain: Ereta was alone.
Scraaape, claaang!
Blunt-weapon techniques that used every ounce of rotation and a supple body. Her axe-head, spun with the turning of her frame, seemed to fend off the Artist's biting attacks—but the truth was the opposite.
Ereta was being pushed back.
The furious expression she'd worn moments before was gone. Now she faced the Artist with a grimace of frustration and despair.
"I'll handle him!"
Aslan decided at once and rushed the Artist.
The others outnumbered the priests and could cope, but Ereta was isolated. She was in no state even to defend against a sudden attack from behind.
While Aslan closed the distance, Ereta rained down attacks without pause.
She shifted her grip along the haft and swung. She thrust the axe-head to deflect the mace, then cut short into a rising slash. She twisted at the waist and pivoted, cutting for the throat.
Three attacks in a single breath. Against most, the first would never have been blocked. But the Artist was not most.
He deflected every one—lightly flicking the mace to block, crossing mace and shield to flip the strike away, leaning his body to evade.
The one mercy was that he hadn't counterattacked.
"I've played along a little. Did you enjoy yourself?"
The moment those words followed, the offensive shifted. That mercy became a memory.
The Artist's foot stepped forward and three streams of white light spilled toward Ereta at once.
A mace swinging upward from below. She barely got the axe-haft in the way.
Then the shield climbing the haft like a serpent, aiming to smash her temple. She thrust the axe-head forward and blocked it.
But the impact rattled her stance, and the Artist brought the mace down without the slightest hesitation.
Thwaack!
"Ungh—!"
The protection spell on her shoulder flared and crackled where the mace landed.
Despite the ward, the shoulder sagged—broken.
An enhanced physique born of his elevation to high priest. Skills accumulated since before he'd ever become a priest.
An obsessive artistry that was both dazzling and ruthlessly practical, closing the gap between them with overwhelming technique. Ereta was at a loss.
What made it all the deadlier was the venom.
The miasma strewn everywhere suppressed her breathing and made her hesitate even to move.
The only reason she endured was the life-force stored in Valor of the Flying Bird.
But even that was useless now. She had no way to block the mace hammering down.
If she didn't block it, she'd die. Forcing her axe upward, just as she did—
Clang!
Aslan slipped in beside her and turned the mace aside.
White sparks scattered where white struck white. Aslan met Ereta's eyes for an instant.
The message in that glance was simple. I'm joining. Get your head straight.
Ereta clenched her teeth, channeled the regenerative force of Valor of the Flying Bird into her shoulder, and gripped her axe.
Aslan tightened his hold on Purity as it was forced back, then swung the Kal-blade with his whole body.
White light and ink-black light wove together. Two beams of different hues raced at the Artist.
"Oh, two at once. Fortune smiles on me today."
Only ease answered back.
Then steel sang.
Close to a dozen exchanges in a single breath—a noise that a first-time observer would mistake for dozens. In the midst of it, the Artist laughed while facing Aslan and Ereta.
A downward cut, slid off the shield's face. A thrust that followed—the Artist tilted his head away from it and swung his mace.
As Aslan faltered, blocking that strike, the shield's edge came for Ereta.
She deflected it with the butt of her axe and chopped downward, but the Artist had already slipped sideways out of range.
Out of reach, the Artist moved with sharp agility.
He reversed his wrist. He shoved Ereta's knee aside with his own. He crossed his shield-arm and swung.
The whole sequence was intricate as a choreographed dance and yet perfectly artistic.
In motion that was flawlessly technical, there was no waste.
Even with the overwhelming might he'd seized when he cast aside the Three Evils, there was no carelessness, no slack.
In the hands of a man who regarded martial prowess itself as an art form, that art fulfilled its purpose and sang of death.
Clash-clatter-shriek, clang!
In the ringing of metal.
As blow after blow was stopped, Aslan understood.
The Artist before his eyes had reached the full stature of a high priest.
Not the crude, half-formed high priests common among the Three Evils.
Weaker than the Dragon-king, yes—but unmistakably high priest-class.
A demigod who could force even a prepared hero to his knees and clutch laws inside his fist. The world called such beings high priests.
Aslan ground his teeth, turned aside the mace flying in to crush his throat with a tilted Purity, and lashed the Kal-blade again and again.
Back to back with Ereta. Filling her gaps. Taking her support. Matching weapons.
'The terrain is against us.'
In the midst of it, the thought came.
He had no way to overturn this.
He couldn't use precognition. The moment he tried to focus for it, the seeping venomous miasma—counted as continuous damage, or something like it—snapped him instantly back to reality.
Even if he could use it, would his brain handle any more foresight?
Unlikely. He'd have to craft a single countermove that flipped the situation without using precognition.
Offer flesh to take bone?
No. Show an opening—offer flesh—and he'd die on the spot.
Thanks to the dragon blood, he had one extra life in reserve, but he wanted to keep it if possible.
Wait for the party to finish off the priests and join him?
The Artist's attacks were growing fiercer, faster, shifting every moment. A mace hammering from high to low, from low to the side—aiming for the arm, the head, the throat, the sternum—gleamed coldly, promising death the instant concentration broke.
Aslan clenched his teeth and focused on the Artist's accelerating assault.
Crash-crash-crash-crashcrash-clang!
A ceaseless din of steel. Where weapon met weapon and killing intent met the will to survive, the stone underfoot began to groan.
Crack!
The battle had begun on what was essentially a rock shelf jutting out from the precipice. The ground was never solid enough to endure a brawl this vicious.
Rumble. Feeling the tremor run through the ground, Aslan blocked strikes aimed at his skull and throat with the Kal-hilt and the flat of the blade, and thought.
He had to seize the moment the ground gave way.
The instant the stone crumbled—that would be his decisive move. A single overwhelming strike to take the Artist's head.
He read the rhythm, disengaged slightly from the flurry, and wrapped both hands around Purity.
The Artist had likely reached the same conclusion. Aslan knew this was the tipping point and set his stance.
When the ground shuddered. That was when he'd take the throat.
What he planned was Shadow Flip.
Aslan lowered his stance, readying his decisive blow, and the ground began to crumble.
And in that crumbling moment, the Artist moved—not as Aslan had predicted.
He raised the white-iron mace high and brought it crashing down toward Ereta, who flinched.
Aslan saw it and froze for a fraction of a second.
There was no rationality in that move.
And because there was none, Aslan immediately understood the reason behind it.
The Artist's objective wasn't just Verdict.
For whatever reason—Aslan couldn't even begin to guess—the Artist seemed to be after Ereta as well.
Even throughout the melee, the Artist had directed more attacks at Ereta than at Aslan.
That pattern, and now this move. From a gambit lacking all reason, Aslan gleaned the intent.
The Artist was targeting not the far greater threat of Aslan, but Ereta.
Which meant, conversely, that capturing Ereta alone would gain him something substantial.
Even if it meant Aslan might kill him afterward—and the Artist clearly knew that possibility—choosing this move said nothing else.
Irrational. It reeked of obsession.
But that suited Aslan just fine.
If he let the attack now hurtling toward Ereta land and swung his weapon, he could sever the Artist's head.
He didn't.
Aslan pulled back the sword he'd been about to thrust and slipped in front of Ereta.
The motion was almost reflexive.
Inside the stretching flow of time, the reaction came from something that surfaced in his mind.
Ereta, sacrificed again and again inside his precognition when they fought the Dragon-king.
That voice that had whispered she loved him.
Her warmth.
A heart slowing to a stop.
Blood searing hot and deathly cold.
Along with the vivid, horrifying feel of it—
—Ereta's face when she'd kissed his palm. As if it were proof of some kind of love. Shy and joyful all at once.
Ereta's face stained red by the sunset.
A vision lodged in his skull that wouldn't fall away. That was why he'd moved.
Humans were irrational creatures by nature.
They possessed reason, but the engine of their actions was emotion far more often than logic.
Reason usually came trailing behind to fill in the gaps.
Aslan was no different.
"Damn it."
A muttered word. The Artist's eyes flew wide with astonishment. Ereta's eyes flooded with terror.
In that gap, Aslan extended Seobsaeng.
Crunch, craaack!
The mace pulverized the stone sword and went on to crush Aslan's entire left arm, from the wrist that held it up to the shoulder.
As mangled flesh and splintered bone mixed and oozed like filth, Aslan managed a wan smile.
Smiling, he rotated his body. Purity, held back until now, swung forward.
Seureok!
Strikes exchanged in the same instant. Aslan gave his left arm. The Artist's left hand fled. The severed wrist and the shield it held slammed against the stone floor—and the ground collapsed.
Sudden speed and violent shaking dropped them into a fall toward the lowest reaches of the pit. In that plummet, the Artist and Aslan swung their weapons.
Clang!
The mace driving for Ereta's skull—Aslan pushed it aside with the tip of Purity.
Chiiik, clang!
The follow-up sliding along the blade toward Ereta's nape—tilt the blade, turn it away.
Beyond the scattering sparks between two deflected masses of steel, the Artist's grey eyes met Aslan's teal.
In the instant those two pairs of eyes held wholly different emotions—
Kwaaaaaang!
The rock shelf smashed into the water's surface and split apart, sending poison spraying high.