The Sword of the War God
The Sword of the War God
Aslan drove his heels into the earth at the edge of a thunderclap, raising his shield and Purity in the same motion.
A shriek of tearing metal, a wet hiss.
The leading Warrior Monk lunged with a falchion. Aslan turned the blade with his shield and thrust Purity through the man's throat in a single, seamless movement.
The head dropped. The body crumpled. Before it could even finish falling, a lance punched through the corpse, aimed at Aslan's heart.
He met the lance with Purity, cutting it apart.
Sparks screamed against the clash of steel. The lance split in two, and so did the body of the man who held it. Viscera splattered to the stone. A corpse hurtled through the burst of arterial spray. Aslan spun past it and brought the rim of his shield across the throat of the nearest advancing Monk.
A dry, brittle snap.
"Ghk—"
The body folded. Its durability was low. Aslan reversed the grip on Purity and swept the blade low. A white crescent flashed, and three more Warrior Monks tumbled to the ground, their ankles carved away.
A slicing hiss.
Behind the arc of the slash, a blade was already falling toward his skull. A killing stroke from a Monk who didn't care about offerings or feasts—only the kill.
Aslan twisted his head aside. The edge scraped his cheek and took a strip of flesh with it.
Blood pattered to the ground. A warning shivered up his spine. Aslan shoved Purity into the Monk's body and pivoted, turning the corpse into a makeshift shield.
An instant barricade of meat. Its durability was nothing, but it served its purpose. A storm of killing intent hammered into the dead flesh.
Throwing axes, throwing knives, arrows, crossbow bolts, javelins. So many projectiles punched home that the corpse juddered with each impact. When the barrage bled through, Aslan braced his shield behind the tattered body.
A javelin shrieked off the metal. Aslan planted his foot against the corpse's belly.
'Thunder Call.'
A roar of thunder rolled outward, and the corpse burst apart.
Gore and entrails filled the air, a curtain of red. Aslan angled Purity across his body and drew breath.
A long, hissing arc.
His full-reach slash cleaved through two Monks who had charged straight through the blood spray without flinching.
"Ghhaaak!"
A wretched scream. Bodies split and scattered, steaming entrails slapping the ground. Then came more javelins.
His shield rose on instinct, but the attack wasn't a single throw.
Four impacts nearly simultaneous against the metal. One javelin slipped through the gaps and punched clean through Aslan's forearm.
His white iron shield clattered across the stone while his blood rained down after it. Face twisted with pain, Aslan swept Purity out to scatter the next volley.
A hard, ringing clang.
He spun. At the end of the rotation, the white light of his blade stretched into something impossible.
'Moon Splitting.'
A strike said to carve the reflection of the moon from still water. The sword-wave crashed outward, and six Warrior Monks lost their torsos—bisected in an instant. Through the falling offal, Aslan raised his eyes.
A premonition aimed straight at his skull. A scalding, suffocating certainty. The Sword of the War God was raining down its attack.
Instinct told him there was exactly one way to survive it.
The first thing that surfaced in his mind was his dwindling lifespan.
The second was a hometown already grown hazy and distant.
The third was his own selfishness.
His will crushed all three before they could take root.
'Jeojang.'
He closed his eyes.
A wet patter.
When he opened them again, blood streamed from his nose and the corners of his eyes.
Six trajectories in total. An onslaught using every limb—the centipede-form lower body and the humanoid upper body alike.
Trajectories perfectly synchronized to strike at once. But even the way Aslan shifted his weight introduced minute distortions. Hundreds of deaths had taught him to find those hair-thin misalignments.
He created the distortion. One step forward, then he pushed off the ground with his right foot and twisted his body diagonally.
Purity met the trajectories.
——A thunderous, ringing crash.
A single stroke.
One slash drawing a single line.
Six killing arcs collided with it and stopped dead. A blade—perhaps a heavier weapon, something beyond white iron—slammed down against Purity's edge and bit into the stone, crushing a Warrior Monk beneath its weight.
A gale erupted. The shockwave ripped through nearby Monks and flung their shredded bodies through the air. One corpse slammed into Aslan and sent him tumbling across the ground.
Ringing filled his ears. His breath came thick and heavy. He forced his left hand flat against the stone.
'Thunder. Call.'
A deafening crack of thunder.
His body launched forward. He rolled across the ground just as the strike that should have killed him crashed into the spot he'd occupied a heartbeat before. A meteor of a sword-blow. Dust choked the air, swallowing the world.
The Warrior Monks came for him as he pushed himself upright.
The Sword of the War God was using its lesser warriors to wear him down—grinding away at his stamina before delivering the killing blow without a moment's carelessness.
Aslan smiled, a crooked and bitter expression, and sharpened his focus on luck and sight.
Weapons cut across that heightened perception.
Armaments hurled at full strength by the Sword of the War God itself.
A hammer. A mace. A spear.
Every last one of them lethal.
He clicked his tongue and let Purity hang low. Shadows vanished from beneath his feet, and his blade scattered into the space left behind as he exhaled.
'Shadow Flip.'
A tearing hiss.
Strikes fired in perfect simultaneity. He chopped the hammer and the mace clean out of the air and deflected the spear off-course. Beyond the vibration of the spear slamming into the earth, a heavy sword-blow was already descending.
The Sword of the War God, striking with a human body.
Different from the weight-driven swings of the centipede form—a blow without a single opening.
And far stronger.
The instant he raised Purity to block, a piercing shriek lanced through the clash of metal.
"Gh—gahk...!"
Blood ran from his ears. Aslan tilted his blade. The enemy's sword slid along Purity's edge, hammered into the ground, and launched him high into the air.
A detonation that split the sky.
His body hung in the void. Pressure and shockwave hurled him backward, and he crashed against the stone on his back, the Wings of Stymphalos scraping beneath him.
"Geh-uhk!"
Blood surged up from his throat. He rolled across the ground and forced himself upright while agony crackled through every nerve in his body.
A proximity to death his pain-deadened body could still feel. An intimately close shadow.
Smile still twisted on his lips, Aslan turned to face the gathering Warrior Monks.
They surged toward him. Behind them, the Sword of the War God was arming itself once more. Its humanoid arms blurred pale and indistinct, and two more weapons came hurtling forward in the next heartbeat.
Simultaneous throws, but with an exquisitely controlled variance in speed.
Timed to crush Aslan and shatter the fortress wall in the same instant.
The intent was transparent. He couldn't fail to read it.
Let dozens—perhaps hundreds—of the fortress's soldiers die while protecting himself.
Or let his body break and save the soldiers while he perished.
A cruel binary choice.
'Moon Splitting.'
So there was no hesitation. Aslan clenched his teeth and forced his throbbing arms to move. Purity carved through the air.
White light blazed across its length, stretching into a long arc, and the hammer careening toward the fortress split cleanly in two.
His fighting spirit was empty. No more special feats remained to draw upon. But the other weapon—a spear—was still screaming straight for him.
A direct hit meant instant death. No time to dodge. If he planted his foot to take the blow, it would strike him before he could brace.
Which meant his only option was to minimize how deadly the impact would be.
Wild magic to boost his health. A slow twist of his body to reduce the impact surface. Angle the Wings of Stymphalos into the trajectory to blunt the force.
He would inevitably lose most of his left side for it. But if he burned some of his remaining lifespan, Equalization could patch even that.
And if it killed him—well, he could accept that without regret.
Predictably, there were people who wanted very badly to argue with that thought.
One of them—a girl with scarlet hair—snatched up the hammer half that had been cleaved by Moon Splitting and was still plunging toward the earth. She hurled it.
With strength pushed to its extreme, she accelerated the broken hammer, and the half-weapon slammed into the incoming spear with a shrieking clang of metal.
The spear skewed off-course beyond it, gouging a furrow through the earth as it skidded away. Aslan heard the sound approaching from behind him.
Step. Step. Step. Step. Step.
Hundreds—maybe thousands—of people marching in unison. Armor clinking and rattling in rhythm.
"—Loose!"
The sky filled with trajectories.
Ballista bolts and spells tore through the air—fewer in number than before, but interspersed with shots that were especially fast and precise.
A series of ringing crashes.
The Sword of the War God reeled back, batting the projectiles aside with its weapons. In that pause, a girl strode forward.
She advanced with heavy, deliberate steps, the dragon-leather boots pressing deep into the earth. She stopped directly in front of Aslan, scarlet hair billowing as she clenched her fist.
Behind her, more figures emerged—all of them achingly familiar.
Ereta, holding a blazing axe, pressing a hand to Aslan's body and pouring her life force into his.
Fay, gripping two burning swords, expressionless, radiating killing intent.
Richard, who was halfway through offering a bandage before awkwardly pulling it back.
And behind them, an endless stream of soldiers from a dozen nations.
They had gathered here across every boundary of race and kingdom, clutching their weapons and doing their best to hide their fear.
All of them lined up before Aslan. The Warrior Monks rushing across the battlefield hesitated at the sight of the disciplined ranks.
Then two more figures stepped forward from among the soldiers.
Heat shimmered around their labored breaths. Tension crackled in the air. A woman and a Dragon-kin surveyed the battlefield with eyes that were utterly cold, utterly composed, holding every emotion in check.
Frida and Bahot Head.
Even with all the savage emotion swirling across the field, Frida calmly drew her axe and turned her gaze toward Aslan.
The entire battlefield was fixed on him.
Waiting for a single word from his lips.
Aslan swept his eyes across those countless stares, and a faint smile crossed his face. He lifted Purity.
Slowly, he tilted the blade forward, pointing it straight at the enemy.
Silence held the battlefield. Only Aslan's voice rang out, clear and sharp.
"Charge."
Nothing more was needed.
Thousands of soldiers broke into a unified sprint.