The Sword of the War God
The Sword of the War God
The moment he broke into a sprint, a wave of warrior monks lunged for him.
Soldiers threw themselves into their path, and in the seconds that bought, a blade of White Light slipped through the gaps and carved the warrior monks apart.
Viscera scattered in red and blue and green.
Aslan tore through the breach and drove straight for the Sword of the War God.
The Myth Killer's gaze found him instantly.
The moment he felt those eyes lock on, Aslan halted, arm cocked back.
Domination.
Telekinesis. He feigned a throw of a Purity-wreathed Stymphalos feather and instead hurled the force outward at range.
The radius was narrow, but if he pushed it to its limit, the Sword of the War God would have no choice but to believe one thing.
That Purity would hold its form even after leaving his hand.
That lie was all he needed.
Purity blazed through the air, radiant even after release. The Sword of the War God ignored the ballista bolts studding its body and swung Victory to meet it.
The greatsword struck Purity mid-flight. On impact, Purity reverted to a feather and skittered aside. By then Aslan was already drawing a fresh blade.
Shhhrk!
The creature's auxiliary limbs lashed out in a probing strike. Aslan deflected the weapons they clutched with Purity, turned the attack upward, and sheared through the appendages in the same motion.
He crushed the severed centipede legs underfoot as they flopped across the ground and turned at the sound of approaching footsteps.
Angie. She had followed the moment she saw him break away.
A quick glance passed between them. Then they ran.
In his fight with Rowena, Aslan had learned something.
If he compressed Domination's radius tight against his own body and focused everything on moving that body, he could use it to steer himself in motion. Shift his trajectory. He could weaponize it as a maneuvering tool.
At the very least, he could alter his fall in midair.
That was what this towering monstrosity demanded of him.
Domination alone lacked the output for true flight. But here, there was power that transcended physics.
Charging side by side, Aslan and Angie drew a long, shrieking roar from the creature. It had seen through them. It knew they had a plan.
The roar tore ragged from shredded vocal cords. At its call, the warrior monks battling the soldiers tore themselves free through sheer wound-taking and surged toward Aslan.
A desperate scramble to block his path. Ereta and Rumel met them head-on.
Shhk!
Ereta's axe sheared through a warrior monk's throat.
CRASH!
Rumel's spear punched through another and hurled the body aside.
Aslan spent the time they bought and kept running.
The Sword of the War God loomed closer with every stride—a being whose anatomy made retreat agonizingly slow. To withdraw, it would have to turn its entire body. But the threat of Purity, of another throw, forced it to stand and face him.
Aslan laid out the plan as they ran. Angie's face split into a bright, reckless grin. She scooped up a discarded greatsword from the carnage.
"Aslan, now!"
At the end of their charge, she drove the greatsword into the earth at an angle and shouted. Aslan mounted the blade without hesitation.
Angie looked up at him with that grin still in place, braced herself, and hurled the greatsword into the sky.
"Nnngh... hrraah!"
A throw that should have been physically impossible. Angie's strength existed on a plane above physics, and it made the impossible real.
The acceleration was so violent the ground beneath her feet seemed to crater. The ascent carried Aslan high above the Sword of the War God's head, and at its peak he pulled a clutch of Stymphalos feathers free and scattered them across the air.
Through the drifting feathers, the Sword of the War God stared up at him.
Red-hot hatred and disbelief blazing in that gaze.
Aslan leaped from the greatsword and murmured, "Domination."
Telekinetic force wrapped his body. Not enough to hold him aloft, but enough to alter his descent. Enough to add speed.
He cocooned himself in Domination's grip and dove, Purity clutched in one hand.
He traced a line from feather to feather—between those he had scattered in advance and those he released now. A glide. A gentle, lethal drift.
And as he descended toward the Sword of the War God, the creature mistook what it was seeing.
It believed the cloak let him move from one feather to another.
An obvious mistake to make. It did not know the Predator's gear. And the mistake was exactly what Aslan had intended.
In its mistaken certainty, the Sword of the War God chose.
It chose to sweep the feathers aside with its blade, to bat them out of the air as meaningless tricks.
—!
——!
The mace and Victory carved red-black arcs through the sky as they surged forward. Feathers Aslan had not yet reached went spinning away, raining harmlessly to the ground.
He was not yet close enough for Kal to score a direct hit. So the creature was aiming to let the fall kill him, or to set up a follow-up blow.
It took the bait.
Everything Aslan had wanted.
The creature was more wary of him than of the ballistae or the magic raining down around it. The corner of Aslan's mouth curled upward.
He accelerated the body wrapped in Domination.
Now every feather was gone, swatted from the sky. He fell in a dead straight line.
KWA-GA-GA-GA-GA-GA-GA-GA-GA!
A roar of wind that clawed at the brain. Acceleration violent enough to split eardrums.
Midway through the plunge, he wrenched his trajectory with Domination—a direct line now, straight at the Sword of the War God.
Its blades had already slashed past. A fraction of a heartbeat existed before it could swing again.
The Sword of the War God knew that. And that knowledge turned to horror when it saw Aslan's fall twist in midair.
Because even if that window was only a fraction of a heartbeat—Aslan, accelerated by gravity and Domination combined, was faster than a fraction.
He came hurtling down. The Sword of the War God wrenched its body, absorbed the recoil through its waist, and drove Victory upward in a thrust meant to impale him.
A straight stab. Aslan evaded it with Domination and brought Purity into lock against Victory's edge.
KR-R-R-R-R-R-R-RK!
White sparks exploded outward, drenching the air. And through them, Aslan saw the Sword of the War God's face twist in panic.
The Scale of Order lay within Purity. Its effect: the nullification of repulsion.
Even clashing in midair, Aslan would not be thrown back.
He burned that panicked expression into his memory and raised Purity.
He drove Kal home with a shout the wind swallowed whole.
SHHHHRK!
The blade bit deep into the wrist that held Victory. Pierced through. And from there, Aslan accelerated.
SHHH-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-RK!
Heading straight for the ground. His fall traced a line down the Sword of the War God's body, starting at the wrist and splitting it open.
Red fluids geysered in every direction. Purity's descending edge painted Aslan crimson.
Through the forearm, then biting in again near the ribs. Shearing through the ribcage. Through the viscera. A four-meter gash tore open along the creature's flank.
Blood poured from the wound.
To avoid being swept away by that torrent, to evade the counterattack that would follow, Aslan wrenched Purity free mid-fall and twisted his body.
Mid-acceleration, he kicked off the Sword of the War God and launched himself upward.
His leg shattered on impact.
Both legs would be ruined before this was over.
It didn't matter.
One more stroke would end it.
He drew breath. Ten meters to the ground. The centipede body convulsed, wracked with agony. Above it, Aslan gripped Purity in both hands.
The task was simple. Point the blade at the centipede body. Fall.
The instant Domination held his angle steady, a long streak of White Light carved down through the Sword of the War God.
A downward slash that began thirty meters in the air.
When the White Light that followed it faded—
ZZZZZ-ZZT!
The centipede's head split in two.
SHHAAAAAAAA!
And a colossal torrent of blood gushed from the Sword of the War God.
———!
The scream of the dying. Pain forced through shredded, ruptured vocal cords. As the creature collapsed, writhing in that agony, Aslan slammed into the ground—and ricocheted off it.
KWA-GA-GA-GA-GA-GA!
The thunder of earth erupting. The groan of a giant body crashing to the dirt. Through the din, Aslan pounded the ground and launched himself upright.
KWAANG!
A small noise compared to the collapse of the Sword of the War God.
But the moment that small noise rang out, silence flooded the battlefield.
It held until the dust began to settle.
And when the dust cleared, they could see him.
A man standing drenched in blood.
Both legs were catastrophic—bones jutting at wrong angles, piercing through.
His whole body was lacquered sticky with blood that was not his own. Only his two teal eyes blazed through the crimson.
White Light clutched in his hand.
Cold, terrible radiance.
The meaning was absolute.
The Sword of the War God was dead. The Master of Combat still lived.
"Ah... aah... O War God...!"
Horror strangled the voices of the warrior monks still fighting the soldiers, and on its heels came the soldiers' roar of triumph.
"Aslan!"
While the soldiers' weapons swept through the remnants, Aslan's companions abandoned the warrior monks and closed in.
They approached carrying their own separate emotions. Angie reached him first, her expression bright and unshadowed.
Aslan watched that guileless smile with satisfaction—
Then his brow furrowed at a sudden, dull throb of pain.
He knew this pain.
He had felt something like it before.
After a heartbeat of consideration, he recognized it. The same sensation he had felt when the Artist ambushed him. Luck. Luck reacting.
Not the sharp razor's edge of an immediate threat. A heavy, blunt pulse. A sixth sense hammering in time with his heartbeat.
Standing on broken legs, holding Purity without a single chip on its edge, Aslan thought.
Something was wrong.
In the last moment, right before that final descending slash—
He had launched himself upward accepting that his legs would break because he had expected the Sword of the War God to resist.
He had expected it to twist and try to slash him with the centipede body's lower half, or to swing the still-intact mace.
But it hadn't.
The Sword of the War God had not resisted.
And Aslan did not think it had been the kind of non-resistance born of surrender to death.
...Where is Victory?
Something else was missing. Something he should have been able to see.
Victory, which should have fallen from the creature's grip when Aslan severed its wrist, was nowhere in sight.
He swept his gaze, searching for that divine blade, and all he saw were cheering soldiers and approaching companions.
Most of them were cheering, utterly unguarded. They believed the fight was over.
Looking at that scene, a thought seized him as if by possession.
The moment a person is most defenseless is the moment right after victory.
Even if that victory was only an illusion—a victory manufactured for them to believe in.
If he were the Sword of the War God, Aslan would strike in this exact moment.
And the instant that thought crystallized, Luck answered.
With brutal clarity. With fire. As if the threat was right behind him.
He turned.
And he saw.
A figure of similar height and build to his own, clad in carapace stained blood-red. Among the warrior monks, this one was singular—it had only two arms and two legs.
In its hands, Victory.
As the flame-like divine sword tilted and the warrior monk settled into a stance, a message flared at the edge of Aslan's vision.
[Main Quest in Progress]
[ ! Defeat the Sword of the War God]
He registered the message. And the tilted divine sword came screaming toward him.