Honor
Honor
A rising neck. Chains scattering through the air. A blade slipping between them. The blood-red steel drank deep, restoring its chipped edge and sealing every crack.
The blood-drinking sword, Blood Sword Rutile.
The blade that had earned Dmitri his title—Red Blade—gorged itself on the Kal that day.
It was no surprise, then, that so little blood flowed from the wounds it made.
Before the headless bodies crumpled, the eyes of the warriors flared wide.
For the death awaiting them blazed white before their faces.
Aslan moved, and the warriors threw themselves at him.
At last, they collided.
Clang!
The first clash ended in the screech of metal.
An axe swung, and Aslan's seobsaeng rose to meet it. The gray stone sword hammered the axe aside, then the hilt of the Kal snaked forward as if to coil around the axe-haft.
Before the warrior could free his blade, the weapons twisted where they were locked. His body flipped with his axe, pulled off balance as if reeled in.
Boom!
The warrior's bulk slammed into the ground. Before he could draw a breath under his own weight, Aslan was already past him.
He passed and swung low. The blood sword punched through the eye-slit, tore out the back of the helmet. Brain and blood splattered upward, soaking his ankle.
Warriors swarmed into the gap like ants, screaming as they came.
Gobil watched from a step away.
Aslan's gaze remained lowered. He did not look anywhere in particular. In those downcast eyes, there was something almost solemn.
"What...?"
Gobil could not understand what he was seeing. He could only stand and stare.
Then Aslan moved his arm, twisted his hip, and drove the point home.
"Gruhk—!"
The warrior whose throat had just been opened clawed at the blade. Aslan twisted the sword half a beat faster, shattering fingers before ripping the Kal free.
He kicked the falling body into the warrior charging behind it. The two tumbled across the floor, and Aslan stepped into the space they left, both longswords moving in fluid harmony.
Like a creature swimming through deep water.
The two blades swept forward without grazing or fouling each other's arcs, slashing the ankles of the warriors closing in. Blood fountained. They staggered.
Before they could even draw breath, Aslan scattered death among them. Death blazing white.
The blade climbed from ankle to calf, thigh to flank, forearm to arm, and at last to the throat.
He severed one neck, then pivoted and drove his elbow into the face of a warrior advancing from behind.
As the head snapped back, he shoved it with the Kal's hilt and brought his knee down. The helmet crumpled, and the warrior's last breath left him. Aslan withdrew, thrusting.
The corpse, still pinned by the blade through its throat, lurched as if trying to fall and failed. Aslan inhaled sharply and hurled it away. It fluttered through the air and bowled over two more warriors.
They tangled on the ground. Unhurt in their heavy armor, but thrown into disarray.
Through it all, Aslan did not spare them a glance.
He moved as though he already knew what would happen next.
Scrak—slick!
An axe came down for his head. He caught it on the flat of the seobsaeng and spun. The edge of the spin bit through armor and tore open the nape. The warrior reeled.
His brother screamed and charged, a raised sword aimed at Aslan's skull.
"Damn it, Alon!"
Aslan pivoted, using the reeling warrior as a shield. The sword blow landed on solid armor and threw up sparks. Through the gap, Aslan extended a palm.
"Flash."
Light erupted. Before the blinded warrior could scream, Aslan stepped on his foot and drove a shoulder into him. He hit the ground on his back. The blood sword plunged into him.
The sound of boiling blood-foam. The thick reek of gore. None of it was Aslan's. Only theirs.
"S-Surround him! Hit him all at once!"
They had to attack in coordination. Gobil was a warrior, and warriors knew how to find a way through. The order came late, but it was sound.
Aslan, entirely without urgency, flicked his lowered eyes toward Gobil for a heartbeat, then looked away.
The warriors closed in, encircling him. Hand-axes were drawn from belts and hurled in a swarm. Amid the rain of death, Aslan turned.
Crash!
The brass-colored feather cloak billowed as if caught by a gust, and the axes striking it ricocheted away. As they scattered, Aslan reached out and snatched one from the air.
Blood Sword still buried in a corpse, he advanced on the warriors with the seobsaeng in his left hand and the hand-axe in his right.
That was when he brought the axe down on heavy plate and shattered it.
"Keurgh—?!"
Wide eyes and shock. Splinters of sundered armor flew past that stunned face.
He had poured mana into the weight of the blow, magnified his strength, and trusted in blunt-weapon mastery to bypass armor. The plate broke. Aslan's face remained still, but the warriors hesitated.
Fighting under the cover of their armor was the Honor Tribe's foundational tactic.
Now Aslan's strikes were exceeding that protection.
They would have to revise their approach or die to no purpose. The thought had barely formed before Aslan was already among them.
He gave them no time.
The axe split a helmet and the skull beneath. He threw the ruined weapon into another warrior's face. In that flinch, the stone sword punched through the throat. The precise thrust pulled free in a lightning retraction.
"Kill him! Kil—!"
A shield-bearer rushed in behind it. Aslan's blade swept the leg first. As the warrior toppled, Aslan's knee came down and crushed the head.
Brains burst with a wet crack. Aslan, drenched in blood, drew a hand across his cloak and came away holding a dagger—shaped like a feather, sharp as a spearhead.
The dagger moved. It found the gap of a helmet and pierced through, spun lightly in his palm, then raked across the neck as it withdrew.
Before that man hit the ground, he threw it into another's eye-slit.
Watching the warriors die one after another, Gobil finally registered what was wrong.
Aslan's movements arrived before the attack, as though he expected it. By the moment a warrior began to act, Aslan had already finished his counter.
The blows landed on unguarded openings, and even warriors who had undergone partial priestification died as easily as any.
By the time the floor was littered with pooling blood and the bitter wreckage of sundered steel, Aslan came for Gobil.
Only two of them were left alive.
"Hrrrgh!"
The last two threw themselves forward together—one with a heavy two-handed axe, the other wielding twin swords like Aslan.
The great-axe came down. The seobsaeng slipped into its arc. At the moment of impact, it tilted sideways and cut the throat. As the warrior clutched his torn neck, Aslan's right hand flicked a dagger into his eye-slit.
The twin-swordsman lunged to fill the gap, thrusting both blades at once. Aslan swatted them aside with a single sweep of the stone sword, then seized the Kal's hilt in both hands.
It came down with the sound of a drawn breath. The helmet crumpled. Eyes burst from the sockets, and blood-foam gurgled.
The two freshly killed warriors fell at the same moment. Aslan stood among the bodies, eyes still lowered.
Few were left alive in this chamber now.
The Dwarves and Fay. Aslan and Gobil.
Who would die and who would survive was as plain as fire.
Aslan raised his lowered eyes to Gobil, and Gobil felt ice crawl down his spine. Aslan already held a dagger in each hand. They turned lightly between his fingers.
"Priest Slayer...."
Gobil understood now why they called him that.
This was the true face of the Priest Slayer.
The ruthless Master of Combat who spared no means.
The symbol of Victory recognized by the War God himself.
Gobil was afraid.
Those lowered eyes fixed on him, gleaming with a terrible absence of feeling—that sight filled him with dread.
A great fighter could face two or three at once in open ground. No one could face dozens.
That was the limit of a man, the limit of a master.
What was happening before Gobil's eyes denied that common sense outright.
Thirty-five warriors dead. Warriors who had shared Gobil's conviction, respected for their strength and their heart, who had feared for the tribe's future.
All dead. Fallen into a sleep from which nothing would wake them. The one who had dealt all that death bore not a scratch.
Gobil was afraid.
Afraid he would die just the same, leaving nothing behind.
But soon something rose above the fear. Responsibility.
"I am... acting chieftain."
Aslan, who had been approaching, halted.
"I have to keep my tribe alive. No matter what happens... I have to protect the Honor Tribe. Even if this world is destroyed."
The words came out flat and dull, stained dark by terror. Aslan tilted his head as he listened.
"Do you know why they became like that?"
Gobil's chin gestured toward the Dwarves—frightened, cowering monsters, creatures fallen until they were barely above beasts.
He spoke.
"Those failed creatures became that way by opposing the Evil Gods. They lost their speech and their reason fighting them, and now they live on nothing but bugs they scavenge."
Aslan remembered what Dorel had said and watched in silence. Gobil, his face poised somewhere between a smile and a snarl, wrapped his right hand around the Kal's hilt.
"I could not stand by and watch my people, the innocent ones of my tribe, end up like that. Tell me—was that truly wrong?"
Aslan glanced at the Dwarves, then sidelong at Gobil. Gobil's face was already badly twisted.
"Is it truly wrong to kneel before a god, to admit defeat, to abandon humanity? Is it truly wrong to trade away honor for survival?!"
Gobil shouted through a tangle of terror, responsibility, resentment, and despair.
Driven by the raw emotion in that cry, he advanced. He gripped his shield.
"If I must abandon humanity, I will choose to become a monster rather than a beast. And for that... I will do anything."
The chill blade extended toward Aslan.
"If killing my own brother, if butchering beasts, means my tribe survives this crumbling world—I will do anything."
Quiet resolve. Aslan felt it and turned his daggers in his hands, reversing his grip. He settled into a stance—not a swordsman's stance, but something closer to a fighter's.
His posture was high, reminiscent of a boxer's cross guard, the two daggers leveled at Gobil.
Gobil stood low behind his shield and sword, ready to close and grapple at any instant.
But would it work? Doubt seeped into Gobil's mind.
Just from the fight he'd witnessed, Aslan was a veteran who had reached the pinnacle in nearly every domain.
He never dropped his guard, and he was flawless in swordsmanship, grappling, and striking alike.
The gulf in sheer skill was wide, and the gulf in what they wore was wider still.
His chances were slim.
Barely a chance at all.
Gobil chewed his lip with anxiety—then burst forward.
He opened his mouth wide and roared. He swung as if he could drive out the fear with noise. A swift horizontal slash. Aslan moved before the blow was even on its way toward him.
Daggers were weapons with low base damage, influenced by both grappling and sword skills.
Without high mastery, they dealt little harm and were barely usable. Aslan was not worried.
He had reached the summit in both grappling and the sword years ago.
In his hands, a dagger was a deadly weapon.
A blade shorter than his palm stopped the longsword lightly. The longsword halted. Gobil showed no surprise, thrusting his shield forward without pause.
The shield, formed of green scales, reeked of poison and spread a sickly gloom. Aslan evaded it without looking.
Slipping past the space the shield occupied, he turned the dagger that had blocked the sword and slashed.
Puhk!
The blade tore open the cheek. As it ripped free, blood flooded Gobil's mouth. Through the haze, he reeled backward and thrust with the longsword.
Aslan bent his body away. The thrust missed. He kicked immediately. Gobil's knee folded where it was struck, and he staggered.
Before he could recover his footing, Aslan's dagger came up.
It sliced through the air with a hiss and tore open the wrist. The longsword dropped. Gobil raised his shield, but a fist was already in his face.
Crack!
"Gurk—!"
The punch had been thrown lightly, like a knock on a door, but its force was anything but light. Teeth skittered across the floor, and Gobil reeled. He coughed out a mouthful of blood and swung the shield.
It sliced empty air. Ignoring it entirely, Aslan reversed the dagger and drove it down—the feather-shaped blade sank into the thigh.
"Krrr, krraaaaaagh!"
Tears from his eyes, blood from his mouth, Gobil swung a fist with a wrist already torn open. Aslan's forearm blocked it. The arm stopped. Aslan seized it and turned his body.
Boom!
Gobil hit the floor in a beautiful arc, like something out of a painting. His head snapped; nausea surged from his stomach and choked his throat.
"Kurgh, hurgh!"
Even through swimming consciousness and blurred vision, he could see it. Death closing in. He bit his tongue by sheer force of will to jolt himself alert and rolled. A boot slammed into the dirt where he'd been, throwing up dust. Mid-roll, he stopped and gasped for air.
Puhk!
A dagger buried itself in his shoulder. It had left Aslan's hand in a straight line and punched deep.
"Kkgh, khrr...."
Gobil pulled the dagger from his shoulder and dropped it to the floor. It clattered, soaked through with blood.
The dark blood of a man pressed against death.
His body was wrecked. It was a wonder he was still standing. Every one of Aslan's attacks carried enough force to kill.
He had taken only a few, and he could already feel death beckoning from inches away.
Gobil felt it, somewhere beyond the fog.
He knew: if he let his mind slip for even a moment, he would die.
The floor was slick with his own spilled blood. His body weighed on him. His face had gone pale as a corpse.
Still, he rose.
The blood pattered down, staining the stone dark crimson, and between the dying torchlights, Gobil gasped.
Aslan watched and drew a fresh dagger.
"...Why didn't you fight back from the beginning?"
Two daggers in his hands, Aslan spoke.
There was even pity in his eyes.
He understood.
He understood that Gobil differed from him only in direction. Everything else was the same.
Flailing ugly, fighting, clawing to survive even as he faced death for his convictions.
Gobil was the same as Aslan.
And so Aslan felt genuine regret.
If only that conviction could have been turned against the Evil Gods instead—the thought left him heavy with sorrow.
Knowing their directions diverged too far, knowing he had no choice but to kill, he mourned it anyway.
Gobil, dimly aware of that, laughed at himself.
"How the hell... do you fight... the whole damn world, you bastard...."
On the edge of death, his tongue turned raw. Crude. No one cared. No one would chide a man about to die.
Gobil felt the reality of it, and through the blood-soaked tangle of his blond hair and blue eyes, he let out a laugh. A hollow laugh. Blood from his mouth spattered the floor.
A god was the world itself.
Their mass and power were equal to an entire existence.
To stand against such a being was to wrestle a whole reality.
Only the man before him would ever think to fight something that could crush a universe and twist time.
Gobil could not understand that man.
He thought no one ever could.
"You're insane."
So he laughed. He laughed as he said it. Watching that smile, Aslan smiled bitterly.
"Yeah."
Gobil heard the flat answer, dropped his shield, and took a step forward.
Aslan looked at him and murmured.
"That's why... I'm probably the only one who can do it."
The two daggers spun in his hands and settled into the reverse grip. The twin brass-colored feathers meant death.
Gobil blinked at them with clouded eyes, then settled into a shambling stance.
"May the Mountain... judge which of us... carries more honor...."
The two men, braced and watching each other, collided one last time.
And in that place, death bloomed.