Morgan on the Fields of Erathis. An apt description.
3
hey were beginning to panic. You could see it in the way they clustered under the tracks of the elevated train, hear it in the strange squealing language of their voxorators. The sirens were getting closer, the emergency response teams rushing to rescue the injured from the monotrain accident. Several of the strange men had set off to intercept the sirens. That would bring an armed response, and they knew it. Time was running out.
Nothing they had was going to cut through the Fratriarch's wards. And it was clear that he was their target, from the way they kept close to the train, the way so many of them kept climbing up and arguing and then climbing down. The way they looked up nervously to the car dangling from the ruined tracks, flaring light and dull explosions marking their failed attempts to get inside Barnabas's shields. No way they were going to do it. No way I could let them do it.
When I stumbled out of the square, there was no immediate pursuit. They clustered under the train and regrouped. I did the same in a quiet alleyway, weaving invokations into armor and strength, flaring power along the length of my blade, cursing myself for letting the Fratriarch out of the monastery without a full guard. For letting him outside at all. I would get one chance to make it right, I knew. One chance to go in and cut them down before the old man's wards failed. Balancing act between recouping my arcane reserve and guessing how long Barnabas could last. Lots of unknowns in that equation, so I played it dangerous and went back in before I was fully invoked. No use being at full strength if they got away with the Fratriarch while I was buffing up in some corner.
I crawled to the edge of the roadway behind some wreckage from the mono derailment to see how my strange little friends were progressing. The goggle-faced crew was under the tracks, talking and pointing. As I watched, a couple of them shrugged their burnpacks more firmly on their backs and walked to the center of the square. The wide, loud turbines began to cycle up. Hot, stinging air washed off them in oily waves.
Going to get help. Going to get bigger explosives, or cutting torches, or… Brothers knew what else. Going to get one of their renegade Amonites, probably, to Unmake the whole damn car until they could pry the old man out by his teeth. I couldn't let them go. If I was going to stop them, it had to happen now, or not at all. Now.
I had already incanted the Rite of the Stag Hunt for speed, Morgan's Journey and the Long Stand to keep the fatigue far enough away, and, finally, the Walls of Alteraic. I didn't have the words that the Fratriarch could manage, or the more complicated invokations of the bullistic revolver that came with devotion to other paths, but I sparked up what I knew, and came in burning like a flare. The sword is my path, the sword my fire and my strength.
I came out of cover at a blind sprint, the wide, flat steel of my sword held up over my head. They were facing away from me, the barrel-like engines of their burnpacks blocking my approach from their view. Halfway across the courtyard, my legs hammering the cobbles like iron pistons, I began to yell the invokation of the Mortal Blade. It doesn't last long, and you have to wait until the last second to flare it or it runs out before you run out of enemies. Plus it's nice for the intimidation.
"I bind myself to the Champion, the Warrior, the battlefield, the blade!" I intoned, my flat, arcane voice grinding out like an avalanche of steel. As I spoke, fat red sparks rolled off my weapon like crimson leaves in an autumn breeze. The air around me coiled with power. Red and black flecks coalesced in front of me, plowing forward as I ran. "I bind to blood, to fire, to steel, to grave! I bind myself to battle and the war eternal! For Morgan, dead and unending!"
They saw me, too late.
The near one turned, raising the intricate double blades of his gauntlets into a guard that would never withstand such arcane fury. I cut him down, the blade sliding in an easy cross against his chest, his blades and his arms falling away as he crumpled to the ground. His companion took one look at the invokations roiling over my noetically armored body and fired the turbines on his burnpack. Flames and heat filled the square and a plume of smoke boiled down to the cobbles.
I rushed toward him, my blade catching the fleeing warrior on the shoulder. He twisted, his control of the 'pack wavering as he sluiced sideways. I punched forward with the blade, strength and force coming from my hips, my legs. The tip of the wide sword parted his chest and drove back into the whining furnace of the turbines. A tongue of flame lashed out from the man's chest, charring the scream that died on his lips. I whipped the sword out in a backhand slash. The turbines ruptured, tearing the man apart.
The explosion battered my shields, framing me in angry fire, flames of blue and red that tore up into the sky. The shock wave rippled up into the towers that surrounded the square. Glass shattered into a diamond snow that crashed down to the cobbles. Glittering shards flaked across the remnants of my shield, building up a shell of starry light shot through with skeins of furious red.
The glass settled into a field of sharp light, reflected from the sun above. The cataclysm of the explosion echoed through the canyons of the city. The bodies of the two men lay twisted under the tiny glass flecks.
I turned to the men standing beneath the elevated tracks and raised my sword in salute.
"I bind myself," I said quietly, gasping with the effort of the invokations and the fight, "to battle. The blade. The grave."
The last misty shards of glass shuffled to the ground. They crunched under the knobby treads of my boots like broken bones. In the shining light that reflected off the broken-tooth windows far above, the courtyard was silent. The goggle-eyed men and I stared at one another. Before they gather themselves, I thought. Before they recover from watching me blow one of their comrades into rags of meat and ash. Before I collapse from the strain of the attack, from the sheer arcane weight crushing my lungs and straining against my bones. Before I became something I couldn't control.
I moved, and the air shimmered around me as I ran. Waves of force tore away from my sword as I swung it into a variable guard-to-strike position. The stones under my boots boomed as I rushed them, rushed them like an avalanche broken free from the mountain of god. My scream was meaningless and terrifying, full of incoherent rage, full of pain and anger.
I moved and they fell back. Dropped their weapons, their guards, their formation, and fell back. But not fast enough. Never fast enough. The first one I caught on his heels, his sword held forgotten by his knee. Two more fell before any of them held a guard worth avoiding. I burned bright, flaring my invokations for quick results. Had to break them fast. I couldn't win a long fight, not against this many.
Another down, arm and shoulder split from his chest, the heat of my blade curling up in wisps of smoke from the edges of the wound. My head was a dull roar, little in it but the form of the sword and the rage of murdered Morgan arcing through my bones. Something lurked at the edge of my attention, though, something begging to be heard through the fire of the battle. The next one managed a guard block and counterstrike as my mind raced.
Blood. The blood. I raised my sword warily, sparring with the warrior. The others were circling. Another one came at me and I fell into a dual guard position without thinking about it, cycling my sword in broad, sweeping arcs, finally finishing the first attacker with a cut to the inner thigh that slid through bone and whirled up into the stinking mess of his guts. He folded, and I spun around to give my full attention to the second man. I held my sword in front of me.