Stormblade 4 C49: Deadpool (3)

49 - Deadpool (3)

The S-Ranked Paragon stared me down, eyes not wavering from my sword hand. His aura pushed out, and a sensation like being drowned filled my lungs. My own aura pushed back, and the feeling lessened, but didn’t stop completely. It felt like I’d ran for an hour; I couldn’t catch my breath no matter what I did.

Nathan started to cast, but I held up a hand. “Wait.”

To my surprise, the S-Ranker nodded slowly. “What are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking this is part of what my patron told me,” I said, sucking in air between sentences. I couldn’t name the God of Thunder—not yet. “This monster is here to hunt me, not you. I need the two of you to regroup with the rest of the team and get back here, or even better, go for the portal boss. I’ll keep myself alive, but I can’t promise more than that. If you hurry, we’ll be able to kill this thing and take out the portal boss—but that has to be the priority.”

Sarah started to say something, but the water-covered, shimmering rapier moved into a familiar guard. Quellat was clearly a veteran duelist. I put a hand on Sarah’s shoulder. “I honestly don’t think the three of us can kill this monster. Get the rest of the team. It’s our best move.”

Her brow furrowed into a vicious-looking glare. Then she nodded curtly and turned, routing around the portal.

“Stay safe, kid,” the Phoenix Reborn said quietly, and followed her.

I didn’t say a word. Nimbus Edge came up, and I stepped carefully forward until the lightning-and-cloud blade was almost touching Quellat’s rapier. Neither of us moved for a moment.

“Well, are we getting started or what?” I asked.

Quellat’s blade lashed out. I parried and dodged backward. Mistwalk Forms gave me a single Rainfall Charge as my feet shuffled along the ankle-deep water, and I kept distance. The monster was fast, and against that kind of speed, I’d need space to react. Space, in swordplay, was time. His lunge came in fast, and I caught it on Nimbus Edge’s hilt, shoving it up and over my head. A second Rainfall Charge appeared.

The battle trance tried to press down on me. I pushed it back with an almost physical effort. This fight wouldn’t be won by fury and anger, but by tiny maneuvers and skill with the blade.

Two more parries and a leaping dodge later, I shifted stances to the one-handed, flexible Thunderbolt. I didn’t bother with Rain-Soaked Blade; there were plenty of places to cut and stab Quellat. Instead, I lunged. My sword bounced off his. A second thrust met the same fate, but the tip of my blade cut a shallow groove into the monster’s arm.

First blood was mine.

I shifted back to Mistwalk stance; I’d gotten everything I needed from my sudden offensive. Quellat pressed in, but this time, instead of dodging, I used Storm Dance and immediately followed it up with a Lightning Chain, grappling myself across thin air and onto a narrow brass pipe.

Then I caught my breath—or most of it.

My plan from here was simple; I’d play cat and mouse with the S-Ranked Paragon. I didn’t have to win. All I had to do was not lose. So, as I crouched on the pipe, I prepared myself for another move—either a Lightning Chain to somewhere else or a Storm Dance to get distance. Either way, Quellat would have to—

A massive tentacle, easily the size of a tree, smashed through the pipe.

Steam filled the air, scalding the back of my neck as I threw myself forward to dodge. Brass tubing rained down around me. I pushed off the largest piece, then used Storm Dance, appearing on the ground near where the golden portal had formed. The water was rising, but an open door was to my back. “Nice try,” I muttered.

The gigantic tentacle slurped back into Quellat’s off-hand, wrapping around his pallid fingers as it shrank.

Great. One more problem to deal with.

I backpedaled as Quellat sprinted toward me, water splashing below our feet. Beyond the door, a catwalk stretched the length of a gigantic brass wall; the water had covered the molten lake of metal below, quenching its surface, but steam erupted from the lake far below. Narrow stairs led both up and down.

I chose down; the team’s objective was probably up, and I needed to buy them time.

That only gave Quellat an advantage, though. As I worked my way down the stairs, blows rained down on my head, and I had to stay in Mistwalk Forms and use Mistform every time I got two Rainfall Charges just to stay alive.

And even that wasn’t enough. Cuts opened up on my scalp and arms. Blood poured down across my face, and I had to push what Stamina I had into my wounds to keep the pain down. As my feet worked their way down the stairs and the boiling lake’s surface grew closer, I started looking for a way out.

There. The stairwell flattened for a dozen or so yards, and I lashed out with Nimbus Edge and a Stormfire Lance to buy myself space. Quellat pressed forward and parried the blow as I backed up, but my next cut sliced through a closed brass door’s lock.

The water behind it did the rest.

The pressure was like a cannon, and it hit Quellat dead-on, launching him off the catwalk. I kept backing up, then turned and started running, lungs screaming. The fall—and even the boiling water—wouldn’t kill him.

But I needed it to at least slow him down.

◄▼►

It didn’t.

Quellat walked through the falling water like it was air and its lower edge was concrete. Worse, his aura pushed out, and I coughed and gasped for breath. He stepped back onto the catwalk through the shattered railing, and it was all I could do to duck his incoming blow.

I got under it—but only barely. His backswing caught me in the shoulder, though. The Stormsteel pauldron took most of the cutting action, but the impact popped it out of its joint. Nimbus Edge slumped in my grip, and I gritted my teeth in agony as muscles tried to force the joint to work.

They couldn’t. Mistwalk Forms fell apart slowly; as it did, I used one more Storm Dance to gain distance, teleporting back up the stairs behind the Paragon. I squeezed my jaw closed, poured Stamina into my shoulder, and slammed it into the brass wall even as I unsummoned the Stormsteel pauldron. Pain ripped through me like lightning—pain, and relief—as my arm popped agonizingly back into place.

Having my sword arm functional was a relief, but it didn’t change anything. I’d only landed a handful of blows, none of them meaningful, and Quellat felt like he was holding back.

I couldn’t win this fight. I probably couldn’t even come close.

The monster pushed up the stairs. I braced myself and lunged the moment he got in range. Then, before he could react, I shifted stances again—this time to Cyclone Forms.

How long had I been fighting? A minute? Two? Thirty seconds? It was hard to tell at high A-Rank speeds. I needed more. Sarah and Nathan needed more. They needed the time to regroup with the rest of the team, and Cheddar needed the time to guide them all to each other. And there was only one person who could buy them that time.

Me.

The longer I could fight, the better off they’d all be.

So, Rolling Thunder. Polarity Shift. Lightning Chain, with Windfall attached to it to slow Quellat down. The chain pulled me toward him, and Nimbus Edge punched a hole into his chest. He barely noticed. I didn’t care; Polarity Shift echoed with Rolling Thunder. A Stormfire Lance slammed into Quellat’s water sword from point-blank range—another Polarity Shift.

Apply them all to Thunder Crash.

Aim it at the catwalk between Quellat and me.

The sheer amount of lightning pouring down from above was almost awe-inspiring. It was all I could do to keep moving backward as it slammed down into the brass bars and grid below me, but I forced my legs to move and lungs to breathe as I gained just a little distance.

Distance was time, and time, in this fight, was exactly what I needed.

I ducked through the door I’d cut open earlier. Water was still flooding out of it, but it was only calf-deep now. It led down a narrow hall, too tight for either of us to do more than trade blows. Thunderbolt Forms. I lunged, using Cutting Storm to echo the attack as wind and lightning, and backpedaled. Another slashing blow clattered against Quellat’s sword. Thunderblade. My attacks accelerated as I picked up steam. His watery rapier matched every blow, the air cracking and sparking as liquid vaporized and lightning sparked.

For a few moments, we were evenly matched. Then the massive tentacle lashed out, and I was a beat slow to jump it. It wrapped around my left leg, slamming me into the ground. The watery sword slammed into my chest. Stormsteel and maelstrom buckled, and agony rippled through me.

Stormbreak.

Lightning blossomed. I let the pain rip through me. No exclusions, only electrical hatred and rage. Mana drained rapidly as my negative field overlapped with Quellat’s positive. Then they drained, and electricity pulsed through the narrow hallway. Five times. Six. Seven. Eight.

When it ended, Quellat was still standing. Lightning arced across his tentacled body, and two of his eyes had popped open gruesomely. The stink of burning flesh wafted from several severed tendrils. But he was still up.

That was it, then. I’d done what I could; the Stormkin Avatar might buy me a second or two, but that was all I could count on.

Nimbus Edge vanished, and my hand darted into my pocket as the Dadvatar appeared, slamming into Quellat. Even as he faded, a blue-white portal with shimmers of other colors appeared. I threw myself toward it, and as my arms and head entered, agony ripped across my legs.

◄▼►

Tanat sat at the bottom of the stairs, pondering the nature of the Black Tower.

Her Lonely Gate continued to be a thorn in her side, though she’d made progress recently. The third floor was almost completely conquered, thanks in part to the monster who’d saved her life, and she’d been working on understanding how the floor’s boss fought. But even so, she’d been tinkering with the Black Tower for years. Literally for years.

Her cohort back at the Soaring Saber sect had all cleared long ago. As she often told herself, it didn’t matter. Her growth was slower, but more total, than theirs ever could be.

But the Lonely Gate had to fall, or that growth would mean nothing.

So, as Tanat prepared herself to climb the Black Tower again, she turned its nature over and over in her mind. It was truly like no portal world she’d ever encountered. The tree-top worlds full of elves and spiders, for instance, did their business with other worlds as if they were still connected. The foul-smelling vivisectionists’ portals did the same, creating monsters to ship to other worlds as warriors, guardians, or biological weapons of untold power. Her sect had a few of those in storage, in fact.

Even the benighted, script-based citadels she’d heard about had purpose.

Not so, however, the Black Tower. It seemed frozen in time, down to the monsters’ motions within—almost like it only existed when someone was inside of it. Granted, she’d been spending more and more time within its brick walls, but that was because of the monster.

The monster was better at this than she was. He was more willing to take injuries in the moment to accomplish his goals, and he’d gambled—successfully—that small victories would remain after he left. It had taken Tanat a while to figure that out. If she didn’t keep the pressure up, Tanat risked finding the Black Tower cleared when she arrived and her Lonely Gate solved by another—a brutal humiliation.

As she pondered the tower, a portal opened beside her, and she leaped to her feet, sword in hand.

The monster hit the ground like a sack of flour thrown from the second story of a barn.

He was covered in blood. Head and arm wounds, most in varying degrees of repair, covered his body; they’d punched through the strange armor he wore and ripped into his flesh. A pattern of round sections of skin had been removed from his boot and leg, and even more blood poured from those wounds.

But the cuts across his calves were the worst part. Neither of his legs looked like they’d so much as take his weight if he tried to stand. Still, he tried—then collapsed onto the brick floor, groaning. His armor faded into nothingness, and his sword was nowhere to be found. His eyes flickered closed, and he lay there, helpless.

The monster was helpless at Tanat’s feet.

She could end her stress with one simple motion. Draw her sword, jam it through his heart or neck, and be done. Simple. Effective. Final. He’d been stupid to come here in the state he was in, and she’d be stupid not to take the gift his mistake had given her.

But on the other hand, the monster was stupid. Reckless. Willing to put himself in life-or-death situations over and over, on the off-chance he’d be able to find a way to win. And, in just a few days, he’d made more progress in the Black Tower than she had in her whole life.

And he’d saved her life, too. So there was that.

In the end, after thinking about it, Tanat reached for her bag and pulled out a set of bandages. As she wrapped them around the monster’s bleeding calves, shoving padding into the gouges left behind by a sharp, clean blade, she realized that her decision had been made long ago.

The Black Tower had to be cleared.

An alliance must be formed.