trying to make it a glorious fight...been editing it all day...onto the 587...also wanted note the ebook for book 6 is scheduled to come out July 5th
Chapter 586: The Last King of Caelora
My dance partner was not being very accommodating. He never let me lead and kept trying to step on my toes—well, not step, but cut them off. If it hadn’t been for my thicken air spell form largely negating his haste spell form, I was certain I would have lost my head by now. Heartseeker was like an extension of the elf, moving so fluidly it would have been entertaining to watch if he wasn’t trying to kill me. The speed at which he adjusted his grip reminded me of a savant playing a guitar as his hands danced along the dark spiral shaft.
I kept retreating, waiting for an opportunity to use my air shield and surprise him. I had sneezing and blindness pellets, but I knew I would only have one opportunity to use both, so I needed to lull him into a false sense of superiority—well, maybe not a false sense, as the ancient elf was a great deal more skilled with the spear. The only physical edge I seemed to have was my strength. He was superior to me in speed and more agile. My whole focus was on keeping the tip of his spear away from my body. I knew the dark mithril could cut anything.
I was strangely calm fighting for my life, and in a weird way, I was savoring the challenge. If I survived this, I would be able to gain so much from this fight when I brought it into the dreamscape. As I thought that, I made my first mistake. The elf accelerated his movement even faster. My danger sense went off, and I tried to disrupt his haste spell form and layer an air shield to protect myself. His Heartseeker obliterated the air shield, not even slowing. Even though his spell form was disrupted, his enhanced speed still took time to fade over a few heartbeats, giving him an advantage.
Without the reprieve of my aether shield amulet, the black-tipped spear thrust dangerously toward my heart. I didn’t have a new teleport anchored yet because I had been too distracted parrying and retreating. I twisted my torso, praying the elven chain underneath would save me. My outer layers of clothing parted easily, and the links on the mail locked together to form a plate under the pressure of the spear tip. The leaf blade slid off the mail, briefly catching my bicep before I got out of range.
The elven king was already coming around for another strike, but as I retreated, I had put up a number of air shields in his way. He was hampered by them but I suspected they were not completely invisible to him by how easily he moved around them. Seeing he was not going to catch me, he abruptly stopped and stood with the butt of the spear resting in the gravelly ground. I could see his mind replaying what had just happened. I had disrupted his spell form, placed barriers in the air, and revealed that I wore elven chain. That was half of the surprises I had for this fight already burned through.
The whole exchange had only been about ten heartbeats, and neither of us was breathing heavy, so I doubted I could draw this out and fatigue him. My veins were probably more adrenaline than blood at the moment as well as my heart raced. I touched my chest and felt the exposed mail. The leaf tip only managed to deform a few of the small rings. They were now misshapen and didn’t interlock well. Normally, the mail flexed and moved like fabric, but now I had a rough spot in the weave. At least I knew a smith who might be able to repair it.
“Well, that was close,” I said, letting my hand drop when the elf didn’t advance.
“You are competent for a human,” the elven king praised. “I will consider it a privilege to kill you and remember this fight fondly.”
“Well, thank you,” I said sarcastically. “Maybe it’s time I ran away?” I waited till a confused look came on his face before I smashed smoke pellets into the ground and turned and ran. I followed that with blindness and sneezing pellets, leaving a trail of dense smoke as I went further in the passage. With my earth speak pulses I tracked him. He didn’t move at first, just watching me, but then started to walk steadily after me. Well, that plan failed because the pellets' effectiveness expired before he even entered the cloud. He was being annoyingly uncooperative.
I stopped running after a few hundred feet and waited for him to catch up. I hung the amulet of clarity around my neck and drank an aether restorative. My aether was at about a third full, but I wanted to top off when I could because I couldn’t afford bottom out and lose my aether sight. He approached causally, and the amulet of insight crystallized my thoughts and helped me recall the king’s name—Ninleyn Eldaerenth, the fourth king of Caelora.
“King Eldaerenth, why don’t we just call this a draw?” I said in my friendliest tone.
The king stopped thirty feet from me, tilting his head until his neck cracked. Then he repeated in the other direction. “No, I don’t think so.”
“Since the dungeon is going to recreate you in a day, what if you let me win so I can save the world?” I offered.
The king laughed at me, truly amused. “You think you are funny, human? I watched as your Empire sealed my people inside a dome of compressed air and then flooded it with poison gas. I watched as my people’s eyes bled and they screamed in torturous pain until their voices were hoarse. Then they vomited blood as their organs liquified until they died. My children. My people. The world’s greatest artisans, women, children, dogs, horses, rats—no living thing was spared.” The anger in his voice was palpable.
“But you survived,” I said before thinking it through.
Ninleyn’s face tightened, and I knew I had touched a nerve. Not that I was in a very good position as it was. “The only reason I chained my fate to this dungeon was to make sure I would one day get my promised vengeance against every Telhian citizen,” he growled out.
I don’t think he cared that I was not a Telhian; just being a human was good enough for him. He rest over, he charged me again, and I was extremely thankful for the amulet of insight. It helped me process his attacks on another level. Even the elf realized my defenses had been shored up. He suddenly shifted his attack style, shortening his grip repeatedly for quicker attacks.
The sound of wood on wood and metal and metal on wood echoed in the passage. I was getting less and less confident. I attempted to drop the large stone sphere of darkness on him I had collected two days ago, but he looked up instantly and avoided it. I assumed he had a way to see in the magical darkness like me, but he must also have a danger or combat sense as well to notice the surprise so quickly. It was just too small to catch him under its weight. I would need something much larger to prevent him from evading it.
I considered switching to a different weapon, but the Heartseeker was the best defense I had against its twin. I was worried with how well the king used the weapon’s reach that switching to any sword would lead to my premature end. At least I was able to constantly disrupt his speed enhancement and it took him about four seconds to reestablish it, slowing his assault. It had to be an aether-intensive spell form, so maybe I could outlast him in that regard with my restorative potions.
I was forced to teleport again, this time back to the entrance when he slid his spear’s tip down my haft. My silk spider glove was ruined, offering no resistance. Three of my fingers were also nearly detached. After the teleport, I held the flopping digits in place when drinking a healing potion and using my self-healing spell form. When the elf reached me again, I was flexing my restored fingers.
He looked more amused than concerned that I had recovered so quickly. His attitude was starting to piss me off. “So you survived while you let your people perish. Then you bound their souls to defend the city for all time. You were a really shitty king.”
I knew I was pushing his buttons, but I needed his anger to make a mistake. “You know nothing of what I sacrificed for my people, boy!”
“I know your hubris prevented you from getting aid from the Esenhem elves,” I retorted. I struck another nerve as he, instead of responding, launched into another attack, this one more ferocious than the others. I was regretting my plan as I struggled to keep up with disrupting his spell form and defending with the spear. Konstantin’s insistence that I practice disrupting spell forms in combat was paying off. My air shields were popped as soon as he recognized them.
Then the unthinkable happened without warning. The haft of my Heartseeker was severed; the wood crumbled to dust in my hands, and the king grinned maliciously, knowing it was over.
I couldn’t believe it. He had targeted the same spot on the shaft for numerous attacks, but not even a scratch had appeared there. At least not a visible mark. Rhuuk’s broadsword appeared in my hand before he could land a killing strike. I blocked two more attacks as I stared at the pile of black dust that had once been my most powerful weapon. The black leaf tip was now a tarnished silver color, and I assumed the enchantment had been broken and the void essence infused in it had dissipated. It was now just a hunk of mithril.
It was the first time in the fight that I truly was in despair. Now I needed to kill the king and claim his Heartseeker as payment for destroying mine. If it wasn’t for the amulet of insight, I might have succumbed to his attacks quickly, but I was starting to see the pattern and read his body movements.
All my practice with the broadsword in the dreamscape was paying off. It was my weapon with the longest reach. “You are impressive,” the king hissed in frustration as the fight continued. I was considering trying to push the king into my dimensional space, even though I knew it was probably going to fail. I just had the feeling that the dungeon had set up this fight to prevent me from doing just that.
This time it wasn’t as unexpected, as Rhuuk’s broadsword cracked and shattered into three pieces under a rapid, successive strike. “Now you see the true power of a void spear bonded with its wielder. It deteriorates enchantments until they fail. I will wait while you retrieve another weapon,” he goaded, a maliciously jubilant smile on his face. I hadn’t even disrupted his aether shield yet. But he was currently standing with his back to a wall…
Ginger was going to hate me if she ever learned about what I was about to do. Magebane and boneblight appeared in my hands. Both blades were short blades, and it would be suicide to attack the king. The king seemed to recognize both blades on a cursory inspection as he took a defensive stance in anticipation of my final attack. I had one major distraction. The king’s eyes looked up, but it was too late as hundreds of pounds of apples, small glowstones, and fish fillets rained down on the last king of Caelora. When his aether shield flashed, I charged into the carnage…
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