Chapter 1712: My Power |
The duel had worn past the point of counting exchanges, and the gap had not closed.
Kaede answered both of them at once, the dark blade sweeping from Ayame’s katana to Blossom’s gauntlets in arcs that treated the two-on-one like a warm-up, and every third swing came from the sword itself rather than Kaede, the weapon dragging her arm sideways to intercept a void-phase Blossom was still halfway through.
Blossom crackled out of the void at Kaede’s flank with lightning arcing between her gauntlets, and the sword met her before Kaede turned.
The broad side of the blade caught both claws before they reached flesh and electricity sprayed outward in a shower that scorched Kaede’s forearm without drawing a flinch, and Ayame came through the opening with a cut aimed at the wrist holding the cursed steel.
Kaede’s sword wrenched free of Blossom’s claws while she simultaneously kicked the dogkin and met Ayame’s cut in a counter so heavy the collision drove Ayame’s boots into the earth to the ankle and sent cracks racing through the stone beneath her.
"You’ve become much faster, yes." The smile Kaede showed her sister held nothing warm. "But speed was never the real problem, was it?"
She shoved, and Ayame skidded backward through scorched dirt.
"I don’t know what nonsense you’re spouting." Ayame reset her grip, then she grinned. "But it seems the Scarlet Lilies came to their senses."
"Mercenaries switch sides." Kaede’s tone was flat. "It’s what they do."
"And Ragnar?" The ridge above them had gone quiet minutes ago, the tremors that had been shaking the battlefield since the start gone still. "He’s rather silent. I see a big ice construct over there, I wonder what it could possibly mean?"
Kaede came in hard and Ayame met the first strike with water running her blade thin and bright, redirecting the second into the dirt while Blossom materialized behind Kaede’s knee with claws that forced the sword to wrench backward and cover.
They separated, and the screams of the surrounding war filled the gap.
"Why are you doing this, Kaede?" The mockery left Ayame’s voice. "You should be pursuing Greenvale. The Fujimori holding two whole duchies would immortalize your name in the clan’s legends."
Kaede’s gaze found hers through the smoke, and honesty crossed her face for a fraction of a second before the mask settled back. "Greenvale was always just a stepping stone. He forced our hand. We cannot allow someone with his abilities to take Elvardia and add an entire nation to his arsenal."
"’We.’" Ayame caught it instantly. "The sword says ’we,’ sister?"
Kaede’s grip tightened on the hilt. The dark steel hummed. "I’m talking about the Fujimori leadership."
"Sure, sure."
"Your beliefs are none of my concern."
The overhead came down with everything the cursed blade could channel, splitting the air in a visible line, and Ayame raised her katana because she had nowhere left to go.
The water along her steel had been thinning with every parry, each exchange compressing the infusion until it barely clung to the edge, but under the full weight of Kaede’s blade the current surged instead of breaking.
Water bled from the katana in a sheet that climbed the descending steel and carried the incoming force sideways along its own edge, and the strike slid past the point of contact the way a river carries a stone past a bend.
Kaede’s sword hammered into the earth beside Ayame’s hip hard enough to crater it, and Ayame stood uncut with her arms shaking.
But the water was gone. The deflection had burned through the last of the infusion, and her blade ran dry as the current faded to nothing.
She needed the Reservoir again, and the unease arrived instantly.
Through the bond she could feel them.
Lucille was furthest forward, carving into the dwarven front with a magma-coated axe in one fist and a blacksteel warhammer in the other, elite souls covering her flanks, and every dwarf she cut down sent warmth pulsing back through the Reservoir.
One of the gentlest women in the family was the engine keeping her sisters fueled, and she was killing without pause.
Serika’s wind-solar eruptions were cratering the Fujimori lines in flashes of gold and howling gale, each punch pulling from the pool and sending back what she took threefold, while Raika fought with such devastating punches that the shockwaves alone scattered those who stood before her.
Kitsara was... Doing Kitsara things.
But all of them were killing, all of them refilling what they took.
Ayame and Blossom were fighting a woman they couldn’t kill, draining the Reservoir without returning a single drop.
"No one will mind, all of Blossom’s friends are nice girls!!"
Blossom’s voice came bright and certain from the side, as if she’d fully read her thoughts. "Dealing with Corrupted Bitch Sister is very important! Ayame is allowed to be greedy!"
"...Right," a soft giggle broke through Ayame’s composure.
Ayame knew that Blossom was right. It didn’t sit well with a woman raised to pay her debts in full, but this wasn’t the time.
Ayame reached for the Reservoir, and Quinlan’s water answered.
The current surged back along her blade, running the steel in a pressurized film. She resettled her stance and faced Kaede.
Kaede’s eyes narrowed, visibly studying what this power was about, how it functioned.
The Bloodfather class was extremely anomalous, perhaps even more so than any other class Quinlan wielded. The denizens of Iskaris could only guess how it worked.
Ayame noticed the sharp, observing eyes of her younger sibling and smirked.
"Guess we’re both getting empowered by external forces that aren’t quite our own, hmm, sister?" Water rippled along the edge.
"Shut your mouth." Kaede rushed in. "My power is mine and mine alone." .
The overhead carried the same crushing force, but the water was at full and the current climbed the descending blade before the impact reached Ayame’s wrists, redirecting it sideways. Her boots shifted an inch.
Kaede pulled free and swung again, a lateral sweep aimed at her throat, and the water answered better than ever before.
The current caught the incoming steel and bent its trajectory into the dirt, and Ayame’s counter came through the gap, scoring a thin line across Kaede’s forearm.
Kaede glanced at her arm and found red.
The next exchange came faster, three strokes, high, low, diagonal, each carrying force that dwarfed Ayame’s own output, and the water turned every one of them.
It received the force and gave it somewhere else to go, flowing around each impact the way a stream flows around stones it can never move, and Ayame was moving with it now, her footwork shifting from the desperate retreating stance she’d held all fight into something fluid and forward.
Her understanding was accelerating. Each deflection taught the next, the water learning the shape of Kaede’s sword the way a river learns its banks, and the girl who had been driven backward through scorched earth for the entire duel took her first step forward.
"What is this..." Kaede hissed. Her expression hardened.
Blossom came from behind with lightning trailing from her gauntlets, aimed at the gap between Kaede’s shoulders, and the Fujimori leader’s response was wild and violent.
She spun a full rotation with the cursed blade extended, the arc of dark steel forcing Blossom to phase backward into the void and Ayame to duck beneath the swing.
The dogkin landed five meters back with sparks racing between her claws, unhurt.
Kaede stood at the center of the crater her own swing had carved, breathing harder than she had a minute ago.
"This rapid improvement..." Her eyes hardened, awfully aware that her sister was getting accustomed to her new powers in real time, against HER!
The mere thought made her hands tremble in rage.
Ayame straightened from the crouch with water running bright along her katana, and her gaze drifted past her sister toward the edge of the horizon.
"Would you look at that?"
Dust was climbing the sky in a column wide enough to blot the treeline.
A second column rose from the west, thinner and faster, and the banners became visible at the same moment.
Silver-bark standards from the east, Isveth’s host of shrine maidens and matriarchs marching in formations so tight the column moved like a single organism through the trees.
The head maiden herself ran at the front, expression full of fury.
On the other side, Consortium banners were cresting the western ridge with Maelstrom’s heavy infantry pouring across the fields, the general’s booming voice already carrying orders across the distance.
Then, if that wasn’t enough, beastkin snarls could be heard behind the humans, wolfish howls and the deep battle cries of bearkin.
Three armies were converging on the same battlefield from opposite ends of the horizon.
Ayame let the grin crack all the way through.
"You got the jump on us, but you failed to finish the job in time."
Then, all of a sudden, the dark blade in Kaede’s hand screamed.
The sound came from the steel itself, a tone so low it bypassed the ears and hit the chest, and Kaede’s arm wrenched sideways as the sword pulled toward the approaching armies with anger that had nothing to do with its wielder.
Dark energy bled from the edge in tendrils that reached past Kaede’s guard and her whole body lurched a step before she caught herself with both hands on the hilt, fighting the pull.
"I know..." The words came through her gritted teeth, whispered at the blade in her grip quiet enough that her own soldiers wouldn’t hear it. "I’m not going to fail, I promise..."
"’My power is mine and mine alone,’" Ayame mused. "...Right."
...
Black Fang hit Quinlan before his arms could rise.
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