Stonehand, p.18
Stonehand, page 18
Daine moved to follow before realising the area around the rune scratched on her armour was becoming very warm indeed. The steel glowed first red, then white in a widening circle, burning the cloth and skin beneath.
Grimacing, Daine sought to block out the pain. In the middle of a battle, there was nothing to be done but to endure it. This was one of her favourite pieces of armour, too.
“Are you really sure you wish to do this, my Lady? You would not be the first Knight of the Road I have needed to vanquish, but, in all honesty, you would be the first to whom I would regret doing so.”
“Counterpoint. I have always enjoyed bringing down Dark Warlords, and I cannot say I care very much about you either way right now.”
Ignoring the burning pain, she lashed out with a blow that would have cleaved a lesser opponent in two. Donal, however, twisted away to the other corner of the room, the edge of her blade missing him by mere inches and creating sparks that flashed as she cut down the edge of the wall.
Then the Dark Warlord returned at her with a series of strikes aimed at the softening metal of her chestplate, each faster than the last, his blade a blur of motion. He punched hole after hole through the once-resistant armour. As if being empowered by his attacks, all around the room, dark runes, each humming softly as they unleashed their power, surged into life and began to drain her.
“I’ve known this moment would come since you followed us back from that blasted village. Did you really think, when the time came for this confrontation, you would so easily be able to bring me down?” Shadows coiled around his arm, extending his reach, his knife striking from impossible angles.
“Donal, you appear to have spent an awful lot more time thinking about me than I did you. And that does not seem like the sort of thing you would be doing with Swinford under threat if you were quite yourself. Sir, you are not in your right mind. This was not the preamble of an attack upon you. I intended nothing more sinister in coming here than discussing the latest manifestation of your Class. I wanted to discuss with you that I have seen Soulless used in this way before. And it was not to the benefit of anyone.”
There was the flicker of something on the man’s face, but his attacks continued. Daine tried to meet each of his strikes with her sword, but her range of movement was hampered by the searing heat burning her skin. Her strategy, usually, was to use her Strength to end confrontations immediately. But under direction from the Goddes not to kill him, she found herself forced to try to get Donal to expend energy by dodging and parrying her powerful blows. Ideally, when he was exhausted, she would find him far more manageable to subdue than he was proving at present.
Holding on to that thought, she advanced, pressing the older man backwards, her massive sword an improbable whirlwind of movement he could not dare to clash iron with. But, dodging each strike, Donal leapt onto the room’s central table, then sprang off onto a wall and back again, his movements erratic and unpredictable. He was no longer just fighting Daine; he was using the layout of the very room as a weapon against her.
Even when seemingly cornered, the Dark Warlord continued to unleash a flurry of rune-enhanced strikes from both his knife and the runes he’d carved around them, each emanating dark energy that exploded from the walls to pull at Daine’s life force. She absorbed each attack, but the sheer number of blows began to take their toll, her body trembling with the effort her
There will be an opening. Shortly. I must stress, do not kill him.
Then, in a sudden shift, Donal changed his tactics. Rather than seek to avoid contact, he began to focus his attacks on Daine’s armour, looking for weaknesses.
He feinted high, then struck low, only to spin and deliver a backhand strike at the centre of her breastplate. The superheated metal completely lost its integrity under the strike, and Daine shrugged off the pieces that remained, the heat causing her far more pain than it was providing support.
However, in the absence of any further protection, the rune-covered dagger pierced her skin and plunged inwards into her heart.
As it did so, Daine was disturbed by the expression on the man’s face. There was nothing left of the mischievous, kind man whose company she had grown to value over the last few weeks. In its place was a pallid mask of hate.
“Got you!” The voice had nothing of Donal in it either. It seemed to be both very young and extremely old at the same time.
As it tore into her heart, the runes on the dagger activated, and Daine was alarmed as she felt her health halve, then halve again and again.
I hope this was the opening you meant . . .
Seizing the initiative, she clamped both her hands around Donal’s and locked them around the handle of the blade embedded in her chest. Her health continued to decrease at an alarming degree, but, as she had done throughout her life, she trusted in her patron Goddess.
And, a tiny part of her thought, if this was to be the end, she was not wholly horrified at that outcome.
Sensing something was wrong, Donal activated all the runes in the room; Daine met the onslaught with a roar and held him locked in her tight embrace.
Just when she could not stand the pain any further, she felt the Goddess manifest within her. Just as when she was delivering judgement within a court, that power swelled within, healing all her wounds and flowing into Donal’s dagger like a reverse waterfall.
As the tide of energy surged into Donal, the man shrieked, and the shadows around him burned away. His skin blistered and split in much the same way as Daine’s own.
You are not welcome here, my son. Return to your own domain.
If there was a reply to the Goddess’s words, Daine did not hear one.
And then . . . it was all over.
Donal slumped to the floor, a golden haze covering his body. Daine carefully caught him and lowered him down, pulling the remains of the knife that had connected them out of her heart.
“Thank you, my Lady. Do you want to tell me what that was all about?”
Daine was unsurprised to receive no response from the Goddess and mentally shrugged as she felt her fade from this realm.
What was a surprise, however, was the sight of something she had not seen since her final days with Old Gant.
At the corner of her vision, she appeared to have her first Class notification in almost thirty years.
Chapter Thirty-Three
“Class Evolution”
Daine did not know how much time had passed since noticing the invitation to evolve her Class.
She stared, as if into space, as a whole gamut of emotions and fragments of memory swam around her head.
She was aware that Donal was lying at her feet, unmoving but breathing softly. She had managed to keep her promise to the Goddess, in any event.
“Don’t rush it,” Gant growled in her memories. “I haven’t put all this effort in for you to fumble things at the last. When the moment comes for you to evolve your Class, take a beat. You have time.”
And there she was back in the training yard, her senses overwhelmed by the coarseness of the sand, the stench of blood and sweat and the blinding light of the midday sun. How many times had she nearly died in this place? And how many times had the man standing in the centre of the ring, hands on his hips and a sneer on his face, been the cause of that?
Gallant Stonehand, the Kingdom’s premier Mentor, stared balefully back at the small group of children before him. As if finding their very appearance disgusting, he spat messily into the sand.
“Evolving your Class is a choice you need to make with your whole heart. In front of me, I see a bunch of Farmers, Labourers and Bakers. Sure, I’ve beaten some fight into you. Most of you can now handle a blade. And you can all take a kicking and ask for more. But all I’ve really done so far is put lipstick on a pig. You’re going to need to take the next step yourselves.”
Daine remembered the sense of anticipation in the air that day. The Goddess had already begun courting her for the Road, and she knew a few of her — well, not “friends”. Say “acquaintances” — had been visited by other members of the pantheon. But there were as many sitting in front of Gant who had no idea what awaited them as there were who did not.
“When offered a Class Evolution, you are given a chance to fundamentally change who you are.” Gant had grinned then. “And a new personality can’t come fast enough for some of you.”
No one asked any questions. Of course they did not. That lesson was one of the first battered into you at Old Gant’s school.
Heroes were to be seen and not heard.
“Our training has been aimed at passing the various thresholds in attributes that we believe the gods use to decide who to offer Class Evolution. It’s not an exact science, of course. Divine beings don’t converse with the likes of me. But I know a little of my business, and it’s a rare scrub that can make it this far on the journey and can’t impress one deity or another.”
It took a collective surge of will for the audience to not look as one towards the small graveyard behind the training yard.
If he noticed, and of course he did, Gant pressed on regardless. “So, when you tickle the fancy of some god or other, they’ll reach out and offer you a Class Evolution. Some may woo you first” — did his eyes glance her way? — “but most will expect you to drop to your knees, take what they give you and praise them for the opportunity to serve.”
As Old Gant had spoken, she had become aware of the voice of the Goddess in her mind, and she had quickly transferred her focus. Gant sought to make her pay for her inattention later in the training circle, but by then, she had completed her Class Evolution from a Farmer to a Knight of the Road, and the bout did not quite go the way he had expected.
He had still, eventually, beaten her black and blue. But the look on his face whilst he did so was priceless.
And now, thirty years later, she was being offered the opportunity to progress again.
By thinking about the notification, she became aware of what it said. They were not words to be read as such, but she understood them with all her being.
Knight of the Road → Templar Ascendant
The Templar Ascendant embodies decades of rigorous training, discipline, and mastery in the art of war. This Class emerges from the ranks of Knights of the Road who have dedicated their lives to the Goddess and have completed deeds she recognises as heroic.
Daine was unsure how to react.
She had never heard of Knights of the Road “evolving”. The wording of this notification suggested it had happened before, but if that was so, it had never made it into any of the records. To be honest, she had the sense the Goddess was playing a little fast and loose with some fundamental rules of the game here.
She just was not sure why.
Considering things more deeply, she could tell that the change would increase all her Attributes exponentially. If she had been hard to kill before, she could not conceive what it would take to kill her if she chose to evolve. On the other hand, she remembered how long it had taken her to get used to functioning normally with her current level of Strength. At her time of life, did she really have it in her to go through all that again? She did not think the furniture in the Keep could stand it . . .
The Skills that came with this Evolution were certainly interesting, though. As a Knight of the Road, she had been quite lacking in that department beyond
Should she evolve, she could see that she would gain two additional Skills designed to bolster the abilities of any group she was in. Considering she had spent her life essentially travelling alone, she could not but think her patron was being a little arch with this offer. Nothing said “you need more friends” better than Skills that were only useful when activated within a team. She could not but think there was something fairly convenient about
Daine had never read too much about the various tiers of the Classes. She knew enough to recognise that Knights of the Road were considered to be on the Epic scale, whereas Eliud’s Pendragon was most certainly judged Mythic. It felt to her, at least initially, that a Templar Ascendant would have a chance to hold her own against the Duskstrider for a little while. That was a proposition that made her smile.
Donal murmured at her feet, and she looked down at what seemed like some pretty clear foreshadowing about the dangers of the path before her.
Sometimes, the ends did not justify the means.
Had Donal’s new Class not been selected precisely because it would help hold the defence of Swinford together? And look at the devastation that had wrought. Evolution was not a danger-free choice.
Could she genuinely decide to walk down the exact same route and hope for a different resolution?
That felt like a perfect opening for the Goddess to swoop in and reassure her that this was all part of a carefully considered plan. However, as with most occasions in her life when she had turned to the deity for answers, silence was her only reply.
Her indecision led her to the window of Donal’s office. The attackers below had withdrawn beyond the courtyard and were restoring some sort of order following their mauling. However, far from retreating, they were clearly gearing up for another push. Say what you like about the King’s Army, but there were some tough soldiers down there.
With Donal incapacitated, she would be needed below to hold things together at the door. Taelsin had been understanding thus far about her reluctance to be overly aggressive with the attackers, but she could clearly not allow the Keep to fall.
No matter her scruples, she needed to take every advantage offered her if Swinford was to remain standing when Eliud returned with Genoes.
“Whatever you do, though,” Old Gant had said, “make sure you evolve somewhere safe. It takes each of us differently, but one thing is common. You’ll be good for nothing until the process is finished.”
It was hardly a ringing endorsement for accepting evolution in the middle of a siege. But if you waited around for everything to be perfect, you would not get out of bed in the morning.
That homily made Daine smile. How many years had it been since she had thought of those favoured words of her mother?
That they had come to her now felt like a sign.
Sitting down heavily on the stone floor, Daine pulled a cushion under her head and propped her feet up on an unconscious Dark Warlord. Satisfied she was as comfortable as she could make herself, she closed her eyes and took a breath.
And accepted the notification.
Chapter Thirty-Four
“Going All In”
Angharad gasped as the turmoil of her agony abruptly ceased.
She lay on the floor for a moment, unsure what to do with herself. One moment, she had been writhing her last seconds away — her soul tearing apart — and now she was . . . fine? Better than “fine”, actually. She felt like her entire being had been renewed. Refreshed. Reset.
That appalling violation of the integrity of her mana core had stopped as quickly as it had begun; the lingering shock of the pain was already subsiding — as if her conscious mind were locking that memory away.
Nevertheless, although the deep wounds clawed into her soul were quickly healing, she could still sense the damage that had been done. She could tell she had lost at least two Skills — there were holes in her foundation where
Although . . .
The longer she considered the damage the attack had wreaked on her, the surer she became that there was more to it than a few Skills ripped loose. Something had happened to her Class.
Angharad was a Mage from a long and distinguished line. Mages of Withertop knew from the cradle that their sole purpose in life was to master their discipline and go out into the world to serve the Kingdom. She had dedicated every moment of her twenty-five years to that endeavour, and she assumed her parents had been proud when she had been attached to Souit’s punitive expedition to the West. They had not mentioned it either way.
Perhaps they merely saw her as doing precisely as expected. Would you cheer for a child who learned to walk? Angharad was dimly aware that most parents did celebrate that achievement, but there was little benefit in dwelling on her upbringing.
For generations unending, the Mages of Withertop had provided “support” for the King’s Army. It was not that they lacked power (far from it. The Duskstrider himself had noted that Angharad’s mother had “a mana pool he would like to drown in.” There had been quite the debate about what he had meant by this) but rather, they had a broad range of Skills for the benefit of others.
This was such an uncommon attitude amongst powerful Mages — all of whom saw personal progress and ambition as the pinnacle of all achievements — that Withertop Mages were viewed with some strange mixture of deep awe and profound suspicion. Surely no one was so altruistic as to specialise in being a generalist?
The other Mages in the Army had been happy to allow Angharad to speak for them because if anyone had to deal with the Great General, they felt it might as well be the Withertop Mage. Her type lived for that sort of self-sacrifice, after all.
Of all her siblings — indeed, most of her immediate family — her Intelligence was by far the highest. Its level was to so great that Old Gant himself had reportedly come to look her over shortly after her birth. Her mother and father did not speak much of that fell encounter, but they made clear she had not reasonably met the necessary standards for his school. Angharad was never sure whether they were pleased or disappointed by that.
