The duelist 7, p.14
The Duelist 7, page 14
I jumped off the pillar, pulled out my trusty Decisiveness blade, and joined the fray.
“Riiiioooooowwwl!” came that beloved battle yowl, and even angelic choirs didn’t sound as beautiful to me.
“Zoie!” I hollered, and I watched the cat-warrior do a flying kick to Lord Licorice’s poncy face, which knocked him out of the cube and to the ground while Zoie gave chase.
The other Varthan concubines who were “selected” for the cube poured out and were led by Issa. Then they formed ranks around each other as they squared off against Siegfried and Bigfried, who had sicced the tiger-spiders on the warrior women.
“Alex!” Zoie yelled before she did a backward cartwheel away from the swipe of a tiger-spider. “There are still members of the Troupe inside the cube!”
Part of me raged to go and help my wife, but I halted my trajectory and changed course.
The cat-woman would be fine without me for a few moments.
“Alex, over here!” Mec waved at me, dropped down to one knee, and laced the fingers of his hands in the universal Launch Pad position, and I knew exactly what to do.
I pelted forward as fast as I could, planted my foot in the center of his hands, and then braced myself as he all but threw me up into the half-visible half-broken cube.
Once I got inside, the floor suddenly became visible, and I figured this strange glass was some sort of one-way situation I really wanted to know the workings of, but I filed the thought away for later.
For now, I had to take out the monkey contortionists who were preventing the rest of the people in the cube from escaping by shoving them in the far back corner where the remaining three walls were still intact.
“Hey!” I yelled and backhanded one of the contortionists with the hilt of my sword.
When I went to attack the fucker once again, I was suddenly whacked against the back of my knees with a sturdy staff, and I fell to the floor. My blade went flying off the platform and down to the ground below as I crashed down, and I rued the loss of it.
But I didn’t have time to rue too long, and I rolled to the side to avoid being smashed in the head with the quarterstaff.
“Duelist scum!” Thing One spat at me while Thing Two kicked me in the gut. “You’ll pay for what you’ve done!”
Thing One then slammed the butt of his staff into the ground, and after a small click, the business end of the staff suddenly became bladed with sharp razors.
Oh, that was not good.
I flipped onto my back in an attempt to scoot away, but the contortionist was already raising his staff over his head…
“No, no, no, no, no!” a small enraged voice screamed, and out of nowhere, a tiny silver shoe struck the center of the monkey-man’s forehead hard enough to leave a little mark.
It was such a shocking and unexpected thing that the contortionist hesitated just long enough for me to get the upper-hand, and I wasted no time as I exploded into action.
Quicker than lightning, I flipped myself up into a crouch and kicked both feet out from under my assailant, which caused his razor staff to fall off the platform and join mine on the floor below.
“Hey!” the other guy shouted and tried to come to his friend’s aid, but he was still trying to keep his hostages back with his own spiky staff.
The guy I was fighting-- Thing One or Two, I couldn’t remember so he was now Shoe Face-- did a weird helicopter spin that twirled him back up on his hands like a funky breakdancer. A metallic noise sounded, and Shoe Face suddenly had ankle blades.
I would have been impressed if I wasn’t dodging for my life as the monkey-man came at me like a possessed Vitamix.
“Fuck!” I yelled after having to summon some Matrix moves to keep my jugular from being sliced open.
He was still advancing on me, so I danced back even more until my back thumped against something solid.
The other wall.
Fuck.
I dropped into a crouch as a bladed foot came at my head, and then before Shoe Face could change course, I hooked him twice in the ribs and jabbed him in the solar plexus.
This caused him to lose his balance enough for me to slip out from between him and the wall, and then I danced around him. By the time Shoe Face jackknifed himself up to his feet, I was already there waiting for him and met him with a snap-kick to his chin that sent him flying back against the wall I was just pinned up against.
Shoe Face slumped down unconscious with another shoe-shaped bruise added to his face for good measure.
“How dare you!” the other contortionist screeched at the top of his lungs, and he swung his staff at me.
I ducked and rolled to the side as the sharp spikes sliced through the air where my head was mere seconds ago, but at least I was an ample enough distraction for the small cluster of remaining hostages to make their way out of the cube with the help from those below.
That was all that really mattered, and now I could focus on kicking this guy’s ass since there wasn’t any danger to any innocent bystanders.
My attacker came at me again, but I caught the staff with both hands, and for a moment we jockeyed for leverage until he flung me back against the other wall with a lot more power than I was anticipating from such a smallish bendy guy.
The breath got punched out of my lungs, and the back of my skull smacked the wall hard enough to cause my vision to whiteout for a second, but a second was all it took because I suddenly felt myself being grabbed and flung down on my stomach.
If the air wasn’t knocked out of me previously, it would have been now. As it was, I knew I was going to have some interesting bruises.
When I finally got both my breath and vision back, it was only snatched away again when the contortionist climbed on my back and began strangling me with the quarterstaff digging into my throat.
“Diiieee!” the deranged Gumby on my back growled as he pulled up on the staff even harder.
“Ack!” I dug my fingers in between the rod and my neck in an attempt to keep it from crushing my trachea.
Things were not looking like they were in my favor, and with the spike of adrenaline lighting me up on the inside, it was easy to slip into that familiar pool of power.
Tick…
My heart beat like a sledgehammer in my chest as the world slowed down around me, but the way the guy was wailing on my neck made me realize I needed to turn it up a few notches, or else I would be unconscious before I could do anything about it.
I needed to dig deep.
Tick…
Stars burst at the corners of my vision, and my head felt like it was going to pop off if I didn’t do anything soon, so I reached down and pictured the aperture that my power funneled through as it opened wide.
Ti--
The air seemed to shimmer like a heatwave as everything slowed exponentially until the world came to a stop. The incredible pressure against my windpipe also stopped, and I was able to slip my head back through the hole between my attacker’s arms.
I gasped in great breaths of air until the tunneling in my hearing disappeared, and the darkness crowding my vision eased up. Then I wormed my way out from under the hellish acrobat and just sat there on my knees for a second so I could finish catching my breath.
Strangely, I seemed to have only stopped time inside the cube, because the commotion was still taking place on the ground below, and I wondered if it was my own ability, or if it was because I was still in this weird invisible floating structure.
Whatever the case, I needed to file that away for later because it was already getting hard to hold the time-stop.
“Chief!” Horus called out, and I searched the chaos for his familiar black-feathered crest. He was directly below me and holding my herald blade. “Drop this?”
“Toss it!” I yelled as my control on my power started to slip.
Horus yelled as he tossed my curved sword up to me and straight into my hand.
Snap.
The time-stop fell apart, and I whirled around right as the contortionist brandished his razor staff and did a flying leap.
We collided pretty hard, and because I was on the platform’s very edge, we both fell through the air and all the way down to the floor.
Smack.
Chapter 12
“Alex!” Horus shouted, and his voice sounded high and thin in a way I’d hardly heard from the usually overconfident falcon-man.
He also seldom called me Alex, so I knew he was worried, but I was busy still reeling from having fallen ten feet to reassure him I was alright. Thankfully, I managed to open my eyes without too much issue, and I realized the monkey-man had met the business end of my blade and was probably dead before we hit the ground.
Unfortunately, Horus didn’t know I wasn’t the one bleeding, so he worked himself into a lather as he hauled the corpse off me and then began searching me for any fatal wounds.
“Hor--” The rest of the word rasped into silence since my lungs were still trying to remember how to function.
“Darkhell, where are you wounded, Al?” he asked with a faint quake in his voice. “There’s so much blood.”
“Not… mine,” I wheezed as he helped sit me up, and then he smacked me on the back. I coughed and cleared my throat, and finally my seized lungs began working again. “Thanks.”
“Mercedes, don’t scare me like that again,” he said, and he placed a hand over his heart like it had remembered how to start beating again.
“Sorry,” I said as I gazed around the banquet hall.
Most of the fighting was done, and those who were part of the illusionist troupe who weren’t dead were now being taken into custody by the palace guard.
“How did you figure it out, by the way?” Horus asked as he helped me up to my feet.
I had to breathe carefully through my nose for a second as my entire body screamed in protest at how fast I moved. One thing was for sure, falling straight back from that height Did Not do me any favors.
“Actually, I heard someone sneeze above us and figured that’s where the cube must have been,” I said as I recalled the odd displaced noise that ended up being the key to everything.
“Ah, the old invisible-but-not-soundproof mistake,” he said sagely as he stroked his chin. “Amateurs.”
I laughed and then wheezed to a stop when the motion hurt too much. “What I want to know is how they got the damn thing to float.”
“Same here,” Mec’s voice rumbled behind me, and I whipped around to see the slightly battle worn ram-lord clutching his wife on one side and holding his daughter in his other arm.
The little deer-girl lifted her head from where she’d hidden it in her father’s chest and blinked at me with her big wet eyes, and the sight of her missing shoe reminded me just how brave this little pistol really was.
I cast my eyes about and spotted the silvery slipper lying upside-down on the floor near where my sword had fallen earlier, so I went to pick it up and return it to its rightful owner.
“Your daughter saved my life, Gavlain,” I said as I took the toddler’s little foot in my hand so I could put the shoe back on like she was a miniature Cinderella.
With antlers.
Cin-deer-ella?
“She did, did she?” the ram-lord asked as his smile went supernova. “What did she do?”
“I was almost a goner when Meera came up with the perfect distraction by throwing one of her shoes at my attacker’s face,” I relayed to the pair of proud parents, and I winked at Meera when she blushed so hard the smattering of coppery freckles on her face disappeared. Then I took her hand and bowed deeply. “Madame, I am forever in your debt.”
“Hee hee!” she giggled when I straightened from my bow, and then she jettisoned herself out of her mother’s arms and into mine. “No mean heads can hurt my Alex.”
I chuckled as I held her close, and over her little shoulder I spied my two wives as well as the Mec sisters making their way over to us. From what I could tell, they were okay but a little bruised and battered, but when they got closer, I could tell something was missing.
Or rather two very important somethings.
“Where are Jenner and Rylan?” I asked immediately as the rest of the Crew approached us, and everyone glanced around.
“And that traitor, Bartus,” Regent Sskern growled as he came up next to Mec with his new wife wrapped in his arms like he would be hard-pressed to ever let her out of his sight again. “He must pay for his crimes.”
“Ames, can you help us out?” I asked the oryx-woman and handed Meera back to her mother.
“I will search for both of them.” She nodded and then crouched down to place her palm on the floor of the banquet hall so she could do her seek-and-find thing.
Her eyes flashed nearly white, and she tilted her horned head as if she was listening to something. Finally, her eyes faded back to their normal dove-gray, and she stood up.
“What is it?” I asked.
“I looked for traces of that Bartus fellow, too, but something is wrong…” she trailed off and started for the opposite end of the hall until she stopped in front of the far wall. She then pressed her ear against the wall and tapped twice.
“What is she doing?” Sskern asked, but Anwaar shushed the raptor-man.
“Listen!” Amaya suddenly gasped. “I hear something!”
Practically all of us hit the wall and pressed our own ears against it to see what she was talking about.
At first, I couldn’t hear anything, but then I pressed a palm into my other ear to block out the din of the large hall, and there it was.
A very faint pounding.
“What is that?” Horus asked when all of us pulled back from the wall. “Is that them?”
“Yes,” the augur-woman said as her eyes shimmered again. “I’m sure of it.”
“My question is, how did anybody get out of the hall in the first place?” Shay chimed in with her hands on her hips. “Those doors remained shut the whole time.”
“What about a servants’ entrance?” Mec asked. “On Nata, it was a classic building practice to design invisible entrances in the ballrooms and banquet halls so the servants could come and go without being in the way.”
“Hm, my uncle might know,” Sskern said and waved over the man in question from where he was talking quietly with Issa.
“What can I do for my esteemed friends?” Griss said as he sauntered up. “Ambassador, I owe you for your fast thinking.”
“All we need to know is if there is some sort of servants’ entrance around here?” I asked the dino-man.
“Hm.” Griss stroked his neck-frill in thought as he examined the wall in front of us. “I believe I remember something of the sort around here somewhere. Grekis, Bartus, and I used to play in the servants’ corridors when we were lads.”
The Terran Asher Lord then began to feel along the wall with his two hands until something clicked, and a small panel popped out that opened to reveal a narrow passage. Instantly, the faint pounding that could be heard rang out at full volume, and I wasted no time in rushing forward toward the frantic sounds.
“Hello?” I called, and suddenly the pounding ceased, and I could hear Jenner’s muffled voice yell out from a little farther down the corridor.
“Master Alex!” the koala-man shouted. “We’re in here!”
“I’m coming, Mr. Jenner!” I called back as the corridor came to an end. “Where are you guys?”
“Storage cupboard.” His voice floated from behind the locked door at the very end.
“Is Rylan with you?” Zoie asked. “Is he okay?”
“Rylan is with me,” Jenner responded, but my cat-wife and I didn’t miss the fact he didn’t answer the second question, and my uneasy feeling grew.
“Stand clear,” I warned as I backed up a few steps. Then, without further ado, I slammed my shoulder into the door and broke it open in a shower of splinters.
“Oh, my,” Amaya said from behind me as she took in the scene before all of us.
Jenner was sitting on a stack of half-broken crates and looked disheveled with his missing monocle and ripped green jacket, and he stared down at the large and very dead brontosaurus-man.
“Is that Bartus?” Sskern asked in shock as he looked at the jagged slice across the man’s long neck and all the blood.
I tuned out the rest of the conversation when I finally spotted Rylan huddled in the far corner of the room along with Mozz, who was sitting silently beside him. They both looked shocked, but Rylan looked almost catatonic with his knees drawn up to his chest and staring at the dead man with a hollow stare.
“Rylan?” I whispered. My boots crunched as I stepped around the dead Asher, and I saw there were shards of glass everywhere. When I glanced around for the source, I saw there was an old broken mirror smashed to hell due to the apparent confrontation that had taken place, and my frown deepened.
And finally, as I crouched down in front of my catatonic son, I saw that in his fist was the largest and most jagged mirror piece still dripping with blood.
It wasn’t hard to put two and two together after that.
“Where is that wretched Bartus?” I heard Major Tharfin’s booming voice from out in the corridor a moment before the dome-headed man himself came into the room as well. “Mozzy? Sweetness?”
“Uncle!” Mozz cried out, and she sprang up from her spot and threw herself into his arms.
“What is the meaning of this?” he asked as he looked around the room. “What happened?”
“That’s what I’d like to know,” I murmured as I gently tried to rouse my son from his fugue state. I glanced down at his hand where he was still clenching the makeshift dagger, and I saw how some of the blood oozing off it was some of his due to how tightly he was still holding it, as if the dead man might spring up again at any second.
“Maybe I can illuminate some of the situation,” Jenner said, and I was grateful for him once more considering the kids didn’t seem like they were in any fit state to rehash the ordeal. “I wasn’t here for the start, but I can guess what probably happened. This young lady was kind enough to tell me that Lord Bartus attempted to snatch her away during the confusion, because I saw him enter this secret passage. It took me a bit longer than I liked to follow because of all the commotion, but when I finally chased after him, I stumbled across Rylan and Mozz fighting Bartus. I tried to help, but in the frenzy, the door was knocked shut, and then jammed closed after the big oaf slammed into it.”
