The war is on – and hey, look, I technically did a tournament arc without making anyone sit through another tournament arc. We've got an arena, a stage, fighting in the stands, etc, and you didn't have to sit through the pointless pre-fights.
Beta: College Fool
Cover Art: Dishwasher1910
Book 6: Chapter 14
After a moment's silence, the arena descended into chaos. I liked to think my warning helped by giving some Heroes the warning they needed to draw their weapons, but there was no way to tell. Everyone stormed to their feet, some began to scream, and before five seconds had passed, someone had started to cast spells – and then weapons were drawn.
There was no telling what was happening outside of the arena. Was the news spreading? Were people from Mistral being rounded up? Or had the King thought of that and had his stronger Heroes sequestered through the city? For all we knew, the war was commencing across the city. I personally knew an army was approaching from the direction of home, and there might yet be more spread across Vale, burning villages so that no news reached the city.
"W-What's going on!?" Ruby cried.
"Betrayal," Blake snapped, drawing her daggers. "Mistral turned on us."
"But why?"
"Who knows," Weiss said. "What matters is that we have to stay safe, and we need to protect the innocents who can't fight."
"No," I said, drawing attention to me. My eyes were fixed down below, on the arena floor where Cinder stood over the kneeling King of Vale. She was quickly driven away by the King's bodyguard, and the two engaged in melee. The King of Mistral stood nearby, unconcerned with the war taking place around him. "This war won't end unless we can force it to. If we capture the King, we can force a surrender. That's the only way we'll manage this."
No one responded. I was no longer a Knight, nor the leader of our Guild – or even a Hero. I had no right to make such suggestions, but no one argued against it for the longest time. We were, for the moment, safe, our party trapped between several bands of Valean Heroes fighting against their Mistral counterparts. The fighting was fiercer the further down we would go, being particularly brutal near the ring itself.
"We'll have to fight out way there," Yang pointed out.
"Stick together," Pyrrha said.
I nodded, relieved that they were willing to listen to my words at all.
Pyrrha, Yang and Nora spearheaded the charge down the arena's stands, the three tanks creating a wall of muscle and steel while Weiss rained down spells from above and Blake darted in and out, sliding past distracted foes to plant daggers in the back of their knees or arms, disabling where she could. Ruby used the length of her weapon to reach over Yang's head and crack skulls. Lacking any sufficient means to help, I stayed at the back, guarding our weaker members in case anyone got by.
The Mistral Heroes we faced were no pushovers, however. These weren't low-level Soldiers sent on a minor scouting and razing mission, nor were they over-confident or out of practice. Mistral's best were here, some of their most famous, and it showed. A Warrior bowled into Yang and swept an axe up, slamming through Yang's guard hard enough to launch the Brawler back.
"Yang!" Ruby cried, chasing after her. Pyrrha and Nora moved in to flank the Warrior. The man was easily thirty to forty and possibly twice our level or more. He blocked Pyrrha's sword with his and Nora's hammer with the back of one hand, wincing to show that it did hurt, but not enough to badly injure him. His hand gripped around the hammer, catching the haft under the head and dragging Nora in so that the hammer struck Pyrrha's stomach instead.
Blake lunged in from behind and scored a blow on the Warrior's back, earning a startled gasp. His counter-attack whistled by as she vanished into shadows. Turning back, the Warrior brought his axe up in readiness, prepared to kill Pyrrha in a single blow. It came crashing down – only to slam into some kind of greenish shield.
A wave of force struck the warrior like a hammer, snapping his head to the side. Ozpin twirled before us, his robes flapping, and swung his stave before him horizontally, as though he were slamming the head into someone's stomach. The foe was a good ten feet away, however, and not at all close enough for the staff to hit.
Despite that, the Warrior cried out in pain as he was picked up off his feet and thrown away. He crashed through some seats and into the back of another fight, knocking everyone to the ground. Still alive, he pushed himself up, but was quickly beset and dragged into the fight he'd inadvertently interrupted.
"What are you children doing here!?"
"We're going for the King," I said. "There's an army coming, Ozpin. They burned all the villages to the south-east! The war has to end now, otherwise it never will."
"I see." Ozpin's eyes hardened. His lips thinned. "I will cut you a path to the arena. Keep running and ignore any who stand in your path."
"Thank you!"
The Sage nodded. "I can buy you only time. Go now."
None of us dared question him. Ozpin's abilities as a Sage were still a mystery, but his power was not. Those that tried to challenge us as we made our way down were thrown aside, or found their progress impeded by some invisible, impenetrable force. The fighting continued on either side, while those ahead were pushed aside, or we had to circle around them, protected at all times by Ozpin's power. Or at least until someone noticed and decided to engage him directly.
Down in the arena, the King looked in our direction and shouted something to Cinder. She managed to break free from her opponent and bring a flaming hand to her chest, whispering something under her breath.
No. Not this. Not here!
"Stop her!" I yelled.
Weiss swung Myrtenaster in the air and pointed it forward, launching three spikes of ice toward Cinder. The distance was too great, however, and by the time they reached her, they were already beginning to weaken.
Cinder's eyes snapped open and she wrenched her flaming hand forward, not only completing her spell, but also using the flames to blast aside Weiss' spell a second before it could harm her. The Elementalist threw her hand into the air and let go, releasing the ember, which fluttered upward as if it had a power of its own. The clouds above the city began to roil and swirl, forming something akin to a whirlpool in the sky. Within that, something glowed.
It was too late. She'd done it.
A hot, fiery mass fell from the sky like a miniature sun. It twisted and turned, oddly ball-shaped but uneven. For a second it looked like it might come down and impact the stadium, bathing us all in flames, before the ball exploded outward, long, fiery limbs spread wide into the sky, halting its fall and allowing it to hover for a moment. A flaming neck reared up, beak aimed towards the sky as a piercing shriek cut through everyone's minds, driving many to stop fighting and clutch their ears. When it finally finished, the monstrous creature made entirely of fire surveyed the battlefield, suspended above the main arena.
Phoenix had been summoned.
I'd personally seen Phoenix kill over a hundred Grimm; circle a small village and burn everything outside its walls to ash. Here, the great beast hovered, not yet attacking but instead watching those fight beneath it with an almost curious air.
"W-We need to stop Cinder," Weiss said. "If she was killed or knocked unconscious, it would lose its grasp on this world."
"You're sure of that?" Ren asked.
"No. Absolutely not. Summons belong in myth and legend. There are stories, but… everyone in Atlas thought that was all they were – that or spells given shape and mistaken for having a sentience of their own."
I didn't think Phoenix was the same. I'd seen Cinder cast spells into shapes, her sword an example, but Phoenix had eyes that looked down on and judged us. It moved like an animal, flapping its wings to stay aloft, despite that, if it were simply a spell, it would not need to.
"Why isn't it attacking?" Ruby asked.
As if her words were a suggestion, the summon began to fly in a lazy circle. "You just had to ask," Blake muttered.
The summon didn't attack, however. I knew it could shoot fire from its beak, not to mention the attack potential of it just flying into and through us, but it instead chose to circle the central arena, turning sideways on and banking. Perhaps it didn't want to risk harming its own allies, or maybe Cinder wanted it more to dissuade anyone coming near. Whatever the case, it continued to fly faster and faster, and I began to notice the temperature in the air increasing, not to mention light shimmering down by the arena.
In the two minutes it took us to make the rest of the journey down, Phoenix's plan became more apparent. A great wall, easily twenty or thirty metres tall, had sprung up under it, connecting down from Phoenix to the ground like some kind of cylindrical tower that ringed the arena. It cut us off from getting in, preventing us from even seeing what was going on. Everyone in the stands was safe assuming they weren't knocked into it, but the Kings of Vale and Mistral were trapped inside, essentially locked away in another world for all we could hope to do.
"Weiss?" I asked.
The Mage responded not with words but with ice and water instead, blasting a huge amount of it at the wall of flame. The ice struck and melted instantly, joining the water in casting great gouts of steam into the air. It hissed and burned, evaporating almost immediately. The wall did not so much as flicker, let alone weaken.
She tried again, this time creating a tunnel of ice that she thrust into it, hoping to give us at least a few seconds with which we could get inside. But that, too, failed to get past, collapsing in on itself the moment it touched the unnatural fire.
"Damn it. Now what?" Yang asked.
"It has to be hollow," Pyrrha said. "Otherwise, everyone inside would die. Cinder included."
"Well, unless you can jump thirty metres in the air, I doubt that'll help. Assuming this thing doesn't have a ceiling, or that the big firebird can't burn you to ash the second you try it."
I knelt, picked up a loose pebble and tossed it at the wall. It fizzled and cracked instantly, exploding into tiny shards of rock and dust. It hadn't even passed through, instead being knocked back at us by the force.
"How long do you think she can hold this up?"
"Assuming it's not the Phoenix doing it on its own, I don't know," Weiss said. "The problem is, how long do you think she needs to kill the King's bodyguard and then the King himself? Less time than it would take us to find a way through this, I think."
Time we didn't have. Pyrrha was right when she said the construct had to be hollow. People who used spells that contained elements weren't immune to it, not unless they had a Passive like mine. They were, however, immune to it when they were casting, otherwise the very act of shooting fire from one's hand would damage their flesh. It was like when Weiss used ice. If she for some reason fired it at herself, she could hurt and kill herself, but if she summoned a shard of ice to float above her hand, there would be no risk of hypothermia. At least until she used it.
As such, Cinder would die if she touched this fire, so it was just something to keep them out. A barrier in the middle of their fight and Cinder's. There was no telling how thick it would be, but it couldn't be so thick that Cinder herself was at risk. Maybe a foot or two at most. The problem was that the thickness didn't matter so much as the intensity. No one was going to die by running out of oxygen here; they were going to be burned to death.
It was the temperature that was the real problem, and if the flames were self-sustaining, or being sustained from Phoenix, then Weiss alone wouldn't be able to affect that. Maybe she would if she had a Mage Array with loads of others chiming in to help, but there was no way we could get something like that set up around here. The Mistral Heroes would interfere.
Without saying anything, I hurried around the wall, towards some bodies crumpled at the base. Some were from Mistral, others Vale, but with the sloped nature of the stands, some of the fallen had rolled down to our position. I knelt by a few and started to loot them.
"What are you doing?" Blake asked, following me.
"I have a plan. Help me get all their armour off. Anything that's metal, I don't care what kind."
Blake didn't question and instead began to help, and the others caught up a moment later. There were questions, but I chose not to answer them, partly because there wasn't time, and partly because I knew they'd never accept it. Before long, a small pile of steel, iron and other material was collected. By this point, Ozpin's protection had also ended, and a few spells started to come our way. Along with the occasional enemy. Everyone else circled me, protecting me from them as I pushed a hand into the mass of metal and concentrated.
It took time to get them all to the point of melting. As expected, the pile grew smaller as it did, condensing into a single lump of bright orange metal, imperfect and impure. The mixed alloys would make for poor equipment liable to break in a fight, if it didn't shatter in the quenching process itself.
Metal had a higher melting point than ice or water, even magical variants. If I had enough, I might have been able to forge a tunnel I could push through the wall, but that was a dangerous prospect. Not least of all, the sheer material I'd need would be astounding, but depending on how fast the tunnel melted, those within would cook to death, basically baked in a kiln. Luckily, that wasn't my plan.
The metal fell in on itself as it finally became liquid. Modulating the heat with my hands in order to alternate between fully liquid and not, just a little solid, I drew it up onto my body. There was a gasp from nearby, someone no doubt seeing what they must have perceived as pure suicide. It would have been were it not for my Passive. I was still forging, after all, so to me it felt like tepid water all across my body.
More and more came, until my body was covered. With my hands and my mind, I smoothed it as best I could, allowing one piece to cool enough to become solid and then, with a combination of my hands and my Engraving Skill, scraping the area flat until it resembled armour. At least enough so to adhere and attach to my body. If it were anything less, or too much a liquid, it would fall or slide off. Piece by piece, minute by agonising minute, I built the suit of armour up, starting with my feet and legs before moving onto my thighs, hips, stomach and then chest. It was a hideously constricting suit of plate that covered every segment of my body, movement only allowed by intersecting plates at my joints.
The final piece was the helm, which I shaped up by pulling molten metal with my fingers over my cheeks and face, closing my eyes as I worked. When it was done, I could barely breathe, but a quick pull of my fingers across my mouth and eyes created space enough to see and draw breath. The rest of the Guild was staring at me.
"Okay," Nora said, "I'll admit, that was pretty cool."
"I'm not sure what a full suit of armour will do for you, though," Ren said. "Surely, it would just melt. If you didn't cook inside of it."
That was a risk for sure. Conventional armour would indeed conduct heat to an incredible degree and kill me faster. But that was conventional armour. This wasn't armour, at least not properly. If someone were to take a spear and plunge it into my stomach, the tip would pierce through with ease and kill me. My breastplate was still soft, after all, still in a state somewhere between solid and liquid. More the former than the latter.
More importantly, I was still forging. So long as the heat was high, and I continued to work on the armour with my Engraving Skill, my Passive Skill considered this a work in progress. The armour was incomplete.
"Stay safe," I said. "I'll deal with Cinder."
Before they could ask how or why, I turned and stepped into the inferno. I took a breath a second before I did and held it, running a gauntlet down over my faceplate to once more cover my eyes and mouth. The fire from Phoenix could still steal oxygen and dry my eyes to the point they popped, but only if it touched me.
Right now, the fire could not. That was the thing about fire, really. It was the differences in temperature that caused the consequences of injury by fire, and no matter how it was summoned, this was still fire. It was hot, incredibly so, but fire itself did not have the energy to burn at temperatures hot enough to melt steel. That was why coal fires were used, because the coal itself would help the fires burn hotter. This had no such fuel.
When I stepped into the fire, my body – my mass – was hotter than the fire itself. The flames licked at my molten armour, but they were cooler than it. If anything, heat was stolen from me, but I kept that going from the palms of my hand, constantly using Stoke the Forge to maintain my ridiculously high temperature.
A temperature I did not – could not – feel. My skin did not burn, nor did my organs cook. Trapped as I was within the armour, my own molten steel created a buffer against the fire, a shield of hotter fire that kept Phoenix's away.
But I could still suffocate in what was essentially a coffin of molten steel. I forced myself to keep moving, concentrating and using Engraving to sheer and push the metal around my knees and ankles to simulate walking, almost like muscles, increasing and decreasing mass above and below the knee-plates to contract and relax my shin-plates, taking one step after another. I was blind. I kept going straight.
It felt like an eternity but couldn't have been. It was more akin to thirty seconds, but my lungs burned from lack of air and I wanted nothing more than to tear the helmet from my head. To do so, however, would be to incinerate myself immediately. I had a second to wonder if I'd made an agonising miscalculation, and then suddenly my armour was cooling more rapidly – incredibly so. I let it go, let it harden, and then tore the face-plate away, shattering the metal in one go.
I was on the inside, in a fresh hell of scorching-hot air and the sound of roaring flames. I could breathe, though. I was in.
My timing could not have been better, or was that worse? The King of Vale's Bodyguard, a Knight in armour burnished gold, fell to the floor with a mighty crash, run through by Cinder. The Elementalist was panting slightly, the evidence of a hard-fought battle. She turned toward the King of Vale, who was still on one knee, clutching his stomach. As she did, she saw him.
"No," Cinder said, voice filled with fury. "No, no, no! Impossible. I refuse to believe it!"
Stoke the Forge kicked back into life again. The armour around my body became molten once more and this time I engraved some space around my joints, allowing me to move more freely. I didn't need the full covering now since I didn't have to wade through a literal sea of flames. "Why, Cinder?" I asked. "Why do this?"
"No! You're a Blacksmith. You shouldn't be here! Why did you come back!?"
"Why? You sent an army to burn Ansel to the ground. You tried to slaughter my village and kill my family!"
Cinder took a step back. "What? That was not-" Her eyes flicked to the side, to her King, her father-in-law. She scowled and summoned a sword of fire once more. "It doesn't matter. Surrender, Jaune. You can't hope to defeat me. If you surrender now, I shall allow you to live. I will even do my utmost to ensure your friends survive as well. I can have Phoenix protect them."
I brought Crocea Mors up. She was scorched and blackened from the fire, but a quick application of my Engraving Skill sent an invisible edge down the length of it, causing the imperfections to flutter away as if they'd never existed. The edge was sharper than it had ever been before. My answer was obvious.
"Don't do this, Jaune. It need not end like this."
"I think it has to…"
"What are you waiting for?" the King of Mistral, a rotund man with a heavy black beard, shouted. "Kill him already!"
Cinder hesitated. "My King, he is but a Blacksmith. An NPC. The Treaty-"
"Is broken. Forget about it. Once we rule here, we shall set the laws. Atlas will surrender to our might and Vacuo cannot put up a fight. Kill him and be done with it, Cinder. These are my orders to you."
There was a wave of force behind those words, and Cinder's body seemed to shiver. "A-As you command, my liege."
"Cinder…"
"Don't, Jaune," she pleaded. "Words are pointless now."
I readied my sword. "I guess so."
The two of us stared at one another for a moment, each sizing the other up. The Blacksmith and the Elementalist stood apart, a Prestige Hero against a Tier-Two NPC. A moment later, the tableau was shattered. Cinder leapt back and thrust a hand out, sending a wave of searing fire towards me.
My hands tightened. Heat poured from them, bringing my armour to a new high – burning bright red as I lunged forward, one molten arm in front of my face, shielding it from the flames. Once again, the fire rolled over and around me. With my head free, I could feel it more and some of my hair singed, but I was able to keep moving and the pain was momentary. There was a hazy shape indistinct through it and I brought Crocea Mors up with my other hand.
The inferno halted as the figure dodged, spinning to the side. Cinder's spell ended, and she dashed a small distance away, eyes locked onto mine as she brought both hands before her, crossed before her breast. A short sword appeared in each, formed entirely from fire. One foot struck down and she changed direction in a second, hurtling towards me. Her first sword struck mine, clanging against it, and despite that there was no metal in her blade, ours locked and made a sound upon contact. Her other came up and under, sliding through my guard as it lunged towards my ribs. I shifted my body just a little, allowing it to graze the side of me. It didn't splash and fizzle out as expected. Instead, the short sword cut through my molten armour, almost as if it were not made of fire but metal. It drew a cut along my flank. I ignored it and pushed her back, swinging for her head and forcing Cinder to step away.
So, despite being made of fire, her swords acted like regular ones. That was interesting. There wasn't much logic behind it, but that was magic for you. It wouldn't have made much sense for her to use them otherwise, since fire swords wouldn't cut or stab and she might as well have just been a glorified Mage trapped with one element.
As such, I allowed my armour to cool and become more solid. On the next exchange, Cinder managed to circle her weapon over and into my wrist, seeking to disarm me. Unlike the first time, the weapon this time bounced off my hardened armour.
Which was when Cinder grinned and dropped both – cupping her hands and bathing me in fire once more.
"Shit!"
Gods, it hurt. There was only a second or two to feel it before my instincts kicked in and my armour became molten once more, immune – or as immune as I was going to get – to the flames. I still had to shield my face so it wouldn't be burned, but the pain dissipated. I rolled away, fighting for distance as I considered my options. Cinder had lured me into dropping the heat on my armour and then switched back to fire spells to cook me. A clever move. I had the perfect counter to either her swords or her spells, but only one at a time.
It was still better than anyone else might have had. If it were Ruby here, she'd have been doubly in trouble. I was uniquely equipped to counter half of Cinder's abilities, and I had the pick on which half I wanted. It must have been galling for her, knowing that I could do that and that I was `just` an NPC.
In the end, I chose to keep my armour molten. I couldn't hope to hurt her at range, so forcing her to close in was my best chance. It took more concentration on my part, but it also made my armour fluid and gave me a better range of movement. When I closed in on her again, pushing through her flames, Cinder caught on and stopped wasting energy, instead summoning her twin swords once more.
"You know, I was serious when I said I would take you into my retinue, Jaune. Even before this, I respected you more than I cared to admit. Your determination. Your ferocity. Discovering that you were but a Blacksmith did nothing to change that. If anything, I admired it all the more. I admired you."
"And I you," I returned. "I saw you as a Princess who didn't care about Class or Caste. Someone who would lead Mistral well and genuinely do the best for her people." My words caused Cinder to hesitate. Her smile fell. "What happened to that woman, Cinder? What happened to her?"
Cinder's shoulders fell. "Her wishes were overridden."
"Cinder…?"
"I don't want to be here, Jaune. I don't want this." She gestured with one sword to the wall of fire that locked us in here, but I knew she meant beyond it, to the bloodshed and the killing. "I fought for peace. I fought to create this festival in the hopes it would bring an end to this. But in the end, that doesn't matter. I may be a Princess, but I am not Queen. I do not rule."
The King. My eyes flicked to him. He was hidden behind Cinder, smiling cruelly. He couldn't hear what she said, but I held little doubt that he wouldn't care either way. My blood boiled. This… This was all his fault.
"You don't need to do what he says!"
"He is my liege."
"You have a choice!"
"If that were true, do you not think I would have already? It is not that simple. His commands are absolute."
What did that mean? I growled and brought Crocea Mors up in time to block her sudden attack. I found myself even more pissed off by the look on her face – the sheer sorrow that pervaded her being. She didn't want this, I could tell, and yet she kept coming, attack after attack until the point that some got past my guard no matter what I did. One struck my arm and scored a line through my armour. Another nicked my upper thigh, dangerously close to an artery. A third came in for my stomach, but this time I reacted, rapidly cooling my armour there – localised in one spot. The metal became solid and turned her blow aside, deflecting it so that I earned a scratch and not a gaping wound.
Cinder's eyes widened, but I melted the armour once more before she could take advantage and launch a fireball up into my stomach. In the moment of hesitation, I drove forward and rammed my shoulder into her. Shocked, Cinder didn't try to block it.
She screamed in agony a second later. Cinder fell back quickly, throwing a huge ball of fire at me more to prevent any pursuit than cause any harm. With a free hand, she patted down her chest, revealing burned fabric that stuck painfully to skin burned pink. Even if I'd only touched her for a second, I'd burned her.
Who was the fire elemental now, huh?
I charged forward while she was off-balance. Crocea Mors cut wide arcs that forced her to hop back. Her weapons weren't long enough to reach me, and by keeping her on the back foot, she never had a chance to close the distance. Cinder let one go and tried to throw fire in my face, but this time I ignored it, closing my eyes and fighting through the pain to continue my onslaught.
Cinder didn't expect it, that much was clear. Crocea Mors cut through and caught her shoulder, drawing blood and a startled yelp. She flinched back, losing control over her fire. I lunged again, this time for her stomach, and though she managed avoid the attack by a hair's bready, she was unable to escape my other fist, which caught her in the forearm. It would have hit her face, but she brought her arm up in time. Even so, she staggered back with a grunt, wincing in pain as her left arm shivered, her fingers twitching unconsciously. I might have caused real damage with the burns, but I had to keep it up. If I let her regain control for even an instant, she'd be on top of me.
She fell back as I continued – giving ground in a desperate attempt to put some space between us and regain control of the fight. Every sword she brought forth, I smacked away with my longer reach. Every fireball or explosion she cast, I waded through with staunch determination and molten armour that forced the flames to part around me. She might have kicked, tripped or grappled with me, but to do so would be to kill herself.
My Blacksmithing had neutralised her. Cinder's flames could not burn hot enough, her weapons could not cut deep enough, and for all her Levels, her Skills and Stats could not save her if she could not touch me. From her wide eyes, she knew it. She gave ground, searching for something she could use.
She found it in the King of Vale.
I hadn't noticed, too focused on trying to push her back, but Cinder managed to retreat towards the wounded monarch. She leapt back behind him, grabbed him by the shoulders and pushed him towards me. The King's eyes widened but he was too weak to fight back.
Panicked, I dropped the heat from my armour – but even that wouldn't be fast enough to stop my own King burning to death on me. Instead, I quenched my armour immediately causing it to crack and fracture. The King struck my weakened breastplate and bounced back. I tried to catch him, but he fell with a groan, lying flat on the ground.
When he fell, Cinder was behind him, crouched down with something new in her hands. I had a second to gasp before she thrust up, and the sword we'd found in Vacuo – Watts' sword – pierced through my armour, my chest, my ribcage and then then my skin again. It erupted from my back with a sickening squelch.
Cinder's cheek pressed against my chest. I coughed once, twice, and on the second, blood splattered out across her hair.
"I'm sorry, Jaune," she whispered, letting go of the hilt, using one hand to grip my shoulder even as the other gently took Crocea Mors from my nerveless fingers. The sword fell to the floor. Hers, the one she'd run me through with, remained lodged in my body despite her not holding it.
"A-Ahh…"
Her hands came up to my cheeks, gripping them, keeping me upright. I expected fire, but what I got was moisture. Cinder smiled at me and wiped one my tears away with her thumb. "You were brave, Jaune. So brave. So strong. But in the end, despite all of that, you were just a Blacksmith."
I… I… No… Everything hurt. I reached out with one hand, trying to touch her face. S-Stoke the Forge. I could still… I could still end this. Before my hand could touch her, it was knocked aside with contemptuous ease, Cinder almost being gentle as she did so. Not that it mattered. My body sagged and fell, slumped forwards onto her. Cinder adjusted her footing to bear my weight. I couldn't stand on my own feet anymore.
Slowly, I was lowered down. First to my knees, and then walked back so that I lay flat on my back. I felt the sword that transfixed me grate as the ground pushed it back into me. It remained inside my body, lodged somewhere in my organs.
Cinder stroked a hand over my face as she laid me down, kneeling at my shoulder. I tried to do something, anything, but I could no longer feel my hands, let alone move them. One was gripped onto the sword that had killed me, but that was it. The other lay flat at my side.
"If there is a life after this, it is my hope you come back as something better," Cinder said. "You, of all people, deserve to be a Hero. More than I."
Above us, Phoenix warbled mournfully.
Cinder's skin was warm, or perhaps it was I whose skin was cold. Her fingertips brushed over my eyes, closing them. I didn't have the strength to open them.
"Good night, brave Blacksmith."
I heard more than felt her stand. Her footsteps moved away. Why not? She was done with me. I was done. Blake. Ruby. Mom. Dad. I'm… I'm sorry. In the end, I was just a Blacksmith. In the end, I wasn't strong enough. Just… a Blacksmith.
If only I could have been something stronger. If only I could be stronger. If only I could have made myself stronger. If… If only I could reshape myself as easily as I could metal. But in the end, that was all I'd been able to do. While I could make so many wonderful things, forge weapons and armour with incredible skill, I'd never been able to change my destiny.
Honestly… I should have known better. Maybe I had. Maybe, despite everything, I'd chosen this. Because the alternative was to stand by and do nothing while those I loved died. Better a fool's chance than no chance at all. That sounded right. I was a fool, but this was the life I'd chosen. A Blacksmith was only a Blacksmith at the end of the day. My lot wasn't to slay the dragon and save the princess. My job was to create things. To remake things. To forge impure and weak material into something stronger.
To forge…
Forge…
Forge.
My hand, still clutched around Watts' sword in a death grip, tightened imperceptibly.
My cracked lips moved.
"S-Stoke… the Forge…"
Pale blue light flickered fitfully behind my eyes.
/-/
It was the sound which alerted her, a sound like steam pouring from a boiling pot. A hissing that heralded something far hotter than even her brightest flames burning on contact with naked air. Cinder turned, eyes growing wide as she watched the man – the boy – place one hand down onto the ground and push himself up onto one knee.
Steam poured from him. It obscured him. His skin shimmered and sweat ran down exposed flesh. The gaping wound in his chest, the one she had imposed, was gone. So, too, was the sword. In its place, an expanse of pulsing silver remained. Living metal.
"How?" Cinder asked. "How are you still alive?"
There was no answer. The Revenant reached down and picked up its sword once more, pale, glowing eyes flickering through the steam. Cinder's eyes narrowed. In the end, it would not matter. Though he might stand, and though his wounds might somehow have healed, he would still fall. He had no choice, for she had no choice.
It was their destiny. He was still just a Blacksmi-
No.
Her eyes must have betrayed her, for the alternative was not possible. Cinder shook her head and took a step back, summoning once more a sword of fire. The haze of steam that poured from him, as if he had come fresh from the forge himself, obscured the air around and above him, the heat causing the air to flicker and warp before her eyes.
And yet, as the haze dissipated, the illusion did not. The words above his head which donated his name and his Class continued to do so, but before her eyes they… flickered. Shimmered.
Changed.
"Impossible," Cinder whispered.
JAUNE
SWORDMASTER
BUM-BUM-BUUUM!
It is the sound of the laws of an entire world shattering. Or people's expectations of it, anyway. Obviously, this is going to raise questions galore, but those are things that will be answered in time. Not now, obviously. Now is hardly the time for exposition or explanation.
Ooh, a switch to third person. Ominous. Yeah, looking back, though I have enjoyed writing in first person a lot more than I thought I would, and there HAVE been things I NEEDED to keep secret that would have been instantly revealed were this third person, I think that if I write first person in the future, I shall do it so that it's 75% first person, but we occasionally have third person POV from other characters. Just rarely.
Next Chapter: 17th September
P a treon . com (slash) Coeur
