O Glorious Combat
The big cop’s face contorted as I charged him, from steely-eyed focus to wide-eyed shock. What did I look like to him? A blur? An unseen flash of motion, a bolt of lightning? His outstretched arms became a target as I pulled one towards me, displacing his balance, then I planted myself under his hips and flung him through the air, my own hips serving as a fulcrum. He crashed into the ground before the feet of an astonished Rorian, who had pressed himself against the back wall in an attempt to stay as far away from the incipient scuffle as possible.
Another officer lunged for me, but a cross and a lead uppercut shut off his lights before he could even think about blocking. He tumbled to the carpet and stared blankly at the ceiling, spittle drooling out of his open mouth.
Two more came, and I dodged back for some space. My enhanced speed and perception would amount to nothing if they started to get grips on me, slowing me down. I flung a chair at them, halting my foes in their tracks, and glanced behind me, just as the big cop was on his feet again, tackling from behind, but I pulled the same trick again: sliding under his hips and throwing him over me, using his momentum to topple the others like a wrecking ball smashing through stone.
“Brilliant, Yohei, brilliant!” Vyxtarion cackled.
With one foot I caught my backpack, kicked it into the air, and looped one arm through. Between being bogged down by the pack’s bulk and the cramped nature of Manaha’s house, I was in an ill-favored situation for my type of combat; I favored the freedom and space of the outdoors, where I could dance and prod at my foes. It was a good thing these officers were only human. Without lethal weaponry, they stood little chance.
Captain Lei seemed to realize the same thing. He and a few of his officers trained their pistols on me, and he began to shout a warning, which I found kind of him to issue, but naive.
Time began to slow.
His words came slowly and drawn-out, like he was learning to speak, and I divined what he was going to say long before he finished: Stop moving, or we will open fire! His words came to me as an intuition, not too unlike the delivery of my telepathic companions.
“Combat, O glorious combat!” Vyxtarion bellowed, his crown beaming a brilliant blue. He didn’t waste time speaking: his meaning imprinted itself within me, and I instantaneously understood him. “Do you feel it? The Weave is interfaced within us all! Show them my preeminence and make these fools regret the day they crossed a Child of the Titans!”
Everything slowed to a glacial pace and my surrounding reality became like a buffering video, crawling milliseconds at a time.
It flooded into me all at once. I embraced the Thoughtweave as it penetrated my mind, an overwhelming tidal wave comprising the psychic information of everyone around me: surface thoughts, bodily commands, gut instincts, subconscious biases, biological impulses, and even hints of deeply embedded core memories.
Once, the sheer weight of everyone’s minds would have crushed me like an ant beneath a boulder, but I recalled my training and braced myself against the surfeit. Drowning in a sea of excess data, I cut through the deluge, honing in on the minds of the officers arrayed before me.
The female officer behind Lei was terrified. Who is she? What’s happening?
Time to kill this bitch! Another officer thought.
Die, die, die! The most violent among them was filled with a raging resentment.
Not even a second had passed, ticking by slower than a drip of molasses. Time flowed differently within a shamanic battletrance: it could rush by, skid to a halt, or stretch—as it was doing so now—to make one second feel like one minute. I had more than enough time to exploit the surge of information gained through the Weave. The officers’ lethal intentions required an escalation of power, and Vyx had flayed open their minds. All I had to do was pull on their strings.
Time snapped back to a normal flow. Lei was only halfway done with his warning. “Stop moving, or we—”
I leapt upon the table, so that I might gain a better view of my enemies, and roared in unison with Vyxtarion, my guardian and son of the primeval god Goretax, Devourer of Thought, and my command rebounded through the Weave, spreading through the minds of the officers and infecting their intentions like a virus overpowering a weak host.
“Kneel!”
I commanded, and the effect was immediate. Half the officers dropped to one knee and lowered their heads, while the other half struggled, frozen as statues, gritting their teeth as they resisted a foreign impulse. Only Lei maintained control, gasping for air, overcoming my order. His will was strong, stronger than I had expected.
His reaction time was quicker than I had accounted for as well. As I soared through the air, he fired, bullets puncturing through my torso, but I followed through with my attack nonetheless, slamming my lead knee against Lei’s head and landing in the hallway, surrounded by officers, kneeling or slowly regaining control of themselves. More police stood guard outside the home, but the Weave had reached into the street, and they were struggling against my command as well.
I became a whirlwind of fists, elbows, and knees, fighting my way out of the narrow hallway as pain emanated from my midsection. Though the officers struggling to fight off my command were rendered more sluggish (I ignored fighting the others that remained kneeling in submission), their raw numbers hampered my escape. I slipped punches, threw out hooks, spun around grabs, and knocked the air out of one officer with an aggressive straight knee to the gut.
One tenacious cop leapt from the ground, wrapping himself around my leg, forcing me to twist and shake him off, and in doing so I’d lost time to respond to the next threat, barely blocking a blow to my head from an officer on the opposite side, but he didn’t see my hook in response and reeled backwards. Masked by his ally, another officer was already mid-air, connecting with my waist and wrapping himself around me. I hammered at the back of his neck, forcing him to detach and crumple to the ground, crying in pain.
The exit was within reach, and I flowed towards it like a dancer transcendent on an opening night. Opposing limbs clashed with mine, bodies were flung back and forth. Blood splotched itself upon the blue wallpaper. The officers’ fear, anger, and confusion rushed into me through the Weave, but I held my mind above their emotions, flush with a sense of clarity and complete attention. As I crossed the doorway outside, one last cop crumpling from a strike to the jaw, I tasted fresh air, the iron tang of blood in my mouth, and the sweetness of victory.
The guards outside stumbled backwards, mouths agape. Golden fire enveloped my body, lighting up the night. Ithreniya fluttered beside me, singing a song of love, the gem on her thorax shining like a golden sun. Her fire washed over me, not only harmless and gentle, but restorative: easing my pain, stitching together my wounds, filling me with confidence.
“Live, Yohei! Live!” She sang.
The hallway behind me was a chorus of moans and whimpers. Officers rolled about on the ground, or propped themselves against the wall. Captain Lei pushed through the crowd, waving his hands.
“Masks!” His voice was hoarse and weak, but he persisted, miming the action of putting on a gas mask. “Masks!”
Melting out of the fog, two familiar figures in black cloaks approached. Fog seeped out of their brass censers, nearly imperceptible within the thick vapors encasing the street. Dreamwraiths, Manaha had called them. Puzzle pieces were beginning to slot together.
The officers around me scrambled to don their masks and avoid the wraiths, giving the undead a wide berth as they hovered in the sky, but the undead simply ignored them, turning their hoods to face me. I rose to the challenge, striding across the lawn, passing Manaha as he stood with his hands on his head, astounded at the chaos and equally distraught about the state of his house.
The wraiths cackled—an otherworldly, halting noise—then began their typical hypnotic hiss.
No fear, and no hesitation: I knew now their speed and sleeping fog were nowhere near a match for Vyxtarion’s battletrance. I leapt upon one of the wraiths, pockmarking it open with rapid stabs and sprinkling cleansing salt in the open gashes before leaping through the air onto the other. It attempted to knock me from the sky with its censer, but I tanked the hit and descended upon it with the same method.
Vyxtarion cackled throughout it all. “Glory, glory! Glorious battle!” He had laughed through my entire escape.
I dropped to the pavement, rolling back to my feet. The defeated wraiths twitched violently in the sky as a great gale of wind sucked in all the fog. They were surely returning to the Land of the Dead. I pondered snatching their masks (the red Dihennen runes looked slightly different than the mask in my possession), but I let them slide into the vortexes and vanish. After two golden droplets slipped away from view, the black cloaks and legless skeletons collapsed onto the street, motionless.
We all caught our breath collectively. The Ahawai police officers lingered by the door, mesmerized by the vanishing of the dreamwraiths. They clutched at their injuries, leaning on each other for support, checking for serious wounds. Their desire for battle had gone. Instead, their thoughts had turned to curiosity and hope. I felt it through the Weave.
She defeated the wraiths. How is that even possible? An officer thought, lowering his pistol.
Could she do it? Another officer bit her lip. Could she free this city?
Captain Lei thought similarly: Is she strong enough to defeat Ranveer?
Their bloodlust gone, I let Vyx’s battletrance fade. I wasn’t interested in helping my foes with their liberation or in dealing with the man Lei called Ranveer. Let them fight their own battles. I had my own duty to bear.
“Demand one of them as tribute,” said Vyxtarion. “We deserve a reward after such a battle. I have never manipulated the Weave while crossed with so many… I hunger for flesh! Only the richness of an enemy’s heart shall sate my hunger!”
“No. We’re done here.” I felt some measure of disgust to be treated as a threat, but I was never going to submit. Ahawai wasn’t safe for me. It was time for my companions and I to wander once more, as we too often did. I began to leave, grateful that the remaining fog would soon mask me from view.
A few of the officers started to follow, but Lei held out his hand, letting me go in peace. Vyxtarion followed, grumbling about his hunger, while Ithreniya attended to my remaining few scratches, searing them shut with her fire. The sweetness of victory was evaporating. In its place, a profound chasm of loneliness.
“Wait!” A voice called out for me to stop.
I turned to find Rorian in the middle of the street, chest heaving. In one hand he carried a pistol.
“You’re Atorian,” he declared.
“That’s right.”
“Worse than that, you’re a shaman.”
I narrowed my eyes, defiant. “I am.”
“Are they here, then? Your shadowy familiars? They’ve been with us the whole time, hiding?”
“Of course. Will you show yourselves?” I asked. Ithreniya and Vyxtarion assented, dispelling their glimmer and revealing themselves in their full ethereal splendor. They flew beside me, protective.
“How could I be so stupid?” Rorian shuddered, his face contorting. “You should turn yourself in to the Empire! It’s the right thing to do! Renne grants clemency towards cooperative Atorians. You’d be able to live with your people, in safety, in peace, earn an honest income—perhaps even start a family.”
“Live in Renne, on their terms? Don’t be ridiculous. A gilded cage still has bars.”
“The Divinities will send Rennian Templars for you!” Rorian snapped. “And they will show you no mercy! You ought to surrender yourself as soon as you can. It’s for your own good!”
“I refuse.”
Rorian threw up his hands. “I am obligated—duty bound!—to report you. All citizens of Renne must serve in the face of The Only War. You know this. Yohei, please! Surrender yourself before a squadron of Templars descend upon you and imprison you in the deepest dungeons of Noros—or worse!”
“Then do your duty. I know I shall do mine. Goodbye, Rorian.”
He snapped the pistol towards me, hands quivering like a newborn doe. Vyxtarion hissed, but I held up a hand for him to stop. I didn’t need the Weave to read Rorian. I could see it plain in his eyes. He hadn’t the courage to pull the trigger.
I whirled and marched away, listening. No footsteps chased after me, no final gunshot rung out—there was only Rorian bellowing a curse of frustration swallowed by the night. Then silence and emptiness, as I returned into Ahawai’s incessant fog.