Chapter 137: Ecoul sabiei

​Smoke drifted over the shattered steps of the Town Hall like a thick, dirty carpet, clinging to stone fragments and twisted metal. Elias emerged from the basement, stepping over the carcass of a decorative column pulverized by an explosion. He moved smoothly, without haste, though every step he took resonated with pain.

​The current phase of the mission has failed. The skiff is destroyed, communication with the fleet is lost, and personal magic reserves are exhausted from maintaining shields. Further presence in the epicenter of enemy territory without support is mathematically impractical, he reasoned mentally.

​He stopped at the edge of the square, assessing an escape route to the harbor, when the air density in front of him shifted. A dense shadow detached itself from the carcass of a burnt-out cargo wagon.

​Noah didn't utter a word. In his lowered hand, a long, slightly curved sword gleamed dimly. The blade still retained an oily warmth from cutting through the etheric power cables of the Inquisitorial skiff.

​Elias didn't waste time assessing his opponent or engaging in hollow talk. His fingers adjusted their grip on the light wood of his staff, and a brief, blinding flash of light erupted from its tip.

​The light struck Noah, but instead of binding him, it merely caused the skin on his face and hands to smoke. Noah didn't pause for a fraction of a second. He broke through the magical barrier with a sudden burst. One moment he was by the wagon, the next he was within arm's reach of the Punisher.

​Elias realized his mistake instantly.

​The light at the end of the staff went out. Elias shifted to physical defense, utilizing his weapon as a piece of ultra-durable, enchanted wood.

​Noah's sword came down from above, aiming precisely for the collarbone. The strike met the shaft of the staff in its path. A dry, splintering crack rang out. Elias smoothly parried the blade aside, using Noah's own momentum against him, and delivered a short, thrusting jab with the butt end of the staff into Noah's solar plexus.

​Noah stumbled back, feeling his sternum cave in with a crunch.

​He attacked again and again. His blade became a blurred smear. He struck from unthinkable angles, delivering thrusts and slashes in a seamless flow. But each time, millimeters from the target, the blade hit a defense.

​The Punisher read the micro-movements of his shoulders, the shift in his center of gravity, and the tension in his calves. His mind calculated the strike's trajectory an instant before the sword even began to move.

​His counterattacks were sparse and devastating. A sharp sweep behind the knee. A brutal strike to the elbow joint. A glancing block culminating in a butt-end smash to the jaw. Noah felt his body beginning to fail. Blood ran down his face, flooding his eyes; the gashes on his shoulders and chest refused to knit, the edges of the wounds charred from contact with the staff.

​I can't reach him, Noah coldly noted, spitting out clots of blood. Another glancing blow from the staff tore across his ribs, leaving a deep groove.

​Noah leaped back several meters. Elias gripped the staff with both hands, changing his stance.

​"I'll have to use it," Noah whispered.

"Ecoul sabiei."

​Noah lowered his sword. He forced his heart to make a few monstrously powerful contractions. All the blood in his body, under immense pressure, surged into his right shoulder, forearm, and hand. The arm swelled instantly, the skin stretching to its limit. The veins turned black, standing out against the pale flesh in thick, pulsing cords. The metal of the hilt groaned beneath clamped fingers. The muscles began to tremble with a fine, painful shudder.

​He stepped forward, intentionally dropping his left shoulder and exposing his flank.

​Elias saw it. And instantly calculated the probability: the enemy is exhausted, losing concentration, making a fatal error; the vector for a lethal strike is open. The Punisher made a brief, swift lunge, closing the distance and driving the pointed end of the staff straight toward Noah's heart.

​The wood impaled the flesh with a crunch, breaking ribs and tearing tissue. Noah let out a muffled groan, blood spewing from his mouth. But Noah took a step into the blow, skewering himself deeper onto the staff, letting the shaft protrude from his back. He locked his opponent in place.

​Elias's eyes widened slightly.

​In that exact instant, Noah delivered his strike.

​A standard horizontal slash at the level of the chest and neck. But due to the colossal strain, his arm twitched through space so violently that the blade fractured in the air.

​Instead of a single edge, fifteen blurred arcs of steel sliced through the atmosphere. They followed one after another along the exact same trajectory, spaced mere milliseconds apart.

​The first strike sheared the shaft of the staff in half. The second shattered an instinctively raised etheric barrier. The third, fourth, and fifth tore open Elias's chest cavity, crushing the protective amulets beneath his clothes, cleaving clavicles and ribs. The sixth severed his right arm at the elbow. The rest turned his torso into a bloody slurry of shredded flesh and bone.

​Elias collapsed to his knees. He looked at the stump of his staff clamped in his left hand, then slowly shifted his gaze to the night sky, choked with the thick smoke of burning Dornheim.

​His lips moved barely perceptibly. A quiet, wet sigh escaped his punctured lungs. Noah, standing a step away from him, could make out only a few words:

​"Forgive me..."

​The body of the High Punisher rolled heavily onto its side. His eyes turned glassy, staring blankly at the gray ash on the cobblestones.

​Noah stood over him, drawing ragged breaths into his mangled lungs. The sword slipped from his unclenching fingers and clattered across the stones.

​He gritted his teeth and ripped the fragment of the staff from his chest. Black blood pumped in spurts onto the cobblestones, but his regeneration, freed from the dampening effect of Elias's magic, slowly began to knit the edges of the torn wound.

​Noah leaned his back against the cold stone wall of a surviving fragment of the colonnade. He slowly lifted his head, and rain began to wash the soot and blood from his face.

​Suddenly, the clouds shifted.

​High in the sky, dark, massive silhouettes appeared. First one. Then a second. A third. A fourth. A fifth. They tore through the veil of fog, moving in a strict, perfect wedge formation, dropping altitude with terrifying, mechanical synchronicity.

​Damn it, didn't I destroy them? Noah thought, watching their red lights ignite in the darkness one by one.

He rose… and started toward the Heart.