the area where the history and legend; of the creation of the alliance
of the forming of the three; this has been deemed worthy to pass on..[..The Duel..]
After everyone had finished ooing and aahing about the gargantuan reliquary, they left the blasted sands of the Land of Nightmares, and Drask felt the chill returning and stabbing its viselike grip into his bones once more. He shivered, but gasped as he looked up into the temple. A red carpet stretched down an infinite hall, lined with portraits and torch brackets. Windows punctuated the hallway every now and then. Far down the hall's length, there began to be rows upon rows of pews, extending down like the nave of a cathedral to an altar the shone like a satellite dish viewed from an airliner. Columns braced the walls and the stained glass, supporting a ceiling that was lost beyond view. No choice but to go forward. Drask sheathed Vaelot's Will, and the ring of ivory on metal echoed back fully forty seconds later. They walked down the aisle of the Temple.
As they walked, Drask looked out the windows, and immediately they struck him as odd. Most weren't stained glass, but that wasn't what bothered him. Each window, whether stained or not, looked out upon a different scene, either one created in art or entirely natural. A rural village in the middle of winter. A fallen hero, now a saint, rising up into eternity. Angels combating daemons. A farm in spring. The depths of a volcano before it erupts. More and more scenes, pictures upon pictures upon pictures. Drask thought back to the Raven's cloaked advice... Look inside for the noonday sun, ere you see the moon arise? Certainly it must have something to do with fire, as it was inside him... protection from the night or the creatures in it? Hashing it over in his mind, but making no headway, the Dragon decided to let it be for the moment. He stopped where the Temple spread out east and west to form a cross of the building's foundation.
There was a woman, pale skin, brown hair flowing past her shoulders, dressed in a white silk gown with a cape lined with ermine fur. Upon her brow, she wore a tiara of silver or white gold. Hazel eyes seemed to bore through Drask's scales, searching his mind for intentions. She stood on a balcony just behind the altar, and she watched. How long had she known of their presence here? Drask bowed and addressed her, his voice booming with echoes that resounded from all the walls around him. 'Lady, we come in peace, and have no wish to harm any innocents in this sacred place. Perhaps you remember us, the band of Amiadus' followers who battled Dimindium's legions not more than a few months ago? We seek only what you would be willing to give us, either possession of an artifact or the knowledge of where it lies.'
'And if I deny you both? What would you do then, you who have bathed many with the blood of innocents?
Stunned, Drask recoiled for a second, and carefully answered: 'We would first ask that you reconsider, and then we would leave, hoping to return at some point with the ability to persuade you to help forward our goal of banishing Neit.'
'Well met, sir Dragon. Perhaps your leaders would meet with me and my fellow sisters while you and your fellows guard the gates against those who follow? We have been watching both your party and theirs for a number of days.'
Romulus smiled suddenly, smugly... As if she had spoken something into his mind. He and vAldiCi bowed to the Lady, and strode towards the altar. Drask followed the others back down the corridor, towards the entrance to the Temple. It was night in the dreamscape, no light shone through the opened marble doors. When Drask and the rest were about one hundred paces from the doors, they slammed. Torches were extinguished by a sudden wind that sprang up. When Drask re-lit them, there were thirteen men... rather, almost men... just inside the entrance, walking slowly but confidently towards the WarAngels.
Anger soared around him as Drask drew the ivory blade, rage lending him strength and speed. His eyes glowed and lightning seemed to flow across the green of his irises. He roared a challenge to his long-time nemesis, the Dark Man, and warned the others:
'Do as you will with the rest, but the Dark Man is mine to kill!'
The Dark Man smiled.
* * * *
The thing was done. Twelve piles of dust lay strewn about the enormity of the Temple of Celica D'Acry. An unearthly wind scattered the remains of the Lords of Night. Time seemed to lag behind his actions as Drask looked quickly--slowly--around the room, seeing vAl being carried hurriedly but carefully out, seeing The Dark Man gather his senses about him. In slow motion the Dragon charged towards his longtime nemesis, consumed and surrounded by a righteous wrath more aligned with being sentient than with being a Dragon. Slowly the two came closer. Closer.
Drask felt himself filled with a grim purpose. Dispatch this Daemon he'd created, or die and dispatch him in death. For the Dark Man was literally the stuff of nightmares, the doubts and fears and hatreds that hide behind conscious thoughts, but struggle relentlessly to escape into the world in violence... And Drask avoided violence when he could. So the Dark Man had formed from these small things, but the whole was far more fierce, far more evil than just the sum of its parts.
Far from being unnerved by an eight-foot-tall Dragon hurtling towards him with only vengeance and violence on his mind, the Dark Man smiled. He knew exactly what was coming: he knew well the mind that had unwittingly spawned him. He lifted his bladed staff to assume a defensive posture. He nodded when Drask bent, still charging, to seize the fallen dagger of a dead immortal. The vampiric blade and Vaelot's Will collided with the crystal staff, and the clap echoed around the enormous chamber like a manufactured clap of thunder. Windows, lining all down the nave of the temple, exploded outward in a pulse of green and red and blue and white and orange glass shards, flying in a thousand directions at several hundred km/h. Schrapnel flying out into a desert.
The Dark Man raised an eyebrow, as if he had not anticipated the vehemence of the impact. When both combatants had recovered from the blow, the duel truly began. Sword, dagger, and tailsword, all acting together with a single grim purpose. Sparks flew as blades clattered off blades, parrying and attacking and turning aside stabs and thrusts and slashes. Intellect disappeared. Everything came down to instinct. Came down to anticipation. Came down to how well the duelers knew their enemy, their opposite, their other part. A staff whirled in a blinding motion that heralded death, while an ivory blade stove off the cut that might have got home.
Dueling is like dancing with a partner you hate.
The dance of death continued, and Drask began to concentrate his fury, attack the defenses of his nemesis. The Dragon aimed his blades not upon the body of the Dark Man, but instead at his weapon. His father's tailsword snuck around in a blunt attempt to hamstring the Dark Man, a shot that had to be parried. Valot's Will crashed down upon the left had gripping the crystal staff. Four fingers fell towards the floor, and black ichor evaporated into the air of the chapel, which now carried the distinctly unholy scent of a recent battlefield. The severed fingers melted away, leaving a bit of a haze around the grappling pair.
The Dark Man grunted, and swung the staff with one hand, wildly, desperately. It dropped in below Drask's guard with his left hand, and stabbed through the scales in his hip. Acidic blood etched the steps of a lethal dance in the floor of the cathedral. Another feint, this time with the dagger, shifted the Dark Man's balance enough that he was forced to retreat. Several steps the fiend backed up, but the staff vanished. It was replaced by a saber in the right hand and a kata on the left wrist--a piercing blade that needed no more guidance than a crude punch.
Frenzy. Charging forward. Dodging backward. Feinting left, stabbing right. Parry. Sidestep a bladed punch, then turn aside a well-aimed sword thrust. Not well enough: blood, seeping down crimson scales. No thinking anymore: just cut. Quickly, decisively. Cut. With grim purpose, with finality. Cut. Faster than the target, faster than thought, faster than reaction. Sacrifice defense as a gain for offense. Give over to rage. Cut. Exist simultaneously in three blades, all focused on the one single other entity in existence. Cut.
A scream, a hand falling, evaporating. A bloody kata vanishing, leaving the torn flesh it bore to fall to the ground. One less weapon to worry about, but Drask was tiring, losing blood. The Dark Man showed no fatigue, merely redoubled resolve. Saber thrusts came faster, faster. The tide of battle was turning, and black waters raged up against a red shore. The waters came away scarlet. Drask fought to retain control, fought to keep at least some part of his mind actively conscious rather than submitting to his failing instinct and his slowing reactions. The Dark Man triumphed as Drask's arm fell to his side, dagger dropping to the ground, defeated.
The coup de grace never came.
A shield of fire blocked the slash as it came down. Ice and fire hissed as sword and shield clattered. The Dark Man was taken aback, having forgotten something. Having underestimated his prey, his creator, his killer. With a scream of vengeance, Vaelot's Will arced around the other side, neatly beheading the creature born of nightmares. The Dark Man evaporated, turning into an oily black smoke that converged upon Drask, forcing entry through his nose, his eyes, his wounds, his mouth.
'You have bested me, yes. You have killed my incarnation. Yes. But you can never escape me truly, for I am your Darkness, and we shall fight again.'
It was over. The Dark Man was vanquished. For now.
The Dragon hobbled out of the temple, wounded by the Dance. He limped out into the illusory desert, not caring whether he trod on broken glass or cracked sand. He had to find the Alliance, had to rejoin them, before his strength gave out.