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Vol.5, Ch.3, P.4

Now was it Lise’s turn to widen her eyes and drop her jaw.

“Weh,” came a froggy rasp from her throat. “Y… you’re all right, Rolf? Have you hit your head? Or lose it?”

Not the response I’d expected. Some polishing up on my peacocking seemed also in order.

“Ah, ehm,” Walter yelped in a stammer, before catching himself and continuing very sheepishly. “C-come now, everyone. Who’s strong, who’s stronger; that’s small concern here. But if you must insist, I think a demonstration better serves than a dispute. Besides, I’m rather curious myself to see what this ‘magick-cutting’ hubbub is all about, anyway…”

A sound point—too sound to be debated by either of the jarl-daughters, even, who both could only pout with dissatisfaction. But with the matter decided, both of our parties then took to their places: the Reùlingen hero and myself stood at the centre of the grounds, spaced many paces apart, with the rest spectating from the shade a ways off.

Facing my opponent, however, I found him deep in what seemed by now a habit of scratching his head. “Er, where to begin…” Walter said timidly. “I’ve, erm, I’ve heard of your heroics, Herr Rolf. And—being a conjurer myself, you understand—I confess, I made the long trip with hopes of seeing it for myself.”

The whole of his tone sounded more an apology than a proclamation. But in his eyes, I instantly gleaned a glint of interest—or even intrigue. When first I’d met him at today’s war council, I was keen to deem this Walter fellow a scholarly sort, what with his bookish mien and raiments. Now, I saw that I’d been not so off the mark. Indeed, were it mine to guess, I’d say that inquisitiveness of his might itself be the very source of his own heroics—the blade hid in the breast, as it were.

“It’s less my strength that cuts magicks, but more this sword,” I said, before holding up to the sun the lightless steel.

“Ah, yes, yes!” Walter sang asudden, his timidity turning to glee. “That! That I’ve heard of, as well! The sword of soot! The spurner of all hands save yours…!”

“Who can cut magicks out of the air!?” came Erika’s heckling. “This isn’t a game of knattleikr!”

Lise heckled right back. “Rolf can! Rolf can! That’s who!”

And here was I, thinking my ears had finally earned some rest. In all honesty, their bickering seemed to me so in concert by this point that I began to suspect that these two damsels did, in fact, get along more amicably than they’d dare admit.

“Eh, ah…” again stammered Walter, following it up with a scratch of the head. “Aha hah. S-sorry for the, er… yes…”

“Let’s put aside the sorries,” I said to him. “You’re a vaunted one, Walter; respected and trusted both. In that, at least, you have me beat; and of that, I should like to learn a thing or three from you, if I’m to find my own place amongst the Nafílim.”

“A little late for bootlicking!” taunted Erika. “Just admit it! You can’t cut magicks! You never could!”

“Rolf! Enough chit-chat!” yelled Lise. “If you lose, ’tis my boot up your bum tonight!”

…

“Eh heh… S-sorry again…” said Walter, bowing—or rather, bobbing his head up and down apologetically.

“Likewise,” I answered, and soon enough, we both poised ourselves.

On and on did Lise and Erika clank away at their clamour, but as I held the soot-steel centre, I let a low breath from my lungs, and at once, their voices began to thin to nothingness. The breezes blew hushedly; the sun stared in silence—all the sounds of Arbel seemed to sail away.

Far afore me was Walter, himself appearing wholly changed from his erstwhile reserve. Narrow now were his eyes, grim now was his mien; the look of a hero, and beyond all doubt, the last, dying sight to many an enemy Man. Indeed, ever as we stood at odds, I sensed it then: only he and I now inhabited this world. A world isolated, a space serene—a chasm of concentration.

But with that sense came a weight pressing against all my skin. The air… it was gathering, congealing. Rills and ripples of incorporeal light flickered in the emptiness about, like flashes of lightning from the deeps of clouds. A swirling confluence of odyl—once before had I felt this: a storm summoned by my own sister when we faced one another within this very same city. Here, however, was Walter’s less violent, and yet did it seem to me all the more pressing than Felicia’s fury.

A mountain more.

At the seat of the swirls stood the hero with his staff held stiff. Were this a blood battle, already would I have shot off to shear him down. Yet today’s was merely a demonstration. He was to show the might of his magicks, and I was to unmake it. But even were we foes upon the battlefield, I doubted even then that I would’ve made such a move. Dense and dire was Walter’s odyl, that even as the hero himself appeared open to attack, to my eyes, he seemed instead encircled with pits and snares. To dare upon him a blind charge would’ve been death, indeed.

Then, as though to confirm my caution, the air once again bellowed with a new weight, and withal a new wintriness to chill the skin. In answer, I sank my mind ever deeper into the fathoms of focus. And in that moment, Walter cried out his incantation.

“Hildewiða!”

Swift as sound then shot the aeolian spell. It was right as the weaving words had ended—nay, right in the midst of them that the magick manifested itself, sending air scything straight my way.

Strange enough was its speed. Stranger still was its number. On the usual, only one blade of wind ought be conjured by a spell of this calibre. Spell-adepts may summon two in tandem, but such were stories seldom to reach the ears. What I witnessed afore me, what was screeching right towards me, however, might’ve seemed a drunkard’s tale—with Walter’s volley of six.

But the strangeness hardly ended there. The six-fold blades: they were all of them nigh-invisible. Naught strange there, one might say. Air is unseen, after all. Yet with this spell is air enveloped in odyl, and by it, propelled to high speed. And therein lies its flaw: the shine of the odyl itself betrays both the shape and position of the projectile. A diligent sorcerer, then, assays all manner of means to dim the odyllic luminosity. Yet Walter here seemed to have taken such diligence to an extreme, culminating in six blades each escaping all but the subtlest of eyes.

What a marvel he was, Walter. Not without a gasp and a skip of the heart could one behold such skill. I realised then what Erika had been preening and strutting all about. By his talent alone was her hero truly the hope of all Nafílkind.

Nevertheless, of winds as Walter’s magick was ultimately composed, so by sound and feel could I yet sense it. The chirping of each discharged blade, the rippling of the very air—such was how I counted six to begin with. Yes; so long as ear and skin could yet avail, then that sufficed enough.

At once, I loosened all my sinews, and in turn honed my every sense to their sharpest, to better perceive the shearing blades in their flight.

Awe next overcame me, for I spied then one more surprise lurking in Walter’s spellcraft: the six scything gusts were all of them aimed and angled just short of shearing the hairs off my skin. A wild and windy spell—controlled to all perfection.

If such be Walter’s play, then so must my sword perform no less perfectly.

Blood thundered next through my veins. Steeling the whole of my slackened body, I poured all power into a single swing of the soot-steel. And another. And another again. Against each stroke, two wind-blades would break, blasting out sound and pressure, only to disperse and disappear. By the end, all six were sundered, leaving naught but echoes of their might to ring in our ears and the dust of their activity to settle upon the dirt.

“…What…?” I heard Erika uttering. Guido and Gunthar stood speechless beside her. All of them were wide of eye, save for Lise, who, with arms folded—

“Hah hah hah!”

—laughed aloud with pride and delight.

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