Vol.5, Ch.5, P.19
After bidding the Nafílim lock the doors and keep quiet within the chamber, Lise and I made for the third and highest storey of the Dēlūbrum. It uneased us both to leave the liberated folk so uncared for, but it was naught we could help, as we knew not for how long Alfred and Malena might hold against our pursuers below. And so had we made the hard choice of first concentrating on the marquis.
“Alfred saw further than I,” I noted amidst our haste. “Time’s against us. The sooner the marquis is dealt with—”
“The sooner this all ends,” finished Lise. “All right. Leave this section to me!”
A quick council—very good. With the matter settled, Lise split off like lightning at the very next junction. A two-pronged hunt was the plan. To be sure, I doubted not that waiting to waylay us were enemies mighty of measure. Thus to part ways was a peril; but this, too, was naught to be helped.
Urged all the more, I took the other way and sprinted down the southern corridors. No enemies nor any sign of the marquis there was as yet, but before long, I rounded a corner, crossed a large doorway, and emerged…
“Impressive…”
…out into the clear mountain air.
Spanning all afore me now was a space most expansive, and empty besides but for its stretches of impeccable marble. In fact, not even a wall was to be seen here, save the northern side whence I had come; rather, it was pillars that distantly stood in their place. From west to south to east: a long procession of large, hulking columns, each soaring to support a roof of colossal, carven stone.
A terrace-prospect this was, southwardly sat atop the Dēlūbrum and providing between its many pillars a vista of Isfält’s many mist-mantled mountaintops. Pale was the yonder late-sunned sky. The air blew brisk; the battle below rumbled in but a rumour. And as I wandered warily into the yawning space, I could but find myself filling more and more with wonder. For magnificent, indeed, was the view all around, a true mural of sublimity—enough, perhaps, to move a man to believe in a god or three, even.
“Well, well. What have we here?”
But staining that scenery now: a voice, easy and slightful to hear. I looked ahead and at once found a figure revealing itself from behind a far pillar. A man it was, medium of height and build, bearing a face unfamiliar to my eyes.
“The black and shameless sheep himself, nosing about sanctums and sacred spaces,” the man said in his sauntering approach. “I’ve done right to sit tight here. Oh, very much so.”
“Who speaks?” I pressed him.
“Sven,” answered the man, bowing as he went. “A pleasure.”
The hairs at my nape stood on end; from just his formful gait, I had already measured him a titan of the blade. But the name that so slithered from his lips did little to allay my alarm. Verily, he was the sword foremost amongst all the Champions Salvator: Sven, zealot and sword-devout. With Alfred’s defection, I had thankfully avoided another tussle with the supreme sorcerer. Yet it would seem the fates merely had something else in store for me: a match with a master of a different discipline.
“Rolf I am, indeed,” I returned. “The pleasure’s mine.”
With that, I poised the soot-steel straight in the centre-guard. And as I clenched fast the hilt, closer Sven came, drawing his sword with a dead-silent stare. Against the westering sun, his blade scintillated as he let it dangle lazily at his side. But a blink, and a blur it became—our battle was begun.
Sven slithered in, swift and sudden, yet lax still in the lunge. But like a true serpent, lowly was he poised, his head lower than hip-level. Sunk even more so was his sword, that whence and whither it would strike, my too-high eyes could not tell.
Clashing head-on here would be heedless, yet backing off was neither any better. No; my legs would be cut clean in the escape. Hence I leapt quickly to the side whilst keeping his hands vised in my view. But even this did Sven previse, as before my feet could find the floor, already was my landing assailed by a stabbing bite of his sword.
Yet he was hardly alone in his previsions: with a swipe, I deflected his offence and reprised with a swing of the blacksword.
“Uwoh!” Sven yipped, eluding my blade with a back-jerk of his body, all before flitting away to a safe distance. Despite the close shave, however, the look on his face remained as smooth and unmoved as before. “Scried that, eh?” he noted, sneering softly. “You’re more shark than sheep!”
I gave no answer, choosing instead to stare and study this new foe of mine.
Strong he was. Strong and strikingly lethal. Just from that exchange alone, I could very well tell that the “keenest sword of all the Salvators” was no gloat. Indeed, a misstep here could be my last—with a stab through the neck, heart, and belly long before I could meet the floor.
But just the same, I had chanced upon, too, the chink in his armour: that against as furtive and free-spirited a sword as his, it is best never to be wiled by its whims. Thus, keen to reel him into my own rhythm, I flew forth in a forcible bolt.
“Dyaah!”
“Tup!”
Yet, like a feather in the wind, Sven swerved away from my scything steel, attempting a riposte in parallel. But having predicted his play, I, too, took quick action, evading his blade before driving up the blacksword in a heaving hew.
A counter for a counter, delivered with as opportune a timing as one could ask for. Still, in a display of deft defiance, Sven twisted his body whilst whisking himself clear away from the violence. A sight truly that was to see: even when ensnared, it seemed this Salvator was not to be so easily bound—a slippery snake, if ever there was one.
Only, he had not escaped unscathed. The tip of the svǫrtaskan—it had blasted open his breastplate and cloven clean into his bosom, sternum and all. Nay, not for long might he live with a wound like that. So much the better. I rather loathed to dance for even another second with so perilous a partner as he.
“Hhrrgh…!” Sven moaned, reeling and landing in a totter.
But ever as he did, I…
…I espied a most chilling change in his woesome wound.
For like a mouth, it moved.
Cloven bone melted and merged. Sinew, vessel, and skin, once so utterly destroyed, squirmed as they sewed themselves back into as seamless a whole as before my blade had ever beset them.
My breath ceased. What it was that so unfolded afore my eyes, I could not guess. No; not even a mite of it.
“Phew…” Sven huffed, “…titillating.”
That tone of his. Even and unvexed it was, as though naught had befallen him at all. Indeed, so swiftly and so completely had his wound closed that I began to doubt my very senses. Yet, from the corner of my mind, there whispered to lip a single word.
“Regenerātiō…”
There existed in the repertoires of surgiens such spells to steadily mend a mid-battle wound. But this… this was clearly a perversion of them. To close an injury that ought’ve killed? Not least in the blink of an eye? Had such a magick ever existed, even? Nay, not to my knowledge. And neither to any scholar nor chronicler of this age, I reckoned.
But were it no magick, then what?
A… a miracle?
Yoná’s meddling?
Yes… yes, of course. That must be it.
A miracle.
“…That’s no ordinary sword you wield, is it?” I said to Sven.
A chuckle played from his throat. “Never stops scrying, does it, that keen eye of yours?” he remarked.
No denial dared. Doubtless, then, that he held in his hands a Sacrāmentum, a weapon disposed from the Deiva Herself, and a long-slumbering relic of Déu Tsellin besides. And if what I had witnessed were no mere sleight, then it well-seemed the sword was one to bless its brandisher with fleshly mending beyond any mortal to achieve.
“But right enough. Quite a handy toy, this,” Sven cooed, looking all along the holy blade with wonder. “How about it, lad? Ask nicely and it could be yours.”
“Not today, thanks,” I answered. “This one suits me just fine.”
The dragon-blessed blade so black in my hands—once more did I hold it ready, grim and grave in my resolution. For this was clearly to me but the beginnings of a ghastly battle.
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