Chapter 840 (2/2)

The Spearman’s attack was stopped dead. The lights around Shal spun faster and faster.

“Do you know what you never understood?”

The Spearman blinked, straightening to meet Shal’s gaze. Then he hissed in horror as Shal’s spear spun around like a lasso and grabbed the head of the Spearman’s heavy iron spear. A sharp yank pulled the Spearman stumbling forward, even as both of Shal’s hands came off his spear.

It was clear that the movement pained Shal immensely, but he made a fist with his left hand and slammed it into the wound that he had inflicted on the Spearman’s side. Then Shal’s right arm came across in a brutal straight that smashed the gored wreckage of the Spearman’s nose. Howling, the Spearman stumbled backward.

The Spearman steadied himself and raised his spear as Shal’s spear hopped off the ground and back into his hand. “Do you think this is a game? This is not an image that will allow Tellus to succeed. The spear is not a game for children!”

“That’s exactly right. That’s what you don’t get,” Shal said lightly as he spun his spear. “It is a harsh world we live in. The reality is one dominated by violence and strife. But can you feel it? These runes around us sing with the voice… of Tellus itself.”

They whispered to him, that press of bodies weighing on the Spearman’s shoulders. Of what they would do when he finally fell amongst them. Their words were so twisted and distorted by their hatred that they no longer spoke a language understandable by the living. They tugged at his ankles now, urging him to fall. To join them.

I cannot fail here. Ethe… I’ll destroy it all. I’ll crush it all...

Grinding his teeth, the Spearman managed to bellow, “AND TELLUS IS VIOLENCE! You lived it, Shal. Don’t deny your own world-”

Shal struck again, slashing diagonally at the Spearman. Shal’s glow had shifted from small motes of light to his entire body, and the Spearman felt something then that he had not felt for years. Something he had not felt since Ethe died.

He felt a small thrill of fear. A seed, planted in his heart, slowly taking root. Those hands on his wrists and ankles grew more powerful. The Spearman could see the faces of those he killed, spinning around him with excited expressions, waiting for him to join them.

Roaring, the Spearman smashed those faces. They were little parasites, but they also gave the Spearman his deep control over the darkness. It roiled out in a thick cloud, chocking the air. But Shal cut right through, spear raised.

Although the Spearman could block the first strike of Shal’s, the man’s elastic seeming spear allowed him to rebound it and strike lightning fast at the Spearman’s good leg. Growling, the Spearman shifted his stance and deflected the blow. But Shal struck again, just as quick.

Again and again, Shal’s infuriating spear seemed to evade and nip at the Spearman. Its bites might have been small, but each bite was another poisonous drop of fear in the Spearman’s heart. Every time the Spearman marshaled the sea of violence in his heart to explode outward and Shal didn’t even respond was another hint of hesitation. Shal was quickly moving beyond being simply good with a spear; he was-

“IMPOSSIBLE!” The Spearman howled. The ground rumbled as he smashed his spear down at the spot Shal was a second ago. But Shal was gone, twisting away and scoring another gash across the Spearman’s forehead. Blood dripped down into his eyes. The bodes were draped across the Spearman. The cost of violence, seven hundred years worth. And they were all laughing, their teeth clacking against themselves in depressing applause.

“Auto. We are fighting over an image.” Shal said shortly as he paused in his onslaught. The Spearman was incensed as he saw pity in the other man’s gaze. “The first image, the truest image everyone on Tellus created was not of the violent reality. It was of the Hero they yearned to be.”

The spinning runes were keening now. The Spearman trembled as he held fast onto his spear, hoping to figure out what was going wrong. But although he could see the building light in Shal’s hands, he couldn’t understand it. “I refuse to believe that I am beaten by children’s fantasies!”

“Of course, those children grow up. Their sparkling dreams are dirtied. But they never stop holding onto them.” Shal was just a voice in a sea of light. The Spearman stared at it, his darkness ebbing. “Because do you know what your violent image is? The tantrum of a world’s disappointed children.”

In spite of himself, the Spearman took a step back. His image faltered and then failed. The dark hands tightened like vice grips around his limbs.

You will die here, the mountain of dead stacked on his shoulders told the Spearman.

The Wraith Viper coiled around Shal’s body, its head sharp and triangular. It hissed. But to the Spearman’s surprise… the viper didn’t even look at him. It regarded the sea of bodies that he carried, deadly intent in its eyes.

“You dreamed of this too, didn’t you, Auto?” Shal said softly.

He comes not for me… The Spearman realized, feeling the sea of darkness he carried in his chest tremble in fear. The screaming sea of dead, their cold fingers scrambling for purchase, and their empty eye sockets looking for an escape. This was never… me. I wasn’t fighting. You’ve been fighting against this darkness, the whole time, haven’t you…?

And the Spearman couldn’t deny… he hated it too. Hated how twisted the world had become. He couldn’t deny that he dreamed of this darkness being destroyed someday.

I told you time and time again, Ethe, Auto thought while looking up at the eyes of the Wraith Phantom. I would be no good for you. That I would only bring you trouble. That I carried something that was as deadly as a poison. Now at least…

At the end of his path, the Spearman did not flinch; he only closed his eyes. His fingers loosened and his spear fell to the ground. Here I come, Ethe.

In a surge of power, an image finally Ascended on Tellus as a blade chopped cleanly through the Spearman’s neck. A world’s worth of dead, clinging tightly to their grudges, howled with indignation as a burning viper made of light bit deeply and flooded them with poison.