Chương 17: An Honor to Swallow the Sun

The ground itself started to shake under all those boots at once, dust kicking up in a low brown haze along the hillside, the gap between them closing fast. She was still held tight against his chest, no room in his grip to twist free even if there had been anywhere to go. One of them outran the rest of the pack and skidded to a stop first, close enough now that she could see it clear, chipped tusks, a nose broken and healed wrong more than once.

It looked at the wreckage scattered across the road, then back at the rest of the pack still closing behind it, and let out a sound that cut through all the others, short and sharp. The masked man went still against her, every muscle in him drawn tight and ready, though he made no move yet, watching the one in front of them the same way a cat watched a snake it hadn't decided how to handle.

"OI! ONE CART!" The charge behind it didn't slow, but a few heads turned, tusked mouths curling into something like confusion.

"JUST ONE?" another voice roared back, almost offended by it.

"CHIEF SAY BIG CART. LOTSA CART." A stray wheel had rolled clear of the main wreck and stopped near his feet, one of a hundred pieces the blast had scattered wide across the road. He kicked it, like it had personally wronged him.

"THIS ONE CART." A third one, one of the handful fast enough to have already caught up, shoved past the first two and grabbed the nearest one by the collar, hauling him around face to face before jabbing a thick finger into his chest.

"YOU SAID LOTSA CART." A pause, like the accusation needed room to land properly.

"YOU?" Behind all three of them the rest of the pack was still closing, the noise of the argument piling on top of the noise of the charge, arguing and running at the same time like the two things weren't different to them at all.

"STILL LOOT!" someone decided, loud enough to end it.

"SMALL MEAT. STILL MEAT." That settled it, apparently. The charge kept coming. The masked man moved first. He set her down with surprising gentleness against the one solid piece of the wreck still standing, then straightened and stepped out alone from whatever cover the ruin offered. One hand swept wide in a bow so deep and so slow it could only have been mockery, the other pressed flat over where a heart would sit, held there twice as long as anything sincere ever needed. The charging shapes faltered.

Not all at once. A few kept coming a beat longer before their legs caught up with what their eyes had already seen, boots skidding and stumbling to a ragged stop across the road. Weapons raised high a moment ago dropped an inch, uncertain what to do with themselves. The one who'd grabbed his kin by the collar a moment ago stared at the bow aimed his way like he'd never once expected to see it. Silence carried the whole exchange, something old and plain to look at, needing nothing else to make its meaning clear.

One stepped forward from the rest, sword drawn slow and deliberate, and returned the bow himself, plainer than the mockery he'd been answered with but genuine in a way the whole pack seemed to recognize at once. Around him the others began to roar, ragged and rhythmic, something that might have been real words once, worn down through however many times it had been shouted before into pure noise and want.

The one with the sword lifted his blade, pointed it square at the masked man, and gave the only actual words either side managed.

"HUMAN. DON'T DISAPPOINT US—" He was already moving before the last word left him, boots tearing at the road, the sword already swinging back for the first strike. The rest of it tore loose somewhere in the middle of the charge, breathless and half-lost under the sound of his own feet.

"TO VALHALLA." The masked man's shadow rose up around him again, wobbly and stretched under all that daylight. He met the first swing with something that looked less like defense than performance, a spinning step to the side, shadow pulling up into his hand and hardening into a shape long enough to meet the blade coming at him, the whole motion carrying a kind of showy grace that had nothing practical in it at all. Two swings.

Then a third, faster, and the opponent's head was already rolling loose across the road before the rest of him had even finished falling. The others didn't flinch away from it. They cheered, a ragged, delighted roar that sounded closer to approval than anything like horror, weapons thrown up high in something that looked, impossibly, like celebration. Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

Two more broke off from the pack and came at him together, and he answered that too, shadow bending and twisting around him in shapes too fast for her to properly track, that same terrible grace in every bit of it, like the fighting itself was some dance he'd been waiting all day to perform. She watched from where he'd set her, mesmerized despite everything.

He was so small next to them, next to all that green muscle closing in from every side, and somehow, again and again, he was the one still standing once it ended. One more went down without dying, just crumpled where he stood, some blow she hadn't quite caught landing hard enough to fold him over and keep him there, too spent to get back up. The rest kept laughing. Loud, delighted, genuine laughter that had no part to do with fear in it at all. Watching one of their own die, or drop, hadn't dimmed it once.

If anything each fall only fed it louder, three of them down already and the rest of them still sounding like this was the best day any of them had had in weeks. For them, apparently, this was as good as it got. The sun kept climbing while it went on, brilliant now, scorching heat replacing whatever cool the morning had left. Bodies piled up around the wreck faster than she could track, some of them still, some of them barely moving.

One of them landed close to her in the middle of it, thrown wide by some blow she hadn't caught, huge and green and still breathing where it hit. Not dead yet. Just down. Curiosity got the better of her. She crept close and pressed a paw against it. [SYSTEM] Basic Offensive Recovery available. Use on target? She understood it, plain the moment it touched her. Her paw pressed down, claws catching against skin that hadn't been given time to grow cold.

Whatever had still been left in the thing beneath her paw went out all at once. [SYSTEM] Orc defeated. [SYSTEM] Mana gained. The fullness of it caught her off guard, warm and sudden, better than anything she'd felt in longer than she could name. She wanted more of it. She got the chance. More of them kept landing close as the fighting went on, thrown near enough to reach, still dying when they hit. She touched every one she could get to, and every one gave her that same warm fullness back.

The masked man's motions had changed sometime while she wasn't looking, showy as ever, no less deadly for it, but the spins came a half beat slower each time, the landings a little heavier. His shadow barely rose past his own knees anymore, thin as smoke, flickering out between one strike and the next like it was running on whatever was left of him rather than anything separate. More than half the orcs lay scattered across the road by then, dead or too spent to stand.

Something shifted in the rest of the orcs all at once, a signal she couldn't catch, passed between them without a single word for it, the whole remaining pack rising together instead of waiting their turn, roaring at each other as they came, delighted, like this was somehow the best part yet.

The ones who'd been holding back, watching close and waiting this whole time, finally came forward too, bows and all, and a solid wall of orcs closed in from every side, weapons raised, cheering louder than they had at any point before. A chant rose up out of the charge, rough and layered, no two throats matching, "TO VALHALLA" tangled up with other words she couldn't place, over and over, faster with every step.

The masked man let out a long breath through the mask itself, slow and heavy, the kind of sound that meant something even without her understanding what. Whatever was coming next, some part of him had clearly been hoping to avoid it. They hit him differently this time. Not the honest one-at-a-time of before, and not quite the wall of them she'd expected either.

One came at him, and the instant that one fell back or missed, another was already sliding into the exact space it had left, striking from the same angle before he'd finished recovering from the last. None of them seemed to be planning it. The gaps closed, seamless, like something coordinated had built itself out of nothing but numbers and luck. Sweat had started down the side of his neck, the first real strain she'd seen out of him all fight.

His footing kept giving ground, half a step at a time, the wreck at his back closing in smaller with every exchange, until his heels hit splintered wood and there was nowhere left to step. A single shot cracked out from somewhere off to the side, one of the archers finding a clear lane through the crowd of their own kind, aimed low and precise where the melee hadn't quite closed. One came in low and wrong, angled at a spot he could have stepped clear of easily.

Except clearing it meant moving, and moving meant the one solid piece of the wreck she was sitting against would take the hit instead. He didn't move. The arrow caught him square in the shoulder, a bolt thick as her own leg, and the force of it staggered him half a step back before he caught himself. Something in him changed right then, fast, like a switch flipping over. Not a break in the performance.

If anything he leaned into it harder, like whatever was coming next had simply been the final act all along, no different in kind from the bow or the mocking flourish, only bigger. He struck one last pose before it happened, exaggerated even for him, arms thrown wide, one knee bent low like the closing bow of a stage performance nobody had asked to see the end of. The mask split down the middle, a thin crack cutting the painted smile clean in half.

A laugh spilled out through it, high and cracked and completely unhinged, unlike the humming she'd grown used to, worlds apart from the one rough word he'd once said. It didn't sound like triumph. It barely sounded like him at all. The world went black. This was deeper than night, darker than the cage had ever gone. Complete, total, the sun and the wreck and everything else erased in a single stroke, like something had reached up and swallowed the whole sky in one bite.

[SYSTEM] Pseudo Domain activated: Swallow the Sun. Effect: all light within range extinguished. Penalty: casted under direct sunlight. Duration and range are both reduced. [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] None of it reached her. She was too far past understanding anything right then, the words sliding past without finding anywhere to land. [SYSTEM] Debuff inflicted on all entities within domain: Fear. Effect: unable to move. No skill or ability available to counter.

Screaming broke out on every other side of her at once, dozens of voices tangled together, confused and furious and afraid all at the same time, like a fight was happening in every direction there was.