Chapter 24: Even The Best Of Men Break, And I Am Not The Best Of Men.


    Selvas spat into her father’s eye. It wasn’t the most creative of moves and it was far from effective, but it was something. And while pinned to a wall, losing her vision and most importantly losing time as her father choked her to death, she simply could not afford the luxury of doing absolutely nothing.


    Selvas felt the hands loosen around her throat, not enough to make breathing easy, but enough to make it possible. Then they were trembling, and soon they let Selvas slip from his grasp.


    She fell to the ground, coughing and spluttering. Every breath she took was a much needed one and she cursed her bastard lungs for not being able to hold more in one go.


    Her father stumbled backwards while she tried desperately to pick up her scrambled wits.


    He looked unsteady on his feet, like a man trying to balance on a rickety bridge. He shook his head as if attempting to blink away stars from his vision.


    All signs that her poison was working.


    About fucking time.


    She’d once heard from her father that what the thrall shackle inflicted wasn’t pain, because he’d seen enough torture to know it didn’t work.


    He said it wasn’t mind control either though. Instead it was somewhere just in-between, its magic balanced at the precipice of where both concepts met in order to create something worse than even the sum of their parts.


    Today, as he charged at his daughter with her blade’s poison running through his veins and yet bleeding only with the intent to kill her, Selvas thought she was at least a fraction of a step towards understanding what he’d meant.


    She stumbled more than rolled out of the way of his attack, but the result was one in the same in that she succeeded in avoiding a collision with a goliath of a man sprinting full speed into her body.


    It helped that he was slower now thanks to the poison making its way through his system. He should be down in a minute, but she hadn’t ever fought anyone as durable as him before so her estimates were up in the air.


    What Selvas knew was that her father was still on his two feet, and quite intent on making sure she still wasn''t.


    She still didn’t have any proper weapons on her and knew sprinting over to any of the ones on the ground would just leave her open.


    On the bright side, neither did her father.


    ‘Some consolation at least.’


    He came at her again and Selvas stood her ground this time.


    He hadn’t expected that so she used it to her advantage, ducking under an arm swing and meeting his ribs with her fist with quick jabs.


    He seemed to barely feel them, shifting slightly and sending pain down her wrists with the rigidity of him, but ‘barely’ was enough to do at least some damage and hopefully buy herself some more time.


    Though not a lot, because he was swinging those meaty arms of his soon, again, and again. Selvas dodged back like her life depended on it, perhaps because it quite literally did.


    She kept herself light on her feet, careful to slip back from any grapples and stealing a quick blow or two to make her he never got too comfortable attacking her.


    There were narrow misses here and there, but those grew wider and wider as the seconds passed and the poison worked.


    If her father could focus on anything else but the burning of his shackles she’d have liked to imagine he was proud of her.


    But she doubted he could, and since that was the case he’d be thinking of everything in the book he could use to kill her.


    ‘Shit!’


    Selvas realised she’d fallen into his trap just a fraction of a moment after he must have. But that fraction, it seemed, might make all the difference.


    A half glance told her behind was a wall. He’d trapped her and she hadn''t even noticed.


    That was when the swing came, a blow so furious, so hot and angry that its approach made its predecessors seem like crawls in comparison.


    Selvas abandoned any hope of dodging and raised her arms to protect her head from that murderous left hook. She couldn’t afford to get knocked out, couldn’t-


    ‘Wait.’


    It was a feint.


    But by the time she realised, she’d already opened up herself further. Futily she tried lowering her arms to her abdomen. She was only halfway there when his left fist cracked into the soft spot just beneath her ribs and turned her legs to jelly.


    Selva wretched out yesterday’s lunch as she keeled over around his knuckles. The pain was thick, red and sharp and before she could fully begin to process it a new kind of agony was about to join the frey.


    She saw the blow coming for her head, but her arms were slack extensions on her torso. It connected wickedly, turning her vision white and sending her to the ground.


    By the time colour and depth returned, her father was on top of her, axe recovered and raised high. He swung it down and Selvas caught him by the wrist.


    Her death hovered a few inches over her neck and as he pressed down further with what little strength remained in him, it crawled ever closer and closer.


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    It was a testament to the potency of her poison that she was still able to physically contend with him even this much.


    But it seemed he was going to be the victor of this final exchange.


    She grit her teeth, roared, snarled and kicked with everything she had, but the blade dropped lower and lower, until it was finally kissing the skin of her neck.


    Selvas felt the warmth of a bloody trickle run down her flesh.


    She peered into her father’s eyes and saw sorrow, anguish and all their cousins dancing deep within the depths of his soul.


    “It’s okay.” She whispered. “I forgive you.”


    Tears spilled past his eyes and crashed against her cheeks.


    His hands were trembling more severely now, breathing heavier, eyes ever more unfocused.


    It wouldn’t be long before she was down. She just had to hold on. That was easier said than done however, her arms were aflame, her head pounding and she was certain she’d at least broken one rib and cracked a good many others during their exchange.


    The fight was going to be over soon and it all depended on which one of them would give first.


    It wasn’t Selvas.


    Her father’s hand slipped, grip weak. Selvas twisted the axe out of his other fingers and slammed the butt of it against his head with everything that her arms had left.


    He fell to the side and crashed into the dirt like a felled tree.


    Much to her horror, Selvas saw him begin the motions of a crawl onto his feet. She tried to do the same, but she just didn’t have it in her.


    Her father got all the way up to his knees before collapsing right back down again.


    He was down. The battle was over.


    As much as she longed for it, she didn’t have time for relief.


    Selvas crawled over to her father, reached into her belt and pulled out a vial of antidote.


    “When this is all over, you’ll be free.” She told him.


    Selvas parted his lips and poured its contents down his mouth.


    It would take a while before he got back up, but he’d be fine.


    She looked around her. All of Stradale was alight with emotion, with hope, citizens clashed guards and even as they were cut down, they were only replaced by more men.


    Men filled with hope.


    Nero had given them this, certainly not on purpose, but he had. And he’d given it to her too.


    And in saving him she’d ignited that same hope in several more people.


    A hope that stradale could be more than a plaything of the Demons.


    She hoped dearly that she hadn’t made a mistake.


    “Selvas, Selvas!” The voice was familiar, yet she did well to point an axe at it just in case.


    Gunther abruptly slowed his pace towards her at the sight of her brandishing a weapon at him. “A-are you okay?” He asked cautiously.


    “I’m fine.” She grunted. She wasn’t.


    Gunther seemed sceptical about that but had the good manners not to mention it now. His attention was on her father, lying motionless on the ground behind her. “Is he?”


    “He’s alive.” Selvas said. She tried to get to her feet, but her side ignited into a furious pain in an instant. “Fuck!”


    Gunther hurried to her side, ignoring the weapon and inspecting her wounds. “Stop moving, you’ll only hurt yourself.” He said. The way his eyes darkened at the sight of her side told her all she needed to know about the extent of the damage.


    “I can’t stay here, I need to help.” She began arguing, knowing it was futile, but doing it all the same.


    Gunther shook his head. “Tommy and Cain and some other Mighty are dealing with the Chieftain’s men. What you need is to get to safety.”


    “Tommy?” Selvas arched an eyebrow.


    Gunther for his part did not seem even half surprised as she was. He just shrugged. “Always knew the kid had it in him. Just a shame it took the end of the world to bring it out.”


    “I still need to be out there, what about Nero?” Selvas asked, attempting to struggle to her feet and wincing in pain yet again.


    Gunther’s eyes fell. “Nero’s on his own, I’m sorry. We have to go.”


    Selvas winced then nodded. “Wait… Just let me do one more thing first.”


    <hr>


    Death was approaching Nero; big, red and with rows of teeth as sharp as needles. Why, then, did he charge directly towards its maw?


    Despite the agony that ran through him, he was actually still in this fight. Cain, he decided, was the reason. She’d made him intimately familiar with pain and exhaustion, and that allowed him to retain his wits when they desperately scrambled away from him.


    The Chieftain did not expect Nero to meet him with a dash of his own, but it felt like the Light within him had taken control of his soul, mind and body, and made it a vessel of hate. Hate, rage and malice..


    He saw how the lights in his hands burned like an inferno, hotter than ever, wilder than ever, they danced to invisible winds like snakes in a storm, hungry for something to sink their fangs into.


    Nero would give them that.


    The Chieftain was on the defensive immediately, and Nero’s first swing only grazed his cheek. It singed his hairs and scorched the top layer of his flesh.


    An omen of what was to come.


    He swung his legs at the bastard’s face but stopped the attack midway as his side exploded in agony.


    Shit.


    It was the monster’s turn to attack and he did so ruthlessly, swinging arms upon arms at Nero and forcing him to dance out of their way without upsetting his side.


    The strikes marked him with a few glancing blows, each like hammers but none managing to send him to the ground.


    He wouldn’t let that happen again.


    The Demon’s next attack came from frustration, a desperation to connect with a direct hit and put his opponent out of their misery.


    Nero ducked under it, slipped into his guard and slammed his elbow right between the creature’s ribs. If Demon anatomy was anything like human’s he should have just felt a shock go through his liver.


    The gasp of pain above him told him he had.


    Nero helped the Demon shut his mouth with a furious uppercut. The pain in his side didn’t let him extend as much as he should have, but it was still more than enough to rock the bastard.


    He went stumbling back in a daze and Nero gave chase.


    His lower jaw was burned, the bright red giving way to a darkness underneath as his light continued to eat away at the skin.


    Nero wondered just when the last time the monster felt pain was.


    ‘When was the last time he knew fear?’


    Well, Nero was going to make him intimately familiar with those sensations once more.


    He struck his jaw, and relieved him of a handful of teeth. Something the colour of coal and tar clung to the teeth.


    Their blood is black…


    Nero’s fist caught his belly and sent him folding into the ground.


    He knelt on top of him and continued to bash his face in with his burning fists.


    Someone roared with his voice, a mad man who’d been begging to be let out for far too long.


    He remembered his sleepless nights, confusion, fear and loneliness, so much loneliness.


    “FUCK YOU, FUCK YOU, FUCK YOU, FUCK YOU!”


    He slammed his fist into the Demon’s face one more time but there was a toughness to it that wasn’t there before.


    His Light had extinguished.


    “No-”


    The Demon punched Nero across the face like a stray wrecking ball. It sent him rolling into the dirt with a hot agony burning through his cheek.


    That he was still conscious was more a testament to the poor angle of attack than anything to do with his own toughness.


    Nero scrambled for his feet and a kick to his injured- glancing and ill-aimed though it was- side had him abandoning the very notion of that for instead clutching to his ribs and screaming.


    Above him the Chieftain stood, face ruined, and misshapen like a dropped cinder block. Dark blood ran down his face, his horns were chipped and he had one eye swollen shut.


    The working one glared at Nero with sulphuric malice. “You rat! I am Vfangard, a Demon of a thousand years, slayer of the five ringed beast and Chieftain of Stradale. To think a child would have ideas of defeating me.” He spat a globule of black ichor into the dirt. “You know not your station, Light Breather.”


    “Nero, get up!” Ember warned.


    “Afraid, I can’t quite do that.” He groaned as the world spun around him.


    He drew in his Light but was only able to create sparks between his fingers.


    “Can’t do that either.” He sighed.


    He was tired, so, so tired.


    The Demon raised its foot high up in the air, and brought it down to crush Nero’s skull.