Rise of the Living Forge-Chapter 390: Brilliant

Flesh gave beneath Kien’s fist. A cheekbone crunched, cracked. The skin of his knuckles was already split. They were covered in blood. He couldn’t tell whose it was anymore. There was so much of it.

Not just his hands. His arms. His chest. His face. Blood was everywhere. It pounded in his ears and stung his eyes. Soaked into his pants and ravaged shirt. Dripped from his fingertips to splatter against the already-painted ground in a relentless plink, plink, plink.

The sound rung in song of heavy breath, echoing through the still arena. Kien had started the battle dancing, weaving through strikes and exchanging blows with Hein.

Now, they weren’t even limping. Exhaustion had wrapped its noose around both of their necks and begun to draw it taut. The wounds covering Kien’s body should have killed a man a hundred times over. His heart had long since been run through… but death had no grip on this moment.

It was stolen from time. Here, nothing could interfere. There was only Kien and Hein, two brothers, two men that had killed each other so many times that even that had lost its meaning.

There was only ragged breath and desperate wheezing left. That and the sound of the dripping blood and scuffing feet. It echoed through the emptiness, the final salvo of a fading light.

Kien stumbled forward. His fist slammed into Hein’s face for the umpteenth time. There weren’t any teeth left in his brother’s mouth anymore. They littered the ground around them — although Kien was pretty certain that one was lodged in his fist.

“Let… us… die,” Hein rasped. He drove a knee up into Kien’s stomach with enough force to knock what little air was left in the man’s lungs free. The blow was weak, but so was he.

Kien stumbled. He twisted his body, lashing out with an elbow and catching Hein in the side of the head with a wet crunch. Both of them tumbled to the ground in a wet, bloodied heap.

“No,” Kien wheezed. He dragged himself forward. The dust stung the wounds covering his body as he swung a leg over Hein’s prone form. With a weak, coughing hiss, he clenched his hands together and brought them both down on Hein’s head.

The blow connected with a thump. Hein’s skull bounced against the arena floor, but he wasn’t knocked unconscious. That wasn’t possible here. The only thing present in this space was their consciousness.

There was no escape from this stolen moment. Not until it ended.

“How… can you keep this up?” Hein whispered, his words choked from the blood in his throat.

Kien looked down at his brother. Hein’s face was so pulverized that it wasn’t even recognizable anymore. His bone structure was gone, crushed and shattered. Deep gouges covered his features. One of his ears was missing — but the only thing that Kien’s eyes truly saw were his brother’s eyes.

He didn’t recognize them.

Kien drove a fist into Hein’s stomach. Blood splattered from the man’s lips and Kien lifted his hands again, bringing them down once more. And again. And again. And again.

A crimson flower bloomed on the ground beneath them as Kien rained down blow after blow into Hein. It soaked into the stones and turned Kien’s legs clammy with sticky cold. The other man didn’t even try to fight back anymore. He had absolutely nothing left.

“This will end.” Garbled words slipped from Hein’s lips.

Kien’s fist slammed into his brother’s mouth.

“When…” Hein’s cold eyes burned up at him. They were nearly swollen shut. Kien lifted his hand. Then his fist fell. It crunched into Hein’s already broken nose and bounced the man’s head off the cold, wet stone.

Hein’s lips trembled as he continued to speak. Every word dripped with hatred and spite.

“You…”

The fist fell again.

Blood splattered.

“Lose…”

The fist fell.

“Focus…”

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The fist fell.

“I…”

The fist fell.

“Will…”

The fist fell.

“Kill…”

The fist fell.

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“Everyone…”

The fist fell.

“You…”

The fist fell.

“Love.”

“You already did,” Kien hissed.

The fist fell.

Hein said nothing more. His lips quivered. Blood welled up from them and poured from the gashes covering his features in rivers that joined the ocean welling around him. Kien swayed. His heart thumped, exposed to the air and elements.

Thoughts rattled through Kien’s skull. The world seemed distant to him now. Everything was nothing but a hazy blur as his mind retreated inward. His consciousness couldn’t depart this space. It was bound here, but by nothing more than a thread.

A thread and the knowledge that he could not fail again.

The reason Hein was here in the first place was because of his own failure. He had saved everyone but his own family, and now that put countless innocents at risk.

The guild had caused this. Their time to pay would come. They would pay, as would everyone else on the long list of debtors. Every single one of them would pay their due… and that begun with the first person on the list.

Himself. He could not relent. Not now. Not ever. Never again would he let the future distract him from what already was.

I just have to hold on a little longer.

Just… a little longer. Forgive me, Hein.

***

Art had done a great many things to get to the point where he stood now. To protect Thornhelm. To protect his family.

But never before had he done something like this.

He felt sick to his stomach. He was no stranger to violence, but the scene playing out before him couldn’t even be considered a fight. It was like he’d stepped into the torturous realm of the afterlife itself.

Two dead men laid on the ground before him. They were so bloodied and battered that it was impossible to tell which one was which — and worst of all, he couldn’t turn his eyes away from it.

He couldn’t even blink.

Art was frozen in place along with the rest of the world. Not so much as a single hair on his skin could twitch. His body was a statue.

But, unlike the rest of the world, his consciousness remained completely and utterly intact. It was forced to sit there and bear witness to the plan that he himself had created.

All it could do was watch as one of the men lifted a trembling hand and brought it down on the other. They were so pulped and bloodied that Art could barely even tell the difference between them. He only knew from memory that it was Kien.

There wasn’t a single scrap of energy left in either of the men’s bodies. They may as well have been two corpses.

A small part of Art sympathized with Hein. The man had been so confused as to how a world like this could maintain itself when Kien was so badly wounded. That had been a very good question. For Kien to sustain magic like this should have been mere story. A feat of sheer legend, one told by campfires in hushed whispers, but not one that any man could actually accomplish.

It should have been nothing but falsehood and legend. It should have been impossible.

And, as a matter of fact, it was.

Kien couldn’t have held this world in place. He couldn’t have even created it — because this wasn’t his ability, after all.

It was Art’s.

His energy trickled out to flow into the frozen world around him. Art’s reserves were running dangerously low, now. Tremors would have racked his limbs if they’d even still been able to move.

Was this the right move? Making Kien do something like this to his own brother… can I ever be forgiven for such an act?

If Vix had turned into a monster like Hein, I don’t think I would have had the strength, even if the potential to fight her had been within me.

But Kien had followed Art’s orders to the letter of the line. Even though every single blow must have driven that very same pain into Kien’s own chest, he rained down strikes on his brother.

And, even when this moment was gone, those blows would still remain in his heart. It didn’t matter if they were because of Art’s orders. They were still dealt by Kien’s own hands.

The moment stretched on.

Art watched.

All of this suffering. All of the pain… the price of a stolen moment, spent for the mere second of confusion that it would buy them when time resumed. It was the most expensive second that Art had ever purchased.

It cost more than any money could ever buy, and he haven’t even paid the price himself.

Art felt sick.

And then, finally, the last of his energy trickled out.

The world slammed back into motion.

Kien and Hein vanished, their consciousness sent hurtling back to their bodies. All of their wounds evaporated, real to only their memory as their forms were made whole once more.

Roars ripped through the silence as the crowd screamed to life. They were completely and forever unaware of what had just transpired.

The moment had ended.

But an unprepared mind could not so easily shift on the drop of a coin. Hein was stronger than all of them. He was faster than all of them. But he had not been prepared. Moments ago, he had been lying broken and battered to a shell of a human.

And even with all the strength in the world, that memory could never be erased.

Kien may have been weaker than his brother, but there was one difference between the two of them.

The two figures from the Adventurer’s Guild stood at the back of the platform, still blissfully unaware of what had transpired. They had no plans to enter the fight.

Hein fought alone.

Kien did not.

“Now!” Art screamed.

Hein was already moving, his eyes beginning to clear as his magically enhanced body yanked his thoughts to the present. But in the sliver of a second that still remained, Vix blurred into motion.

There was only one possible way they could ever have a chance to get Hein’s blade away from him. He was too fast to steal it under any normal circumstances, and the moment Kien revealed he had a match to the weapon, Hein would take countermeasures.

No, the only method that gave them a chance to disarm Hein was one where he was completely and utterly off balance.

Vix streaked across the arena and slammed into Hein, ripping the dagger from his hands before he could realize what was happening.

Kien recovered a moment before his brother did. He’d known their plan before they’d ever entered the arena, and his body moved on its own before his mind had even caught up with it. He drew the sister blade to Hein’s weapon from his side.

Vix flung him Hein’s dagger.

Realization set into Hein’s features an instant later as his mind finally adjusted to reality. He lunged.

It was too late.

In a smooth motion, Kien’s hand shot out and grabbed the hilt of the second dagger. Then he brought the second blade down on top of it with a wordless roar.

A brilliant, ringing chime tore through the air.

And, with the sound of shattering glass, both of the weapons shattered.