The Ninth Wonder-Chapter 30: The black winter (5)

The black knight turned around, seeing Vernox standing still with his head down. For a moment, silence swallowed the ravine. Harley lay motionless on the ground, blood pooling beneath him from the deep wound in his chest. Vernox said nothing for several long seconds.

"Is this guilt I feel?" the knight tilted its helmeted head, gripping its longsword tighter as it began to approach Vernox. "No... it is only pity. Pity for another wretched soul."

The young man slowly lifted his gaze. His golden eyes, once bright with pride and fearlessness, were now cold as winter steel.

"I see deep in your heart an evil intent towards the world," the knight continued, sounding almost fascinated. "It seems that you too... I cannot leave you alive."

A chilling aura erupted around the knight. As it raised its blade high, small jagged spikes of ice formed in the air above its head, hovering like frozen daggers ready to rain down.

Before the spikes could fall, a weak, wet cough echoed from the ground.

Harley stirred.

Blood streamed from the corner of his mouth, yet he forced himself upright on one trembling arm, the other still clutching his sword. The stab wound in his chest pulsed as blood spurted, dark red soaking through his torn shirt.

’I’m still alive?’ Harley wondered, bearing the pain he felt in his chest to stand to his feet.

The knight froze mid-step, turning its visor toward him in visible confusion.

"You... still breathe?" it muttered. "I drove my blade through your heart How are you—"

Harley spat blood and grinned through the pain, his voice hoarse but defiant. "I’m not dieing here."

Vernox’s lips twitched, the faintest hint of a smirk breaking his icy expression.

The knight’s shoulders shook with low, metallic laughter. "Not human... neither of you. I sensed it the moment our blades met. That revolting presence... that wrongness in your souls. You reek of something that should not exist in this world."

It pointed the tip of its longsword at Harley’s bleeding chest. "I stabbed you. Right here. Yet you stand. What manner of abomination are you?"

Harley pushed himself fully to his feet, swaying slightly. "The kind that doesn’t die easy." He glanced at Vernox. "You good?"

Vernox gave a single, slow nod. The ice that had encased him earlier had shattered completely, though frost still clung to his shoulders and hair.

Harley didn’t know what to say about the fact that he survived a fatal attack. Perhaps it could be attributed to his unwillingness to die. Or was it something else... Was he truly human?

The knight’s helmet tilted. "Two against one, then. Very well. I will purge you both."

With that, the hovering ice spikes shot forward like arrows.

Harley moved instantly standing beside Vernox just in time to swing his blade in a wide arc, deflecting three of the spikes. Vernox moved at the same instant—his golden eyes flashing as he swung his own sword which lit up in flames.

The flames surged outward, burning out the rest of the spikes and even washing over the knight.

"Argh!" The knight roared and charged.

Steel clashed against steel as the three of them engaged in a brutal battle. Harley, despite the gaping wound in his chest, fought like a cornered animal—slashing low, spinning high, using every dirty trick he’d learned in the mines and the circus, joined with what he learned from Eman, all of his efforts to live was coming into fruition now.

Vernox fought with cold precision, his movements economical yet devastating, each strike aimed at the gaps in the knight’s black plate armor. His focus was unnatural, almost like he saw the attacks coming while looking at the gaps in the armour.

The knight was a whirlwind of violence, its longsword moving in lethal arcs that forced both of them backward. Sparks flew as their blades met again and again.

Harley was the one getting sworn out by the battle, with each force that the knights sword sent to his body, he felt a stream of blood gush out from both his chest and back where the sword pierced. His vision was getting unfocused, but that stubborn determination in him made him still stand.

"You fight like cowards!" the knight bellowed, slamming its sword down in an overhead strike that Harley barely parried. The impact drove him to one knee, fresh blood spraying from his chest wound.

Vernox lunged in from the side, his blade scraping across the knight’s pauldron with a screech of metal. A long gouge appeared, but the armor held.

"Harder than it looks," Vernox grunted. 𝓯𝙧𝙚𝒆𝙬𝙚𝒃𝙣𝙤𝒗𝓮𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

Harley rolled to his feet shakily and attacked from the opposite flank. "Then we hit it harder!"

They coordinated without words—Harley drawing the knight’s attention with feints and rapid slashes while Vernox struck at the joints and seams. Slowly, cracks began to spiderweb across the black plate. A chunk of the knight’s left vambrace broke away. A deep dent formed in its breastplate.

Yet every time they thought they had an opening, the knight retaliated with terrifying power, its sword humming with dark energy that made the air itself freeze.

Harley’s breathing grew ragged. Blood loss was catching up to him. His swings became heavier, slower.

The knight noticed.

"Enough games," it snarled.

It suddenly planted its sword into the ground. A pulse of icy power exploded outward, forcing both Harley and Vernox to leap back.

The knight’s laughter echoed through the ravine—deep, distorted, and utterly mad.

"Very well... if ordinary steel cannot end you..."

It gripped its sword with both hands. The blade began to glow with an unholy blue light, frost racing along its length until the entire weapon looked like a shard of pure winter.

It was like... It turned its sword into real ice.

But Harley could feel that the sword was much sharper now, and something about the knight shifted too.

"...then I shall use all my strength to extinguish you all."

The temperature in the ravine plummeted. The trees at the edges of the slash in the earth groaned as their branches froze solid and shattered. The ground beneath the knight’s feet turned to black ice. And so did the sword...

Harley and Vernox exchanged a single glance—bloodied, exhausted, but still standing side by side.

The knight raised its sword towards the sky ready to finish the battle once and for all.

"It ends now."