Stronger Together chapter 198

Contrary to what one might expect, I did not immediately leap over  the massive crowd of brawling soldiers and engage in sky combat with  Drakul. In fact, it was a bit anticlimactic the we had to slowly make  our way toward each other through the throng. As expected my guards  weren't thrilled with my decision to throw myself into the melee, but  they had to keep up anyway, so they got dragged along. I kept my eyes  mostly locked with Drakul but I had to keep looking away to engage with  the various soldiers in my path.

Medieval battles, it  turns out, are extremely chaotic. The whole line up and shoot at each  other thing was very much a factor of warfare evolving into firearm  territory because when two melee forces meet each other they overlap and  intermingle. Drakul got his peanut butter all up in my chocolate and it  showed. Ever few feet there was some random soldier fighting one on one  with an enemy combatant before some other soldier of the same side  stabbed the guy in the back. Then the stabber got shanked when he was  stabbing the first guy and the whole thing made me glad I had guards.

Drakul  meanwhile was having much less trouble making his way over. He cut a  striking figure with his long wavy black hair and goatee and that weird  red hat with no brim. Not to mention what looked like a dark red velvet  arming jacket with gold trim. Regardless he was cutting his way through  the riot of soldiers with barely any trouble, basically hacking a path  through my men like he was on safari and they were particularly sickly  trees. He barely had to look away from me as he fought whereas I kept  glancing back after each encounter.

His centuries of blade  work showed in spades, and even with my klurkor training I was a bit  worried about fighting him. The ancient bastard seemed to see everything  around him in a three hundred sixty degree field of perception. Every  attack was casually deflected, every opening ruthlessly exploited, it  was like watching the most brutal interpretive dance of all time.  Something about the economy, the efficiency with which he killed  elevated it to an art form almost. His moves were somehow so simple  their execution became complicated.

Fighting him one on  one was out. I couldn't compete with him. That blade of his moved in  such sharp brutal arcs I could barely see it standing still, it was like  he was standing in the worlds most murderous storm. Streaks of shining  metal lightning striking down victims for every step, arterial red  clouds drifting around him as he scattered the blood of my soldiers,  until finally, eventually, he made it to my group. He walked between my  guards like he was taking a summer stroll, casually flicking his blade  out to dispatch the first guard he met.

Luckily I'd been  waiting, I deflected the blow and my arms ached from the impact. He  leveraged every muscle, every ounce of momentum and force into each  swing and it felt like I was trying to parry a semi truck, but I  managed. He tried again and again I threw myself into countering him. I  couldn't attack, hell I couldn't even really defend, it was all I could  do to trip him up and try to make openings for my boys to take him out.  Klurkor wasn't overpowering his combat skills, a year of training in  even got level combat wasn't enough to outdo centuries of bloody  experience. I was barely staying alive.

I felt like I was  riding the edge of a knife, every attack, every parry, was like sticking  my head into the mouth of a lion and poking it in the eye. Constant  blaring survival instincts as I struggled to live through the next  second. It went on like that for what seemed like forever. Every move  felt closer to my inevitable death, inching further and further into the  abyss with every block or parry but somehow staying just that small bit  ahead of my demise. My guards tried to help, trying to exploit openings  that weren't even really there, but somehow managing to distract him  enough to keep me alive.

The battle around us fell away as  we dueled, everyone except my guards backing off and giving us space.  Drakul's own soldiers kept clear of him instead of helping, at least one  having gotten close to aid him and dying when he invaded the old  monster's domain of butchery. My own soldiers seemed to steer clear  because they sensed that interrupting this fight might cost me my life,  or the lives of one of my guards, who were sustaining small wounds even  with me playing distraction for them.

The fight seemed to  drag on forever, every second stretching into eternity as my body tore  itself apart to keep up with the beast in human skin I was battling. But  as we fought I noticed something hopeful. He was getting tired. Drakul  was an unbelievable titan in combat but he was mortal in this world.  Regardless of how brutal or efficient his attacks were battling against a  dozen people will start to wear away at anyone. Those ringing blows  that made my muscles ache were slowing down, hitting just a bit lighter,  and it was making all the difference.

Slowly but surely  the flow of battle started to change. Those unstoppable strikes of  shining metal that made my bones rattle were batted aside more easily.  That omniscient reaction time was just a touch slower, and those  perfectly placed nearly omnipresent defensive attacks were just slightly  out of place, not soaking up the force in the way they had before. I  started spotting openings in his defense that hadn't been there before,  and I pressed the attack as carefully as I could so as not to leave  myself open. It didn't do much at first, but slowly over time the holes  got bigger and bigger.

As the web of  terrible violence the vampire king had woven around himself began to  unravel I started scoring hits, legitimate damage opening muscle and  skin. I had to hand it to daddy Drak, he was a tough son of a bitch.  Some of the blows I managed to land on him were vicious looking, but he  didn't even react. His eyes remained hard and cold and focused as he  tried his best to murder the living shit out of me. But sadly he wasn't  the only one getting tired, my own strength was waning, and after  particularly brutal exchange my arm buckled at the wrong time and I took  a hit.

A  line of white hot pain landed on my ribs. My armor took the brunt of the  cutting force, but the impact smashed into and seemingly cracked one of  my ribs. The metal dented inward, pressing into my injury agonizingly  and the feeling of my damaged rib bones being ground against by the  impacted piece of metal was pretty much the worst thing I had ever  experienced. I gritted my teeth and countered again my arm hitching as I  pulled my ribs in a way that I really wished I hadn't to deflect a  sword blow.

The  next blow I took on my arm, not the one I was using for my sword but my  off hand, even with the vambrace to catch it the blow hacked halfway  into my forearm and it was all I could do not to black out from the  pain. On the upside the agonizing blaze of pure torment now eating my  arm was a very effective distraction from any tiredness I might be  feeling. Hard to take the burn of a good workout seriously when can see  your arm bone with your own eyes. I felt myself slow with every breath  bleeding heavily but I had to keep pushing.

I  locked my blade with Drakul's throwing my body against him in an  attempt to put him off balance and started bludgeoning him with my  ruined arm while I kept his blade locked with my own using my working  limb. Fun fact, there is a point in time where the pain you are  suffering becomes so sever that your brain no longer registers it as  pain. Where you are essentially feeling something so awful that you  can't even recognize it as hurting anymore. I was pretty much at that  point now.

But  all things must end, even fights that feel like they will literally go  on for eternity, and eventually the beaten broken and bloody form of my  enemy finally dropped the ball enough to give me the final opening I  needed. I saw the hiccup in his movements when it happened and took full  advantage, headbutting the bastard in the face to daze him and then  looping my working arm around his neck. He drove his blade into my leg  through a joint in my armor, but it was over, I pressed my sword against  his neck and yanked, opening his throat to the spine in one quick jerk.

The  pain in my body amplified, my eyes literally whiting out from agony and  suddenly I was standing back in The Deeps. Mab was there, with her hand  on my head and on Drakul's and I turned to look at the vampire king as  he stood there, frozen in place. Then his eyes began to glow. Subtly at  first, then brighter, amplifying the errie gleam of predatory malice he  always had but somehow changing it. I swear I could see his dying  struggles in the shine of his now white irises.

His  voice tore itself from his throat, strangled and outraged, but it was  an obvious effort, like he couldn't force himself to move more than the  minimum amount to makew his lungs work. "No! I can't die here! I am  Drakul. I am the dragon. I am born of stars!" His body began to shake  and twitch and smoke began to pour from his mouth and nose, his skin was  paling past the point of being white, glowing with the heat and  intensity of hot steel as it was forged. Everything began to accelerate  as he stood there screaming and finally he threw back his head and  roared, erupting into a column of flame.

Everyone  stared at the floating ashes that were all that was left of a creature  that had preyed upon the earth since longer than this country had  existed. The stunned silence just sort of settled over the room. I  understood their point of view, based on what I could see the  Arbitration had been instant out here. Even I was in shock at having  spent months inside the trial only to emerge seconds later, but seeing  it start and end instantly like that must have been even more shocking.

Mab's  black eyes fixed on me and her sub zero voice cracked the air like the  splitting of a glacier "The Arbitration has concluded. Drakul has been  found wanting and his guilt condemned him. Cameron Beddows is the victor  and will be offered compensation from Drakul's estate. All of Drakul's  holdings and servants will now belong to Beddows." She turned and nodded  deeply "Congratulations young lord. Your holdings have grown." She  turned to regard the gorgeous blonde that had been with Drakul. "You.  Introduce yourself to your lord.

The  shell shocked woman scrambled over to me and dropped down on her knees.  "Apologize sire. My name is Mina Harker, I was a companion of Lord  Drakul and now am your humble servant. I shall assist you with  transition into your new role, of course." My eyes widened at the news,  the sheer lunacy of it just hitting me from out of the blue. Apparently  I'd inherited a new roommate. This would be fun to explain to the girls.  As I took in the situation my eyes fell on Qin, to my surprise he  didn't look pleased, more annoyed than anything. This did not bode well.