[Voidknight Ascension] Chapter 103: Teamwork Makes the Dream Work

We said you would be vulnerable, and yet you persist in this folly!the Dagger screamed into Simon’s head.

He had no idea why he was doing this, but for once, he felt sure of himself. Sure of his standing. Sure of purpose. It was liberating.

And it didn’t hurt that he was doing something the Dagger didn’t want.

It was one little rebellious act to remind the magical artifact that he was in control here.

Simon poured on the speed, using every trick in his bag to close the distance before the final blow fell and Kale was just another body on the ground.

We will not make it, do not needlessly harm us!

Ignoring the Dagger, Simon siphoned MP into his pouch, producing a single black bolt. He slotted it as he ran, his [Crossbow Proficiency] guiding his hands and nimble fingers.

As Simon leapt over a tumble of boulders, he lined up the shot.

The commander’s blade was held aloft like a banner. He was far too close to Kale for Kylie or Chris to do anything. Their accuracy at such a distance was abysmal.

But not Simon’s.

The bolt flew while he was still in the air. He dropped the crossbow to the ground as he sped down the hill behind the flying bolt.

***

Kale watched as the commander’s blade descended like a flash of silver lightning. There was a faint ping followed by blinding agony as Kale’s arm dropped to the ground, a fountain of blood spraying from his shoulder.

He stared at the dark-skinned arm on the ground, numbly aware that it was his own and that he should do something.

Roaring with rage, Kale lifted the commander off the ground with one hand and slammed him into the ground. He jumped on top of him, bleeding all over the red armored bastard and attacking with all the pent-up ferocity that he had.

His one good fist pounded against the commander’s metal. He could feel his bones breaking, but he didn’t care. I’m already a dead man. I can’t stop the bleeding.

If he couldn’t die on his feet, then he’d die beating the ever-loving piss out of this asshole. One of his strikes knocked the man’s helmet askew and the coming sword strike went wide.

Kale pressed his knee down painfully into the exposed weakness of the man’s armor just beneath the armpit. The man let out a satisfying groan of pain and his arm locked up.

The angle was all wrong to attack Kale, and with his rage sustaining him, he hardly felt the man’s knees and his other fist striking him.

With difficulty, he managed to get the helmet off. Eyes as blue as a summer sky stared up at him, and for a moment Kale nearly hesitated as he feared that this was his friend.

It wasn’t Sam, but somebody who bore an unsettling likeness in the eyes. Not for long, Kale thought as he reached down with his thumb and gouged at the man’s eye.

Kale screamed as a fiery, scorching pain pierced his side. He had been wrong about the sword. Perhaps it was the wrong angle for a slice, but the man’s sword was sharp, and Kale’s armor was nothing to it.

A knee to the side had the tables reversed and Kale lay on the ground bleeding, impaled with the man’s sword. Any moment, he expected the commander to get up and finish the job.

Even if he didn’t, how long did he really have to live?

With his vision rapidly fading into a long, dark tunnel, Kale saw his brother one final time.

Sam crouched down in front of him, smiling down at him. “I never took you to be a quitter, Kale.”

“I’m losing a lot of blood here, Sam,” Kale told him. He opened his mouth to smile, and a bloody hacking cough racked him for a moment. “You’ll have to excuse my manners. I’m not like you, can’t summon magical infinite blood.”

“Bullshit,” Sam told him. “You think you’re allowed to just throw in the towel? Did you stop going to physical therapy even when the doctor’s said the odds of regaining full motion were distant?”

Kale chuckled wetly. “You forget that I never was able to walk again. Not until we were brought here.”

“Didn’t stop you then. And all we had on shitty Earth was barbaric surgeons to cut you up and doctors to pump you full of chemicals. There is magic here, and you’re going to just let it all go? What would Becky Meyers say about that?”

Kale shut his eyes, the name instantly transporting him back to his past. It wasn’t long after the accident that had paralyzed him from the waist down. Becky Meyers was a stuck-up rich bitch that was the de facto queen of their school.

She was also a Grade A narcissist. And the very fact that Kale Kalama was getting more attention than her drove her insane.

It wasn’t the words she used to talk about him, always whenever he was wheeling awkwardly down the hall and just within earshot, it was the way nobody stopped her.

She was a vicious, horrible person that everybody was afraid of. Her parents had money and were not afraid to use it to protect their fragile daughter.

It was Sam who stepped up and put an end to it. Oh, he wasn’t quite as muscular or fit back then, so he took more than a few beatings for running his mouth… but it never stopped him.

And when Kale joined in, well… beating up a kid in a wheelchair was bad optics no matter what you did. It hadn’t been that Sam saved him, but his best friend showed him that he had to fight back for himself for anything to change.

When Kale had been too afraid, too depressed, and too tired to do it, Sam had stepped up.

The surname the orphanage had given Kale was Kalama. It meant “torch” or leader, such as somebody who uses a torch to delve into the darkness to lead others through.

He had never felt like much of a leader though, but right then, bleeding and dying, he could see Becky Meyer’s sneering, ugly face. People said she was beautiful, but he only ever saw the hate and cruelty that such a doll-like façade hid.

“Fine, fine,” Kale said, blinking hard to restore his vision.

Sam was gone, but he could have sworn he heard his laughter. Kale’s body had gone cold and numb. He didn’t have much blood left to lose and it would be so easy to just give in.

He wouldn’t. Not for Sam, but for himself.

He struggled to turn his head, surprised at what he saw. The commander was up on his feet, but there was another pair of boots skirmishing with him.

If I had the strength for it, I would laugh, he thought, watching his unlikely savior come to the same realization as Kale had moments before.

***

He is beyond us, beyond you! the Dagger screeched into Simon’s mind. Let me in and we will defeat him!

Already he could feel its compulsion growing stronger, weighing his limbs. The Dagger wanted one thing and one thing only. To fight the strongest and best them.

If Simon lost, he knew the Dagger would do all it could to make the commander use him, and it would continue its cycle of violence and destruction.

But Simon was in control here, and he managed to push the Dagger’s influence out just in time to dance to the side as the commander struck at him with his sword.

Kale’s blood splattered on the ground. He was already dead by the look of it and the first thing the commander had done when Simon arrived was pull that blade out of Kale’s lifeless corpse.

I was too late, he thought to himself. What did I expect? That I would be a hero by saving him? Get some goodwill from the group that, despite my efforts to gain their trust and help them, still look at me as if I’m going to stab them all in their sleep?

Maybe he had thought of it once or twice, but they were useful, dammit. Besides, they were all weaker than him. He and the Dagger craved the same desire to test themselves, but Simon wasn’t nearly as blind as the Dagger.

Except in this instance, he reminded himself, and had to agree.

It was pure idiocy to save Kale, and now he was locked in a battle with this commander who, even with one eye, was more than a match for him.

Simon used [Fade] just as the commander’s sword was passing through his ribs. Too close! His body went immaterial, and he lunged forward as the ability brought him back to the material plane after the man’s sword passed harmlessly through him.

He struck home with the Dagger into one of the dented areas from Kale’s savage beating. [Poison Imbuement] sizzled on the tip of his Dagger as it ate away at the man’s armor and struck home.

A backhanded blow knocked Simon to the floor, his head ringing. The Dagger took advantage of the moment and seized control, getting Simon to his feet and narrowly dodging another measured strike from the commander.

Only the fact that the man’s depth perception was hampered saved his life. That, and the Dagger’s control. As much as Simon hated to admit it, the Dagger had saved him.

Even with the commander’s eyes closed, he wouldn’t miss a prone target.

His footwork is better than mine, and he’s clearly had classical training. Every strike is calculated and precise. He waits for an opening, attacks, then backs off and waits for me to strike again knowing I have the shorter reach.

The only thing he had going for him was his relative freshness and his speed. He was faster than the commander, but only just. And it didn’t make up for the huge difference in skill and reach.

One-on-one like this, he didn’t have to worry about [Exposed] triggering, but if any of the commander’s flunkies showed up….

Simon couldn’t help but wonder as he dodged and weaved around the commander’s probing attacks if Kylie and Chris had abandoned him somehow for allowing Kale to get hurt.

It wasn’t as if he told the man to be their shield!

Calm. He was calm. Centered. He could do this.

The commander overreached as he misjudged the distance slightly, and Simon seized on the opening.

He lunged forward, stabbing into the same wound he made into the armor and just as the Dagger was driving home, a metal fist caught him in the jaw and the world burst into white, sparkling lights.

It was a feint!  the Dagger screeched.

***

Gods above, I’m sick of these kids! Allen thought to himself. They should have been easy pickings like all the rest. But instead, they had to fight.

5 people against 32? What insanity was that?

He flexed his free hand. The kid had really thought he misjudged his [Adder’s Strike] that badly? Even with one eye, he was better than that!

Allen stepped forward, raised his sword for the finishing blow and—

Now what the fuck is going on?!

Something had snared his ankle. He looked down to see a black hand grasping his foot. “Didn’t I already kill you?” he growled.

Was it too much to ask that when you cut off a man’s arm and stab him in the side that he died?!

Must I do everything?

He hadn’t heard the sounds of battle in a while, and though that worried him, he knew he was more than over leveled for dealing with these kids.

[Marking the Ground] swept his blade back and out, severing the hopeless man’s hand at the wrist. Now that he had no more arms or hands to grab him with, he turned his attention to the sneaky one.

A sharp acidic ache spread out from his stomach. He looked down to see the dagger up to the hilt through his glorious [Rebnach Breastplate].

The silent one of the group was kneeling, arms thrust forward, driving that evil-looking dagger into the thickest part of his plate mail.

How?

Snarling, Allen executed [Reaping the Lillies], a sweeping circular slash that beheaded the idiot and left him— wait, why wasn’t his arm moving?

Allen’s arm dangled to the side. A large spike of ice impaled it at the shoulder and had frozen his bicep to the side of his body.

“Hurts, don’t it?” the boy said with a grin as he twisted the dagger, sending waves of burning pain throughout Allen’s body.