The Puppetmaster

The Puppetmaster

T he streets were empty and the sky had grown dark. The only signs of life were the small shafts of light that occasionally filtered out through the windows of the houses lining the road. Gourry and I walked shoulder to shoulder in silence.

It was getting cold. I’d left my mantle at Tarim’s place, and the spare that I’d managed to find wasn’t cutting it. The leather shoulder guards I’d bought on my way back to the inn yester—er, this morning—helped a little, but not much. My armored scales were much better, and since they made me look a little taller, I had every intention of getting them back. For the time being, I at least had my sword to keep me warm. (Warrior’s logic. Don’t question it; just keep reading.)

We followed the path uphill and passed a single sorcerer, clad in a black mantle, casting lighting spells for street lamps.

“Where do you think you’re going?” asked a familiar voice. Gourry and I stopped walking.

Was that guy talking to us?

We turned and looked back at our “sorcerer.” Hood down, his silver hair was buffeted by the wind, and his eerily long arm extended toward the street lamp.

“Doing your community service, Mr. Gio Gaia?” I couldn’ t help but laugh as I considered the possibility.

“In a manner of speaking, I suppose,” he said, his emerald eye brightening. “I am cleaning riff-raff off the streets.” Calmly and deliberately, he moved to the center of the road. His tattered robe billowed in the wind.

“Don’t go for it until I tell you to,” I whispered in a low voice. Gourry nodded.

I didn’t need to spell out that the thing I didn’t want him to go for prematurely was the Sword of Light. Pureblood Mazoku like Gio and Seigram are impervious to physical attacks. For the most part, spells are ineffective as well. The Sword of Light, however, possesses the capacity to render an opponent’s soul asunder. It’s a sword capable of destroying existence itself. For that reason, it’s pretty darned effective against demons. So much so that it would probably be overkill to use it against this little guy, but whatever…

“I don’t think you can handle this job,” I warned him. “If you had Mr. White Mask with you, you might have a chance, but…”

“Mr. White Mask? You mean Seigram the Formless?” he asked.

Seigram the Formless? Does that mean there’s not actually anything under that mask?

“I’m afraid Seigram the Formless is otherwise occupied. I would, however, be grateful for the opportunity to prove you wrong in your assessment.” Gio moved closer, his footsteps making no sound.

“Seriously, for your own sake—you should stop now,” I said as I raised my right hand, my palm facing outward indicating the international sign for “Whoa there, buddy—if you come any closer, I’ll have to drop you.”

Gio moved closer still, and silently watched as I cast my spell.

“Dug Wave!” I shouted, and there was a large explosion at his feet. Of course, a stunt like that wouldn’t inflict any real damage on Gio. It would temporarily blind him, however.

Unsheathing the Sword of Light, Gourry leapt into the center of the dense dust cloud just as half-mask leapt out. In the confusion, Gio didn’t notice Gourry’s having made the switch.

“Elmekia Lance!” I unleashed my next spell. Antici­pating that my magic lance was targeting his Astral weakness and shooting toward his landing point, Gio froze in midair, causing the lance to miss. Just barely.

“Pathetic,” he hissed nastily, and he swung his right hand down hard. Sensing something awful coming, I jumped to the side.

Whizzz! A low sound, like the buzzing of insect wings, filled my ears. A few hairs were ripped out of my head, and the end of my cloak was torn apart. The brunt of the blow passed, but a strange feeling of discomfort lingered.

A miasma shock wave! It had to have been.

That was a dangerous trick. If one of his hands or feet had managed to touch me, the miasma would have spread through my body and short-circuited my bioelectrical system, resulting in death. Not even a giant could withstand a blow like that.

Okay, so maybe he wasn’t a top-class opponent, but he was proving to be one I couldn’t hold back on. We could be in real danger if I let this battle drag on.

“Dam Brass!” I fired off my next spell. Waves of small red orbs of light exploded on impact, ripping up the ground where they hit. It was a most excellent smokescreen!

The bad news was that I couldn’t see Gio. The good news was that he couldn’t see me, either. Mazoku can sense malice and enmity in humans, and they use those sentiments like homing devices, so Gourry and I were fighting hard to suppress our emotions.

Just as I considered the possibility that he might start launching miasma shock waves randomly…

“There!” Gio spotted me. As he yelled, I threw a spell at my feet and dove out of the way. A shock wave tore through the dust cloud. If I hadn’t gotten myself airborne, I’d have been ripped to shreds.

“Waah!” I shrieked, making it sound like his attack had hit me square in the middle. I knew I had to lay it on thick to fool a Mazoku. It was an impressive performance, if I do say so myself.

Sometimes, I just have to take a moment to admire my own talents.

… Okay, moment’s over. Anyway…

“Ha ha! You fool!” Completely duped, Gio Gaia figured he could exit the cloud with impunity, and he did. So confident in his infallibility, he continued to move forward, paying no heed to Gourry whatsoever.

Obviously, that demon either didn’t know or had forgotten about the Sword of Light.

Exactly what I was hoping for.

The shriek from my solo performance wasn’t solely intended to throw Gio off. It was also Gourry’s signal.

“Now, where did she go?” Half-mask surveyed the area; Gourry drew his blade.

“Arrrgh!” Gio roared. With a single blow, Gourry had lopped off the demon’s long right arm. Thanks only to a reflexive lurch of his body did Gio save his own life. “Damn you!” he cried, and thrust his remaining hand outward.

The shockwave lunged toward Gourry. Even he couldn’t dodge it at that range!

“Nnguh!!” Gourry grunted and maneuvered. The Sword of Light absorbed the miasma wave, reducing it to a harmless breeze. Both Gio and I stared, agog.

“Impossible! The Sword of Light?! No one told me he had the Sword of Light!” Gio raged.

Well, of course not. The only people in Atlas City who knew about it were Gourry, Chairman Halcyform, and myself. It wasn’t like we were gonna advertise it.

There was something else that Gio didn’t know about us. Namely, that I didn’t have a particularly chivalric nature. I wasn’t going to just let him stand there dumbfounded until he recovered from the shock.

“Elmekia Lance!” I hollered, and this time, I didn’t miss.

“Guaaaah!” he bellowed once more.

When used against humans, the most this spell can do is cause mental collapse. Since demons are almost purely Astral beings, however, a direct hit should be fatal.

Only… it wasn’t.

“Gourry!” I shouted.

“Right!” he responded, running and leaping toward the demon in the half-mask. The Sword of Light flashed in the darkness, missing its target by a hairsbreadth.

“Next time, I will kill you!” Gio threatened as he fled, disappearing into the darkness faster than we could hope to follow. Gourry sheathed the Sword of Light and returned to my side.

“Wow. Even his clichéd exit line was pathetic…” I marveled.

As the dust from the tumult settled, we noted that although the residents of the houses lining our battlefield surely must have been watching the goings on, no one had chosen to come outside and risk getting involved. We were still alone on the street. Oh, well. Couldn’t blame them, really. I’d have done the same.

Er… scratch that. We had been alone, but as soon as I thought it, I noticed a solitary figure standing further up the hill. From the ambient streetlight, I could make out his red hair.

“Lantz?” Gourry called out.

Lantz’s face was pale.

“Wh-where have you two been?” he asked, his voice quivering.

“What’s wrong? Did something happen? Are you okay? You look pretty bad.” I couldn’t get over how the blood had left his cheeks. As I approached, he took a step backward.

“Did you… did you go to Daymia’s?” he asked.

“Did we what?” I wasn’t clear what he was getting at. Gourry and I exchanged glances. I was reminded of how I’d sensed something odd about Chairman Halcyform when I stood beside him. “What happened?”

“You were there, you tell me!” Lantz yelled back at me. He wasn’t raising his voice in anger, but rather in an attempt to conceal his fear.

“Yeah, we were there. But—”

“Then it was you!” he shouted. “Then you’re the ones who did it!”

“Huh?” I thought he meant that we had been the ones to rescue Halcyform—and we had been. But I couldn’t figure out why that would drain all the life from his complexion.

“What do you mean by it? What happened at Daymia’s place?! We were there, yeah, but everything was fine when we left.” I was leaving some pretty important details out, sure, but my first priority was to get him to calm down. Laying all the facts out at once would just upset him further.

“You didn’t do it?” He sounded dumbfounded, but calm.

“That’s right. We didn’t do anything. I swear. Look me in the eye if you don’t believe me.” I stared straight at him, fixing my gaze on his pupils. My natural instinct was to look away just to mess with him, but this was absolutely not the time for hijinks. I resisted.

“Now, please tell me. What the heck happened at Daymia’s place?” I asked, once he was satisfied that I wasn’t pulling his leg.

“I don’t know how to explain it,” Lantz said with a sigh. “I don’t even understand it. Maybe… maybe you should come with me.”

Gourry and I looked at each other and nodded.

“Okay. Let’s go.”

* * *

The Daymia residence stood silent and foreboding, blocking the moon’s radiance with its silhouette. At first glance, nothing had changed since last night. But… there was something in the air, a kind of unease that foreshadowed a new horror awaiting us. Tension ran through my body like a blade.

What the hell happened here?

“This is spooky,” Gourry muttered to himself uncharacteristically. A small bead of sweat formed on his forehead.

“It’s creepy, all right. Well, then, shall we go in?” I suggested. I heard Lantz yelp beside me.

The three of us advanced through the open gate. The air, damp and chilly, wrapped around my body like a wet blanket. Inside the gates, I sensed enmity, sadness… desperation. In other words, a miasma. It took me a minute to recognize that sick cocktail of emotions, but it was definitely the residual effects of a miasma.

The front door wasn’t locked.

“Ugh,” I grunted as I used my hip to force it in.

As soon as the door swung open, we were smacked in the face with the perfume of fresh slaughter.

“What is that smell? It’s something like blood, I know, but…,” Gourry muttered to no one in particular, a grimace on his face.

“Over here.” Lantz led us deeper into the mansion. As we moved in, the stench grew stronger.

“You guys completely vanished last night,” he mused aloud, apropos of nothing. He may have been trying to distract himself from his fear. “After we beat down the rest of those creatures, I looked up and poof! Both of you were gone. I thought maybe you were dead, but we couldn’t find your corpses.

“It wasn’t a good idea to start poking around at night, so I waited ‘til dawn,” he explained, “then Rod and I split up and went looking for you. I didn’t have any luck, so I went back to Tarim’s place around noon. We were supposed to rendezvous there, but Rod never showed.”

“He didn’t?” I was genuinely surprised. Of course we had our reasons for not going back, but Rod?

“I don’t know what the hell’s going on. I waited awhile then decided to go look for the three of you. I figured that maybe… maybe you’d come here for some reason and gotten into some kind of trouble—captured or killed or something like that. I thought maybe Rod tried to help and got caught, too? I don’t know what I was thinking exactly. I came here and didn’t see anyone, but… I got this sick feeling. Like something was horribly, horribly wrong. I was just… sick. And I-I was scared… His voice trailed off, and he looked at the floor—a little ashamed, I think.

We headed down the same corridor we’d traversed the night before. All the doors along the way were still open. I peeked into one of the rooms, not expecting to see much of anything.

“Gaaaah! What the—?!” The floor was covered in a nasty viscous fluid and about a gazillion broken crystal vials. In the center of the room, a dozen or so squirming globs of flesh gathered. One was about the size of a cat, with neither eyes nor hair. It was lying on its side, moaning and scratching at the air with stubby, jointless limbs. We could see its internal organs through its tissue-thin skin, and the blood vessels in its transparent wings (yes, it had wings) throbbed audibly. A puppy with snake scales wiggled next to it, and a bird with tentacles grew out of its stomach.

Any child witnessing this would become psycho­logically scarred for life.

“Oh my God! What is that?” someone barked in my ear—half shouting, half retching. My head snapped back to find the source. It was Gourry.

“Daymia’s chimeras,” I answered.

I averted my eyes and noticed a bunch of strange-looking tools stacked together on a table in a corner of the room. I had seen instruments like them long ago, in a back room at the Sorcerers’ Guild in my homeland. There, they were used to manufacture trinkets and talismans, but here… here, they were being used on living beings.

“Let’s keep going,” Lantz urged us on, “This isn’t where we’re headed.”

We couldn’t object, of course. We didn’t want to look at the carnage any more than he did. My fear was that I was going to remember it in detail the next time I sat down to a meal.

There were similar scenes behind every open door. No matter how hard I looked, I just couldn’t make sense of what I was seeing. In one room, there were piles of weapons and armor covered in that nasty slime. In another, mummies— the corpses of male mercenaries, I think—convulsed about. And then…

“Huh? What was that?” I stopped walking.

“What was what?” asked Gourry.

“That voice…” I could hear it only faintly.

“Is it laughing?” Lantz asked. He sounded shaken.

“Yes! You hear it, too?” I heard laughter somewhere in the distance, but I couldn’t tell where it was coming from.

He shook his head. “No. When I saw… when I saw it…” He paused to allow a small shudder to pass through his body. “I heard a laugh.”

“What it?”

Lantz didn’t answer my question.

Finally, we came to the same huge door as the previous night—the door to the room that had housed the Rune Breaker. The same room we’d been in that very morning.

The laughing grew louder. The source was behind this door. It was Daymia, certainly, no mystery there. He had a strange laugh when we met him before, but not like this.

“Here?” I asked. Lantz nodded.

“I’m going in,” Gourry announced, not waiting for either of us to answer. As he opened the door, the laughter got louder and more maniacal. Gourry took one step inside, turned and surveyed the room, and then stopped abruptly From where I stood, I couldn’t see what he was looking at.

“What the hell is… that?” His lips curled back into a snarl.

I glanced over at Lantz. He was shaking.

“I’ve seen it already,” he said. “I don’t want to see anything like that again, ever….”

I made my way to Gourry’s side, stood beside him, and looked in the same direction. It was slowly turning around.

I froze. I couldn’t speak.

I was staring at an enormous lump of flesh. It was writhing—the arrangement of its internal organs and the pulsing of its veins fully visible.

As we watched, a snake sprang forth from the top of the lump. The snake, borne of the hideous meatball, grew into an arch half the size of the clump. It swallowed the mound of flesh, essentially consuming itself, and then sunk back into its fleshy mass.

Daymia’s laughter grew especially riotous when the snake consumed the flesh.

“Raugnut Rushavna…,” I muttered under my breath. Beads of sweat slid down my cheek.

Once, on a stopover during my travels, I’d heard a story about a king. Some twenty years before, the celebrated sovereign of the Kingdom of Gairia, Dirus the Second (also known as Dirus Ron Gairia), had set off with five thousand troops to suppress the Demon King of the North, who was said to be the source of all the disorder in this world. Neither he nor a single one of his soldiers ever returned. Legend says that the Demon King destroyed them. That was what most people believed, anyhow.

But in truth, King Dirus had returned. Alone. As night became dawn, the soldiers at the palace recognized the thing that had appeared in their midst. A sticky, fleshy mass made its way to the royal throne. As the snake, borne of its flesh, consumed it, it spoke sternly to the soldiers.

“Kill me,” it commanded in the voice of King Dirus. A dark ritual, beyond human understanding, had reduced their sovereign to this horrible form.

Mercifully, one of his soldiers raised his sword. But the cuts and blows only brought more suffering to his king. Unable to save him, his vassals sealed him—or the thing that he had become—somewhere. They never told anyone where. It’s said that even today, the voice of King Dirus is carried into Castle Gairia by the night wind.

“Kill me,” it begs.

Those who fall prey to this ritual die over and over until the demon responsible for their torture is destroyed. Daymia was suffering King Dirus’ fate. It was a ritual too powerful for human flesh, which meant that the one who had perverted Daymia’s mind and body had to be Seigram the Formless— the demon in the white mask.

* * *

We quickly worked our way out of what was now Daymia’s tomb as fast as we could, taking in the night air in gulps. It felt good, cleansing.

“You know what that thing is, don’t you?” Lantz asked after a brief pause. “You recognize it, don’t you?”

“Sort of…” I nodded weakly.

Gourry’s and Lantz’s complexions both looked bluish, and it wasn’t the fault of the moonlight.

“That thing… is Daymia the Blue,” I explained. “It’s a spell, one that only a Mazoku can use.”

“That’s a person?” Lantz’s horror was palpable. “Y-you mean to tell me that our enemies are Mazoku who would turn a human being into… that?! Wh-whoa, now, w-wait just a damn minute! Y-you don’t mean you plan to fight that thing?!” What little color remained in his face drained away as he grappled to understand what kind of enemy we were up against.

I nodded. “Yep. We only agreed to get involved in this mess because we knew these two Mazoku were behind it.”

“TWO?!” Lantz went apoplectic. “Who are you kidding?! We don’t have enough lives between us to take down one guy like that! Let alone two?! You can’t be serious.”

“We can,” I said.

“…And we are,” Gourry finished my thought in a light voice, tilting his head as he did so.

Lantz stared hard. “Who… who the hell are you people? No way ordinary mercenaries would sign on for something like this.”

Well, at least he was perceptive. Gourry and I are anything but ordinary.

“No, don’t tell me!” Lantz erupted before I could even open my mouth. “Forget it! I don’t care who you are. This is where I get off!” he said, heading for the door. ‘And if that makes me a coward, then so be it. If you’re smart, you’ll let this go and get the hell out of town while you still can. No one should die like that! Nobody!”

He broke into a jog, and then a run, stopping only once to turn and shout a warning to us, “Stop now! Let it go!” Then he vanished into the darkness. Gourry and I watched in silence. We didn’t blame him, and we didn’t think he was a coward. On the contrary, he did exactly as we’d hoped he would. If he’d wanted to stay and fight with us, we probably would have tried to talk him out of it. He’d be more of a liability in a fight than anything else—it wasn’t that he was weak, just that Gourry and I were used to working as a team, and well, the enemy was a Mazoku.

Lantz couldn’t use magic—and he didn’t have a Sword of Light to make up for it. So, no matter how skilled he was, he couldn’t help.

“Hey Lina,” Gourry mumbled, still gazing into the darkness after Lantz. “How do you think those demons are connected to all this?”

“How?” I had to think about it for a minute. “Aaah!” I got it. I’d been so sure that the demons were working for Daymia all this time that I forgot about Tarim the Violet!

I looked back to where Lantz had disappeared—he was headed for the Tarim residence. “We’ve gotta follow him!”

“We do?” Gourry was surprised.

“He’s in trouble!” I said, and took off running.

“Hey! What do you mean? In trouble how?!” Gourry asked, running after me.

“Tarim the Violet’s probably behind this whole thing!”

“Whaaat?!” Gourry stopped for a moment, then resumed the chase. “How the hell does that work?!”

“Tarim used Daymia to seal up Halcyform, figuring he could take care of Daymia later. But Daymia was smarter than he thought. As long as that Rune Breaker was in place, Tarim couldn’t be sure that sending those Mazoku after Daymia would get the job done. So, he figured he’d have to hire human mercenaries to do it,” I explained on the hoof. Laying out the whole thing was a tedious process, but it was the only way to make sure we didn’t cross swords with the enemy while Gourry had no real idea what was going on. Working in the dark might dull his edge, so to speak. He was running a short ways behind me, listening carefully… I hoped.

“So, Tarim sent Rod to hire his killers, and Rod found us,” I explained. “He could tell we didn’t have any intention of actually signing on, so he sent those two demons to challenge us. Anyone who’d back down from a couple of demons wasn’t cut out to do the job anyway.”

“So we got suckered pretty good.” Gourry had a way of cutting to the heart of the matter.

“Exactly!” I gritted my teeth. “He probably sent his monsters after us just to test our strength. Then he used the demon in the white mask—Seigram, the one Gio called the Formless—to lure us to Daymia’s place. His plan must’ve been to trick us into thinking Daymia was responsible for everything so that we’d destroy him.”

“And then we walked right into the pit,” Gourry added. “Yeah, he hadn’t counted on us meeting the chairman and releasing him. Somehow Tarim must’ve gotten wind of it, though, so now he’s afraid of involving the law, and he’s trying to eliminate all the witnesses in one shot: Daymia (who’s defenseless without the Rune Breaker) and us.”

“Halcyform’s in danger too, isn’t he?” Gourry asked. “No, there has to be a reason why he was sealed up and not killed. Whatever that reason was, unless circumstances have changed, I doubt his life’s in danger. Lantz, however…,” I trailed off. We still hadn’t spotted him. Since he knew the layout of the city much better than we did, he might have taken a shortcut.

“Lantz has no idea that Tarim’s behind this. If he gets back and says the wrong thing, Tarim might decide he’s no longer useful or he knows too much. He could be executed on the spot—or worse!” I didn’t really want to think about it.

“You know…Gourry started, “you sure change your theories a lot.”

Argh!! I was so taken aback that I lost my focus and tripped, which sent me flying forward. Crunch! “Ow, ow, ow!”

Don’t step on people when they’re down, Gourry! I lifted my head, and he glanced back at me as he passed.

“Sorry. Guess that was a little harsh,” he offered.

“Ya think?!” I got up and started running again. “When circumstances change, then of course the conclusions you draw change, too! That’s not theorizing, it’s deduction!”

“Okay, whatever. Your point is that all roads lead to Tarim, right?” Gourry asked, leaning toward me for some kind of clarification.

“Yes! And we have to hurry!” As we continued down the dark path, I got an ominous feeling in my chest. Our night was only just beginning.

* * *

I froze where I stood. Gourry did as well.

The Tarim residence had already become a slaughter­house. Just inside the front door, we choked on the stench of death. The blood of fallen mercenaries had collected into what could justifiably be called a sea covering the entirety of the first floor. I felt the urge to vomit. I’d been on many, many battlefields in my short life, but you never get used to smells like that.

If you ever meet anyone who says they aren’t bothered by it, be very, very afraid.

Looking at what was left of the mercenaries Tarim had hired was enough to turn the most iron of stomachs into rust pits. It looked like they’d been on the wrong end of a legion of combat drones! That’s not a fight I would’ve expected the mercenaries to win, per se, but I wouldn’t have predicted such a… massacre.

“Where’s Lantz?” Gourry’s words shook me back to the present.

“Inside!” I said as I pressed on. My boots made a squishing sound in the gut soup, like stepping into mud.

We curved through a corridor that opened up into a foyer. I stopped.

Lantz—well, he was lying on the floor in a stew of corpse parts and broken furniture. He was still whole and breathing, which put him in a far better position than the rest of his comrades.

And there, standing over him, sword drawn and bloodied: Rod.

He turned his dark eyes toward us.

“I was hoping you’d come. Now we’ll find out who’s better,” he said to Gourry.

“I don’t get it,” I mumbled.

“I was constrained from challenging you while we were allies,” he explained, turning his fouled sword in our direction, drops of blood falling to the floor like exclamation points. In the weak light, the blade reflected a faint purple.

“So that’s it, huh?” Gourry answered. He was horrified, but not surprised. There was a quiet anger behind his words. I didn’t quite understand what was going on yet.

“Yes. I transferred my allegiance to Halcyform to make this very encounter possible.”

He what?! I thought my eyes were going to pop out of my head. Then, he did this became? Wait, that would mean… Oh, nuh-UHU

“I’m sorry I’ll have to deny you what means so much,” Gourry said, stepping in front of me. He had not yet drawn his sword.

“Deny me? What must I do to inspire your challenge? Kill the girl?” Rod asked.

“Even if it were that easy, it wouldn’t be necessary. I don’t intend to deny you your fight, only your victory,” Gourry answered.

I took a step back. The tension in the room was nearly unbearable.

“Lina, go see what you can do for Lantz. I’ll take care of this.”

“I’m going,” I said, and nodded. He was asking me not to get involved in their fight no matter what, and I’d just agreed. I wasn’t entirely sure he could take Rod—and of course I was worried—but the look in Gourry’s eyes said he wanted to fight this one on his own. I focused my energies on Lantz.

The poor guy was hurting, but I was pretty sure I could pull him through. I placed my hand on his belly wound and chanted a healing spell.

“Shall we do it here?” Gourry asked Rod.

“Wherever,” Rod curtly replied.

Gourry reached for his sword and in an instant, the stench of blood, the carnage—everything but the contest was forgotten, pushed aside by the tension of their conflicting wills.

Gourry drew and Rod charged. The twin flashes of light met in a clatter. Gourry deflected a blow and managed to slip his sword in toward his opponent’s flank. Rod stepped sideways, smoothly reversing his blade. He had the longer reach. Pulling his metal back, he stopped Gourry’s strike cold, abruptly changing directions. Gourry plunged his own blade down to protect himself from the scooping attack. His sword dipped under Rod’s, lifting it up.

He wasn’t fast enough. Rod easily pulled his body back, evading the counterattack. The two separated.

They were so quick on their feet that my eyes could barely keep track of their movements.

The two rushed each other once more. Gourry parried a high blow from Rod. Rod pulled back and thrust toward the opening left by the parrying blade. Gourry’s weapon spun, deflecting Rod’s sword once more. Again and again, Rod attacked and Gourry evaded. Rod was losing his patience.

Though Gourry was engaged in a defensive battle, he only seemed to be getting stronger, more determined. I hoped he had some kind of plan.

Too clever to underestimate his opponent, Rod dared not let up for a moment.

And then …

“Hah!!” Gourry yelled, distracting himself enough to create an opening for Rod that was too good to let pass. His blade surged up under Gourry’s. Neither was in a position to evade.

A mutual strike!

CLANG! A metallic sound echoed off the chamber walls.

Gourry had altered his strike mid-swing, bringing it down to his left and onto Rod’s blade. The resulting impact severed Rod’s weapon, sending more than half of it tumbling to the floor. Gourry, cleverly, had aimed for the sword. If he had aimed at Rod himself, he would have been resigning himself to a mutual strike, as he had foreseen.

The instant Rod realized his blade had been cut, he lunged forward, altering his attack. The tip of his steel caught Gourry, and a bloodstain began to spread from the cuff of Gourry’s fighting arm.

“Looks like I got the worst of that one,” Gourry said, daring to laugh.

“You are a worthy opponent indeed….” Rod smiled. It was the first time I’d seen him smile, and it was eerily amicable.

“Let’s finish it.” Gourry gripped his weapon with both hands, raising it to eye level.

Rod rested his blade on his right shoulder in silence.

Gourry charged. Rod extended his body.

The two met sword to sword, will to will, and held there, unflinching. Then, without weakening at all, they flew apart, creating a gulf between them.

Gourry lost his balance. Perhaps the injury to his strong arm had thrown him off, or maybe his foot had slipped on some blood. Whatever the reason, for a moment, he wavered. .

Rod lunged. Gourry’s stance wouldn’t allow him to dodge or deflect the blow. He collapsed forward, falling to the floor on one knee. Rod raised his blade, angling it to plunge downward. He meant to bury it in Gourry’s left shoulder…

He meant to, and he would have, if his sword had been its original length. Handling it like the blade he was accustomed to, he made no more than a shallow dent in Gourry’s shoulder guard.

In answer, Gourry rammed his blade through Rod’s flank.

“You are… very good.” Rod smiled. He looked sincerely pleased as he complimented the man who had slain him. A bit of longing still gleamed in his eyes. Blood gushed from his wound. His sword slid and then fell from his grip. “I would like to do this again someday,” he said, his face childlike, devoid of malice.

“I don’t think that’s gonna happen,” Gourry replied honestly. His own forehead was slick with sweat.

“I see, yes. That is unfortunate.” Rod exhaled, his vitality fading. He fell to his knees, but in a gruesome display of irony, he did not collapse.

The Black Swordsman had impaled himself like a stick puppet on the broken shaft of his own sword.