Commerce Emperor Chapter 43: The Leap of Faith (Patreon)

Disclaimer: Hi guys, a reminder that since Commerce Emperor will hit Kindle Unlimited on March 6th, I'll have to remove the first volume (covering the first 19 chapters) from Patreon and RR two weeks before that date. 

If you haven't downloaded the free dracolich ebook version you have until around February 23rd to do so!

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Previous Chapter 

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An unstoppable force hit an immovable object.

An ancient dragon’s scales were said to be thicker than a castle’s walls and stronger than steel; whereas tales of the rune cannons’ power to destroy fortresses in a single salvo had spread far and wide. When our artillery vomited forth a burst of essence and adamantine cannonballs at Belgoroth’s gigantic warbeast, I briefly wondered which of the two would prevail.

As it turned out, cannons beat dragons.

Colmar’s handmade projectiles punched through the dragon’s chest like quarrels through chainmail, shattering thick scales and causing a flow of burning magma-like blood to pour from its wounds. The undead beast no longer felt pain, but the recoil from the blow was enough to cause it to briefly halt it mid-flight.

I loved it when wise investments paid dividends.

My joy lasted until the dragon opened its mouth at us. The light building up inside its gullet burned brighter than the sun.

“Hang on!” Marika shouted through the soundstone-speakers. “It’s going to shake a little!”

The airship veered to the side so suddenly that I was nearly thrown overboard through the gap in the wooden panels separating our cannons from the open sky outside. Cortaner grabbed my arm before I could fall off while Colmar hung onto one of the cannons. The dragon unleashed its breath of flame at us right as the Vernisla turned to dodge its onslaught. A torrent of Berserk Flames erupted from the beast’s maw, setting the sky ablaze and dissipating the clouds.

The blast narrowly missed the airship’s flank by a large margin, but I could feel its searing heat from a distance. A wave of burning gas and hot air hit us with enough force to split trees in half. Had Cortaner not held me, I would have been flattened against the back of the artillery room by the blowback.

Belgoroth’s dragon and the Vernisla passed by each other like two birds narrowly avoiding a collision. I caught a glimpse of the Lord of Wrath riding atop his mount, weathering a volley of fireballs thrown by our witchcrafters from the deck above. The projectiles missed him by an inch before his warbeast’s wings whipped up a storm of dust at us. A cloud of smoke and cursed essence entered the artillery room through its openings, filling my lungs with a rancid stench of burning corpses and gunpowder. The very essence of anger and malevolence washed over me like a tide of tar.

I barely caught a glimpse of the battle through the tide of smoke. We passed by the dragon, our airship moving northeast and Belgoroth to the southwest towards the direction of Snowdrift. Roland, Soraseo, and Alaire pursued the dragon on their own mounts while our group drifted further away.

This is Walbourg all over again, I realized when Belgoroth refused to turn back and fight us. He had also prioritized targeting population centers over engaging us back then. He’s going straight to the closest city.

Namely, Snowdrift.

We couldn’t let him reach it.

“Is everyone alright?!” Marika shouted from the soundstone-speakers.

I opened my mouth to answer and only succeeded in coughing smoke. The outside wind carried the smoke away from the artillery room, but Belgoroth’s cursed essence within it had latched onto the ship. The metal walls began to twist into the shape of screaming skulls, their empty eyes burning with the Berserk Flame.

“Waybright, Colmar, you take over the cannons while I clean this up!” Cortaner ordered with the experience and authority of a hardened commander. “Target the wings and send that dragon crashing down to earth!”

Cortaner let go of my hand and immediately moved closer to the Blight’s manifestations. Putting his left palm against the Berserk Flame and pointing outside the artillery room with his right finger, he began to siphon the cursed essence and propel it outside the airship in a diluted stream.

I knew it was an extremely risky maneuver. Essence needed physical matter to latch onto, so releasing it into the wind would cause Belgoroth’s curse to dilute and dissipate. However, Cortaner forced it to travel through his body to redirect it. He would have turned into a monster on the spot without his Inquisitor’s mark. Even now his armor’s steel shifted like a molten sea under the strain of Belgoroth’s corruption. His pain must have been unbearable.

If Cortaner would bear such an agony for victory, then I had no excuse to slack off.

Powering through the pain in my burned lungs and the foul essence permeating the artillery room, I immediately moved to help Colmar refuel the rune cannons. Thankfully, the refined runestones powering the weapons withstood Belgoroth’s curse. I had feared the corrupt essence would have ignited them.

“Such suffocating anger,” Colmar commented. “It is like breathing blood…”

“I fed these flames once,” Cortaner replied, a hint of shame in his deep and guttural voice. “They burn brighter than ever.”

They do, I thought. The smoke in the air carried the grudges of the departed and the anger of those who remained. Archfrost’s civil war had contributed to Belgoroth’s escape as much as any other conflict. We’ve all fueled that pyre.

“I’m going after him!” Marika shouted, the airship veering to the right and turning around as she spoke. “Prepare to fire again as soon as we get in range!”

“We may not survive a second volley,” Colmar warned us. “We must hit true.”

I agreed with a nod. A direct hit from the dragon’s breath would blow our airship out of the sky, and an indirect one risked turning it into a small Blight. Either outcome would be fatal.

The Vernisla made a wide circle in the sky. We flew above the burning canyon and the smoking ruins left behind by Belgoroth’s bombardment, which let me witness first-hand the devastation that would befall my homeland if we failed to stop him: a scorched sea of fire and ashes engulfing all in its path.

The sight made me sick, and Colmar didn’t look any better. “Is that what Florence wanted to see?” he muttered to himself. “No one will survive this.”

After completing its turn, the Vernisla pursued Belgoroth’s dragon with all the speed its sails and runestones engines afforded it. I heard detonations resonate in the distance far away. We had equipped Alaire and the others with spears packed with explosives and bottles of Colmar’s hardening solution. I assumed they’d started using them.

I took a peek through the nearest porthole to get a better view of the battlefield. The Vernisla pursued Belgoroth’s dragon across the Archfrostian skies, and we slowly caught up to the Lord of Wrath in spite of his head start. Our Knight and his Vassals harassed him by flying in an organized formation, closing in to throw projectiles, and then retreating in short order. Alaire and Soraseo fared better at it than Roland; the former because Silverine moved quicker than the wyverns and thus had a better time slipping past Belgoroth’s guard, and the latter because of her enhanced aim.

They proved themselves to be such a nuisance that the dragon interrupted its scorching campaign to target them with its breath. The beast roared at the clouds and set them ablaze. A trail of flames tainted the heavens red like comets coursing through the black night.

How could such a terrifying sight be so beautiful to look at?

Cortaner managed to extinguish the Berserk Flames threatening to engulf the artillery room, through its walls still kept the shape of screaming skulls. “This should be enough for now,” he said as he returned to his old post. “But if we get too close, the ship will start turning on us.”

“Neither can Roland and the others stop Belgoroth,” I noted as I observed the battle from afar, much to my dismay. Our allies targeted the dragon with explosive spears, but they lacked the power to inflict meaningful damage against the beast’s scales. They might as well be mosquitos harassing a cow: annoying, but harmless. “We’ll catch up in a minute.”

My allies and I took position behind the cannons and waited for Marika’s signal. The Vernisla gained ground—so to speak—on Belgoroth’s dragon and moved to its left. The undead monster reared its ugly head at us with light swelling in its gullet. The wounds on its chest hardly seemed to slow it down.

“Ready?!” Marika shouted through the soundstone-speakers. “Fire!”

Selestine and Eris unleashed lightning bolts from the upper deck at the same time as our cannons unleashed an adamantine volley. The dragon dived lower in a swift and unnatural motion, its body tilting a quarter of a clock to the right. Our projectiles flew right between the gaps between its wings and shoulders in spite of its immense size.

The dragon unleashed a stream of flames at the airship’s bow and hit it with tremendous force. The entire Vernisla trembled so much I hung to my cannon with all of my strength. A cloud of smoke erupted from the bow, obscuring our sight.

I barely managed to catch a glimpse of Alaire and Silverine breaking formation to strike at the dragon’s throat. They launched explosive spears at its gullet, and while the detonation hardly managed to crack the beast’s scales, it threw the monster’s aim off and its fiery breath missed us before it could finish consuming our airship.

“Marika?!” I shouted at the speakers, but to my horror I only heard the screech of broken metal in response. “Marika!”

“Focus and keep shooting!” Cortaner snarled. “Before he kills us all!”

Our remaining cannons unleashed a second volley, but the undead dragon contorted at the last second. Its back bent in a way that let it dodge the projectiles it could avoid, and its tail intercepted those it couldn’t with a wide sweep. The Lord of Wrath rode unharmed, his burning gaze staring straight ahead.

Curses, Belgoroth was using Soraseo’s power to predict our shots!

The Vernisla put some distance between the dragon and itself, with Marika’s voice coming out of the speakers. “Robin?” she called out my name. “Everyone, can you hear me?”

“We can!” I replied. Hearing her voice alone lifted a weight off my shoulders. “Are you unharmed?”

“I’m fine, but I can’t see much!” Marika replied. “The smoke obscures my view!”

Unfortunately, that was the least of our problems. Belgoroth’s evil rippled through the smoke and latched onto the airship’s hull. Murderers’ blades grew out of the wood below the bow like a great shark’s fangs. The steam bursting through the pipes gained the rancid, yellow texture of sulfur. I heard the echo of distant screams and whispers of the departed in the back of my mind.

The Vernisla was turning into a haunted airship.

Eris teleported into the artillery room in a cloud of white smoke, her hands clutching her staff dearly. A few of its runestones had lost their luster. She must have spent them firing projectiles at Belgoroth himself.

“I have bad news,” she reported with a deep scowl. “We took damage at the front. Selestine is extinguishing the flames as we speak, but I’m afraid we have neither the time nor resources to fully exorcize the ship.”

“How long until we lose control of it, Belarra?” Cortaner asked sharply.

“I do not know, Corty. Marika should be able to steer it for a few minutes, half an hour at best.” Eris turned to me. “Can you sell me the ship’s cursed essence as a package deal?”

“I can, but the cursed essence will immediately break out of its container,” I replied. Our chances were grim. “The distilled Blight will explode in our face the moment I complete the trade.”

“It won’t do us much good either,” Marika replied through the speakers. The quality of her voice had noticeably declined, largely due to the foul essence interfering with my communication system. “The Vernisla needs urgent repairs. The longer I keep it in the air, the more likely it is to fall apart.”

It had taken us nearly a month’s work to build this ship, and we would lose it in days.

“Can’t Selestine petition the Artifacts to smite the dragon from the sky?” I asked Eris, grasping at straws. “Or summon a storm?”

“We are on our own, handsome.” Eris shook her head with a hint of resignation and then looked at the cannons. “We should close in and try to hit him again.”

“Belgoroth can use the Monk’s powers to anticipate and dodge our shots,” I replied in frustration. “We need to adjust our strategy. Getting closer will cause the airship to catch fire–”

“Guys,” Marika’s voice interrupted me. She gulped on her end of the line. “We are getting in sight of Snowdrift.”

My heart sank in my chest. I immediately rushed to the nearest porthole, as did Colmar and the others. The horizon sprawled before us, with not a single cloud to mar it. The river my friends and I had used to enter Archfrost slithered ahead of us, its pure waters glittering in the sunlight. I could see the green fields whose fertility Colmar had helped restore, the ships Marika had built sailing on the waters, and the city I’d struggled so much to bring back from the brink. The sight of beauty to despoil caused the undead dragon to hasten up, its wings whipping up storms of embers and dust.

My hometown and its thousand inhabitants were less than an hour away from annihilation, and I could do nothing to help.

“There has to be a way to stop him,” I muttered to myself. If we approached with the airship closely enough to fire in melee range, maybe the right spell… A thousand plans formed in my mind, each and every one of them as unworkable as the last.

“I will teleport onto the dragon’s back,” Eris suggested. “If you give me all the explosives this ship carries–”

I immediately shot the idea down. “Belgoroth will skewer you the moment you come in range. Soraseo didn’t need to see people to sense their presence.”

“The dragon’s heat will burn you to cinders sooner, Eris,” Colmar added. “You might as well be stepping into a volcano’s heart. If the explosives don’t detonate on the spot, you will suffer fatal burns.”

Eris looked at us with a blank stare that filled me with panic.

“No,” I insisted. “Just no. Nobody dies today. Not you, not my city.”

“Do you have another solution, Robin?” Eris replied with a resigned sigh. “We’re running out of options.”

“There is another, Belarra.” We all looked to turn at Cortaner, who alone kept a cool head in the face of these overwhelming odds. “We ram him. With the ship.”

His words restored my hope. Belgoroth’s dragon trumped us in size and firepower, but we had an advantage in mobility. The Vernisla could pivot faster in the sky than an undead being fueled by the Lord of Wrath’s power. If we managed to engage him in melee…

Moreover, Belgoroth hadn’t personally fought back either. His dragon was both dead and his weapon, so he had to focus all of his attention on his mount to keep it moving. The Lord of Wrath would be vulnerable.

The airship won’t last long anyway. My body radiated with tension. This can work.

“Simply breaking a wing would do,” Cortaner said. “At this height, the dragon will splatter on the ground. The Lord of Wrath will lose his mount and we can force him to fight us on foot.”

“He will see us coming,” Eris pointed out.

“Then we use a feint,” I decided. “We pretend to approach him in close quarters to fire the cannons and then throw the airship at him at the last moment. We managed to hit him with our first salvo, which means we can still take him by surprise.”

Colmar nodded in assent. “Even if the Lord of Wrath can anticipate our movements, his dragon lacks the agility to fully follow his master’s orders. It is too large.”

“I can ram him if I use all the available fuel in the last stretch,” Marika muttered on her end. “But we’ll have to jump mid-flight and scatter upon landing. If the maneuver fails–”

“If it fails, thousands will die,” I cut in, my fists tightening in resolve. “I say we do it.”

I looked at my allies. None voice an objection. Eris even dared to smile. “You are a mad and daring lot, you know that?”

“We have a go-for-broke mindset, remember?” I conceded with a smirk of my own, before looking up at the speakers. “Marika?”

“Griselda and Roland wasted a fortune on this airship, Robin,” Marika noted, her faint laughter echoing through the artillery room. “We’ve used it to build the world’s most expensive projectile.”

“Money is power, as they say,” I declared with a smirk. The irony wasn’t lost on me. “We’ll bury Belgoroth under all of Archfrost’s wealth!”

We immediately took positions. The Vernisla rumbled with a sudden burst of speed under Marika’s command. Eris teleported away to inform Selestine of our goal, while Colmar began to transmute the artillery room’s walls and ceiling into inert explosives. I triple-checked my allies’ jumping bags for any hidden defects I might have missed. When I found none, I moved to the edge of the artillery room and assessed our current position. Our airship was quickly gaining ground on Belgoroth’s dragon in spite of its hull turning into a defaced mural of screaming faces and blades. A gaping void called out to me from below, the wind threatening to push me down its embrace.

Selling away my fear of heights had been my wisest investment.

Marika’s voice gave out one last order. “Abandon ship now! I repeat, abandon ship! Jump now!”

“I am ready for my part,” Colmar declared. The entire room smelled of saltpeter and charcoal. “I have done all I can.”

“You two will jump first,” Cortaner told us. “I will stay until the last minute and fire the cannons. With luck, we will hit him. If not, it should distract him.”

Staying onboard any longer would be suicide for anyone else, but somehow I knew that Cortaner would pull it off. That man was made of steel inside and out.

“Good luck, Cortaner,” I said with one last salute. “Don’t die.”

“Good luck, Waybright,” Cortaner replied with a stern look. “The real battle will begin once we land.”

Eris was right, he had such a way of souring the mood. Colmar joined me near the edge of the wood panels separating us from the void with his jumping bag on. He looked at the ground with the same unease as me. I supposed even the undead could feel frightened.

“Are you afraid?” I asked him. “It’s okay to be. I’m a little frightened too.”

“Are you, my friend?” Colmar appeared genuinely puzzled. “I thought you had sold away your fear months ago.”

“I haven’t sold my fear of death.” I gathered my breath. “It’s a leap of faith.”

“Once upon a time, all I wished for was to fly with my own wings,” Colmar answered as he took my own in his metal gauntlet. His metal grip felt strangely fragile. “I will have fulfilled that dream even if we do not survive this crash.”

“We will,” I replied after mustering all of my courage. “One, two… three!”

We jumped.

For a brief instant, it felt as if time itself had crawled to a halt. Seconds started stretching into minutes the moment my feet leaped off into the void. The great bursts of wind that battered my skin, the smoke in my nostrils, the screams of my haunted airship, the dragon’s roars… I forgot all of them. A terrible silence quelled them all. It reminded me of the moment when Daltia painted the world in gold and stillness.

Then we fell.

The noise of the wind returned stronger than ever in an instant. A powerful force sucked me from below, overwhelming the momentum of my jump and dragged me down to earth. The dragon was close enough that its presence sent waves of hot air crashing on me.

I would have screamed in terror and exhilaration, if I weren’t so tense. Neither Colmar nor I looked at the ground below. Our eyes were firmly set on the Vernisla as it caught up to Belgoroth. Our airship soared across the sky while leaving a trail of fire behind it. I couldn’t see any of our allies through the thick smoke. I hoped Marika, Selestine, and the others had found time to jump too.

From the cannonballs thrown from the ship’s flank, Cortaner certainly hadn’t done it yet.

Belgoroth’s dragon once again showed incredible agility by adjusting its position just enough for the projectile to miss it by inches. The beast raised its maw at the airship to blow it out of the sky, only to realize far too late that it kept rushing in its direction. The dragon attempted to dive to the ground in a last-ditch effort to dodge; far too little and far too late.

The Vernisla, the physical incarnation of a united Archfrost’s hopes, rammed Belgoroth’s dragon and blew it out of the sky.

Marika had never designed the airship for this maneuver, so it shattered upon impact in a shower of steel and fire. The corrupted essence filling its pieces burst into a sea of flame that shredded the dragon’s left wings. The bow impaled the beast through the chest, and a mast punctured its scales like a spear. The flames building up inside the dragon surged to the surface with the strength of a volcanic eruption. Half the creature’s body exploded in a cataclysmic blast reverberating through the sky that was strong enough to throw Colmar and me off course.

I watched on with great satisfaction as the Vernisla’s husk and the dragon’s corpse both fell out of the skies miles away from us.

“Success!” I gloated in triumph. “Success!”

“No, Robin, look!” Colmar raised his free hand at the clouds. “Look!”

A blazing comet of searing hatred separated from the dragon’s corpse. So bright was its anger that it blinded me to look at it. Belgoroth had jumped off his mount before the collision.

Cortaner was right. The true battle would begin once we hit the ground.

It didn’t stop Alaire and the others from engaging him early, however. Our Cavalier and her other mounted allies pursued Belgoroth and attacked him in mid-fall. I was too far away from them to see clearly, but the impacts did deviate the Lord of Wrath’s course further away from Snowdrift.

I turned my eyes away from them to look at the collapsed Vernisla. I couldn’t see Cortaner through the rain of burning debris, but I did catch a glimpse of Marika and Selestine. The latter carried the former a few hundred feet away from us. I didn’t see any hint of a jumping bag on the Priest’s back, but the way her robes fluttered in the wind…

Their shape reminded me of wings.

“Robin!” Colmar’s voice drew me out of my thoughts. “The ground!”

I focused back on my own fall. We were falling straight at the river which I once used to travel to Snowdrift. I immediately pointed at its flat banks and the nearby flower fields.

“Let’s put some space, draw the rope, and find a flat area!” I told Colmar before pushing him away. “Flat!”

We both activated our jumping bags at roughly the same time. The silk on my back unfurled in the shape of a wide envelope catching air and halting my fall. The sudden recoil nearly made me throw up, but the fabric thankfully held. My bag did not snap under the strain and neither did Colmar’s.

The warm wind thankfully carried us closer to the flower fields below and away from the rocky riverbanks. I saw Belgoroth hit the river far away from our location. His mere contact boiled the water to steam and his essence surged in a cloud of red mist. I couldn’t see anything.

Colmar and I managed to make a semi-good landing on a field of daisies near the riverbank; mine was slightly less graceful than his. I nearly stumbled when my feet hit the ground, but I avoided collapsing head-first onto the ground.

“Quite the experience,” Colmar commented after removing his jumping bag. I did the same and threw it to the ground. “What now, my friend?”

“We need to regroup with the others,” I said. My eyes searched the sky for our allies, but the cloud of steam raised by Belgoroth’s landing obscured everything within sight. “Eris shouldn’t take long to check on us.”

The lack of silver marks flying back to Mount Erebia told me all our allies were alive so far, but I couldn’t tell their location. A distant and colossal pillar of smoke a few miles away indicated roughly where the dragon and the Vernisla’s wreck ended up crashing. Maybe we could use it as a rallying point?

We barely had time to take a step before he arrived.

We felt Belgoroth’s approach long before we saw him. His presence radiated bloodthirsty essence for miles around him. He was a living Blight on legs who stank of blood and charred meat. The horrible taste of blood on a sword’s edge watered my mouth. Their air thickened with a foul stench. The steam cloud covering the river turned crimson and echoed with distant screams.

An unnaturally hot wind scoured the smoke clouds from the sky. A vicious gust scourged the water from the river and dried it up in an instant. The flowers around us burned with smokeless yellow fire, but it was nowhere near as hot as the mark on my skin. My hand started bleeding under my glove from the sheer pressure.

Then I saw him.

Belgoroth emerged from the cloud of bloody steam in utter silence in a blur of steel and fire.

I had fought demons without flinching, but when that burning knight charged onward in a frightful burst of speed, I was suddenly seized with fear. The world’s fastest horse wouldn’t have been able to cross a hundred yards in the blink of an eye, but Belgoroth did in half that time. He closed the gap between the three of us in an instant.

My left hand reached for my rapier on instinct. His own was quicker to the draw.

I screamed long before my arm hit the ground.

The pain that coursed through my biceps was unlike anything I had ever experienced. Belgoroth’s burning adamantine did more than slice through my flesh and bone; it sent ripples of searing heat and cursed essence traveling through my shoulder and body. The flames cauterized my muscles in an instant. I felt the foul essence of boundless fury ripple through my very soul; a bloodthirst so deep and intense it made me want to die on the spot.

I heard Colmar call my name, but I was too busy struggling against the pain to listen. Belgoroth did not stop to finish me off. Instead, he went right after my friend and cut him in half in a single swing. A torrent of yellow flames engulfed Colmar.

I couldn’t breathe. The pain was so atrocious that I had to bite my tongue to keep myself screaming. I cried, but my tears evaporated before they were halfway down my cheeks. I couldn’t breathe.

“Did you truly think that you could fight me?” Belgoroth’s voice was awful in that it sounded unmistakably human. The guttural echo reverberating with each of his words hardly hid the vicious, self-righteous Knight lurking underneath. “You Merchants were always too bold by half.”

I dared to peek over my shoulder.

Belgoroth loomed over the burning remains of Colmar’s suit. The Alchemist’s clothes burst into flames among the charred remains of flowers and arid dirt. The metal gauntlet replacing one of his hands had begun to melt under the pressure of the swirling Blight surrounding the Lord of Wrath.

“How strange,” Belgoroth noted with disquiet. “His mark should have flown out of that corpse’s remains. If it has not, then…” He turned his burning gaze on me. I couldn’t see anything other than yellow flames past his black metal visor. The Lord of Wrath had become fire itself for all I know. “What are you scheming?”

“You are smart…” I rasped between my teeth. My right hand covered my stump to the best of my ability. My glove melted when it touched my cauterized flesh. “Figure it out.”

“It matters not, I suppose. I shall slay each and every one of you.” The Lord of Wrath pointed his baleful sword at me. Its black edge burned with all of the world’s hatred, and a single sinister eye glared at me from the hilt. “You challenged me to a duel in Walbourg. We shall settle it here and now.”

I was dead.

It wasn’t even a question. There were gulfs so great that none of the world’s goodwill and determination could help cross them. The Lord of Wrath was too quick for me to escape him, too strong for me to stop, and too skilled for me to fight. I had tricked him once with words, so he would not fall for it again.

My knees were shaking and my heart pounded so hard that my chest hurt. But I still forced myself to unsheath my rapier with my right hand. My Merchant mark burned as I held on to the hilt with all of my strength. The sheer heat was killing me. My sweat evaporated the moment it appeared on my skin and the hot air sucked the moisture in my lungs. I felt like I was breathing in an oven.

I was a maimed fencer facing a flaming demon knight in plate armor. My weapon would snap like a twig before it could hit a weak spot. I would have laughed at the sheer disparity in power between us if I wasn’t so scared.

“Before I die, you self-righteous prick… I want you to know something,” I rasped through the pain and suffering. “Even now, it’s still not too late for you. You are choosing this–”

He cut down my knees in a single sweep.

Belgoroth’s blade moved so fast that my eyes couldn’t follow its movement. I felt it, however. His adamantine neatly sliced through my bones and the flames consumed my flesh, causing me twice the pain my arm went through. I collapsed chest first into the ashes of dead flowers, defeated in a single stroke. I could still feel my legs below the knees, though their stumps stood behind me.

“Twice you have stood in my way, False Hero. There won’t be a third time.” Belgoroth looked down at me with a fiery glare. “I commend your courage, however. Though your people will burn in my flames, I will let you choose your death.”

I mustered whatever strength I had left to glare at the Lord of Wrath. From below, I finally saw him for what he was: a vile man who followed the letter of a chivalric code while spitting on its spirit. A parody of a true Knight, who would reward my valor with the execution of my choosing.

If I were to die, I would do so mocking his so-called honor.

“How about I die… of old age?” I replied with all of my contempt. “On a bed of gold… and in a woman’s arms?”

Belgoroth did not laugh. Proving himself incapable of keeping his promises, he silently and slowly raised his sword to the sky. He could have killed me in an instant, but he wanted me to see my death coming.

“Forgive him, Bel,” a familiar voice said. “He meant my arms and bed.”

Eris appeared in a cloud of smoke, a few feet behind her old comrade.

Belgoroth lowered his sword, but he did not kill me. Instead, he slowly turned away to face Eris. I had never seen her look so solemn. Her hair flowed with the hot wind, while her expression was one of pure grief and regret. Her hand clutched her staff with the grip of someone who hoped not to use it.

For a short moment, only the sound of the wind stood between them. Both appraised one another while I agonized on the ground. My mark flowed with essence reinforcing my body in a desperate attempt to keep me alive. I saw Eris sending glances at me. She couldn’t teleport to my side without entering the range of Belgoroth’s sword, so her best bet was to talk him out of killing me.

I wished for her success with all my heart, but I had my doubts.

“Daltia,” Belgoroth finally said. “I knew you were behind this.”

“Let him go, Bel,” Eris replied calmly. “He’s right, it’s not too late for you. You are better than this.”

“So are you. You are a shadow of what you used to be, and that man bears a fraction of the power you once wielded.” Belgoroth studied his old comrade, his sword firmly planted in the ground. “What do you hope to accomplish here?”

Eris bit her lower lip. “Redemption.”

“There is no redemption for those who have failed the Goddess,” Belgoroth replied. There was no sorrow nor bitterness in his voice. Only a grim form of acceptance. “I will never be forgiven… and neither will you.”

His answer made Eris flinch. As for me, I want to puke.

“Says the coward too craven to even try to atone…” I rasped before looking at Eris. “Don’t listen to him…”

Belgoroth spared me a brief glance of utter contempt. “Are you so blind? Do you not see her strings on you?” He pointed his sword at Eris. “She has orchestrated this conflict from the very beginning to wipe us out. She does not regret claiming power. She regrets sharing it.”

“No, I…” Eris visibly flinched. Belgoroth’s words slashed deeper than any dagger. “That’s not… I regret both.”

“That is wrong and you know it.” Belgoroth glared at the Wanderer’s mark. “That so-called demon whose existence you wish to deny embodies your desires. You have lied to yourself enough to fool that false Class, but your actions speak otherwise.”

“Don’t listen to him…” I told Eris, struggling to form each word. “He’s using the Knight’s power…”

“You think that this fake will give you absolution?” The disdain in Belgoroth’s voice was both sincere and palpable. “That you can live a fantasy where you bury your past and replace us with a fresh set of fools? That you can do it better the second time?”

Eris faltered, so I helped her the best way I could: with kind words.

“I trust you…” I coughed smoke. “No matter what he says… I believe in you.”

“Silence.” Belgoroth pointed his sword at me. “I tire of your prattling, False Hero.”

Eris turned her staff on Belgoroth, her eyes cold as ice. “Don’t even think about it, Bel.”

“You will fight me over this miscreant’s life?” Belgoroth shook his head. “That is absurd.”

“What have you become, Bel?” Eris’ expression twisted into a crestfallen scowl. “I am so sorry for what I’ve done to you. You were the best of us, and I turned you into a monster. I allowed that sword to corrupt your mind, just as those coins twisted mine.”

The aura of overwhelming fury surrounding Belgoroth somehow grew more potent.

“I hate those eyes of yours, Daltia,” he said with immense loathing. “You think you understand me. That you know what it is to be me. I have looked into the soul of man and seen depths of filth that you cannot even imagine. I have witnessed horrors I can never forget.”

“Then why don’t you stop?!” Eris shouted back, her voice laced with frustration. She waved a hand at the sea of fire around us. “Why won’t you lay down your sword and be better? Why do you have to pour more trash into the fire? You’re better than this.”

“Is that what it is about, my old friend? That you should feel sorry for the sinners I have killed? You should not regret anything.”

The Berserk Flame erupted from inside Belgoroth’s visor. It shone with all the malice of his soul and the fury on which he fed.

“You have freed me,” he said with a voice brimming with madness. “You have given me the strength to act on what I had always believed. To cleanse the filth that infests this world and never deserved our salvation.”

At this moment… At this moment, I think it finally dawned on Eris that the man Belgoroth was and the person she thought he was were two very different people. That he would rather destroy the world than admit his wrongs.

Her gaze hardened like stone.

“I was afraid you would say that,” she said with a quiet, small voice. “What do you intend to do next?”

“My duty.” Belgoroth managed to make the word sound ominous. “I will flatten the horizon until flames cover the world, as they once did in the beginning. I will burn everything until the evils of man perish with him. Then my oath to the Goddess shall finally be fulfilled.”

“I can’t let you do that, Bel.” Eris briefly glanced at me, then back at her former friend. “There are things in this world worth believing in.”

“If you do not walk away, Daltia, then you will die.” Belgoroth planted his blade in the ground. “This is all I have to say. There is nothing before, nothing after.”

A sinister silence settled between them. The two former Heroes stared at one another, their grip on their weapon tightening. You could cut the tension with a knife.

Eris broke the stalemate with a sigh. “I’m sorry, Bel.”

Belgoroth struck her in a blur of speed, but his sword only cut through white smoke.

Multiple shadows flew over my head. I recognized Silverine’s cry above me and saw a crimson flash descend upon Belgoroth. The Lord of Wrath raised his sword to parry the one falling on him from above. The blowback sent Soraseo flying back, but she managed to land back on her feet.

Hands grabbed my shoulders from behind and dragged me away. Belgoroth turned his head in my direction, but bolts of magical lightning forced him back.

“Oh Goddess…” I recognized Marika’s voice and the warmth of her hands on my skin. “Hold on, Robin. We’re here.”

Cortaner emerged from the crimson mist with blazing fists. Selestine was here too, two white reptilian wings flapping behind her back. She hovered in place above the Lord of Wrath while Alaire and Silverine ran circles in the sky. Soraseo threatened Belgoroth with her sword from one side, and Eris did the same with her staff from the other. We had him surrounded.

That naughty nun… I would have smiled if my body didn’t hurt so much. She was stalling for time.

A wyvern landed between me and Belgoroth. The true Knight rode on its back.

“You are surrounded, Lord Belgoroth,” Roland declared with a true king’s dignity. He climbed down from his mount with his thundering spear in his right hand and his royal sword in the left. “Though I know you will not listen, it would be wise for you to surrender.”

“All I am surrounded by are ghosts and cowards, King Roland.” Belgoroth raised his sword at his fellow Knight in defiance. “Whether you are eight or eight hundred, you lack the strength to challenge me.”

“And you lack the mercy to use your gifts justly.” Roland glared at him from behind his helmet. “This madness ends here.”

My friends charged at the Lord of Wrath from all directions, and all I could do was watch the battle among the flames.

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Next Chapter 

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A/N: been struggling with February insomnias lately so not my best work, but I hope you found this first half of the final battle suitably epic. Robin was kinda reminded the hard way why the Merchant class is strictly support though...