124 – Mind Games

Instead, Zelsys just kept dodging out of the way and biding her time, giving herself fully to this dance of death. She saw the Sister adjust her hold on the blade and move her arm, giving away that she was preparing for a thrust, but something tipped her off about it.

A small shift in her facial expression, a failure to conceal an internal thought that said, “I’ve got you!”

It would be a distraction, perhaps a series of weaker blows. Zelsys prepared herself to counter the swing all together with a Rebound Pulse, but again the Sister’s expression subtly shifted. The locust knew that she knew about the impending feint, even as both of them carried out concealed preparations for their counters.

Out of all the possibilities here, Zelsys settled on the simplest one. A fake feint, one that would in the end be carried through as the same move it was supposedly feinting. It was that, or the locust would just try to overwhelm her with a kick from the right as well as a diagonal downward slash from the left.

The solution was to not take part in the charade.

The blade came crashing down and the sister’s left leg came rocketing in from the right. Zelsys responded by briefly dropping down, turning her legs into springs when she spent half a lung’s Fog to send herself flying not up and away, but right over the Sister’s head, past her attack. Just as she crossed over, Zelsys grabbed onto bundles of those bizarre hair-leg-things.

Relief and satisfaction washed over her when she realized they didn’t just come off, that they were pulling their owner off-balance. The Sister topped over backwards her blade clattering to the ground, whilst Zelsys landed upright on her feet. Just as she let go, the beast-slayer felt an ironclad grasp pulling on her own braids, mere moments before she was thrown across the chamber. Their gazes met as she flew, a cold stare from the Sister said it all.

Limbs, armor, torso, it was all fair game. All but the hair.

“Stay away from the hair,” that brief look said, and Zelsys couldn’t argue. She wasn’t keen on getting tossed around by her hair either, even if her braids were so thick it didn’t really hurt much.

Zel managed to handspring to her feet after a few bumpy, bruising rolls across the misaligned floor, just in time to see the sister holding her sword by the blade before she tossed it like a javelin. The sword was such a huge advantage that she’d never considered such a move, and dodging on reaction wasn’t exactly reliable against an opponent as fast as or faster than you. It ripped past her with all the aftershock of a cannonball and left behind the gift of screeching pain, gushing blood, and broken ribs on her right side. She just barely managed to grab its crossguard before it could slam into her chest, and the momentum nearly knocked her over altogether, were it not for the sword’s point hitting a raised floor panel to stop her.

“Nice throw!” she admitted through gritted teeth, hefting the weapon about to get a decent grip on it. One hand on the handle, the other part way down the blade for leverage. “But you know what happens now. No sword, no advantage.”

Gouts of Fog sputtered out of her mouth and nose with each word whilst the slayer forcibly put her lungs back into proper rhythm. The sword was incredibly heavy, quite a bit heavier than it would’ve been if it were made of solid steel, but that wasn’t the reason Zelsys struggled with it. Simply put, she wasn’t used to a weapon this size, with this particular center of mass.

“I wouldn’t have it any other way,” the locust said. She shifted into a combative stance, her good arm held up in defense. Taking care to keep her eyes on the Sister, the beast-slayer took note of the fact that the pillar-vault’s glyph was nearly fully lit. It would likely open if she got close enough.

Zel pressed her heel against the edge of a protruding floor panel, then broke into a slow run that quickly became a full sprint. The purpose of such a charge was threefold: First, to get closer to the pillar-vault without tipping the Sister off. Second, to distract her for long enough to reclaim the Lightning Butcher. Third and least importantly, to hopefully inflict a grave wound.

Charging across the arena, holding that greatsword as though a lance, Zelsys fully gave herself to the intention of running the Sister through, so that the traitor could not determine her true intentions. She was sprinting as quickly as her legs could carry her. She would skewer the Sister right through her chest, the bleeding crater of a wound that she’d inflicted serving as a target.

Only… The impact never came. At the moment before the blade would’ve struck, the sister grabbed it with such resolve that it stopped dead, scraping against the tiny plates on the inside of her hand. Zelsys didn’t even try to hold onto it, having let go the moment she felt any resistance at all and continued on her path, slipping between the Locust Noble’s legs and taking the turn towards the pillar-vault.

There was an agonizing moment before the glyph reacted to her presence and the door slammed open, long enough that the Sister had already turned and raised her weapon to bring it crashing down on Zelsys in a death-stroke.

Yet, it would never strike.

Within the vault the cleaver hung, suspended by black glyph-etched chains that pulled away like fearful snakes at the reaching of her hand. The Lightning Butcher, both its handle and guard replaced by the dungeon’s own stone, both molded exactly to fit her hands and hers alone. By the time the Sister’s murder-stroke had begun its descent, Zelsys had already grasped her blade and pulled it from the vault, gripping the handle with her right and the guard with her left, that she might better catch her foe’s edge amidst its sawteeth. At the moment of contact, a familiar warm thrumming flowed through her hands.