The Chimera Summoner – ch 45 (part 2/2) – Grace Valant, Duelist

“We have to help!” I cried, trying to lunge back out of the boat.

“If you interfere, you’ll get her killed.” Jennie said, holding me back. “If there was something to be done, don’t you think Brawly would be on it already?”

I hesitated.

I owed that woman a lot.

I watched helplessly as Carmine strode toward her in the throne room.

Heat was blasting out of it now, pipes were bending, the thinner ones were melting and drooling from the walls. I could feel the heat on my eyes, like staring into a forge.

Serenity’s light shield flowed up to protect us from it.

I craned around it to see. I had to see.

Come on, Grace.

Carmine stood before her, swathed in writhing souls, holding her bone needle high for a killing blow.

If Grace lost, Brawly and Marok and the rest of the Bayloft Ascendant faculty would be free to take her on next. Now that the Netherim, Hera, and I were out of the way, it would be a clean two versus one or better.

But if Carmine was really able to steal Valant’s soul, like she had the fallen cultists… and those souls had bolstered her power to the point that she could take on Valant one on one….

With an Ascendant soul in her collection, would even the two of them, maybe even with Principal Maule, be able to take her down?

Eternity had said that she wasn’t bound by the balance the Architect held sacred, in giving out Classes.

This was proof.

When Carmine had been a healer, this duel would’ve been less a fight than a capture.

With her new Soul Stitcher Class….

The two combatants were speaking to one another. Carmine with a needle poised to plunge into Valant’s chest. Valant bleeding freely, and swaying on her feet, knees buckling.

I couldn’t make out their words.

The gifted power was gone. Expended.

My new life was all I had.

The memory of the void beyond death crashed into me.

I clung to Lucy’s hand.

They didn’t know how close we had come to being separated forever, while they had been dormant, and I had been dead.

I shivered.

I felt comfort and love pouring in through my bonds. They instinctively huddled closer to me, feeling my fear of losing them, even if they didn’t fully understand where it was coming from.

I hung my head.

I had to get stronger. And soon. The events we were wrapped up in were just too big for us, right now. If we wanted to control our own destinies, we had to get strong enough that when trouble like this arrived, we could kick it square in the beans and get back to smooching.

I had a second chance at existence. And this time, I knew exactly how I wanted to spend it. And who I wanted to spend it with.

And this fight was well and truly out of our hands.

Lorna’s hand joined Lucy’s clutching mine. Solid. Stable.

When she didn’t fade after a few moments, I broke my agonized stare at Valant’s plight to look at Lorna in surprise.

“We Leveled quite a bit.” Lorna murmured, with a small smile.

Violette nuzzled into Lorna’s shoulder, draping herself over the ghost girl’s back and snuggling her aggressively. “Finally.” She sighed.

Serenity enveloped us all in her wide, shimmering wings.

We settled to watch what would happen.

Please… Grace. Win.

I can’t pay you back for all I owe you if you fucking die on us.

~~~~~~~

Grace Valant listened as her deranged former colleague monologued on the virtues of her new and improved Class, her patron, and how Valant herself would serve that patron. Either by submitting to her, to let her Class be rewritten, and joining the ranks of the Night Blessed in their campaign to ‘save the world’... or by having her own soul ripped out and stitched into Carmine’s abomination of a garment.

Neither option appealed.

Valant suppressed a sigh.

It wouldn’t do to let her adversary know she was bored.

Not when she was so generously approaching, now that the duel was functionally over, in her mind.

To be fair, it mostly was.

Juuuust a little closer.

But she’d paused, striking a dramatic pose with her disgusting needle poised for a death blow.

It was… unprofessional.

But then, Atalanta Carmine had spent the majority of her Wayfinding career as a healer. She had very little experience being a short range offensive mage.

Her new Class was so wildly broken that she’d been able to overwhelm Grace’s defenses by sheer volume of attacks.

Which, Grace admitted to herself, was mostly her own fault. She’d gone in with the intention of taking the traitor prisoner, and hopefully getting some useful secret or other out of her. Gather desperately needed intelligence on how the Night Blessed operated. And what they knew of the dark threat that had her new ally, Marok, so concerned that she wanted to evacuate this entire world and flee through the Dungeon to a more distant region of the greater cosmos.

An insane idea.

She’d said as much herself.

But a threat that could make an otherwise reasonable woman propose a plan she herself described as ‘the last verge of desperation’… made Valant very urgently worried.

Grace refocused on Carmine, still monologuing diabolically, but uninformatively. She evidently wanted to draw out her victory.

A wave of dizziness pressed over Grace like a smothering pillow. Bloodloss. What an embarrassing thing for an Ascendant to feel.

She’d lost her arms.

And the way that it had happened had felt…deep. Impossible.

But that would only matter if Grace survived the next few minutes.

She took advantage of the genuine wooziness, that a former Healer would surely recognize, to close her eyes and make sure she had a clear picture in her mind of exactly how her sword, Reminiscence, had fallen at her feet.

Along with the neatly julienned ribbons of her arms. Damn it.

She dared not so much as glance at it.

But she was fairly certain of its position. Her unstable swaying let her take another tiny stance adjustment that left her right boot…

Her foot landed on the sword!

On the blade, just under the hilt, right where Grace had hoped.

It was hot, like the rest of the floor.

Carmine prattled on.

Didn’t the woman know that the whole castle was set to explode?

Ah well. Power could intoxicate.

Grace's last trap was set.

She just needed the infernally long winded traitorous… She just needed Carmine to step closer, for the killing blow.

Which would probably be successful.

Valant’s gambit was something between dubious, and impossible. The technique was already a suspicious one, but with a sword as large as Reminiscence it could well be a path to broken teeth. Right before getting her soul ripped out and stitched into a cloak.

A tacky cloak, to make matters worse. Horribly mismatched and distorted faces kept seeking to peel themselves out of it, before sinking back into the otherworldly fabric.

Grace suppressed another sigh.

This sort of thing was exactly what Lyla had warned her would happen if Grace continued on her crusade against the Night Blessed.

She was right, of course. Blasted woman was always right.

But Grace had never been able to sit comfortably while others suffered, once she knew about it. It had been a problem since she’d been a gangly girl at the very school where she now professed.

It was an annoying and impractical flaw in her logical system. But one she’d never been able to shake.

Bullies needed their asses kicked.

And Grace was good at ass-kicking. Hence.

Maybe there were second lives, and she and Lyla could meet again one day.

Carmine was looking at her expectantly.

Apparently she was done.

Well.

She’d given Grace more time to recover and gather the last dregs of her strength than she could’ve asked.

“Respectfully,” Grace groaned, swaying more. This time not intentionally. “Suck my huge–”

Carmine snarled and stabbed down with her needle.

Grace flicked her boot knife from the tip of her boot under her sword, and lifted. Reminiscence leapt up between them, turning edge over edge.

Carmine flinched, closing her eyes for just a fraction of a second, her stab losing power and accuracy.

Grace took the needle in the shoulder, instead of the chest, careful to let it hit bone, trapping it more firmly.

At the same time as the sickening numbness washed over the shoulder from the evil needle, she flicked her foot forward, the hidden blade in the tip of her left boot rushing out with a sharp click, to be buried into Carmine’s shin.

Grace caught the huge sword blade in her teeth like a dog catching a disc. The near edge bit painfully into the corners of her mouth.

This was the part of the gambit that might not be possible. Everything else had gone as well as it could’ve.

Carmine was trapped, by their mutual stabbing, and Grace was the only one with a free weapon.

Grace twisted her head, biting down on her blade as hard as she could.

She felt her teeth grinding and breaking against the scalding metal. But she bit down all the harder.

She lost Carmine from view as she twisted her head all the way as far as she could to the side.

She felt a wet smack.

Reminiscence's momentum ripped it free from her ruined teeth and it fell from her bleeding mouth to clatter back to the stones.

Carmine’s body hit the ground. Followed shortly by her head.

Her falling arm pulled the needle free, painfully shattering Grace’s collarbone.

Grace turned back around and surveyed her work.

Carmine’s cloak… slivered… moaning and writhing like a living thing… into the floor.

The Castle shuddered.

The boiling heat went icy cold.

"One problem solved, one...changed." She said, voice garbled and blood now pouring from her mouth as well as her arm stumps.

Time to go.

With a nauseating effort, Grace cut open a portal with her boot knife, then bent quicky and, with some undignified scrabbling on the floor, managed to tuck Reminiscence under the more substantial of her arm stubs.

Just before she dropped through to safety, she caught sight of Carmine’s eye darting wildly from side to side as she took in the sight of her own body.  From both ends of her severed neck, pale threads were worming their way out, seeking each other blindly.

“Don’t leave me.” The head demanded.

Grace perked up.

Looked like she’d be able to take Carmine prisoner after all!