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James decided not to go for the sword swing as there was a chance he might miss and be made vulnerable, and there was the possibility that his opponent might break his eidolon altogether which was the last thing he wanted. He wouldn’t die from the shock, but he would continue to get weaker with every eidolon that was smashed and recreated, and this wasn’t a battle of strength. The stranger already won that. No, it would be about strategy.
James kicked toward the stranger’s chest but it didn’t connect. The stranger took a step back and then reached out to grab James’ ankle.
One hand occupied, James thought to himself as he saw Arimus and Midori rush in from behind. The stranger craned his neck to look behind him and then he raised his free forearm to block Arimus’ swing of his windmill-shaped eidolon. The eidolon lodged into his arm but it didn’t cut. Arimus put his body weight into it as Midori slashed at their opponent’s mid-section. It wasn’t doing anything.
“Hmmm,” their opponent mused as James put the hilts of his two eidolons together and cocked his arm back wide, as if he was getting ready to chop down a tree. He swung it right at their enemy’s neck, and strange enough, their enemy didn’t even try to dodge it. He took the full brunt of the attack head on. James’ eyes widened as the blades attempted to cut through his enemy’s throat, but to no avail.
“Is that everyone?” the Ancient Knight asked as Catherine stabbed him in the rib. Ronan brought his axe down onto the crown of his head, and Pascal tried to jab his daggers into the stranger’s eyes but they simply slid off as if they were made of glass. The stranger put James’ foot down gently as they all watched him in horror, wondering how such a man could exist.
They had all attacked him, and it hadn’t done a thing. He just stood there still, as if they were little children trying to overpower the physical might of their parents.
“It’s not that I’m so powerful that you have no hope,” he replied. Pascal tried to stab him in the cheek as he spoke but it bounced right off. “It’s that I’ve learned how to best divert my energy.” His eyes fell on James. “You transform your entire body, but why? Why not just let the bulk of the energy go where your enemy is going to strike next? I know you had to have thought about this before. But you don’t train for it. You don’t consider alternatives to what you are used to because it’s uncomfortable. This is your greatest weakness: your closed minds.”
“This isn’t over yet,” Ronan said, and the stranger turned his attention to him. Pascal tried to stab the stranger in the chin and the tip of his dagger snapped clean off.
“Being stubborn gets you nowhere. False bravado is meaningless. Acknowledge your weaknesses so that you may strengthen them.” He turned back to James. “My name is Gavin. I want you to remember it. For after this day, I will be what you will aspire towards. I will be the light that you will never reach. You are all a waste of my time.”
After he said his last words, he vanished completely. They had all been leaning into their weapons when Gavin vanished, leaving all of them to fall forward. James grasped his eidolons tight and took a few steps forward, frantically scanning the area.
“Wait!” he shouted. “I am here to learn! Give us another chance! I promise you that we can win.”
“You can’t make such promises,” the soft voice replied in the wind. James couldn’t see Gavin, but he still had to be close by.
“My mind can be dense at times,” James shouted. “But I’m a quick learner. Engage us one more time, and I promise that you won’t regret it.”
“Because you failed to impress me the first time, I will have to raise the stakes on the second.”
“That was nothing,” James said. “You told us that you would test us, but you convinced yourself that we weren’t worthy before you’ve seen the extent of what we could do. I assure you. You won’t be disappointed.”
“I may kill you if I am,” he said, appearing a few yards in front of all of them. “I don’t often entertain second requests.”
“It’s because you’re jaded,” Catherine said. “I can tell. You’ve done this kind of thing a lot—testing others and seeing if they’re worthy of receiving the information that you have. But that doesn’t mean we’re all the same. The fact that we’re looking for your people in the first place should let you know that we’re serious. No one goes on these kind of suicide missions lightly.”
“No one except Quietus,” he said, glancing over at James.
“What can I say?” James smiled. “It’s the warrior within me.”
“I would like to see him,” Gavin said, slowly clenching his fists. They began to glow a warm yellow. “Show me.”
James leapt forward with his eidolons cocked behind him. Gavin crouched low and stood in a defensive stance, waiting for the strike, but at the last second, James shortened the blades of his eidolons, transforming them into daggers. He swung his arms upward as if he was going for an uppercut and they connected with Gavin’s chin. Both eidolons broke, but James managed to throw his entire body into Gavin’s abdomen. They both went sprawling onto the grass.
Gavin grabbed both of James’ arms by the wrist but James cocked his head back and then head-butt Gavin in the face. Gavin was unfazed, but the head-butt was merely a distraction on James’ part. Gavin didn’t see Pascal crawling in the grass and cutting the bone of one of his ankles.
Gavin screamed and kicked Pascal in the face with his good leg. Pascal went flying face first into the grass. Gavin growled and head-butt James back. James cried out and clutched his face instinctively. Gavin pushed him off and rolled backwards onto both of his feet, his ankle now healed.
“Better,” he said, “but not good enough.”
Gavin turned around and plunged a fist through Midori’s abdomen, stopping her in her tracks. Her eyes went wide as he removed his fist and kicked her in the chest, sending her onto her back. Arimus rushed to her side as Catherine jumped forward. She swung her eidolon toward Gavin’s forehead, but he head-butt her blade just as it made contact. It shattered and he punched her in the face. Ronan swung his mighty axe toward Gavin’s right arm, aiming for something a little less dense, but his opponent saw it coming.
Gavin smacked the palm of his hand against Ronan’s forearm, forcing him to drop the axe and then Gavin continued punching the Solon in his chest. His fists were in a frenzy. They were going so fast and punching Ronan so hard that he couldn’t even retaliate. When Gavin was finished, delivering one final blow to the Solon’s stomach, Ronan keeled over and crumpled into a ball in the grass.
James didn’t bother with the eidolons this time. He opted straight for hand to hand combat. Gavin didn’t expect it, and took the first punch to the cheek. It hurt a little more than he hoped, and in retaliation, Gavin jumped up and kneed James in the chin, sending the Sage onto his butt in a daze. Catherine followed suit, also engaging Gavin in hand to hand combat. Without the wide, predictable swings of the eidolons, it was now a lot harder for the Ancient Knight to anticipate their movements. He was forced to pick up the speed—the kind of speed that he had displayed earlier when he vanished and reappeared during their conversation.
Catherine missed a blow toward his nose, just barely, and he sped around her until her back was completely to him. She hadn’t even seen him move.
He grabbed the crown of her head with his left hand, pulled it back, and then delivered one swift blow to the center of the back of her head.
They all heard the sickening crunch.
“No!” James shouted. He had been running towards Gavin, but now he stopped completely. Gavin let Catherine fall onto her face. Her body was lifeless, and the back of her head had a dent in it from the impact.
“You have a choice,” Gavin stated before all of them. “Catherine’s brain has been severely damaged, and without immediate attention, she will be paralyzed, go into a coma, or worse. I have the means to heal her, but the price does not come cheap. I want you to give up the fight, this journey, and decide to go back home. I will accompany you from a distance, and once I am certain that you are serious about your decision, I will reappear and heal her completely. She will be fine, but only if you swear this to me here and now. Should you keep on fighting, or if you decide to leave and then return, you will be killed without remorse.”
“Run and live, or stay and die,” James said. “Is that it?” He couldn’t take his eyes off of her.
“That’s it,” Gavin replied. “The choice is yours. But if you continue to fight me, even if you win by some miracle...Catherine will not be okay. I won’t heal her, and the other Knights won’t either.”
“I see,” James said, casting his eyes to the grass. This was the moment—the moment that would decide their fate. But he already knew his answer. There was really no other, and it was exactly what Catherine would have wanted.
“I will fight,” James said to everyone’s surprise. Gavin frowned as Ronan stepped to James’ side.
“I will fight as well,” Ronan said. “To die by the hand of an Ancient Knight is an honorable one.”
“We didn’t come here for nothing,” Pascal said. Gwen nodded next to him.
“I am with you,” Arimus said, as he continued to apply pressure to Midori’s wound. James couldn’t bear to see the agony in his father-in-law’s eyes. James knew what his decision meant for all of them, and for the future at large. His decision would usher in a world without Catherine.
A more somber, and horrible world.
“Let’s flip this around,” James said. “If we beat you, you heal her.”
“That will not happen.”
“Then there’s no reason to deny my request,” James said urgently. Every second that he stood idly by, it was another moment Catherine’s brain was being denied the assistance it needed.
“Fine,” Gavin said finally. He raised his leg up into the air and then kicked Catherine’s lifeless body in the side, kicking her out of the way of their battle.
James lost his mind.
He roared as his neck began to stretch out and his hair slicked back onto his skull. His muscles became more slender as his fingernails began to sharpen and lengthen. He summoned his black eidolon, and it was now thicker and denser than before. The center of the blade was like a void, so dark that anyone who stared into it felt like they were going to be lost in its pull. James’ eyes narrowed.
“This new form won’t help you,” Gavin said. “It’s pointless.”
“We’ll see,” James said, his voice distant and throaty.
Ronan leapt forward first, swinging his weapons as fast as humanly possible as Gavin dodged them effortlessly. When the curve of the axe cut off a few strands of his hair, however, he picked up the speed. Gavin ran around Ronan and ended up behind him, cocking his arm back and preparing to deliver the killing stroke when James reached out and grabbed his wrist.
Gavin stared back at the Quietus/Sage in surprise as James growled at him and tried to plunge his eidolon into his opponent’s back. Gavin wrenched his hand away and went around James, but Arimus was there, swinging his windmill eidolon at Gavin’s head.
Gavin took the blow, shattering the eidolon, and then he kicked Arimus away. James was back again, and this time he wasn’t bothering with the eidolon. He punched Gavin in the face and didn’t let up. Gavin realized that the blow didn’t hurt this time, even with James in a more advanced state, and the reason was because James was putting all he had into his speed.
Gavin ran away from the battlefield, nearly putting a mile between them, and James was not far away. Gavin kept running and James was right there, panting, but matching the speed. None of the other Sages were in sight.
“You’re alone,” Gavin said. “You have no one to save you.”
“I want this,” James growled as he leapt at his enemy. Gavin grabbed James’ wrists in mid-air, fell onto his back and then flipped the Sage over his head. James landed on his feet and continued his assault when Gavin plunged his fist through James’ chest, just like with Midori.
James fell to his knees as he weakly grabbed Gavin’s wrist with both hands, trying to pull it out.
“This is over,” Gavin said, cocking back his free fist and then slamming it into James’ face, but strangely, it hit nothing but the tar-like substance that covered James’ body. It was as if James had created a model of himself, solely made out of his Quietus skin. Gavin frowned as the real James ducked under the blow, leaving his flesh behind.
Gavin seemed to move like liquid as the goop around him began to slowly cover him, over his legs and arms. It was so sticky and strong that it kept him stationary while his arms tried to wrench themselves free from the muck.
James rematerialized behind him, but Gavin couldn’t see what he looked like without his skin. He was now hidden under a dark black hood and cloak, the black eidolon back in his right hand. Gavin noticed that James’ right hand was nothing but bone.
“What is going on?” Gavin yelled at him.
James chuckled under his breath. “A last resort. A trump card of sorts that I’ve been saving for years. Do you honestly think that in the last twenty years, all I’ve done was practice my fencing?”
“What are you talking about?!” Gavin shouted as the tar muck slowly spread over him. “What is this?!”
“Most of it is my skin, occasionally used to keep prey from escaping. I added some muscle to keep you from breaking free. I realized back there that you’re not that strong, just incredibly fast. That must be why you’re with the Ancient Knights.”
“They will kill you if you harm me!”
“Not likely,” James said in his gruff, throaty voice. “For you to be sent out as a scout, taking on strangers and interrogating them...you must be low in the hierarchy. You’re a grunt doing grunt work. You won’t be missed. If anything, they’ll be impressed.”
“You’re going to kill me?” he asked, beginning to sweat. He could only move his head now. The rest of his body was being consumed by the black tar-like substance, covering him from neck to toes.
“Not in a way you think,” James sighed. “I’m going to absorb you.”
“WHAT?!” he shouted, gritting his teeth and trying to break free.
“I’ve never done it before, and I didn’t want to learn how, but desperate times, am I right? Being part Quietus, I knew it was in me...I was just scared of the consequences. I still am. I will not just inherit your strength and your speed, but I will also get your memories...your fears...the darkness that lies inside of you. But if I’m going to stand toe to toe with the Ancient Knights, it is a necessary evil that I must take on.”
“Kill me,” Gavin pleaded. “Please. I don’t want to be a part of you. I don’t...”
“It’s too late,” James lamented. “The process is almost complete...I’m glad you ran away. I didn’t want the others to see this, and once I saw what you did to Catherine, I knew it was the only way to save her. I’ll be taking on your healing capabilities.”
“You know this is it, right?!” Gavin spat. “The Knights are taking note. They won’t let you absorb one of them! You’re wasting this technique on me.”
“I probably wouldn’t even be able to get close,” James said. “So you’ll do.”
“Why didn’t you do this sooner,” Gavin sobbed, as the substance began to crawl up the side of his cheeks and the back of his head. His neck was no longer visible. “Why didn’t you take Gideon like this?”
“Because Gideon didn’t kill the love of my life.”
“I hope she dies,” Gavin snapped.
James didn’t respond with words. He raised his free hand high toward the sky and then closed it. The substance sped up its climb, covering Gavin completely. James walked forward and into the liquidly mess, allowing it to fuse with him.
“Oh,” James said as he felt his body surge with new energy, new strength and focus. He opened his eyes and turned around to see his teammates staring at him in horror. Arimus was holding Catherine in his arms while Midori was moving slowly behind them all.
“We didn’t know what happened to you,” Arimus whispered, looking James up and down. “What happened here?”
“Gavin is gone,” James said as his Quietus form began to disappear. Just as his hood vanished, his face returned to normal, but Arimus could already see a change in his son-in-law’s eyes.
“How?” Ronan asked.
“I absorbed him,” James replied matter-of-factly. “I used a Quietus technique to get the job done. Now I can heal Catherine.” He motioned for Arimus to put her down in the grass. He obeyed and James put his hands to the back of Catherine’s dented head the moment she was laid down.
“You have this new power and that’s great,” Gwen said. “But what’s the bad news?”
“I guess we’ll see,” James said, wincing. He smiled a little once he saw Catherine take a deep breath.
“Absorbing another person,” Arimus said, shaking his head. “It’s not right. I don’t care if it’s part of your heritage, James. A Sage wouldn’t do something like that.”
“I know,” James said, looking into Arimus’ eyes. “But I’m not a Sage.” He looked to the rest of them one by one. “None of us are.”
