Chapter 28: Going to Die
Ragna exhaled once, long and slow.
Leo was already gone, melted into the shadow of the wall to the right of the door, present only as a shape that the eye wanted to slide off.
Lady Silva pushed the door open.
The guardian was standing.
It had not been sitting against the wall the way they had found it the first time. It was upright, in the center of the room, the rusted cleaver held across its body, and the amber in its eyes was already burning with the particular quality that said it had heard them coming and had been waiting with considerable patience for them to arrive.
It looked at Lady Silva.
She looked back at it.
"Now," she said.
Allen came through the door low and fast, both blades already moving, targeting the wound on the guardian’s shoulder from the previous fight, reopening it before the guardian had fully committed to its first swing. The guardian turned toward him, and Ragna came through the door on the other side, war hammer swinging in a flat arc that connected with the guardian’s hip and drove it half a step sideways.
The guardian recovered fast and swung the cleaver in a wide arc that forced both of them back, the displaced air from the swing audible in the enclosed space. It pressed forward, not chasing but advancing, pushing them toward the walls, trying to pin angles.
Leo appeared at its back.
He drove something into the wound on its shoulder, small and precise. Whatever it was made the guardian jerk forward from the impact, and then he was gone again before it could turn. The guardian swung at the space he had been and connected with nothing.
Kael watched from the walls. Two minutes, he thought. They need two minutes.
Lady Silva stood at the threshold of the room, eyes closed, both hands at her sides. Cleo knelt beside her, the blue detection crystal set on the floor, both palms pressed flat against the stone. Between her hands, a formation was building, slow and deliberate, the geometric lines spreading outward across the floor in thin threads of pale light, reaching toward the guardian’s feet, threading between the chaos of the fight with the patience of water finding cracks.
The guardian took a hit from Ragna that staggered it. Allen came in from the left and scored a clean slash across the back of its hand, making it lose grip on the cleaver for half a second before it recovered. Leo hit it from behind again, same shoulder, same spot, the precision of it deliberate and accumulative.
It was working. Slowly, painfully, with Ragna absorbing blows that shook the room and Allen bleeding from a fresh cut across his ribs, it was working.
Cleo’s formation spread the final distance across the floor, and the lines connected beneath the guardian’s feet with a sound like a bell struck underwater. She looked up at Lady Silva.
"Now," Cleo said.
The formation flared.
The light that erupted from the floor wrapped around the guardian’s legs in an instant, climbing to its waist, the geometric patterns locking into each other with a rigidity that pulled its feet together and held. The guardian roared and the walls shook, and it strained against the binding with everything it had, the formation cracking at the edges under the force of it, threads of light splitting and reforming, Cleo’s hands shaking with the effort of holding it.
Allen and Ragna broke away and created distance, breathing hard, watching.
The amber light in the guardian’s eyes was shifting.
Lady Silva opened hers.
The dawn-colored light gathered above her palms, faster this time, with a certainty that had not been there before. The helm first, then the pauldrons, the breastplate, the gauntlets, all of it assembling with the inevitability of something that had been called rather than summoned. The Valkyrie’s form blazed in the dim treasure room, filling it with light that had no business being this deep underground.
It moved toward her, and she stepped into it and became it, the armor settling over her like a second self, her silver hair catching the light of it, the sword at her hip humming with a frequency that resonated in the chest.
She looked at the bound guardian across the room.
The guardian looked back at her, rage burning red at the edges of its amber eyes, the binding at its feet cracking further with every second, Cleo’s breath coming in short, controlled bursts behind her.
Lady Silva raised the sword, she pulled her hand hand back and took a stance, the ground beneath her cracked and a wave of pressure exploded in every direction, she locked her gaze with the Gaurdian and then launched.
She moved so fast that she turned into a blur, her sword slashed through the air and went through the neck of the goblin in one swift move. It flipped in the head and hit the ground. The body followed after it, it collapsed right to its knees and did not move anymore.
"They won" Kael commented, "they actually managed to pull it off, and they made it look so easy"
While he was busy being excited for their win, he sensed something headed in their direction, it was coming fast.
"What the heck is that?" He asked and turned his attention to it. It moved so fast that he could not even see who it was. But he could tell one thing, and that was the fact that it was going to kill the group for sure, he could sense the strength of it, and it was not in their realm.
"Shit, they are going to die"
