By the time the rat had emerged into the pink light of Gundrygia’s aura, it was twice the size of the largest cat I had seen; as it scrambled between us, it accomplished the stature of small horse; by the time it reached me, it had managed to rise upon its rear legs while, with the elongating limbs of its forelegs, it slashed at me with claws tinged black from a lifetime in tunnels.
Seeing the transformation, Valeria stopped her prayer. I shuddered to think of being faced down with some giant spider for more hideous and violent than a misshapen as a result of her well-intended summoning spell. The rat would suit me just fine. While the squealing, foaming beast slashed at me, I met it with Exigence and its cry rattled through the tunnel.
Branwen, who had been looking in the dark for her crossbow (forever lost in faerieland, I assumed), hurried back to the safety of the light that surrounded my other companions. The overgrown rat’s beady eyes followed her movements, its ears and whiskers twitching amid a terrible rolling shudder as it seemed to consider pursuing her into the purview of the lantern. It focused, instead, on gripping my blade with one bleeding hand and reaching forward to grab my head with the other.
Crying out as the abomination made to tear my head from my shoulders, I blindly wrenched the sword from its grasp. Now it was the rat’s turn to scream in pain. Exigence’s sharp edge effortlessly severed three of its fingers and, to nurse this wound in shock, it released me. I gestured with the tip of the sword at Gundrygia.
“I hope your heart overflows with remorse for the creature you made conscious only so it might die at the tip of Weltyr’s blade.”
With a cry, Gundrygia stepped forward, then backpedaled quite a bit as the beast stumbled. I slashed at its hideously contorted muzzle and it howled, its bright yellow fangs now painted with as much blood as they had been foam. Nevertheless, the creature met me again, snapping at me, its tail thrashing wildly in the air.
Exigence met it in the heart. All its motion ceased.
The dead abomination slid off my blade and thudded upon the floor of the tunnel.
“Release us,” I commanded Gundrygia.
But the glow about her brightened and her hands raised to meet me. Fire danced at the tips of her fingers, swirling about her palms and wrists and growing wildly between them. As soon as the flame had been contained into a pulsing ball between her hands, she hurled it at my companions.
Acting on instinct, I dove between them and lifted Exigence.
The fireball split in half, its flames dissolving on contact with the truly magical blade. While Gundrygia cried out, I spared no time before I charged her.
Once, in the grove, I had struck her and been haunted by it. This was a different situation altogether. Teeth bared, the witch opened a hand. Her empty palm seemed to swallow the darkness around it. A hard obsidian blade swung forward, pulled from the very absence of light in the tunnel system (or its faerieland duplicate). While Zweiding’s blessed steel had suffered immediately beneath the pressure of Exigence, Gundrygia’s sword of darkness fared better at absorbing the blows of Weltyr’s weapon.
Her body, however, could not absorb the strength of mine quite so easily. While she was a powerful sorceress and might too have been a fine enough opponent for some fighters, my lifetime of sword-fighting—and, of course, my earlier victory that day—gave me an undeniable advantage over her in matters of physical conflict. She might parry a blow here or there, but she had better luck relying on her nimble frame to avoid my strikes.
While my companions cheered me on and cried out on those rare instances Gundrygia’s haphazard fighting style permitted her the unpredictability required to almost wing me with a hack from her blade, I wore her down and began to increasingly catch her in parries. Each meeting of our swords marked a reduction in her strength. Soon her arms trembled when our blades sparked and she, without a chance to so much as think one of those spells of hers, looked pale to think the end was quite possibly near.
“You took such exception before,” she panted, a few untamed curls falling across her sweat-beaded face while her arms slowly succumbed beneath my pressure. “In the grove, when you struck me—I felt your shame, no matter how sweet it was to savor the heat of your anger. What makes now any different?”
“Because…now I have given you every chance to release us. Now, you are holding us captive—endangering the women I love. And that, I can never permit.”
With a last push, I knocked Gundrygia back and used the recoil to lift Exigence. The blade fell once again against hers with a sharp crack. To my relief, the summoned sword fell from my opponent’s hand and dissolved back into the rest of the darkness like smoke or sand. When her lips curled in the genesis of a magical word, I sliced at her, and I do confess—guilt singed my heart to hear her cry as she gripped her cut hand.
Still, dangerous as she was, I could spare no quarter. While she stumbled back beside the metal rail, falling upon the concrete beneath it and pushing herself away with her feet, I advanced. The sword remained between us.
“Rorke!” Gasping to stare down the tip of Exigence’s blade, she searched my features desperately and begged, “Be reasonable, now! I’m not really any threat to you, am I?”
“If I kill you now,” I asked her, keeping my
