Verita - The Guardian of Darkness

64

Storming forward, Elanthin aimed to close the distance between them. Aetrian had no weapons and elemental battle magic wasn't just slow, it was also primed for long-distance attacks; so the best she could do was get as close to him as possible.

As soon as their eyes met, she knew that he understood her intent. Aetrian knelt down before slamming his hands onto the blackened ground.

Frost spread from under his fingers and glazed over the dirt. Elanthin's confusion soon turned into surprise, when the ice broke with a sickening crack. Another move of Aetrian's hand and the knife-sharp shards were pulled upwards. They hung in the air like a wall between them. She came to a sudden halt and her feet whirled up a cloud of dust.

The shards are too dense, she acknowledged, for me to cross through without getting cut.
Now that Aetrian had prevented her from fighting close combat for the moment, she had no choice but to play along. At least until she understood his way of wielding the ice – and how to counter it.

Her eyes flew over the wall of ice shards, looking for a weakness. The only part which wasn't as dense laid behind Aetrian, so Elanthin simulated a frontal attack. Clashing her swords against the floating shards sent a sharper pain through the bones of her arms than she'd expected. They hung in the air as firmly as if they'd been screwed to it.

However, she'd managed to lead Aetrian on. He raised himself up from the ground slowly, gathering more shards in front of himself. The wall behind him moved a little, thinning out further.

Too bad but I've caught your weakness, thought Elanthin with a bit of satisfaction. She sprinted forward as if she wanted to break through the wall of ice shards to test his resolve: either Aetrian would falter and drop the shards or he would stand his ground; in that case, she'd have to grit her teeth and break through the thinning wall of ice behind him.

Watching him closely, she noticed a flicker in his amber eyes as soon as she pushed forward, so she decided to risk it. Just before the first shard could pierce her skin, the wall fell. With a deafening ring, the ice shards formed a heap on the ground before slowly melting away. When they had turned into water, Elanthin had long left them behind.

With a feeling of nearing victory, she approached Aetrian. "You talk big – but how will you knock me out if you can't even see me hurt myself?"

"Easy on the presumptions."

"What?"

A cold sensation, stemming from her soles and slowly rising upwards, turned her gaze downwards. Elanthin's heart stopped a beat, when she saw the melting shards wind themselves up, climbing around her ankles like ivy. Trying to shake it off only accelerated the process of hardening. Within a few seconds, thick ice had formed around her feet and tied her to the ground.

She'd seen ankles break from similar spells, so Elanthin didn't move carelessly while the skin underneath the ice increasingly numbed to her orders.

Aetrian used the time he'd bought to reach out to her with ice-covered hands. They both knew that she'd loose if the Living Ice grew onto her swords but Elanthin didn't foolishly fight against her shackles to avoid him. She dodged him by dropping to the ground – if barely.

To touch her weapons, Aetrian had come into reach and Elanthin didn't think of wasting the opportunity. Before he could step back, her blades were already hovering below his chin, to either side of his neck.

As soon as Aetrian recognized that she had him locked in between her swords, his body froze up. There was barely a centimeter of murky air between her weapons and his neck; a circumstance which forced him to breath in and out shallowly if he wanted to remain unharmed.

"You got me."

"I do. That means we're done here."

"If you say so", he replied obediently.

The ice around Aetrian's arms began to melt and trickle onto the ground as he fixated her with glowing eyes. At the same time, the ice retreated from around her feet.

"But you underestimate what I'd d–", he started to say. Elanthin withdrew her swords, while Aetrian spoke on and his voice got drowned out by the sound of her blades sliding along each other.

When he wasn't caged by her swords any longer, she raised a foot and kicked against his chest. The unsuspected blow was enough to destabilize him. Aetrian fell back into the dirt, catching his fall with both arms.

"Will you give it up?", she hissed at him. "I've made my decision. Accept it."

Looking up at her from the dirt, Aetrian didn't seem like someone who'd just lost a battle. A strange sense of foreboding befell Elanthin, while she looked into his amber eyes. They were brimming with confidence despite his current position; as if there was something else he had in store.

"Don't do anything funny", she urged him. They'd wasted enough time on this pointless fight when the situation had been decided from the moment she stepped foot out of the tower.

He didn't answer her. Pulling his sleeve back instead, Aetrian bared the inner side of his left wrist. The skin there was rough; thick scars in the form of runes and geometrical lines raked around each other. A magic circle was tattooed under and above them, as if someone had repeatedly used the colored lines as a pattern.

Elanthin lost a precious second to her contemplation of how and when Aetrian had done this to himself. When she snapped out of her thoughts, he'd already plucked one of her daggers out of the darkened soil.

"Don't!"