Zeroth Knight(GirlxGirl)

Ascension

Ascension

Fennis swings his sword toward my neck- mere inches lie between life and death. Yet before steel meets flesh, he's blown away. A good fifteen feet later, Fennis rights himself and lands standing. Energy swirls around me and pulses in waves. The energy twists around me and remakes me.

My skull shakes from the pounding inside of it. Again and again, something crashes against me, wishing to escape, to ravage. But I hold that door tight. It wants out and desires destruction, but I deny it a release. Instead, I channel it's instincts, how, I do not know. I channel it outward to release shockwaves of energy over and over again to knock back Fennis as he attempts an approach. His illustrious blue hair whips violently from the force of the winds.

Fennis calls me a whore and swears to kill me, but the wild chorus of the crowd around us drowns him out to nothing but a whisper on the wind. Their fear carries across the arena.

I hear and see all, and yet it's as if I'm looking through a haze. My mind is my own and yet, another's. Bang bang, the pounding on the door gets louder but I hold it tight. I demand its power and the space before me shimmers and cracks. I stare into the crack and I see all of time and space, and yet the information is unknowable; far too complex for the mind of an individual mortal.

So I look beyond it, and catch a glimmer. I reach for the light and grasp it within my hand.

Fennis explodes in a rage of energy and the shock of it all startles my hazy mind to a clear. The light before me starts to fade and it is all I can do to hold on to a single fragment of what I found. I pull my arm from the void just in time to see Fennis slam into the wall of the arena. But I know he's not dead. People like him do not die easily.

As I fully separate my hand from the rift in space, along with it comes a blade as black as a raven. Pure onyx in its dominion, leading down to a hilt of ivory, adorned with a blood red gem at the tip. As the energy around the rift and me fades, the blade gains something it seemingly didn't have before- a physical existence. I nearly crash forward at the sudden weight of the sword. It's nearly as heavy as a typical broadsword, I would guess, from one of the stories I've read, yet near four feet in length.

And indeed, when the full weight of the sword manifests, my arms drop and the sword stabs into the ground. Fennis swears loudly as he picks himself up and stares at me with unrestrained hatred. He dives at me with speeds far too fast for a normal man, and yet his speed appears normal to me. My sense have seemed to increase dramatically. I dive to the side and dodge his slash aimed at my midsection.

"The Zeroth will be so much more magnificent when I don its title," Fennis says between slashes. He slashes high. Then he feints and goes low, into a slash diagonally. Every which way he slashes and chases me- his hair comes undone from its bun completely and flows through the air.

Seeming to give up the chase, he halts where he stands and points his sword at me. Immediately my instincts kick in and adrenaline pumps faster than it has before, as the air around me grows chill.

Fennis' hair shimmers in the light, "Stop this now Fennis. Things don't have to be this way." I shout across the arena at him but the chill intensifies.

I drop flat on my stomach just in time to avoid pure crystallized ice as it splits the air in two. I roll to my side as he swings his sword down and the ice changes direction, seeking to eviscerate me from above. Again he moves his sword like a conductor and his baton, causing the ice to follow me. I dive out of the way and the ice slams into the side of the arena and shatters.

I breathe a sigh of relief for a moment and then kick my body into over gear and charge after Fennis. It was only then that I noticed my mistake. Ice is ice, no matter the number of pieces. Near the halfway point of the arena, as I near the Onyx sword, my body is jolted forward in a burning freeze. The small shards of ice pierce my body all the way through from the back; and Fennis moves his sword again, sending the ice through my chest and limbs. Acting as a million tiny needles, the ice tears the skin it pierces and serrates the organs it digs through.

I fall where I stand, the force from an attack from the back canceled out by the force from the frontal assault. I fall to my knees with my left arm draped over the hilt of the Onyx sword. The bend of my elbow catches the long, ivory handguard; and so I find myself in a half kneeling position. I'm bleeding profusely from a thousand piercings of my flesh. No single shard of ice was large enough to immediately kill, having been shattered on the wall. But as the rain will shape mountains, so too will a thousand needles kill.

My vision darkens and I notice Fennis in my periphery; with haggard breathing he lowers his sword- I say lowered, but it's more like his arm simply lost all power and falls to his side. The tip of his blade digs into the dirt. I rest my forehead on the flat of my blade... my blade- how strange to say, to feel. Ten minutes ago it did not exist and now it feels as part of me as my own hands, hands growing colder by the minute.

Drip, drip my blood paints the sands. I knew from the moment I entered this arena that I would die. But I swore to die having given my best; and I did better, better than my best ever could have been.

I put the rest of my weight onto my head as my forehead, slick with sweat and blood, slides down the flat of my blade a small margin. I notice through my death haze Fennis finally getting his breathing together and finally approaches me; his sword leaving a trail in the sand as he stumbles my way.

"You sure are something, for a heretic. It's almost admirable. But after this show today, I don't think it will be possible to simply erase you from the books. Too much power that the public isn't used to seeing, has been put on display. Indeed, decades have passed since I have used any a fraction of this power I possess. This battle today will become a legend, if only for my glory, and so you will be forced to continue existing in some form." He says as he comes to a stop before me.

He digs his sword tip further into the ground and uses his hilt and two hands to stabilize himself. He takes a moment to look around the arena, with a look in his eyes as if he only just now remembered that we had spectators all around us.

"In your own traitorous way, you have done me a favor, my Zeroth Knightling," he adds insultingly.