Chapter 7B: A Common Man's Cloak

I drew my sword and tilted the door open. The rusty hinges creaked as I opened the door, so I slid my slender body through the opening and entered the dusty space. The darkness was dimly lit by three flickering lights, though another three failed to pierce the shadows. Rusted equipment and broken tools scattered the quiet place, but when I scanned the shadows, I saw the silhouette of a woman on the other side of the room. The darkness nearly concealed her completely, but I could tell just by the way the light shimmered on her hazel eyes that this was Aeliana.

As if my tunnel-vision captured my mind and quarantined everything else, I threw myself across the clearing and dashed toward her. I silenced my brain as I ran to her, convincing myself that I had to forsake my curiosity to conserve energy. Only one thing mattered at that moment. It was because of my hyper-fixation that I did not think to question how a vicious woman like her had been captured in the first place. It was because of my monomania that I did not even realize that she writhed and groaned, desperately trying to warn me of a figure in the darkness behind me. A thick rope over her mouth bound her ability to speak.

The sound of snapping wood echoed from the shadows beside me. I swerved to face the sound and saw a towering figure in the darkness, standing atop a broken pulley which revealed his presence in the first place. The figure lunged at me with a large dagger which glistened in the flickering lights. Still startled into a state of shock, I scurried backward and swiveled my sword to block his blade. But as soon as our weapons clashed, the attacker redoubled his assault and attempted a high-speed uppercut with his left dagger; I threw myself blindly backward just to dodge, but I nearly tripped over a broken machine on the ground. The assailant capitalized on my moment of weakness, so he lunged forward a second time while thrusting his right dagger. I swiveled my sword and blocked his blade again, but a spark illuminated the dusty space beside our swords.

The attacker twisted his body and pulled his left dagger back, but I acted on instinct and struck him first in the forearm with a full-force kick. He grunted from the impact as my kick sent his right dagger sliding across the dim-lit clearing behind him. I clumsily lunged forward and tried to slash again while he was partially unarmed, but he threw himself backward even faster than my lunge. He retrieved his dagger a few seconds later at a short distance, standing beneath the flickering lights while I stood at the edge of the shadow. I recognized the hilt of his weapons and realized that he had somehow stolen Aeliana’s daggers.

“How the hell did you find this place?” asked the daggerman with a furious gaze.

“You made a mistake when you took Aeliana. I can sense her love, her joy, her trauma; I followed a trail of footsteps to find her here. So if you end this fight, we will disappear. I want nothing other than to take her home,” I said as I steadied my heavy tone.

But he said as he stood in the center of this space, “I cannot let you leave now that you’ve seen my face. If anything, it’s better this way. I don’t even have to pluck another victim from a quiet street. You brought yourself here and did all the work for me.”

In that moment, the daggerman threw himself at me at an inescapable speed. Countless thoughts flew through my mind like a shower of sparks, all striving to ignite with either intent or strategy, but I had no time to sort through the embers. I could not give attention to anything other than the shimmering edge of his daggers. In the second he stepped within striking distance, I suddenly swung my sword in a slash so swift that even I was surprised. My enemy jumped with an earthshaking spontaneity and flew over the sword; he nearly struck me in mid-air as he flew past me. As soon as he landed in the shadows, he swerved around and lunged at me again, almost from behind, but I desperately swerved and deflected his dagger at the last moment. The impact knocked me back into the center of this abandoned building, but my assailant redoubled his assault with a high-speed lunge.

I dodged one dagger and then jumped to escape the other, but every time he slashed as I dodged, he closed a portion of the distance. Like a convergent series or a game of synthetic division, he quickly cornered me against a pillar at the edge of the light. He attacked again with a dagger lunge that narrowly struck me, but I deflected his blade with a crash of my sword. Our weapons pressed together just inches from my face, and that was when I saw the symbol inscribed near the base of his blade. It was the same symbol I had seen in the dungeon beneath Bellaina’s house. This was the Array of Black Fire.

“Why do you bother to bring your victims to your lair? You could burn them with black fire in the city somewhere. This step is dangerous at worst and extraneous at best,” I said as I pushed back on his blades with all the strength in my chest.

He said as an amazed stare flashed in his eyes, “You know far more than I first realized. That knowledge is meant to be secret, which is all the more reason I must silence you. If my boss or my clients learn that their secret is spilled, they might just kill me. Or at the very least, they would try. I was playing with you before, but that ends now. The underworld demands secrecy.”

I realized in that moment that the assailant and I were both bound to Bellaina; we were both helpless pawns to the queen of the dark. We had never encountered each other as we both fulfilled a diametrically different detail to her design. He procured her victims, and when all was said and done, I buried them beside the sea. I thought for a split-second that I could possibly reason with him, referencing that we were both orchestrators of the underworld, but I could tell by the lustful glare in his eyes that he had succumbed to a monomania of his own. Just as I only wanted to save Aeliana, he saw us both as living fuel begging to be harvested.

He suddenly struck with a pair of rapid slashes, but I pushed off the pillar to escape his attack. I swiftly stopped and swung my sword with all my strength. He did not swerve or run; my sword instead tore cleanly through his body in a burst of blood and bone. I felt an exhilarating shock at first, but when he fell to the ground, I saw the enervating truth.

The enemy daggerman stood behind the bloody body which fell to the dusty floor. Still clenching a pair of daggers, he showed a sinister smile. I glanced briefly at the bloody body on the ground, one which greatly resembled his, but then I threw myself backward to dodge his high-speed lunge. I had to quickly consider the possibility that he had summoned this second body as a lifeless substitute. Just as Bellaina had in some way created a storm of energy blades to kill her victims, this assailant possessed the power to create a substitute dummy as a shield.

(There are still two more parts to this chapter)