Chapter 21: Civil War Part 4 (Captain Gregor vs Sir Kael)

Chapter 21: Civil War Part 4 (Captain Gregor vs Sir Kael)

Alexius, at the head of his fifty Royal Guards, charged down to the slope, a cerulean comet of Aura aimed at the heart of the breach. The world narrowed to the chaos before him: the splintered shields of his men, the white-hot glow of Templar armor, and the screams of the dying. His army was breaking. Breaking by Holysee Templars. He could feel it in the tremors of the earth, see it in the flashing red warnings of the System that screamed across his vision for the warning of losing this battle after two swordsmen appeared. This charge was not only a necessary tactic; but also it was an act of will, a sovereign's declaration that his kingdom would not die here after experiencing hardships.

As his warhorse arrived on the blood-soaked ground, the two enemy Swordsmen reacted.

Sir Gideon, the pragmatist, saw the charge for what it was: the enemy king making a final, desperate gamble. His

eyes immediately locked onto Alexius. To slay the head of the snake was to win the war in a single stroke. Disengaging from the hapless infantrymen he was slaughtering, he began to move to intercept his true target Grand Prince Alexius.

However, Sir Kael, the zealot, saw something entirely different. He saw the heretic prince, foolishly abandoning his high ground, delivering himself for judgment. He dismissed the idea of a personal duel. Why bother with the king when he could shatter the soul of the entire army?

"The line is broken! All Templars, with me! We will carve a path through to their craven command post and hang their banners from our spears! Let the heretic watch as his army is annihilated!" Sir Kael commanded.

A hundred of the strongest Templars, all Expert-level warriors glowing with the white light of their faith-fueled Aura, broke from the main engagement. They consolidated around Sir Kael, forming a dense, unstoppable spearhead of pure power. Their objective was simple: to punch through the last vestiges of resistance and turn the battle into a full-scale rout. They were aiming at the heart of the First Legion.

Alexius saw the maneuver and his blood ran cold. His fifty guards, elite as they were, would be vaporized by that concentration of force. The battle, his kingdom, his life—everything balanced on the next thirty seconds.

"GREGOR!" Alexius bellowed, his voice a crack of thunder.

Captain Gregor, who had been riding at Alexius's right flank silently, immediately shifted the horse's reins, he peeled away from the main charge. He guided his massive warhorse not into a frantic charge, but into a calm, deliberate path that placed him directly in the way of the Templar spearhead.

He dismounted. The ground seemed to groan as his steel-shod boots sank into the mud. He drew his greatsword, a monstrous slab of steel that no normal man could wield, in a single, fluid motion. He planted his feet, holding the blade in a low, ready guard.

One man. Against a hundred and one of the most elite, Aura-wielding warriors on the continent.

To the Royal Army soldiers fighting desperately nearby, it looked like suicide. To the charging Templars, it was the height of foolish arrogance.

"Crush the lone fool!" Sir Kael screamed, his sword blazing with righteous fire. "Leave none of him for the crows!"

The hundred Templars surged forward, a wave of white-hot fury and steel.

Captain Gregor did not move. He simply took a breath.

And then his Aura ignited.

It was nothing like Alexius's wild blue flame or the Templars' brilliant white light. Gregor's Aura did not flare; it condensed. The very air around him seemed to warp and thicken, growing heavy, and solid, like a bubble of immense gravitational pressure. There was no color, no light, only a profound and terrifying distortion of reality around his form. It was the Aura of a Sword Master, a power that did not just enhance the user but fundamentally altered the space they occupied.

The first ten Templars reached him, their swords descending in a coordinated storm of masterwork steel, each blow infused with enough power to cleave a lesser man in two.

What happened next would be seared into the memory of every soul who witnessed it.

Gregor's movements were brutal, inhuman, and efficient. A Templar lunged, aiming for his heart. Gregor shifted his weight half an inch, and the enemy's blade slid off the invisible wall of his Aura, its energy dissipating harmlessly. With a deceptively simple turn of his wrist, Gregor's greatsword swung in a low, horizontal arc. The Templar's legs were severed from his body, his masterwork plate armor shearing like parchment.

Another two attacked from the flank. Gregor's sword was already moving, a blur of motion that seemed impossibly fast for such a huge weapon. It met their blades not with a clang, but with a deep, resonant CRUNCH. Their swords, fine steel imbued with their own Aura, shattered into a dozen pieces. Before they could register their shock, the follow-through of Gregor's swing caved in their chests, their armor crumpling like tin foil.

From the perspective of a young Templar in the second rank, it was a waking nightmare. He was an Expert, a warrior who had trained his entire life, one of the chosen of the Church. He had never known an equal on the battlefield, let alone a superior. But the man before them… he was not a warrior. He was a natural disaster. The oppressive weight of his Aura was a physical force, pressing down on their chests, making it hard to breathe, seeding their fanatical hearts with a primal, unfamiliar emotion: fear. His comrades, the best of the best, were not being fought; they were being disassembled. They were being reaped like wheat.

Sir Kael watched from the center of his formation, his mind refusing to process what his eyes were seeing. This was impossible. This was heresy. No man could possess such power. It must be the works of demons. It has to be.

"He is using some dark magic! A demonic pact!" Kael shrieked, his fanaticism explaining the inexplicable. "Focus your Aura! Overwhelm him with holy light! He is one man! We are the hand of God!"

He spurred his men forward, trying to use their numbers to swarm the lone swordsman. They converged on Gregor from all sides, a vortex of white-hot steel.

Gregor became the eye of the storm. He did not retreat. He did not even seem to exert himself. He was a force of nature, his movements a perfect, economical dance of death. His greatsword was a continuous, flowing arc of destruction. A parry became a disemboweling slash. A block became a decapitating counter-swing. He moved with the ponderous, unstoppable momentum of a glacier, and the elite Templars broke against him like waves against a cliff face. In the space of a minute, the ground around him was a ruin of shattered armor, sundered limbs, and extinguished holy light. More than thirty Templars had fallen.

Finally, his path cleared, and Gregor faced Sir Kael. The Templar Swordsman, his Aura blazing with desperate, furious light, charged forward.

"Die, demon!" he screamed, his sword descending in a brilliant, fiery arc designed to cleave Gregor in two. The strongest move from him.

Gregor met the attack. He raised his greatsword, to intercept. The two blades met.

For an instant, there was a silent, blinding flash as Kael's fiery Aura crashed against Gregor's immense, gravitational pressure. Kael's attack, which could have split a castle wall,… stopped. It was utterly negated, its energy consumed by the Sword Master's superior power.

Sir Kael's eyes widened behind his visor in pure, unadulterated shock. He had put all of his power, all of his faith, into that one blow. And it had done nothing.

Before he could even contemplate a defense, Gregor's sword continued its journey. It was not fast. It was simply inevitable. It pushed Kael's blade aside, and with a sound like a mountain cracking in two, it smashed into the Templar's chest.

The masterwork plate armor, a holy relic of the Church, disintegrated. Sir Kael's Aura was snuffed out like a candle in a hurricane. His body, and the faith that had fueled it, ceased to exist in any meaningful way.

Silence fell over that part of the battlefield, a silence broken only by the whimpers of the wounded. The seventy or so surviving Templars of the spearhead stared, frozen in horror, at the spot where their commander had been. They looked at the lone, blood-drenched figure standing amidst the carnage, his breathing perfectly even, his gaze promising nothing but a similar, absolute end.

Their fanaticism, the bedrock of their existence, shattered. It was replaced by a raw, mortal terror they had never known. One of them screamed, dropped his sword, and ran. The panic was infectious. The unstoppable spearhead of the Church, the finest warriors of the Supremacy, turned and fled like frightened children.

Captain Gregor stood alone in his circle of death, his sword dripping crimson onto the blood-soaked mud. He had single-handedly broken the back of the enemy's elite force.

Across the valley, the soldiers of the First Legion witnessed the legendary feat. A strangled silence turned into a single, deafening roar of triumph and adoration. Their morale, once teetering on the brink of collapse, surged to stratospheric heights. They pushed forward with renewed ferocity, slamming into the now-wavering rebel lines. The tide of the entire battle had turned.

Alexius, who had been about to charge into the fray himself, reined in his horse, watching the spectacle with a mixture of profound relief and sheer awe. The gap in his line was no longer a threat. His most powerful piece had just swept the enemy's queen from the board.

His moment of relief was fleeting. He felt a new, intense pressure lock onto him. He turned, his blue Aura flaring defensively, to see Sir Gideon. The remaining Templar Swordsman had bypassed the chaos, his eyes fixed solely on Alexius. He was not routed. He was not afraid. He was a professional, and his mission was to kill the king. If the king falls his army will also fall.

The gazes of the boy-king and the veteran Templar locked across the field of battle. The war for the valley was won. But Alexius's struggle for survival had just begun. (Continue....)