51 – Confidence Ends One Way
Staring up at Sha I could see the subtle, but very familiar, shift in his posture. In the early days of being the Wight I had seen it often. Where the wizards and great warriors sent to dispatch me assumed I was just some mindless beast, a nuisance that they could easily overcome.
And they would come at me, swaggering and brimming with confidence, and as soon as they got a bloody nose that arrogance would give way to indignation. A seething anger which started to simmer under a forced smirk.
And then they died, despite all their best efforts to the contrary.
East or west, human or otherwise, people were people no matter where I went, it seemed.
Sha lunged at me, faster than before, and his blade slashed my left shoulder open before I could block. The searing heat of it didn't much bother me, but the damn thing was sharp. I grit my teeth, even as the wound sealed shut again.
He came at me, faster and harder before, and I narrowly batted away his blows. Those which got through my guard cut deep into me, making my jaw tighten.
The flat of my blade whacked him in the jaw and sent him reeling away.
In that brief moment of respite I could see Yomi tearing through the incoming flock of winged demons. She tore them apart with sharp sweeps of her billhook, grinning as their dark blood splashed about the battlefield.
They did not pose much threat to her, but their numbers were such that they kept her occupied for the time being. And, no doubt, they feared Sha far more than they did her.
Again he was on me, and I used the flat of my claymore to beat back several of his slashes. I could see the venom in his eyes now, a savagery in his strikes as he aimed to sever my arms at the shoulder, but I beat him back bit by bit.
I could feel the temperature when his flames began to rage around us, a whirlwind of wildfire that would have burned a normal man to ash instantly. Yet it was no more uncomfortable to me than a poorly maintained sauna, and the hungry tongues of fire left no marks on me.
A hard clash sent him reeling, nearly knocked the glowing blade from his grasp, and I seized the opening to swing at his waist. He could regenerate, aye, but doubtless not without expending energy. And being severed at the trunk was the kind of wound that would be hard to heal from.
Yet, to my surprise, he swept his free hand to my incoming blade. A hemisphere of golden light formed from his palm, and it slowed the path of my blade to a near crawl. I grimaced. Similar to the trick that damned musician had played.
Sha seized the opening to jump away, and I reeled back to recover my balance. The demon gave a small huff of breath.
"Well," Sha said, giving me a strained grin. "You really are full of surprises. What manner of man are you? I've been studying your qi this whole time, and I still don't know what to make of it."
I narrowed my eyes at him. We circled each other, slowly. "Should I be proud?" I asked.
"I suppose. When you live to be my age, the idea of anything surprising you seems more and more fleeting. You're... an intriguing specimen. I'll study you in fine detail before you die."
"Better men than you've tried," I said, glowering.
He was behind me, shockingly fast, and I barely turned in time to block the next barrage of blows. Bit by bit he was pouring more power into his body, and the attacks came faster and harder. Wasn't long until more strikes were slipping my guard, cutting deep gashes into my arms and sides.
But I could take a hit, I could endure anything. And if Sha could grow stronger over time, so could I.
I suddenly sidestepped one slash and drove my own blade up in a crescent. Sha moved to dodge by the blazing tip of my blade sliced his belly and made him hiss. The lean fiery figure tried to right himself, only for my boot to smash his jaw in a powerful blow that sent his body across the yard, digging up more scorched stones.
I raced for him, my claymore clutched in both hands. He threw a wall of fire up in a blind panic, but I simply ran through it. Sha had managed to right himself on one knee and thrust his sword up with impressive quickness, and I hissed as I felt that searing edge drive between my ribs and through my back.
He was grinning wolfishly at me. "I've won."
My blade whirled around, slicing both of his arms off at the elbow.
Sha shrieked, recoiling, and I took a staggering step backward. "W-what?!" the yokai hissed, his crimson eyes bulging from his face.
Wincing, hissing, I pulled his blade from my chest. "Bloody... hate getting impaled." It's an odd sensation, breathing while your torn lung knits itself back together.
"You..." Sha hissed, veins popping up along his golden face. His arms began to regrow as I flung his sword away, blood spurting from the wound before it fully sealed shut. "Any cultivator of corporeal flesh should have been paralyzed by that!"
"Aye, well, you missed my spine for one thing," I said, "and for another... I ain't no cultivator."
Sha opened his mouth to speak, only for it to lock up. A strangled gasping noise left him, and he was suddenly rooted in place.
I looked over his shoulder to see Yomi standing about two dozen meters away, glaring at his back with inhuman intensity. Long tendrils had sprouted from her shadow, hissing along the ground and piercing his shadow.
"Assassination Art: Shadowbind," she said, her voice straining. "Can't... hold someone this strong indefinitely! Kill him, quick!" Sure enough I could see veins popping up on her brow and on the sides of her neck.
I nodded, raised my blade high, and swooped in. The plan was to cleave that noggin of his in twain.
In my experience, plans rarely go as expected.
A powerful wave of unseen force flexed from his body, shattering the shadowy tendrils and knocking Yomi on her back. The wide-eyed yokai started to pull back as my blade swept down, and instead it cut a long track in his chest.
Sha howled, tried to leap around, but I twisted my grip on the handle of the claymore and swept it up on my instep. It caught him on the right hip, dug deep, and Sha howled as a substance like molten iron frothed from the wound.
"Back!" he shouted, and the rippling aura of his magicka smashed into me and sent me staggering away. "Damn you... how dare you... strike at me in this manner..." His wounds were sealing shut, but slower now.
"Ain't so fun when you're losing, is it?"
Sha's eyes widened. "Losing? Losing against such lowly things as you...?" he laughed, and I could see Yomi huffing for breath as she rose back to her feet behind him. Doubted she could do that fancy shadow trick of hers a second time.
Well, I wouldn't need it.
Sha was strong, aye. If his main element wasn't fire he probably would have fared better against me. But in that moment I bore little fear of him. He wasn't at the peak of his strength, and it took more than what he had to tire me out.
"I'll offer you something you didn't offer the fools of the Snake Flower," I said, raising and aiming the tip of my blade at him. "A quick death. Don't make this harder on yourself than it needs to be."
"You propose... I surrender?" I'd never heard a man speak with such utter disbelief in his tone, he was almost laughing mad, such was his shock.
Yomi had righted herself by now, and the edge of her blade now rippled with a smoking shadow. Sha noticed her, and she seemed to back a bit as she sensed that murderous intent of his.
"You can't beat me," I told him. "Simple as that." Perhaps arrogant to say, but why mince words with a fool?
Sha grinned without humour. He leaped high, the force of his jump kicking up a powerful gale that nearly knocked me over. "Can't beat you?!" he hissed, his eyes wide with mania. A great whirlwind of fire blossomed about his hand, and even from afar I could sense the sheer density of his magicka.
And then he came bearing down on us like a comet.