Others Summon Dragons, I Summon Legendary Knights

Chapter 526: Death’s Kiss

Isaac ran through the heart of Paradise with Oliver and several Sentinels close behind.

Neila had transformed into an enormous spider, her exoskeleton so hard that arrows from Origin Tier summons struck it and bounced away like paper thrown against stone. She towered over Isaac, Oliver and the others, shielding them from the worst of the barrage while unleashing webs that swept enemies from their path.

Statues of Paradise’s past Captains stood on both sides of the sprawling staircase leading up to the Elders’ Court.

Elves had formed ranks across the approach. Their attacks were relentless, but Neila absorbed or obstructed enough of their firepower to keep the Sentinels moving.

Isaac noticed Oliver keeping close beside him. The two of them were able to push through the obstruction faster than the others, racing towards the round, flat-roofed building perched at the top of the hill.

Oliver’s four-armed skeletal summon surged ahead of them and slammed its shoulder into the entrance.

The doors buckled under the impact. Both panels flew inward and struck the walls hard enough to send a slight tremor through the hall.

Isaac stopped.

Two towering knights stood inside.

They were shoulder to shoulder, each resting a gauntleted hand on the pommel of a longsword.

"Oliver. Hold the door." Isaac placed a hand on his shoulder. "These are ancient gods."

Oliver nodded and turned back with his summon while Isaac stepped farther into the hall.

He couldn’t determine the exact tier of the twelve-foot summons before him, but both felt slightly weaker than Neila. That meant he had the advantage. He could win.

Then Isaac’s expression changed. "No..." His eyes widened slowly.

These two ancient gods weren’t here merely to stop them from entering the building. They were guarding the path to the council hall.

Someone was already inside with the Elders.

"Oliver."

The voice came from one of the towering Obsidians. Oliver, who had been facing the entrance, turned his head.

A man stepped out of the massive summon. He was bald, tall and stocky. He opened his arms as though welcoming an old friend.

"It’s been a while, baby brother."

Oliver’s eyes narrowed.

For a moment, he could hear it again. The crackle of fire. His brother pounding against the door of the shed. His parents burning inside their home.

And that howl, the cry of a wounded wolf, that had torn from Oliver’s throat nearly a decade ago.

His eyes began to glisten just as they had back then.

The old burns across his flesh seemed to flare beneath his bandages. They couldn’t truly be burning again. It had to be his mind. The memories returning so vividly that his body remembered the pain with them.

His skeletal summon raised a spear and hurled it.

The weapon crossed the hall with such force that the surrounding walls seemed to shudder. Delusion stepped forward and punched it.

For a brief instant, the sound of metal striking metal rang through the chamber. Then the spear shattered. Splinters scattered across the tiled floor.

"You still can’t see what I see," Del said. "You still choose to become this."

"You’re delusional," Oliver choked out.

He had waited years for this moment. Years to hate him. Years to imagine revenge. But hearing Del speak now shattered something inside him.

Oliver had hated the wrong man. His brother had died before the fire ever consumed that house. Whatever stood before him now was someone else entirely, someone so lost inside his own delusion that it had become reality.

"Del." Another voice called out.

Del turned towards the Obsidian of Manipulation, through which his twin spoke. Yes. This was the brother who understood him.

Oliver’s summon brandished its swords. The blades scraped together before the creature launched itself forward.

"Oliver!" Isaac shouted.

Manipulation and Delusion retreated through the doorway at the far end of the hall.

Isaac reached for the Paragon skill: Eclipsal State. Deep within his mind, Neila answered and his body changed.

A hard black exoskeleton spread across his flesh as he grew to nearly eight feet tall. His fingers lengthened into hard claws, armour forming over his head while three additional eyes opened above each of his natural ones.

Then four thick spider legs tore from his back, two on either side. They resembled Neila’s legs in her true spider form.

White hair spilled down his back.

With a soft hiss, Isaac fired a strand of webbing at the distant doorway and pulled himself forward.

He shot through the opening and found Oliver frozen just beyond it.

Isaac immediately webbed himself to the ceiling, anchoring his body there with the spider legs protruding from his back.

Then he saw why Oliver had stopped. There were children in the hall, three of them. None older than seven.

Their faces were streaked with tears and snot, and their small hands had been bound tightly behind their backs. These men had gone out of their way to bring children here.

The children began to cry when they saw Isaac and Oliver’s skeletal summon. The terror they must have endured for the arrival of two equally frightening creatures to somehow give them hope.

"Oliver. The door!"

Isaac dropped from the ceiling and fired webs at two of the girls, catching them before pulling them straight past himself and into Oliver’s grasp.

Despite the hatred burning in Oliver’s eyes, he understood his responsibility. Isaac was glad to see the Sentinel Captain retreat towards the door with the children.

Delusion and Manipulation charged.

They swung their swords almost simultaneously, moving like two arms belonging to the same entity. Isaac webbed himself to the ceiling and flew over them, racing towards the last girl.

Her small legs were already carrying her towards him.

Isaac reached down and swept her into his arms, almost feeling the relief that washed through her when she realized she had reached him. With a swift turn, he faced the Obsidians of Delusion and Manipulation.

"Kneel."

Isaac used Will Compulsion.

His command invaded the Obsidians like an unseen entity, seizing their bodies and forcing the towering knights to their knees. Both tightened their hands around their longswords and strained to rise, but neither could overcome his will.

Will Compulsion could not force a man to kill himself.

It could, however, force him to kill someone else.

"Kill him," Isaac ordered Delusion before turning towards Manipulation. "Do the same."

The two Obsidians raised their longswords.

Isaac’s vision wavered. He staggered, suddenly aware that something was wrong, and looked down at the child in his arms.

There was no child. He was holding a fruit. It was large and purple, shaped almost like an oversized mango.

The Obsidians began to laugh.

Isaac immediately dropped it.

"Poison," he gasped as the black exoskeleton covering his body began to turn gray.

’Neila!’

He recalled her and hurried away from the fruit. The moment Neila disappeared, the pressure of his Will Compulsion weakened and both knights forced themselves back onto their feet.

"Oliver..."

Isaac fell to one knee and coughed blood onto the floor. The poison hadn’t fully taken hold of him, yet his body had already been deeply affected.

Then he thought of Oliver.

If merely holding one fruit for those few moments had done this to him, what had happened to Oliver after carrying two?

Delusion walked towards the entrance and opened the door.

Isaac’s stomach dropped.

Oliver lay near the other doorway, the two purple fruits resting beside him. His skin had turned gray, while the veins beneath it had swollen into thick purple lines that looked almost too large to belong inside a human body.

Blood stained his lips, chin and clothes.

"Death’s Kiss," Manipulation said. "We thought you might recognize it, but you don’t even know the fruit."

Del looked through the doorway at his dying brother while Manipulation continued.

"Father always said the outside world was weak. Today, I finally understand what he meant. You lack experience. You lack knowledge of other worlds."

Del slowly began to close the door.

Oliver hadn’t merely touched the fruits. He had held two of them for several seconds.

A minute, perhaps less. That was all the time he had left.

Del’s hand stopped. Was he really going to let his brother die that way? Like their parents had?

He changed his mind and opened the door again, raising his sword. At least the blade would end it quickly.

Isaac fired a web around Del’s wrist and anchored the other end to the floor before dashing towards Oliver. Manipulation swung his longsword low across the hall.

The blade would cut Isaac apart if it reached him.

Isaac fired another web at the wall behind himself and let it yank him backwards just as the sword swept past his waist. Before the weapon could complete its swing, he shot another strand onto the blade.

Its momentum caught him.

Isaac swung with the longsword in a wide semicircular arc across the hall, released the web at precisely the right moment and flew past Delusion.

He caught himself with one hand, flipped onto his feet and nearly collapsed again as his vision blurred.

’Fall now and you die.’

Isaac forced himself forward and reached for Oliver.

"Lost!" Oliver yelled. The word barely escaped him, sounding more like a whisper, but it was enough to stop Isaac’s hand.

"Get lost," Oliver managed. His vision had narrowed until it seemed as though something were slowly eating the world from its edges, leaving only a shrinking tunnel through which he could see.

"It’s poison—"

"I know!" Isaac snapped.

"I’m poison."

Isaac’s fingertips stopped just short of Oliver’s skin. He understood. The fruit’s poison was on him now. Isaac rolled backwards as a longsword crashed into the floor where he had been kneeling.

Delusion rushed past his embedded sword and slammed into Isaac’s chest. He drove him across the floor, scraping him over the tiles before lifting him and hurling him towards Manipulation.

Manipulation caught Isaac by the neck.

Countless tiny spiders suddenly poured from Isaac’s body and crawled over the Obsidian’s arm.

Manipulation recoiled and hurled him into a wall.

Isaac struck hard enough to make the entire hall tremble, sending dust drifting from the ceiling as he slumped to the floor.

Then the spiders began firing webs.

Hundreds of strands stretched across Manipulation’s body and anchored themselves to the walls, floor and surrounding pillars. They weren’t nearly strong enough to restrain a being like him, but they didn’t need to be.

They were a nuisance.

That was all Isaac needed.

He webbed the fallen Death’s Kiss, spun it through the air and hurled it at Manipulation. The Obsidian sliced through the fruit. Its flesh burst apart. Purple pulp and juice splattered across his armour.

Manipulation roared and charged.

Isaac entered Eclipsal State once more. Two of his spider legs drove into the floor behind him, anchoring his body, while he angled the remaining pair towards the approaching Obsidian.

The timing was perfect.

Manipulation’s own momentum drove him onto the thick, sharp-tipped legs. They punched through his cuirass, tore through his body and burst from his back.

Delusion was close behind him.

His approach was slower than Isaac would have expected from a being of his tier, but he was coming nonetheless.

"Your head!" Delusion shouted.

Isaac saw the attack coming. "Kneel."

Will Compulsion crashed into Delusion and forced the Obsidian onto his knees.

Only then did Isaac see the sword sweeping towards his abdomen.

Not his head. A delusion.

Del’s warning had been intended to make Isaac defend the wrong part of his body.

Will Compulsion had been the right choice. Isaac’s advantage in tier was simply too great for Delusion to overcome quickly.

And now he had him. Isaac swung his remaining spider legs towards the kneeling Obsidian.

This was the killing blow.

For Oliver. For every person in Paradise they had killed.

"Stop."

Isaac froze.

His spider legs stopped inches from their target. He tried to move, but not a single muscle obeyed him.

Gabriel stood in the doorway leading to the council hall. "You impress me, Isaac." He regarded him quietly. "I never thought you would become this."

Gabriel stepped aside. "Come. Witness my craft."

Isaac’s feet moved. Not because he commanded them to. His body turned away from Delusion and began carrying him towards the council hall.

Dread settled over him. Cain. Cain was the man inside with the Elders.

Which meant...

Isaac stared towards the open doorway. They were dead.