Re-Awakening: I Ascend with a Legendary class

Chapter 819: The Only One Left

Word spread across the Shelf faster than fire.

By the time Almond and Kael reached the western flats, half of two kingdoms were already there. People sat on rocks and broken walls and each other’s shoulders. Hiroshi and three Asuras had carried Silvester’s stretcher to the very front.

"If either of them falls on me," Silvester said, "I want it noted that I died happy."

Kayla walked a wide circle around the flats with one hand trailing behind her.

"Bloomheart Ward."

A low wall of green light rose out of the ground and closed into a ring. It was wide enough for a small town.

"That’s to protect the people watching," she told the two fighters. "Not you. You two can get hurt as much as you like."

"Very kind," Kael said.

John had found a seat on Terravax’s small shell. He was eating something out of a bowl and looking extremely pleased with his morning.

"Ten on Almond," he called.

"Ten on what?" Marcus asked. "We don’t even have a currency you care about."

"Ten of anything. I just like saying it."

Lily stood at the edge of the ring with her arms folded. Rudra stood beside her.

"He beat both of us," Rudra said quietly.

"He did."

"So how do you think this goes?"

Lily watched her husband roll his neck from side to side. She smiled a little.

"I think Kael has never fought someone who cheats as well as Almond does," she said.

Marcus stood between them and raised one hand.

"No Spirit Lords," he said. "No killing. First one who can’t get up." He looked from one to the other. "And both of you are Tier-100 as of yesterday, so nobody knows what your cards do anymore. Try not to break the Shelf. We just finished saving it."

He dropped his hand and ran.

Kael was gone before Marcus had cleared the ring.

"Windrunner’s Grace."

It had been fast at Tier-95. Now there was no streak of silver at all. There was only Kael standing forty feet away, and then Kael standing behind Almond’s left shoulder with his blade already moving.

"Stormbreaker."

Almond got his sword up in time, but only just. The blow threw him ten feet sideways. He hit the ground rolling and came up swinging, and his blade cut nothing but air.

Kael was already on his other side.

The second Stormbreaker opened a line across Almond’s arm. The third one cut his coat from shoulder to hip. Almond struck back each time, and each time he was half a breath too slow.

"Reaver’s Momentum only works if you land the first one," Kael said, from somewhere to his right. "I watched the tournament too."

"I remember," Almond said.

He stopped swinging. He lowered his sword and stood still.

Kael came in from above with the fourth strike.

"Keyward Absence."

The Stormbreaker stopped six inches from Almond’s face.

It did not hit a wall. It simply hung there in the air, bright and humming, like a letter that had been sent but would not be delivered. Almond looked at it with mild interest.

Kael landed and stared.

"What did you do to it?"

"Nothing," Almond said. "It’s still on its way. I just haven’t let it arrive."

He stepped out from under it and let go. The Stormbreaker finished arriving on empty ground and split the stone in two.

The crowd roared.

Kael came back harder.

He struck from the left, and the blow hung in the air. He struck from behind, and that one hung too. Then he struck from three sides at once, so fast that the three cuts were a single sound.

Almond held two of them. The third went through and opened his side.

"Three," Kael said. He was breathing harder now. "You can’t hold more than two at a time."

"I was hoping you wouldn’t notice that."

"I notice things."

Almond pressed a hand to his side. It came away red. He looked at the wide, flat ground between them, at all the room Kael had to run in.

"So do I," he said. "Emberthrone Requiem."

Fire rolled out from his feet.

It did not burn hot. It burned the ground itself, the space where a foot could be put. A wide ring of the flats went dark behind the flames, and when Kael’s next step came down on it, there was nothing there to step on.

He stumbled. It was the first time anyone on that Shelf had ever seen Kael Vantress stumble.

"That ground’s taken," Almond said. "You can’t stand there again."

Kael caught himself and ran straight up into the air. "I don’t need ground."

"I know."

The fire followed him up.

It burned lanes through the open air, one after another. Every path Kael ran, Almond burned behind him, and that path was gone. The ring that had been wide enough for a town began to feel very small.

Kael saw it. He was too good not to.

"You have to keep your mind on it," he called down. "Every bit of it. That’s the price, isn’t it?"

Almond did not answer. Sweat was running into his eyes.

"Then let’s see how you think with this in your face."

Kael dropped out of the sky like a thrown spear, and Stormbreaker came down ahead of him, again and again, so many cuts that the air went white.

Almond held two. He blocked a third. The fourth took him in the shoulder and spun him around.

The fire went out.

But Kael had come down to do it.

He was on the ground, inside the last small patch of space that Almond had not burned. For one breath, he had nowhere fast to go.

Almond’s blade caught him across the ribs.

It was not a deep cut. It did not have to be.

"Reaver’s Momentum," Almond said.

The second strike came faster than the first. Kael blocked it, and the block shook his whole arm. The third came faster still. The fourth and fifth landed almost together.

Kael gave ground. He hated giving ground, and he gave it now, one step and then another, with Almond’s blade speeding up in front of his eyes.

"Aegis Ward!"

The pale dome snapped shut around him. At Tier-100 it was no longer thin. It rang like a great bell when Almond’s sword struck it, and it did not even scratch.

Kael stood inside it and breathed.

"That’ll hold against anything you’ve got," he said.

"Probably," Almond agreed. "How strong would you say it is?"

Kael’s eyes narrowed. "Why?"

"Kingsbane."

The card did not care how strong Almond was. It cared how strong the thing in front of him was, and Aegis Ward at Tier-100 was very strong indeed.

The dome cracked from top to bottom.

Kael did not wait for it to fall. He put a Stormbreaker straight through the crack from the inside, at a range of two feet, and it hit Almond square in the chest.

Both of them flew backward.

Almond landed on his back and slid. Kael hit the green wall of Kayla’s ward and dropped to one knee. For a moment, neither of them moved.

"Get up!" Silvester shouted from his stretcher. "Both of you! I didn’t get carried out here for a draw!"

They got up.

They stood twenty feet apart.

Almond was bleeding from his arm, his side, his shoulder, and his chest. Kael had one hand pressed to his ribs, and his sword arm was shaking. The ground between them was burned and split and broken.

Nobody in the crowd was making a sound now.

"I’ve got one thing left," Kael said.

"I know," Almond said.

"You saw what it did to that thing in the heart."

"I did."

Kael looked at him steadily. "I can’t make it gentle. It lands. That’s all it does. If you can’t take it, tell me now and I’ll call this a draw, and I won’t think less of you."

Almond wiped the blood out of his eye with the back of his hand.

"Use it," he said.

At the edge of the ring, Lily’s arms had come unfolded.

Kael raised his sword.

The fight collapsed.

Everyone on the flats felt it happen. Every way Almond could have moved, every block and dodge and trick, folded down into nothing. There was one line left in the whole world, and it ran from the point of Kael’s sword to the middle of Almond’s chest.

"Keyward Absence," Almond said.

Nothing happened.

"It won’t work," Kael said, almost gently. "You can’t hold back an arrival that’s already certain."

"No," Almond said. "I didn’t think so. I just wanted to check."

The strike came.

It was not fast. It did not need to be fast. It crossed the twenty feet between them like the sun coming up, and nothing could have stopped it.

It landed.

Almond’s hand was already there.

"Voidseed Genesis."

The strike hit his open palm. In the same instant, the card took hold of it and unmade it. All that force, all that certainty, came apart into raw bright stuff between his fingers. Not all of it. Enough went through to drive him down onto one knee and tear a cry out of him.

But the rest stayed in his hand.

"Voidforge."

It took a shape.

When the light faded, Almond was on one knee in the dirt, bleeding and shaking. In his right hand was a long, pale sword that had not existed a moment ago. Its point rested lightly against Kael Vantress’s throat.

Kael looked down at it. He looked at Almond.

"It was certain to land," Almond said. His voice was hoarse. "Nobody ever said it had to stay a strike."

Kael opened his mouth. Nothing came out.

Then his legs went out from under him, and he sat down hard on the broken ground.

For a moment, the whole Shelf was silent.

Almond stayed on his knee for a long time. Then he got one foot under him, slowly. Then the other. He stood there swaying, with the pale sword hanging from his hand.

Marcus walked back into the ring. He looked at Kael, who had not moved.

"Can you get up?" Marcus asked.

Kael thought about it honestly.

"No," he said. "I really can’t."

The Shelf exploded.

Regalons were shouting. PeakWicked was shouting. Even the Skytheum survivors were on their feet, because it had been that kind of fight. Silvester was pounding on the side of his own stretcher until Hiroshi made him stop.

Kael tipped his head back and laughed. It was a full, helpless laugh, the laugh of a man who had been carrying something for thirty-seven years and had finally been allowed to put it down.

"You turned my last card into a sword," he said.

"It was a good card," Almond said. "It made a good sword."

He held out his free hand. Kael took it, and Almond pulled him up, and both of them nearly fell over.

Lily got there first. She looked at Almond’s chest and his side and his shoulder, and then she looked at his face.

"You let it hit you," she said.

"It was always going to hit me. I just chose where."

"That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever watched you do."

"Did it work?"

Lily kissed him, right there in front of two kingdoms. Then she turned to Kael.

"You still owe me a rematch," she said.

Kael groaned. "Can it be after the door?"

"It can be after the door."

Kayla pushed between all of them with green light already running down both her arms.

"Sit," she said. "Both of you. Now."

They sat.

Big D had watched the whole thing from a rock at the edge of the ring.

Natalia came and stood beside him while Kayla worked. The door glowed at the end of the canyon behind them, the same as it had all night.

"It’s tomorrow," Natalia said. "You told me to ask you tomorrow. How does it feel?"

Big D thought about it. He took his time.

"Like standing at the bottom of a ladder again," he said at last. "I thought it would feel like the top. It doesn’t."

"Is that bad?"

"No." He watched Almond and Kael arguing with Kayla about whether they were allowed to stand. "I spent a very long time with no ladder at all. I’d rather have one to climb. And I’ve got better company for it now than I ever had."

Natalia smiled. She did not say anything.

Big D got to his feet and raised his voice. It carried across the whole Shelf, the way it always had.

"Rest today," he said. "Eat. Sleep. Say whatever you need to say to whoever you need to say it to."

He turned and looked at the door.

"Tomorrow at dawn, we go and see what’s on the other side."