Pseudo-Singularity 5: Krakka Drakk (Section 2: Bad Blood)
Sound echoes through the caves as seven peerless warriors battle among themselves. Stalactites and stalagmites and the simple, absolute darkness make knowing who is who difficult, but the flashes of sparks and the power your Contractor even now feeds to you allows you to make a few educated guesses, even as you bind together ax and hammer against sword, power radiating outward. Bertrand backs away from the advancing Estalian, undoubtedly that shiftless rogue Rodrigo, clad all in blue armor, sword jagged and edged and covered in a white-hot flame that burns the arrows to so much ash and dust. The elf Morelion duels with the nameless human assassin and the knight Agilgar (you could never forget that particular manling). Leaving you staring down a figure you would really rather not. In the distance you can hear the Mages, the Chaldean and the Dispossessed, rolling on the floor, wrestling and punching each other.
An elf, of course, because who else would have the strength to face your people? Tall, even among that statuesque band. Bronze of hair, and emerald of eye. Imladrik, Govandrakken, and the Rider among this "Holy Grail War" the Umgi have decided to drag you into. Bunch of beardlings.
In any case, your opponent is as strong as you are or at least so close the difference scarcely matters, faster than you, and quite probably a better fighter than you. You are tougher even before Barak Azmar, but Ifulvin makes that matter not half as much as you would like it to. The shine of his armor even in the darkness of the caves makes tracking him easy enough. At the least he certainly can't summon his damn dragon. Ol' Reliable (of all the weapons to drag with you from the Underearth) and Zhargall strain against the blade, trapping it in a net of metal--but even so it groans against the enchanted, dragon-fired ithilmar. He disengages, only to follow up with a cut from overhead before following up with a diagonal slash, a horizontal cut aimed to disembowel you and finally a stab. You block the first with Ol' Reliable, tank the second on your pauldron, beat the third off with Zhargall but the fourth manages to strike true, piercing into your armor. Though your stone flesh keeps you alive the heat is still bright and fierce enough that you feel it, and the bruise sure to follow. Probably worse, all things considered.
You hiss, sharp and deep. "Honorless, half-wit, elgi--"
He laughs, a mirthless, bitter thing, even as he brings his sword around in a lazy arc that nevertheless manages to pin your weapons. "Honorless? You, you Dwarfs of all people have the least right to speak of honor of any here! You burned Kor Vanaeth without warning, destroyed the hatcheries there and murdered every man, woman, and child! Your first move when you stumbled on my kin in fair Athel Loren was to march and try and slaughter them, and then to whine like a spoiled child every time they beautifully fought you off! You slaughtered a surrendered warrior! You turned on your own allies after they rode to your aid! You murdered his son," the elf pointed in the direction of the wrestling match between the two mages with his shield, "and defaced his body, and that's just a handful of the many, many atrocities I could list! Oh, oh but wait, I forgot, anything for the Grudge! Except that's not true either is it? It only counts when people do something wrong to the mighty, venerated dwarfs! And it doesn't matter who has to suffer, who has to die to make it right, how many thousands, how many millions as long as your ego gets soothed in the doing so! But Asuryan forebear that any in history should dare to say that that is wrong, should dare to gainsay your vengeance, should do anything against you! Another mark against every other thinking being in the world! Another way for the Dawi to try and present themselves as superior to the rest of us mere mortals who have the audacity to forgive, to let go, or at least to try and move on with our lives! And then to try and call us arrogant!"
A bolt of red, a bolt of anger, a bolt of fury. Zharrgal flies like an erupting volcano and slams into his shield, but the shimmering metal surface holds against your fury made manifest, even as you bring it around again and again and again. "Nobody is summoned as a Heroic Spirit," bang, "without regrets," bang, "failures," bang, "and tragedies." Bang! "But." BANG! "Among the many in my life," BANG! "Few rankle as deeply as not beating Snorri Halfhand about the head when he decided the wisest plan was to attack an uninvolved city, or to duel that wazzock if that didn't suffice." BANG! "And now that damn-fool boy intends to do the same thing to Krakka Drakk," BANG, "to the beardlings there," Bang, "the children there? Over my dead body!"
You feel magical energy flow into your body, and because the human is, in this one thing at least, more skilled than the shoddy workings of the Frundar, rather than turning to stone you feel yourself becoming invigorated as he restores you to health, and then more as a heavy, almost familiar weight settles in your hand: Dalvarr, an ax you...made? Planned to make? Considered? With the weight of the Aethyr and the flensing of time caused by the other Umgi futzing about looking for servants here, you can hardly tell anymore. But it's certainly real now, real and potent, burning with all the rune might you could possibly need. Already the power of the tides grows within it, already the power of the ancient ocean, of the most absolutely primordial world, when reality was a roiling, shifting thing of an ever rumbling sea.
You bring it around beautifully, and again it slams into his shield with a burst of blue light. The explosion knocks everybody not you to the ground, except for Imladrik. He goes flying, slams into the ceiling, the floor, the walls, opening great holes into the cave's stone. Stalactites and stalagmites shatter like so much glass or are blasted apart for a few dozen feet, and rock falls all around you: distantly you can only hope your Contractor is still reasonably intact and not stabbed with one of them, or something like that. The elf gets back on his feet, and you assess the damage.
His shield is simply--it's gone, no longer extant, turned to shreds of Ithilmar and straps. The armor around his left arm is in no better shape, and much of that around his chest is dented. The arm itself looks bruised to hell, red and purple and bloody, but likely as not still functional: this particular elf is no glass jaw, you can say that much with no little certainty.
He smiles, a particularly bloodthirsty thing. "Ha. Perhaps this will be a better use of my time than I thought." He salutes with his sword, raising it up then lowering it, seemingly leaving himself wide open to attack. "Your move."
You lunge.
