The Northern Noble is a Grinder (Volume 2: Chapter 8)

The Northern Noble is a Grinder (Volume 2: Chapter 8)

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Commissioned by Sivantic

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The wind screamed as it rushed towards the fleet. The gust was enough to rip several trees up in mere passing. The clouds above parted, and a hammer of wind smashed through the fleet. I watched ships get flung into the air far higher than mountains, like leaves thrown up into the air by a child. They hung in the air whilst their crew tumbled out as they crumbled and broke. Soldiers struck head-on died swift and instant deaths, coming apart and breaking, but within broken hulls I saw people twisted and enmeshed in ruined ships, while more were blown up and away into the sky to fall to their deaths.

The cliffside that they were building into, which they were trying to turn into a temporary dock and fortress, suffered as well. The singular strike blew away tied-down ships and even those that were entombed to the rock face. Rocks shuddered and cracked with enough force that their breaking sent birds many leagues away alight. Great, jagged spear pillars of stone shuddered and broke off the cliff faces. They fell onto the tumultuous seas and created great waves that engulfed ships in an instant.

Lord Trelawney’s initial strike should have sundered the enemy with ease, but instead the center of the fleet remained.

Guarded by a barrier of golden light, which rapidly transformed before my eyes and shot towards us.

Lord Trelawney scoffed at it.

“You see that? It’s glowing and shiny, but it’s not light. Light would be instant.” He gathered power into his hand and shot it towards the glowing pillar rushing at us. It was as wide as an entire castle and would have swept through the whole fortress. He swung his hand and carved through it with an invisible blade. The luminous attack was cut in half and parted. One half into the sky and the other into the ground. “Remember to make a wedge instead of just a thin blade. An axe head splits. A sword will just let you get hit by two attacks.”

He instructed me and the others as though we were to someday ever reach his realm of strength, but before I could complain, I was lifted by an invisible force.

“Alright, they’re weakened enough. No more chaff. Just the elites and the boss. Get over there and win. Remember, the faster you kill them, the less hurt you get.” Lord Trelawney’s words brought me back to the cold north. To times when I struggled for hours on end at the end of my wits and tugging at the frayed ends of my strength, when all I could do was survive against the challenge he placed in front of me. I knew the next words to come even before he shared them with a smile. “Good luck and have fun!”

With that said, he launched all of us forcibly through our foes, and I felt instinct take hold.

I stopped thinking about unfairness and misery while also summoning courage in the face of all my fears.

There was nothing besides survival now, and I intended to do everything that I could to do just that.

The first step to achieving that was to deal as much damage as possible before landing.

Five ships were between us and the landing area. I sent rays of heat at where their wooden hulls met with water. Steam formed on the surface of the wood, and then eventually heat seeped within. Bursts of white mist came forth with many shards of wood, and in an instant each ship was taking on water. We passed over them as they were sinking into the depths, and when some tried to give chase, my companions dealt with them swiftly.

We were about to land on the largest ship, where the protective dome had been projected and where the last attack had been launched.

My stomach lurched at what awaited us.

It was a large platform suspended on two hulls. It was the size of a large city square, and upon it was an altar. Familiar faces with dead eyes were on the surface, strapped naked and disemboweled upon the surface of the ship, while the lizard-like warrior elite of the enemy inscribed seals made of the blood upon their bodies. My fellow noble children and mages were being taken to be used to empower their elites.

All the sacrificed were men as well, so they retained the missing women as breeding stock.

Lord Trelawney’s voice resounded in my head at that moment.

To let loose with baleful fire and destroy the whole of the ship, even though some of my fellows might be there. If I were in their place, I would wish to die instead of being used to fulfill my captor’s insidious ends.

But I knew better than to fall to such urges when I lacked the same amount of strength.

Instead, I burned away most of the seal, avoiding the living sacrifices, and immolated the elites hurriedly attempting to swathe themselves in more enchantments. From prior engagements, I learned that they could rapidly regenerate outer tissue and even limbs, but once their insides burned, they died swiftly. Lances of heat punched through their sides, sunk beneath their rib cages, and burned their innards away. They fell dead, with steam surging from their mouths and eyes.

Chloe landed a moment after me, and she was a blur of blades. More than myself and Alice, she was a master at using flight and augmented her movements. One moment she was charging low, only for her to kick off the ground and surge forward while held up by her artifact, and then in a blink of an eye she’d rid her foe of his ability to walk. When she leapt into the air and made her foes believe she could not move, she used flight to dodge or to return to the ground in an instant, typically cutting her opponent in two from head to foot in the same motion. With her limited magic, she focused on using her sword the most, but when the occasion called, she gestured with her hand, and her foe would compress, crushed into a cube, as she used the winds to compact her foes. Stronger foes would need to stand still and resist, while weaker opponents were destroyed in an instant. The instant she gained against stronger foes was usually enough for her to gain the advantage.

Alice, meanwhile, focused on being at the fringes of combat. Her knives flashed and found the eyes and hearts of her foes before returning to her. When she was chased, she didn’t hesitate to ‘fall’ off the side of the ship and use flight to help her run across the side before returning to the fray on the other side. She sparingly used her bow, but when she found the time and the space, she would lash out, and a hole would form in the middle of one of the lizard’s warrior elites. Those who managed to reach her found her evading and vaulting over them, typically while leaving her knives embedded into their bodies. Her movements were economical and careful, and she moved to protect me at any given opportunity.

I trust the two with my life, while we took hold of the deck, and even as more warriors came forth from the confines of the ship.

What I didn’t expect, however, was for Anisette to grow enraged and to engage the priest that led the ritual by herself.

Someone on par with Aigen should’ve handily defeated her.

Instead, she instantly had him on the back foot while she advanced relentlessly.

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Interlude: Anisette, Demigod of Love

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I never understood ‘righteous fury.’

I thought that I did.

In the songs and stories my father shared with me, he explained it as a lover avenging his lost partner. A hero slaying the lord who had his village destroyed. A hunter bringing low a monster that terrorized the people of an entire town. He told me that their anger was heady, but their minds were clear. That their hearts pulsed hard in their chests with something more ferocious than mere excitement, but their bodies and instincts remained under control. However, despite that clear mind and that complete control, they were controlled not by themselves but by their fury.

I did not understand how someone could be in complete control but still lose themselves.

Now, I did, as I swung my fist into the lizard-priest’s chest and desperately wished that I could grab his heart.

Jonathan’s features were stuck in a terrified, silent scream. He was naked and chained to stone. Inlets on the stone held the organs they pulled out of him as he lived, as they drained his life to power their demented ritual to empower their own soldiers. He frequented the library and yearned to just speak with Claudia, who was his fiancé, so he sought out romance novels even though he was laughed at. He sought me out at school for advice on how to proceed and on how to make his fiancé happy, and now he was gone.

The priest tried to cast some magic, but I struck first. A chaotic mess of magic erupted from my hand and interfered with the formation of arcane power in his gnarled staff. I saw Lord Trelawney do it many times over, disrupting magic with his own, but never managed it myself. It was because I could never fill it with the requisite rage before. Now, I could. The top of the gnarled staff of the priest came apart and showered us both with hardwood and shining metal, but I healed through the shrapnel and the blast while burying my fist into his scaled jaw.

The sight of fanged teeth flying out of his mouth barely moved me.

Claud’s head was separated from the rest of his body. Mounted on a stone spike. The rest of his body was butchered and in myriad pieces, like an animal, and the lizard warriors had been consuming him. His eyes were closed, and his head listed to one side, while a crown of gold leaves lay on his head. His skin was still tanned from his days working on his family’s farm. He was the son of a small merchant family, and he worked to become a skilled mage and a merchant both so that he could elevate his family further. He had a little sister of whom he spoke kindly, and whose early betrothal worried him.

Had worried him.

The priest-lizard snarled and roared before pulling out a long bone knife from his coat and brandishing it my way. My heart stilled at it. Souls were within it. Layered in torment and pain. The newest layers held Jonathan, Kail, and Horace. They screamed in horror and in pain, surrounded by countless other dead, and slowly but surely they were being torn apart.

Before I knew it, I cut through the priest’s hand with the knife Lord Trelawney gave me and took hold of the knife.

I almost fell upon taking hold of its handle.

It was made from the bone of a large and terrible beast who once ruled over the skies. A creature filled with greed and rage who could only be struck down by divinity. Even a fragment of it, such as the knife that I held now, was filled with hunger and greed. That was why it was fed with souls, so that its power could be used by those who were protected by the one who slew it. Once I touched it, it tried to consume me, but I held firm.

It was strong, but it was a fragment of the fearsome creature it once was, and the leviathan who granted me so much strength was mightier than this mere fragment.

I scoured the last traces of the tyrant by following the tendrils of bone it embedded into my hand. I forced it out, freeing all the souls that I could within the blade, and filled it with Leviathan’s strength. The knife shuddered and reshaped itself into a long and simple spiraling horn with a handle, and without hesitation I pierced the high priest’s heart.

It howled in pain and in desperation opened its mouth wide and extended claws from its hands. Its claws dug and scratched into my sides. I felt pain and anguish, like heated knives tearing at my sides and raking my ribs, but I healed through it. Even as muscle tore and even as my insides were nicked, I healed through it. Even as his widened and elongated maw bit into my chest, shoulder, and neck in one bite and made my bones scream and fracture, I healed through it.

“You… you will not survive me, beast! I won’t allow you to!” I will not allow it. I will not fall to this creature. Nor will I allow it to live. While holding onto the leviathan’s horn with one hand, I used my free hand to stab and stab into its stomach with focused fury. I channeled wind through Trelawney’s dagger and forced it into the monster’s body with every piercing blow. With the spiraling horn of the leviathan, I channeled water through the monster’s veins and innards. The tyrant it worshipped gave it great regeneration and toughness, but there was only so much that both could do. “You won’t hurt anyone ever again!”

After the eighth strike to its stomach perforated it completely and filled its belly with its own acid, I brought my hand up, reversed the grip of the dagger, and brought it down into the glowing yellow eye of the creature desperately trying to bite through my neck, ribs, and shoulder while trying to claw out my insides.

Just before the tip plunged into its baleful gaze, filled with hate and desperation, I saw something that gave me the will to carry the punishment through to its completion.

Fear.

It’s fear that made the furnace of fury guiding me burst into an inferno that I could barely understand.

“Don’t you dare! Don’t you dare feel afraid now after all that you’ve done!” I screamed as I plunged the knife through its eye and hit bone. When the knife stopped, when my plunging strike could not muster enough force, I let go of the blade and formed my hand into a fist and pummeled the hilt. Each blow buried it further into the creature, while its attacks grew more and more desperate. I didn’t care. Pain didn’t matter anymore. The rain, the battle around me, and the ebb and flow of my strength as it waned. Nothing mattered besides filling the monster’s veins with torrential seawater and breaking through its skull. Then, finally, as I felt my ribcage give… I broke through the creature’s skull. “Leave this place and never return!”

With that cry on my lips, I pierced its brain and unleashed a storm inside its skull.

As the light faded from its eyes, as its body went completely limp, and as blood and viscera poured from every orifice of its face… The darkness at the edges of my vision began to overtake me.

I felt the soul of the priest in my grasp, but I didn’t hesitate to deny it, crush it, and send it into oblivion.

If my final act was to see every last trace of that loathsome monster gone, then so be it.

I will not have it become a part of me.