NOVGO.NET Chapter 309 - 300 — One of the Seven I
Chapter 309: Chapter 300 — One of the Seven I
" Wrath."
It meant nothing to James.
It was a word. It was a word he had heard in a dark sitting room in Ballymun four nights ago and it had meant nothing then either, and it should have gone past him now the same way.
Except the man had said it looking at Alice.
James turned his head.
Alice had not moved a muscle, which was the problem. Somebody who hears a word that means nothing looks confused. Somebody who hears a word that means something looks at the person who said it. Alice was doing neither. She was standing perfectly still with her wings open and her face doing absolutely nothing at all, and James had lived in a house with her for four months and knew exactly what that cost her.
"What’s Wrath."
"James—"
"Alice. What is it."
She hesitated. It was not long — half a second, maybe less, the length of a decision being made about how much to hand over.
James noticed it anyway.
"One of the Seven," she said.
He got about a second and a half to do anything with that.
---
Then the Last Defender came for him.
Not for the formation. Not for Ronan, not for Maeve, not for the shape of them. He came off his mark in the middle of a courtyard full of people who had been dead ten thousand years and crossed twenty metres in a straight line at one man.
James had seen this before. On a wet field outside Caerleon, the moment a prince understood that the black blade could open the red, Baldwin had stopped managing his battle and started hunting the necromancer.
"He’s on me—"
"I know," said Ronan, and got there.
He did not try to stop him. Nothing Ronan owned had stopped him yet. He put the shield into the line at an angle, took the sword across the face of it, gave two metres, and stayed between the Last Defender and James the entire time he was going backwards.
Finn came into the open side.
He did not commit. That was the plan they had agreed thirty seconds ago and had not had time to say out loud — force a response, do not feed him — and Finn put a shallow cut across the outside of the ribs and got out.
`[THE LAST DEFENDER — HP: 64,700 → 63,800]`
Red gathered at the cut.
James was already moving in on it with the scythe.
He did not get four steps.
The Last Defender spent it before it had finished forming. He did not aim it across the courtyard at somebody weak. He put it into Ronan at arm’s length, straight through the shield at a range where there was no travel time at all, and Ronan went sideways off his feet.
The route between the Last Defender and James was suddenly open.
James stopped dead in the middle of it.
*He’s not saving it anymore.*
---
The sword came round at him and it was a full committed strike from a man who was faster than anybody in the courtyard except Alice, and James did not try to put a scythe haft in front of it.
He looked left instead, at a heap of broken bone by the second column, where his own skeleton had been taken apart eleven minutes ago and left where it fell.
Dead bone on stone. That was all it had to be.
`[GRAVE STEP — 120 MANA]`
`[MANA: 2,880 / 3,100]`
The world went black and cold.
It came back thirty feet away off the Last Defender’s rear quarter, and for one full second James’s inner ear insisted the floor was tilted and his hands did not know where the far end of the blade was.
That second had never once got shorter. Nine floors of drilling had made him *use* it better; it had never made it go away.
And the Last Defender knew it was there.
He turned into the arrival before James’s vision had caught up — did not swing at where James had come from, swung at where James actually was, immediately — and James had to abandon the whole strike and throw himself sideways to avoid being cut in half while he was still blind.
Finn hit the turn.
`[THE LAST DEFENDER — HP: 63,800 → 62,700]`
Red gathered.
The Last Defender let it go into Cillian, who was mid-cast forty feet away and had to break his own stance to get out of the line, and the lightning he had been building died in his hands.
"He’s *dumping* it," Maeve shouted from the column. "Every time. He’s emptying as fast as we fill him—"
"I see it."
"James, he’s not holding anything for you to cut—"
"*I see it.*"
---
The problem was very simple and James hated it.
Their entire answer required the man to be carrying something. Cut the pile, Maeve had said, and they had cut the pile once and it had worked, and he had watched them do it, and now he simply refused to have a pile.
He was spending it on arrival. Small amounts, instantly, at whoever was closest to being useful.
Which meant every hit they landed did two things: it took HP off him, and it produced another weapon he handed straight back to them at point-blank range.
"New instruction," James called. "Stop hitting him."
"He’s still coming *at* us—"
"I know. Don’t hurt him. Move him."
---
So they stopped fighting him and started herding him, and it was the least satisfying eight minutes of James’s life.
Ronan came back in with the shield boss visibly caved and took the centre, and stopped trying to do anything to the man at all. He decided where he could go. That was it. He put his body where the Last Defender wanted to be and did not chase him anywhere.
Finn worked the sword side with plain ordinary axe work, hitting the weapon and the guard and almost never the man, and withdrawing every single time the Last Defender turned on him.
Cillian did nothing at all for long stretches, which cost him more than fighting would have. "Two," he said, at one point, to nobody. "I’ve two left in me. That’s the count. I’m not spending them on him walking."
Maeve stopped supporting and started reading. She was up against the column with her left arm strapped across her ribs and could not have raised a barrier bigger than a door, and she called his weight and his recovery leg and his turns for eight minutes straight without moving three metres.
And Alice stood opposite James at all times.
That was the piece that made it work. The Last Defender could have ignored any of the others long enough to reach the necromancer. He could not ignore her. Every time he squared himself fully at James, the whole of his back went to a Fallen Divinity who had already put a blade through his ribs once, and he knew it, and James watched him check her position before every single commitment.
---
James tested it himself once, because he had to know.
Finn opened a gap and James put a Necro Blast through it.
`[NECRO BLAST — 60 MANA]`
`[MANA: 2,820 / 3,100]`
`[THE LAST DEFENDER — HP: 62,700 → 60,100]`
Red thickened around the burn immediately.
James went for it — three steps, blade already coming round, closer than he had been since the first cut.
The Last Defender did two things at once.
He retreated from James, physically, giving ground he did not need to give. And while he was moving backwards he emptied the whole accumulation sideways into Finn, who took it across the chest and went down on one knee twelve metres away.
The scythe went through the space where it had been and cut nothing.
James stood there with the black blade in empty air.
"He’s managing me," he said.
"He’s managing the *distance* and the *timing*," Maeve said. "Both. At once. While fighting five people."
---
And refusing to hit him did not make anybody safe.
That was the other half of it, and the Last Defender demonstrated it thoroughly over the next four minutes.
He drove Ronan back into the colonnade and hit the same quarter of the shield four times until Ronan’s forearm went numb. He came at Maeve twice, not seriously, purely to make her move, because she could not move well and both of them knew it. When Finn tried to punish the second one he caught the axes on his crossguard, turned the whole bind, and put Finn on the flagstones — and Finn had the sense to roll instead of pretending he could win a strength contest with a Level 67.
`[CILLIAN WARD — LIGHTNING IMPACT]`
"One left," Cillian said immediately.
`[THE LAST DEFENDER — HP: 60,100 → 56,900]`
The red gathered and went out again inside a second, into Ronan, and Ronan took it on the deformed shield and kept his feet by about four inches.
They were being ground down by a man they had stopped attacking.
`[THE LAST DEFENDER — HP: 56,900 → 55,500]`
---
"He’s checking her," Maeve said.
James was watching a woman with a basket walk through the middle of the fight and did not answer for a second.
"What?"
"Alice. Every time he winds up on you he looks at Alice first. Not at me, not at Ronan. Her." Maeve’s voice was flat and fast. "He’s not afraid of us. He’s afraid of what she does to him if he turns his back."
James looked at the man in the middle of the courtyard.
He had one wound under the arm that had not closed in twenty minutes and a bare stripe across his ribs and he was holding five people off with a sword and a fear of exactly one of them.
"Then let’s give him two things to be afraid of."
He went to the wreck of his second skeleton — the one broken against the ground near the steps — put his hand flat on it, and paid.
`[SUMMON UNDEAD SKELETON — 80 MANA]`
`[MANA: 2,740 / 3,100]`
It came up crooked out of its own pieces.
Eighty mana for a thing that would not survive five seconds of that man’s attention, and James did not send it at him. He walked it wide, out to the eastern colonnade, forty metres off the fight, and left it standing there doing nothing whatsoever.
Two anchors now. The wreck by the second column, and a skeleton that could move.
Two places James could be, instantly, at any moment.
---
He did not use either of them.
He just started looking at them.
The Last Defender caught the first glance and checked the eastern colonnade — one full turn of the head, about a third of a second — and Finn was inside before he came back round and forced the sword across his own body.
The Last Defender corrected.
James took one step with the scythe.
The Last Defender disengaged from Finn entirely to stop him closing, which cost him the position he had been building for a minute.
James took another step. He did not swing. He did not throw a Necro Blast. He walked, and the man moved.
*We can move him without touching him.*
They compressed it after that, slowly, without hurting him.
Ronan denied the middle. Finn pressured one side and refused to over-commit into it. Alice walked down the opposite side at a pace that made the hair go up on the back of James’s neck, and did not attack once. Cillian held his last one. Maeve called every recovery, and every time the Last Defender chose a direction there was slightly less of the courtyard in it than there had been.
He worked out what they were doing before it closed.
---
He broke off James completely and went for Maeve.
Ronan moved to intercept and the Last Defender did not try to go through him — he attacked around the outside of the shield, forcing Ronan to turn his whole body to follow it, and the far route opened behind Ronan’s shoulder.
Finn was twenty metres away on the wrong side.
James was on the wrong side of everything.
And Maeve was standing against a column with one working arm.
Alice crossed the courtyard.
She got there — of course she got there, she was always going to get there — and put herself in front of Maeve with the sword already falling, and to stop that sword; she had to *stop* it, which meant hitting him, and hitting him properly.
He left his side wide open for her while she did it.
James saw it a fraction of a second too late to shout.
*He’s giving it to her.*