David Niemitz
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Faerie Knight 146
🕑 Added 2025-01-22 12:00:09 +0000 UTC146 - The Battle of Basilea IV: The Serpent in the Snow
We have never been able to confirm to my satisfaction the veracity of certain reports that more powerful daemons might be able to appear in more than once place at the same time.
The Marian Codex
☀
5th Day of High Summer’s Moon, AC 297
Trist dashed back to Forneus’ coils faster than the mammoth daemon could react, and then leapt up. When he’d fought the monster in the bay outside of Rocher de la Garde, he’d been able to get up onto the back of its great, scaled head. If it hadn’t dived down under the waves, he thought he would have been able to kill it then, and he wanted to get back into that position if he could.
Trist landed on the outermost coil of the monstrous serpent and began to run, using its own scaled hide as a curving ramp to make his way up toward its skull. As he ran, he once again shifted his sword into Near Guard, holding the hilt to the right of his waist, with the blade itself trailing behind him and down, so that he could cut along Fornerus’ scales as he went. He relied on speed, rather than strength or leverage, and the fact that his Daemon Bane Boon only needed the slightest contact to function. As the tip of his sword scraped and bounced along the daemon’s coil, the scales blackened, cracked and smoked, as if they’d been thrown into a smith’s forge.
Forneus must have known exactly what Trist was doing, however, for the great serpent rolled its coils, exposing its belly to the winter like a dog at the approach of its owner. Trist tried to angle himself back up the curve of the coil, but couldn’t maintain his footing. He hit the cobblestone street and rolled, the impact bruising and scraping his skin. If his body weren’t fortified by the Boons of an Exarch, he realized, he would have just broken enough bones to put him out of the fight.
The daemon’s head shot down from above, its fangs gaping, but Trist ducked to one side and drew his blade along its horned cheek, scoring another cut. The rank stench of its breath made him gag, and the impact of Forneus’ head carried enough force to bring down half a brick building.
Trist didn’t have time to see what sort of shop was falling on him. All he could do was raise his arms over his head, and wish that he’d been wearing his armor when he went to learn from Niviène. The faerie queen was probably going to be upset with him for getting involved in this. She’d warned him that, while he might be able to defeat Forneus in a physical battle, Trist was still unprepared to fight in the way daemons and faeries did.
Thankfully, the monster hadn’t yet seemed to realize that Trist was in two places at once. The noises of Niviène’s grove hovered at the edge of Trist’s mind, a constant distraction, and he knew that if he lost his focus for even a moment, his grasp of what he was doing would slip, and he would open his eyes sitting by the pool in the heart of the Arden. He needed to defeat this daemon before that happened.
Invoking the Gate Boon he’d stolen from the daemon Bathin, Trist spun a net of red threads from his core, while the bricks rained down on his back and shoulders, and opened a circular hole in the world. He’d been a little worried this trick might not work, given what he was already doing, but he dove through anyway, emerging in the air just above Forneus’ head.
There was just enough time for Trist to spin his sword around, tip down, and slam it into the back of the leviathan’s skull. His blade sunk deep, a length of metal about equal to a man’s forearm buried into the gap between two dark scales. Forneus screamed, and smoke began to rise around Trist’s blade.
Just like during the battle in the bay, a desperate grip on the hilt of his sword was all that kept Trist from flying off, as the daemon thrashed its head wildly to and fro. Trist’s feet were in the air, with nothing to push against, and he was moving so fast that his bandage was ripped from over his ruined eyes.
The monster must have thrown its head to the side in just the right way, because abruptly Trist’s sword dislodged, and he found himself flung out above the roofs of the city. Somewhere below, he distinctly recognized Clarisant’s voice screaming, cutting through all the chaos of the battle.
Trist relaxed and let his focus slip.
In the grove beside Niviène’s pool, the breeze rustled the leaves of the trees, and the faerie queen studied him with narrowed eyes. A wave of exhaustion swept through Trist, so that he slumped to one side and almost fell over before catching himself.
“I believe I warned you about Forneus,” Niviène scolded him.
“You did,” Trist admitted. “But I had to go. If I had not, my wife and son would already be dead. And I have to go back now, because the fight is not over.”
Niviène reached out a delicate hand, and rested her fingers on his forehead. The movement, the touch, brought back memories of his mother caring for him when he was sick, as a small child. “You cannot do this for much longer,” the faerie queen warned him. “You are using a muscle that has no endurance. Overusing it, more like. You’ve been a knight long enough to know the result of that, I hope.”
“Aye,” Trist said. John Granger had always warned he and Percy about pushing themselves too far in the practice yard. “But I cannot stop until I know that she is safe.”
“Go, then,” Queen Niviène said. “I will watch over you here.”
Trist nodded, crossed his hands over the hilt of his sword - when, exactly, had it come to hand, in this place, for this body? Did he have two swords at once? The complexities of it all astounded him, but there was no time to wrap his mind around it. Instead, he focused on Claire again, and let himself slip away from the pool.
“Trist!” his wife was screaming, as Yaél and Henry dragged her away from the wreckage. “Where did he fall, Henry, did you see?”
“I’m here,” Trist said, using one hand to steady himself against the wall of a building, suffering through a wave of vertigo. They were in an alley, but he had no idea what part of the city they were in now. He was certain that focusing on Forneus itself would have been an invitation for disaster, however.
Claire spun around and threw herself against him with a cry. He staggered, but managed to stay upright, clinging to her now instead of the wall. His sword dangled from where he kept his grip on the hilt with his left hand, and he wrapped his right arm around her for the first time in what felt like eternity.
“I’m safe,” he told her, burying his face in her hair. “Are you hurt?”
“No,” Claire said, pulling back just enough to look him over. “I’m not hurt, but Trist, by the Angelus, your eyes? What happened?”
“Avitus ripped them out,” Trist admitted, and heard Yaél gasp. Claire looked like she might cry, so he quickly added, “But I can see without them. Don’t worry about me. I can still fight.”
“That isn’t what I’m worried about,” Claire said, raising a hand to his cheek.
“I can’t stay long,” Trist said. “I’ve never done this before, and I don’t think I can keep it up. I need to beat Forneus now, before I can’t hold onto this any longer.”
“Go do it, then,” Claire said. “And then come back to me.”
“As soon as I can,” Trist promised. “Henry, Yaél, get her away from the fighting.” He unwrapped Claire’s arms from around him, set his boot against the dirty stones of the alley, and ran out into the city.
Dame Etoile had gotten herself back into the fight, while Trist had been distracted, and he could see her hacking at the monster’s coils as it slid down toward the Basilea harbor. In the meantime, the same faerie who had been throwing ice before was back up in the sky, and she seemed to be creating a frozen wall between Forneus and the water. As Trist dashed closer, he realized the monster was trying to escape.
“Exarch of Auberon,” the faerie in the sky overhead called down to him, and her voice was as cold as the frozen Rea in the depths of winter. “You are more than you first appear. Not even an Exarch should be capable of what you are doing now.”
“I cannot do it for long,” Trist gasped, tearing open another portal and running through it. He skidded to a halt on top of the wall of ice, backed up against the sea, where the winter faerie was rapidly building stakes of sharp ice now.
“Together, then,” she proposed. “And your patron, as well. I see you there, Lady Acrasia.”
With no apparent use in concealing herself, Acrasia appeared atop the wall next to Trist. “As you wish, Queen Beira,” she said, her black dress whipping about her in the wind of the blizzard. “I will consider you to owe a debt to my king, for our assistance.”
Acrasia raised her hand, and the shadow of Forneus pulled away from the daemon’s coils. Just like the ephemeral knight Trist had fought in her maze, so long ago, Acrasia conjured a leviathan of darkness, equal in size and ferocity to the daemon itself. The shadow-serpent flung itself at the wounded monster, latching its jaws around one of the great, scaled coils.
“I will only be able to hold it a short while,” Acrasia said, gritting her teeth.
“You will not need to,” Beira proclaimed, fluttering down closer to them. One after the other, the spikes of ice she had prepared shot forward, impaling Forneus and drawing great rivulets of black ichor that spilled down onto the streets of the city. The daemon howled in pain, and then was suddenly gone, taking Acrasia’s shadow with it.
“Where did it go?” she cried. “I can still feel its shadow under my control, but-”
“Forneus is a shape-shifter,” Trist reminded her. No longer bound by the physical limitations of a man’s eyes, he spotted the dark-haired man running down a side street, away from his own shadow, bleeding. Trist tore another portal open through the skin of the world, and stepped through swinging.
The daemon screamed when Trist appeared in front of it, blade already arcing at its neck. Forneus raised its arms instinctively, and Trist’s sword cut both hands off at the wrist.
“Wait,” Forneus sputtered. “I can tell you things. I can tell you what Avitus-”
Trist brought the longsword around in a doubled cut, and the daemon’s head hit the cobblestones, then rolled a few feet away. Forneus’ human body crumpled to the ground.
“How many?” he asked, and Acrasia was beside him, like always.
“Thirty-two,” she said, as the jolts of power snaked up Trist’s sword, into his arm, and from there into his core. “Ten for you.”
“I think-” Trist swayed, then fell to his knees. The world around him wavered, and he struggled to maintain his connection with this place, to stay long enough to see his wife again.
“You’re pushing too far,” Acrasia said. “Queen Niviène will be furious if you don’t return right away. You’ve done what you came to do.”
“Claire,” Trist mumbled, and fell sideways. When he hit the ground, it was the grass on the edge of the pool, in the Ardenwood. He saw the faerie queen and Acrasia lean down over him, frowning, and then he saw nothing, and his sword slipped out of his hand.
