Page 54 of Blood Red Woes

This time, she’s the one who attacks. She lunges for me, swinging her sword madly. The air around the blade sizzles with magic, slicing through nothing in an effort to get to me. I throwup a hand and Rune activates a shield to stop her from cutting into me.

She might be tall and in full armor, but she’s fast. Much faster than the two soldiers she sent to Laconia.

Although, now that I’ve seen her castle is empty, I wonder if those soldiers were never real to begin with, if they were simply alive from her magic. Unlike the Emperor and his guards, it looks as though Gladus is alone here.

Not that I’m complaining, because I don’t need to face herandher squad of guards.

When her lightning-blade hits the shield, she’s pushed back by an invisible force, and she huffs, baring her teeth at me all the while, “You think you know at a glance what has been done here? Child, you have seen nothing! You know nothing!” She sidesteps and swings at me again—and this time I duck and roll to get away from her.

“I know you’re insane,” I shout back. “I know you failed your people!”

She shrieks as she lunges at me again. I don’t attack her directly; I trip her up by throwing a wave of magic at her feet. Gladus doesn’t fall to the floor, but she does lose her steady footing. I use the opportunity to summon a ball of yellow light above her head, grow it as wide as a small car, and slam it down upon her before she can regain herself.

Oh, yeah. I’m definitely getting better at this magic stuff. It really is instinctual.

The giant ball of light collides with her, and this time Gladus does fall. She hits the stone floor with a grunt. No sooner she falls, however, does she leap back to her feet. Her eyes flash with an otherworldly glow as lightning strikes around us, sizzling the air itself.

“You will die here, demon!” Gladus shouts as a bolt of lightning hits her armor and coats it with an electrical current.

Shit. That looks badass, but having some badass armor tweaking with electricity isn’t going to make me stand down.

Gladus is savage when she comes for me, unrelenting in her attacks. I can’t dodge every single one. Rune does his best to protect me with a shimmering shield when he can, but even he’s not infallible. She manages to slam into my arm and knock me off-balance before she swings her sword at me.

The tip of the lightning-blade cuts through the cape I wear before I can get out of the way, nicking me in the arm. Not deep enough to sever the limb or hit bone, but deep enough to send pain surging down my arm.

I move back to put some distance between us and glance at my arm. Just beneath the sleeve, a bloody, tingly gash sits, openly bleeding. “Shit,” I say. I’ve never really hurt myself before. Done some stupid things, yeah, but this might be the stupidest. “We need to end this,” I say to Rune as I watch Gladus swing her sword in the air between us, a maniacal smirk on her face. “Any ideas?”

She seems unrelenting, out of her mind, and her only goal is to kill me. Obviously, I want to stop her, but I don’t know exactly how to do it. It’s not like I have loads of experience dealing with crazed magical women.

Rune says, “She gets her power from the storm.” As he says that, I glance up at the open ceiling, to the dark sky. Rain falls on us now, drenching both Gladus and me. “Perhaps there is a way to sever her connection to it somehow?”

Sever her connection to the storm? I don’t see how the hell I can do that without getting rid of the storm itself—and since I don’t have that kind of power, it might not be possible.

Gladus is on me again, and this time I summon my own blade of magic, one of bright, sizzling white, and with Rune’s help, I use it to deflect her blows. My body moves in ways it never moved before, my inner swordswoman coming out. I parry, Idodge, I sidestep; I’ve never picked up a sword in my life, but with Rune guiding me and helping with my reflexes, it’s almost easy.

Sever her connection to the storm. Get rid of the storm. I don’t see how I can possibly do that… although, Gladus isn’t the only one with magic. The storm isn’t a natural one. Maybe I can fight magic with magic, like I’m doing with her sword.

Fuck. It’s a long-shot, but it’s the only thing I can think of.

“You will not triumph here,” Gladus hisses as our magical blades collide, a small shockwave emanating from their contact. “Evil dies today.”

I push back from her as I say, “That’s something we can agree on.” Before she can come at me again, I fling my arm up to the sky and send the magical sword straight up. It propels itself with an invisible, impossible force, dividing the rain and the thunder as it soars straight up into the clouds.

The moment the sword pierces the dark sky, I can feel it in my core. Magic at war. That sword, though separated from me, is still connected to me, and I close my eyes as I imagine the power within the blade expanding to the point where its only relief is to explode.

A loud rumble echoes in the sky, and when I open my eyes I see Gladus about to attack. Her lightning-blade is only two feet away from me, but the sky above us turns blinding. A brilliant, vivid white overtakes the dark gray clouds, and the rain around us sparkles like diamonds. It’s almost impossible to see, but I manage.

Gladus, however, does not. She wails as she crumbles to her knees, dropping her electrical blade as she seeks to cover her eyes. The blade disappears, nothing more than a hilt, and the electrical current that ran along her armor is gone. Her armored hands tremble, and the sounds she makes are that of a madwoman.

“No,” she cries, “this cannot be. I am Gladus, Empress of Pylos. I cannot—I will not…” She lowers her hands away from her eyes, and I see that they no longer glow with the storm. They’re normal blue eyes once again, though they’re the opposite of lucid as she gazes at me.

The storm clouds are now mine, rumbling with the need to expel one last bolt. The rain still falls, each drop blinding in their own right. It’s hard to look at Gladus, at her slumped figure before me—in more ways than one.

“You,” she whispers, “have come to annihilate us all.” That is the clearest, sanest sentence she spoke this entire time. Her eyes close. Gladus, for all the bravado she holds, must accept her fate.

I exhale, and when I do, one last bolt of lightning comes down from the sky—only this time the bolt is mine. Less electrical, more solid. Not bluish but a yellowish-white. It surges down above Gladus’s head, and in the next moment it stabs her in the back, too solid to be absorbed by her.

Her hunched-over figure shakes and her eyes flash white. The lightning fades, as does the clouds above us. What’s left of the rain falls, no longer sparkling and blinding. With nothing but blue sky over our heads, Gladus starts to disappear before my eyes.

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