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Salt and Blood - Chapter 101
🕑 Added 2024-12-18 15:32:44 +0000 UTC<< Chapter 100 | Table of Contents | Chapter 102 >>
2.07 - When Statues Come to Life
Being in one’s natural domain will always remain superior to forcing it somewhere it doesn’t belong
-Excerpt from ‘Charting the Tide: Mortal Limitations and the Divine Spark’ by various contributors
Rose’s mouth curled upwards into a smirk as she looked at the man below, through a layer of frost. He’d stood there in silence, observing her with his creepy eyes. The way he stared at her like she was a piece of meat made her skin crawl.
It was obvious from how he acted that he thought she was dead, or at least unable to fight back. While his sudden strike was powerful and his grasp of the frost affinity potent, Rose was far from defeated.
As he’d struck she’d begun to form another small sun on the tip of her cutlass. The searing heat from the ability had resisted the insidious frost and kept her alive. She had passed out briefly, but woken up to see him casually strolling across the sea towards her.
Instead of making sure he’d defeated his foe, the foolish commodore had taken his time to inspect his handiwork. Cruel idiot.
He’d also made a terrible miscalculation. When they’d been on the wreckage of the ship Commodore Foulter had the absolute advantage, especially after freezing the ground and stealing her footing.
But now that he’d brought the fight to the ocean… Well, this was her domain. Rose would not be beaten.
She flooded Sunsplitter with divine energy, finally feeling the reservoir within her core beginning to fade. Sylack’s gift would not last forever, but it would last long enough to kill this annoyingly smug dunghead.
Water dripped onto her from the rapidly melting ice. The heat continued to intensify and suddenly a small crack appeared. Rose saw the commodore frown slightly, knowing that she’d lost the element of surprise.
However, it was too late for him to escape the blast. With a final push, the light affinity energy exploded outwards from her cutlasses and shattered the ice encasing her.
All the ice around Rose for ten metres was shattered and melted at once, while the commodore was blasted backwards. She fell into the sea, but didn’t panic.
Skill up!
Light Attunement 19 > 21
Divine Attunement 8 > 9
Bobbing in the waves she saw the man lower his arms from his face. His coat was in tatters and his arms burnt. He’d guarded his face but the rest of him didn’t fare so well.
Most of his uniform was destroyed, only his underclothes remaining. He coughed and sprayed the frozen sea around him with blood.
“How!?” he roared, blood and spit flying from his mouth. “How is a little brat like you from this unimportant hovel so powerful? You don’t even have a scrap of arcane energy within you!”
She faltered for the first time. What is he talking about? My core is fine, so perhaps he just can’t see very well? Rose thought to herself.
Almost immediately she pushed the doubts away. It didn’t matter what the man thought of her. She just needed to kill him.
She’d always wondered how the others walked on the sea as though it was grass. Rose was content to lie in the waves—the sea was not her enemy.
However, it would be difficult to fight while treading water. Until now she’d only sought to enhance her body through energy, but attacks like the sunblast—which was what she’d decided to call her recent creation—involved releasing energy outside her body.
Perhaps…
Rose jumped from the waves and landed on the surface of the sea, a thin film of divine energy coating the soles of her feet. She giggled, elated at the simplicity of the solution.
Then a bigger wave than usual hit her and the film dissipated. Rose fell under the surface, pouting. Perhaps it wasn’t as easy as she’d thought.
A few more tries later, she’d worked out that in order to stop herself losing balance every time a wave hit or she took an awkward step, she needed to make the film less like a rigid coating and more like water. That way it moved with the sea, but she didn’t.
Unfortunately her brief experimentation had given her opponent time to recover from her previous strike. Commodore Foulter stood on a frozen island, glaring at her.
His gaze was filled with hatred, derision, and… jealousy? Rose wasn’t always the best judge of character but that was the feeling she got from his bloodshot eyes.
A second later he raised his blade and started rushing towards her. The sea froze beneath his feet wherever he stepped. She envied his attunement to frost, since it made his life a lot easier.
No, nothing is better than the sea. And the beasties are pretty cute, too, she chuckled inwardly. Rose raised her blades to meet him as the battle resumed once more.
Both sides put their all into every swing. The sounds of metal meeting crystal rang out across the sea and blood dripped into the ocean below as they sliced and smashed against one another.
It seemed as though they were evenly matched. Rose felt that she might even have the upper hand after blasting him in the face with a ball of light attuned energy, but it was hard to tell.
Commodore Foulter was the type of enemy that continued to battle at full strength regardless of how injured he was. Rose respected that determination but it was frustrating to not know how close she was to victory.
A splash sounded in her ears as she smashed her blade against his and she felt his arm buckling under the pressure. Suddenly however, she heard a tinkling shatter and watched in horror as the cracked cutlass exploded in a shower of crystalline shards.
The loss of her weapon wasn’t all bad. A few of the shards buried themselves in the commodore’s face and chest. He staggered backwards but quickly recovered.
Now that she only had one blade, Rose was severely weakened. She still held up, but because she wasn’t using both cutlasses anymore, Dual Wielding was no longer working.
Her Blades and One Handed Weapons skills were much lower level and she immediately felt the pressure ramping up. She parried and blocked to the best of her ability but around half of his strikes broke through her guard and drew blood.
Worse, she’d used over half the divine energy and what she had left was rapidly draining as she struggled against him. A battle that should’ve been winnable was quickly turning into one where her loss seemed certain.
Rose refused to give in despite the tides turning, believing in her own strength and her fury. If she lost now, she wouldn’t be able to face her dead friends and family from Fairwater Bay in the afterlife.
She considered praying to Sylack again, in hopes that he would provide her with another gift of divine energy. Then she decided against it. Her patron had already done enough and if she couldn’t prove herself to be worthy, she might as well give up on her dreams and become a fisherwoman.
Her only weapon more powerful than Sunsplitter was her Divine Serpent’s Lure, but that wasn’t suited for close range combat. She didn’t regret using the fang to craft the rod though.
How would that blacksmith feel if he knew she’d broken his creation already? Then again, it was already a miracle that the antlers of a low level monster had been turned into such a powerful pair of cutlasses.
Her train of thought was broken as the commodore resumed his attack. Seeing her weakness had only made him more furious and every strike carried a brutal weight that made her stagger.
“Foolish girl,” he snarled as he smashed her blade aside. “Messing with powers beyond your understanding and men beyond your strength. I shall immortalise your stupidity in my collection.”
She stared back in defiance as he raised his blade once more. One thing she would never do, even if she lost, was give this annoying officer the satisfaction of breaking her.
However, the expected strike never came. Instead of killing her, Commodore Foulter rested his cutlass against his shoulder and raised his free hand. With a smile, he stepped forward and grabbed her by the shirt, lifting her to her feet.
Rose was confused until she felt the arcane tingle from his closed fist and an icy chill spread from his hand to her chest. He was trying to freeze her into a statue again.
Wait, he said something about a collection. Don’t tell me… Rose realised what the commodore was attempting. It made her sick.
There was only about a quarter of the original divine energy left, but that was enough to do what she needed. This next move would probably hurt her just as much as it would hurt her enemy, but that was fine.
There was no need to direct the energy anywhere specific, she just gathered it all in her chest, right underneath his hand. Rose was about to let it explode outwards, taking them both down together, when she heard a familiar sound in the distance.
She smiled at the commodore and let the energy fade. His smug grin grew even wider as he believed she’d surrendered, but the battle was far from over.
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