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Salt and Blood - Chapter 100!!!!
🕑 Added 2024-12-16 13:40:33 +0000 UTC<< Chapter 99 | Table of Contents | Chapter 101 >>
2.06 - A Beacon of Hope
When all seems lost, having a powerful or inspiring figure to rally around can even usurp the workings of the divine
-Excerpt from ‘Silversea Saga’ by Norris Howell
Rose realised that even with the divine energy empowering every aspect of her being, she may have bitten off a little more than she could chew. Commodore Foulter was a man who stood on a similar level to Commodore Saff.
Given their shared title that was obvious. Then again, Rose’s opinion of Minenblum was fairly low based on her encounters with influential people from the country so far and she wouldn’t be surprised if many of the higher ranking naval officers earned their positions through nepotism.
The air around the man flared and crackled with shimmering frost, the force of his arcane energy suppressing the space itself. As he walked towards her, ice spread from his feet, rapidly turning this half of his former flagship into an iceberg.
Rose had to dig in her feet as the ice spread beneath her, almost slipping as the friction of the wooden hull vanished. It was difficult.
Most of her focus was on not falling over and she felt like even a slight movement would send her careening in that direction. Which was quite annoying, as her opponent was bearing down on her and would soon be in range to strike.
He wielded a long cutlass in his right hand, the blade a bright silver that was almost white and covered in glowing blue marks. She didn’t recognise them, but the tingle in the air told her they were filled with arcane power.
In fact, if not for her upgraded blessing coupled with the gift of divine energy she’d received, Rose wasn’t sure she would even be able to resist the commodore’s aura at all. When he was almost close enough to strike, he did something unexpected.
His left hand whipped to his belt and he drew the pistol he’d been using earlier, cocking the hammer and pulling the trigger in a single fluid movement. The metallic ting of the hammer was all the warning she got.
Rose lifted her right foot and moved it back, planting it against the ground to shift herself out of the bullet’s path… and instead her foot slipped on the ice, making her slide towards the ocean.
Which actually allowed her to dodge the bullet entirely, rather than simply making it miss her vital organs. That wasn’t a good thing.
Her foe had moved the moment he fired his pistol. It was shoved back into his belt and she saw flakes of frost gathering around his hand in its place. He moved across the ice with ease, like a doori in the mountains.
She hadn’t managed to regain her balance when he struck, his cutlass slicing through the air and leaving a trail of frost in its wake. Sunsplitter was damaged, but that didn’t mean the twin blades were useless yet.
Even from her awkwardly bent position Rose was able to block the commodore’s strike, but that came at the cost of what little balance she had. Her feet went sliding, a manic dance like a newborn calf trying to walk on the grassy earth.
If nothing changed, this fight would end rather quickly. In her absolute defeat. Rose refused to let that happen, so she tried to think of a way to counter the lack of suitable footing.
Commodore Foulter wasn’t going to give her the time she needed though. He was already upon her once more, the runes on his blade glowing as he struck her again and again.
Skill up!
Dual Wielding 15 > 16
Blades 19 > 20
She blocked some, parried others, but many slipped past her guard. Wounds accumulated across her arms and chest as she was pushed further down the iceberg, towards the ocean.
Many of the navy soldiers were struggling in the waters, either trying to stay afloat or fighting off the masses of fish that had gathered. All of them were hungry and most of the soldiers succumbed to the endless onslaught after a while.
Rose smiled at the vicious scene. It was a twofold happiness. These men had come to her home and slaughtered her family and friends, so now they would pay the price.
A price that came with the added benefit of offering them as sacrifice to her god.
She wondered if it was purely the power he’d granted her that made her come to truly revere Sylack as her divine patron or whether she’d had that instilled in her from birth due to her upbringing.
It was a meaningless question, because it didn’t change the bond they now shared. Rose had no time to ponder the answer either, because another barrage of blows was headed her way.
The commodore seemed angry that his strikes were doing little more than surface wounds and with a roar, the runes on his blade suddenly glowed ridiculously bright.
He raised the cutlass above his head and Rose had but an instant to guard herself against the impending strike. As the commodore slashed downwards, the air itself was frozen in its wake.
Rose pushed her divine energy into Sunsplitter, trying to repeat the same move as before in summoning the miniature sun. It was far weaker, both because she’d had less than a second to channel it and one of the twin blades was broken.
Nevertheless, that split-second decision was enough to save her from instant death. The ocean around them was frozen for dozens of metres in every direction, the epicentre being a single line of permafrost that the commodore had drawn with his blade.
Rose herself was frozen into a statue after being blown tens of metres out to sea and the entire flagship was now a twin-peaked iceberg. He’d not even spared his own men with his strike, all the struggling sailors turned into frozen corpses along with plenty of the surrounding fish.
He stepped off the wreckage of his former flagship and onto the frozen waters of the ocean, utterly confident in his ability to keep the water in that state. He strolled towards the girl, the foolish child who’d sought to challenge him, a frown on his face.
If he could’ve chosen not to, he wouldn’t have led this assault. Not because he found it distasteful—he didn’t care one bit about the lives of these backwater peasants—but because he’d much rather be out searching for the next convergence to challenge, the next monster to subdue and use as fuel for his own advance.
The commodore doubted the girl had survived his last move. He called it Empty Tundra. Because after it was summoned through the power of his blade, all life within was extinguished. Leaving nothing but an empty, frozen, wasteland.
Exactly the kind of paradise he felt most comfortable in.
He’d always found it strange that the tide never recognised unique moves, regardless of whether they were physical or arcane in nature. One of the many small mysteries about the strange gift from the gods.
One he might one day discover the answer to. After leaving hundreds or even thousands more frozen corpses in his wake. Looking down at the faces of his men, frozen in contorted fear, agony, or confusion, he had to admit that humans were far more appealing in this state.
Forever locked in a single moment, with no uncertainty as to what they might do next. He looked up at his opponent, frozen still with those two annoying cutlasses in her hands, he saw her mouth frozen in a half smirk.
He clenched his jaw. Such an arrogant brat. However, he knew he would gain much satisfaction from that contemptible expression when her frozen body was stored away in his vault back in Aughold.
Many of his enemies were stored there, prizes to be gazed upon when he felt the desire arise. Their expressions and poses varied. Some had terror etched on their faces, a primal fear blossoming in the moment of their death.
Others were angry, furious that fate had deemed them the loser, fuel for his advance. A few shared the smug satisfaction of this brat, fools who believed themselves superior to him until the moment he snuffed out their lives.
At first, he was insulted that he’d needed to step up personally and fight during this invasion. Taking down the smallest village in the pathetic country that was the Emerlan Isle should’ve been easy.
Arrive with his fleet, blast the cannons for a while and then sail back home. And he had to admit, these new cannons did their job with devastating efficiency.
Minenblum had been advancing their magi-tech recently in an effort to keep up with more powerful nations and the majority of that effort was focused on weapons. He’d heard that since the death of his two sons, old Elmer Saff had been working on a special new ship. One that would blow all his previous creations out of the water.
Quite literally…
In this moment however, none of that mattered. They were all fleeting concerns and background information. He took the final step and arrived before his trophy.
Rage bubbled inside him as he looked at her smirk. He had to resist the temptation to carve the corpse into a dozen shards. After a few years in his collection the rage would subside.
He went to sheath his sword, preparing to snap the statue from the frozen waters below, when a sudden movement made him pause. He looked up at her face and was shocked by the sudden change.
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Comments
Tyler Machado
This commodore is more self-centered than the shadow king. At least he believed in honor in its own way.
