++To become a Circumscriber is to train for most of a human’s lifespan, to heighten one’s abilities and reach the very pinnacle of the Warrior Class. They are our chosen warriors against the dark.++

  Chapter 30

  Barry fell hard, body seizing up, spasming. Toughness did a lot to prevent damage, but once a wound was made it didn’t do much. That left Reggie with two Witchfinders still of concern to him, and he didn’t let his victory distract from their threat.

  Ledwig had already finished reloading his own musket, and Reggie had to slouch and keep his body overlapped by the falling form of Barry to keep himself from being perforated by another gunshot. He’d still not finished healing the first few, still wasn’t quite at the peak of his strength.

  But neither were his opponents. Ledwig was nursing a hastily bound wound at his side that hadn’t been left by Reggie. A gunshot, maybe. Ludvich putting up a fight during his capture? Reggie would take it either way.

  He slipped around the corpse just as Ledwig shot and went high, felt the bullet wing him without doing too much damage, and smashed into the Witchfinder like a cannonball. They both went flying and sprawled a good ten paces back, Reggie on top and Ledwig below. He curled a hand up into the tightest fist he could manage and punched the man right across his jaw, felt bones cracking. Hit him again, then again. By Reggie’s fifth blow the Witchfinder was hard to recognise. Reggie got back up to his feet and turned just in time for Vagryn to shoot.

  The bullet was aimed with experience, this time, and full, clinical knowledge of what it took to put a vampire down. Vagryn didn’t waste his shot on any components that Reggie’s body could do without, and his hardened lead ball smacked right into the centre of its target’s forehead.

  ***

  Ajoke watched the idiot get himself shot again, and winced. She didn’t do anything about it though. One thing she could say for Reggie was that he was tough. Tougher than her, that much was certain. Tough enough, in his bestial form, that she was fairly sure the bullet wouldn’t keep him down for long.

  If it did, her mission was a failure. Nothing she could do in that scenario though, and the rest of her team was relying on success here, so she moved on as if the vampire would be getting up any second.

  The elf was focusing on the vampire. That was good. Everyone else was focusing on him, too. That was better. Ajoke crept up and kept her ida close, moved low, moved fast. These weren’t soldiers around her, now, not even the ones in armour and wielding guns, just enthusiastic amateurs. Motivation by a dumb killing rage was nothing compared to true discipline.

  That killing rage was fickle, and it was keeping them all from awareness regarding their surroundings. Even the Circumscriber had fallen for it. She allowed herself a smile as she crossed the last few paces in a sprint and swung her blade like a bullet.

  At the last possible moment, Eryqai moved. The reflexes of a trained elf still shocked Ajoke, but then they shouldn’t have. To humanity the System was a new acquisition, stolen power as raw and unmastered as Promethean fire. To the elves it was an old art, one they’d practiced long and honed through generations of accumulated knowledge. He was just barely quick enough to offset the disadvantage of surprise, escaping with a gash scored across his shoulder that nonetheless bled profusely.

  But the damned arm was still attached.

  Ajoke swore, then swore some more as the elf whirled around and drew his own blade in a single motion. It was a long, slender thing of glinting silver, humming with power. He wielded the metal like it was paper. Ajoke’s parry was just in time to stop the damned thing from slicing her in half, but she felt both her shoulders threaten to come out of their sockets with the sheer force involved. Stumbled back, gritting her teeth, swearing. More blows came. The elf’s sword wasn’t as heavy or cutting-capable as her ida, not designed for killing blows against durable enemies. It didn’t need to be. The sheer strength he could swing it with would put her down in one connection anyway, and it was a great deal faster.

  She’d have been in real trouble if the idiot Reggie came to save hadn’t chosen that precise moment to shoot her enemy right in the back. Ajoke saw the elf’s torso jerk forwards from the bullet impact, watched shock and pain invade his features, saw him forget himself and half-turn to the source of the unexpected hit. Ludvich, the man’s name was, she thought. He’d stolen one of these clumsy snow-monkey muskets and had its smoking barrel levelled right for the elf.

  Before anything could come of that, Ajoke slashed again and scored a new mark along her enemy’s upper thigh. He cried out and stumbled away, bleeding. Living. Fuck. If she’d left the cut an inch deeper it would’ve opened up the artery and ended things fast.

  Instead she’d just pissed the elf off. So had the Witchfinder, at least, and for one moment Circumscriber Eryqai seemed unsure whether he ought to target the ìràwàor the snow monkey. Ajoke helped him decide by slashing for his head again, and he brought the bulk of his power over to focus on killing her.

  This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

  Except now she was finding a much easier time of keeping the distance between them, backing away as his injured leg lagged behind and controlling space to keep her flesh attached to its bones. The elf’s temper seemed to be fraying more with every second that passed, which was good.

  Ajoke kept herself in the fight with a combination of skill, the advantage of her enemy’s injuries and no small serving of luck. Her skill was endless, and the elf was certainly not getting less wounded as the battle progressed, but it was the luck she couldn’t rely on. Luck never lasted forever, and this time it took just under half a minute to wither. Ajoke felt a sharp pain as her enemy’s sword sunk deep into her guts, twisted, then tore itself free. The strength left her instantly. She fell, she spasmed on the floor, she tried to move and didn’t manage to even lift an arm.

  Now the Circumscriber was grinning, a sneering sort of expression made of wolfish teeth and feline eyes. He raised his blade high. Ajoke hoped to hear some final words, to live a second longer as he said them, but instead the elf brought his weapon down to skewer her without hesitating.

  And still, he was a shade too late. The Witchfinder fired again, hitting the elf right in the back of his head this time and having closed in to give the bullet no time at all to slow down in air. The shot exploded on mana-infused bone and sent its target stumbling forwards with a hiss of pain.

  It took all of Ajoke’s will to lift even a single limb, to twitch her body as much as one inch, but she did. Her hand snagged the elf’s foot and sent him off-balance, then the Witchfinder was snatching up her ida and swinging it in a short arc. He got lucky, and the elf fucked up, and another chunk of meat was cut out of the Circumscriber to roll along the ground.

  Then the elf kicked Ludvich and sent him flying like a ball. Ten, twenty paces and he landed hard, kept rolling, finally came to a stop with blood trickling from his mouth and spasms racking his limbs.

  Well that was it then. They were fucked. Ajoke waited for the end to come, and kept waiting. Reggie of all people ended up delaying it as he garbled Ludvich’s name, like an idiot, and then rushed the Circumscriber only after tipping the elf off about his presence.

  ***

  [Kill him Reggie, do it!] Reggie decided that Dvo had the right of it this time, accelerating towards the elf with only death on his mind. There were plenty of townspeople around the Circumscriber, and none of them were lifting a finger to help. They were scared, he realised. Scared of him. Little Reginald Smith, the devil-child.

  Devil-man, now, and that was just fine by him. After all they’d done for all those years the bastards should have been afraid.

  Reggie lunged for the elf as if he’d entered some mindless frenzy. That was what vampires did, right? One good thing about everybody propagandising against you was how consistently it made your enemies underestimate what you could do. Reggie whipped back and jerked a hand out, then willed blood through his slashed wrist to squirt right into the elf’s face.

  Eryqai screamed, backed away and started flailing around like he’d just been set on fire. Reggie closed in, circled around to his off-side and kicked the elf’s leg out from under him. Barely. He cursed. Even transformed, Reggie didn’t have a physical advantage over this one and the connection of his strike had felt like he was booting a damned tree trunk. The elf did go down, though.

  Step one.

  Step two was a bit free-form, but Reggie figured getting the sword off him was a good place to start. He lashed out a kick into the elf’s wrist and succeeded in sending his weapon flying from it, surprising himself with the success and leading right into step three.

  Mauling Eryqai to death.

  Reggie fell upon the elf and started shredding into him with his talons, snarling and hissing without meaning to, feeling the skin and muscles scraped apart by unrelenting claw-slashes. His natural weapons weren’t the sharpest, and the advantage Eryqai enjoyed in Toughness was enough that a few moments of assault only served to leave superficial gashes in him.

  Then the knife entered into Reggie’s side, right under the ribs. He felt it poke through his superhumanly Tough flesh like it was butter, then twist. Pain ran in convulsive lines through his body with enough intensity that Reggie knew the blade was magic. Another twist, and Eryqai kicked him off. He flew about five of his own height before landing, jarring the injury. It hurt. Reggie wasn’t used to hurt, he’d gotten that bad habit from undeath. Didn’t take him even a second to overcome it, shake off his pained convulsions and roll back onto his feet.

  His hands and feet, all fours, hunched over, snarling, hissing. He realised he was squatting there like a mad dog about to pounce, his transformed body had all its joints configured to make that sort of posture ideal for explosive leaps.

  Well, Reggie could use that. He leapt explosively and all the black powder in sight cringed with jealousy. Eryqai looked like he was staring down a monster, and that was fine. He was. Reggie would be a little monstrous until this fight was done. The elf froze instead of lunging for his sword, ended up stuck with the knife instead. It had about the same reach as Reggie’s talons.

  The same reach, but far more cutting power. Every clash of their weapons left chunks of matter sheared away from Reggie’s claws, but he had ten blades to his enemy’s one, and this elf was clearly not a knife-fighter. Reggie took seconds to mark his first slash along Eryqai forearm.

  He smiled as the elf cried out, stumbling back from him. Reggie redoubled his assault, slashing every way he could in rapid arcs, splaying his hands and sweeping his fingers out across wide swathes to make evasion as hard as it was. His reward was another half-dozen cuts littering the enemy in moments.

  Reggie was winning. He found it hard to believe, he was fighting a Circumscriber and he was winning. Oh the elf was quicker, stronger, tougher, but injury and ambush had given Reggie all the help he needed to start making the fight his own.

  It couldn’t last of course, no good thing could. Reggie was closing in for the coup de grace when some idiot townsfolk got his balls at last and took a shot, made a lucky one. The lead ball sent Reggie back a step as it lodged somewhere in his shoulder.