The Legendary Warrior (Book 5) (5 page)

“Ignore those. It is the sickness that your friends have been trying to poison you with. This illogical compassion that they speak of. It will only get us killed. If I had to guess, they told you that it was wrong to feel nothing about what occurred this night.”

“They did. They said it wasn’t normal.”

“They are reciting the dogma of their parents and friends, who know as little as they. Does what they say actually make sense? Think about it. Think about your childhood. Remember the Quietus. Should you feel sorry for their near extinction? Do you know that they wouldn’t have been annihilated if they hadn’t carried out such atrocious experiments on you and the other children? There was no reason to carry out such acts. There was no greater good. And so they paid for their crimes. We will not be judged. We will be rewarded, for our actions is for the good of others. Mark my words. The more you follow my commands, the more that good will come your way. The more you defy them, and your path, you will see that your life will be cursed. Nothing good will come to it.”

“I understand,” Bastion said weakly.

“We must remove the chains of emotion and rise above it for the people. We must be strong when they are weak. Every day they come to me for guidance and answers. They are children, Bastion. They can’t think for themselves. They don’t even have the courage to solve their own problems. It’s sad. The Yama would destroy them completely. You don’t want to be like one of them, do you?”

“Of course not,” he said, with his eyes steady upon
Lakrymos.

“James is one of those people. He cannot deal with his emotions. Look at you. Think of how strong you are, and how easily you were able to deal with
Hakin’s death. Sure, there was a little self-reflection and nausea because it was your first time, but still you handled it better than James ever did. Surely you can now see just how weak he is.”

Bastion bowed his head in thought.
Was it true? Was James weak? He did shut down after the first kill.

“James is bound to his feelings. He can’t see the bigger picture so he refused to cast them aside. If only he realized that he is his own worst enemy, he would be able to transcend to our level. We are more powerful because the Maker has granted it to us. He sees that we are able to handle it, and act appropriately. If you don’t believe me, then we can attempt another sparring session.”

Bastion’s ears perked up. Another session? So soon? Most people wouldn’t spar with their students so frequently, less their students learn of all of their master’s tricks. The master would have one of the lesser teachers do all the work. But Lakrymos had done no such thing. In only two short months, they had sparred twenty times.

“If you can get me to secede in battle, I will allow you to do as you wish. You may ev
en leave Allay. But I guarantee you. It won’t happen, because the Maker knows what your destiny is, and how you will be needed for the upcoming war. He won’t yet grant you the power you need to defeat me.”

“You promise?” Bastion asked. “Kent and Daisy can leave with me as well?”

“I am disappointed,” he said. “You sound excited to go.”

“I would go if I could.”

“Then you are not ready for your destiny. Still, defeat me, and I will grant all of your requests. Even if you wish my death, I will be happy to receive it.”

“Then let’s spar,” Bastion said, taking a step back. “If I win, I want to be freed.”

“Fine,” Lakrymos sighed. “But if you don’t, then our grooming continues. You will embrace your destiny.”

“We’ll see what happens,” Bastion replied. He didn’t know what to make of
Lakrymos’ words. Whether the Maker granted them their power or not. He wasn’t so sure. But it was hard to fight against Lakrymos’ logic if he wasn’t able to beat him. However, what the Sage of Yesterday didn’t know was that he was holding back. Part of it was because of fear and a little was out of his own safety. He figured that if he showed that he could overpower Lakrymos, then Orchid would come out of nowhere when he was weak and finish him off.

But things had changed now. After talking with Kent and Daisy, he realized that there was a possibility at a happy life, if only he could leave Allay. And now the opportunity presented itself.
This was his moment.

“I’m ready,” Bastion said, taking another step back and letting his black robe materialize from the collar of his shirt down to his toes.
Lakrymos was not impressed.

“I will make sure to show you more of my power this time,”
Lakrymos said as Bastion called forth his blue Gladius eidolon. “I have been holding back, just as you have.” Bastion’s eyes went wide, but he wiped his face clean with a thought. He had to focus now. He couldn’t think about fighting Lakrymos. He had to pretend it was the Yama, or perhaps the Quietus he had encountered as a child. That would give him the resolve he needed.

And most of all, he refused
to succumb to the pain.

He was sure that he was going to be wounded in the inevitable fight.
Lakrymos wasn’t pleased with his new protégé getting excited at the prospect of leaving. Bastion was sure that Lakrymos was going to teach him a hard lesson as a result. But no matter what happened, he couldn’t lose himself. That’s when he lost focus and reacted instead of thinking about the best course of action. It was a weakness that Kent and Daisy recognized in him almost immediately, and if they could see it, then surely Lakrymos could.

“Let us begin,”
Lakrymos said with a weak smile. Then he placed a hand to his right rib, and a flash of blinding light coated the room in his brilliance.

The monstrosity
that came from Lakrymos’ side sent a shudder down Bastion’s spine, but he tried not to show his fear, though he was sure his opponent felt it.

Lakrymos
’ eidolon was a stick. A crooked, thin, long stick, with a few steel leaves sprouting out of the sides. Bastion didn’t know what to think of its appearance, but there was no denying the vibes it was sending his way. There were hidden treasures dormant within the unassuming stick, and if he clashed against it too hard, they would burst forth like a volcano, consuming him entirely.

Did
Lakrymos choose this form? Or was this his true eidolon?

“This is my
eidolon,” Lakrymos said, twisting it around in his hand so that Bastion could make out all of its inhibiting features.
Can he read my mind?
Bastion wondered, tightening the grip on his eidolon.
He answered my question as if he knows exactly what I’ve been thinking.

Bastion didn’t wait for his unchosen mentor to transform. He struck first, swinging his
Gladius upward and slicing the stick Lakrymos held in two. As the piece Lakrymos wasn’t holding fell toward the floor, Lakrymos suddenly reached down, caught it, and reattached the stick to its counterpart in one swift movement. Bastion didn’t let it faze him though. It just gave him the incentive to pierce through Lakrymos’ silent defenses all the more.

Bastion expanded his muscles and pumped adrenaline through his veins at will. There were little limitations he left for himself. There was only the mission at hand: The Death of
Lakrymos. Bastion summoned one of Daisy’s signature pillars from the floor and it slammed into Lakrymos’ chin, sending his head backwards and his fine black hair flying in all directions. The Sage of Old staggered backwards and Bastion went in for the kill. He slashed at his mentor’s neck and Lakrymos parried the blow with his stick eidolon.

Surprisingly, the stick was so solid that it sent an extreme vibration up Bastion’s arm and he nearly lost his grip on his
Gladius. Before he could assess what happened, he felt himself topple over and land onto his belly. The lower half of his legs went sprawling in front of him, separated from the rest of his body, and he stared at them in horror. The tip of Lakrymos’ eidolon was thrust an inch before his right eye.

“Was that how you expected it to go?”
Lakrymos said, kicking Bastion’s severed legs away.

“I—“he began to say, when he felt the pain shoot up through his body. The sensation was unlike anything he had ever felt before. It was like someone had stuck a sword through him from top to bottom and had begun twisting. He was paralyzed, and the only movement he made was involuntarily
, as his hands instinctively reached out to clutch the stumps that were his legs. He couldn’t think clearly, and a deep rumble began from the depths of his being. The same feeling that had emerged when he saw what the Quietus had done to the children around him. The same feeling he got when he sparred with James on the first day of school.

And he didn’t fight it this time. He needed it.

His eyes went black. His head shot up and he glared at Lakrymos with contempt, snarling and breathing heavily as his new legs began to reappear. Lakrymos grinned, but Bastion had no feelings about the expression whatsoever. He just wanted the fight to end. And he needed it to end
now.

H
e leapt to his feet and went to strike at Lakrymos with his Gladius once more, but Lakyrmos just sucked his teeth and pivoted out of the way. He grabbed the back of Bastion’s head by the hair and pulled the young Sage onto his back. Lakrymos slammed his eidolon through Bastion’s abdomen as he also put a foot to his neck.

“Look at you,”
Lakrymos replied. “Nothing more than a vessel that needs to be broken. You have all of this greatness within you, but you are unlearned. Untrained. You are like an animal that I am trying to teach to be human. Let me ask you, animal. Would you rather me treat you for what you are? Should I break you now?”

Bastion roared and tried swinging his hands upwards at his foe, but
Lakrymos kept him firmly planted onto the ground. And the more he thrashed, the more his vision began to clear. The ache in his abdomen from Lakrymos’ blade went numb, and eventually, his eyes returned to its normal color. He stared up at Lakrymos calmly in disappointment.

What is wrong with me?
Bastion thought.
Why didn’t I think this through?
He knew that just because he willed it, that didn’t mean he would succeed. He knew that blindly trying to overpower the Sage of Old wasn’t the answer. He deserved to be broken.

“Is this battle over?”
Lakrymos asked, but Bastion wasn’t ready to give the answer. There had to be another option…wait. Catherine. She had defeated Orchid. And how had she done it? By using her wits. Catherine had blinded her opponent at the last second and she was able to strike the Sage. He had to think. He might not get another chance.

“I’m not done!” Bastion shouted with false bravado, using a great deal of his energy to swat away
Lakrymos’ foot from his neck, and rip the eidolon from his torso. He rolled to the right and sprung to his feet before his mentor retaliated.

“Why are you going to pursue this?”
Lakrymos begged to know. “You cannot win.”

“If it was impossible for me to win,” Bastion replied, “then you wouldn’t have so much faith in me. You wouldn’t be grooming me to destroy the Yama.”

Bastion was trying not to faint from the fear gripping his spine like a vice. He was already beginning to carry out his plan while he talked, and he knew Lakrymos would sense it any moment now. If all went well, Bastion figured that he would be able to get a couple of hits in on his mentor before the Old Sage decided to really get serious. Once that point in the battle was reached, there was no turning back. If he brought the Sage of Old to the point that he was fighting for his own survival, there was no question. He would kill Bastion in a heartbeat.

Am I ready to take it that far?
He asked himself, but he knew the answer immediately. This was the end for one of them, and he didn’t go through all the crap he had in his life for it to be his.

“What are you doing?!
” Lakrymos barked at him, and Bastion chuckled. It was time.

“I’m going to win,” Bastion replied as he dropped to one knee and slammed the palm of his hand
onto the stone floor. A rain of swords fell down from the ceiling and shot up from underneath them simultaneously, and once the blades from the floor hit the top, it shot right back down again and so on, creating a continuous monsoon of destruction between the two Sages.

Lakrymos
growled and grit his teeth as he dodged all of the blades that would have rendered a fatal blow or major wound, but he still had to accept the minor nicks and cuts, and those minor afflictions were growing in number by the millisecond. He had to strike down Bastion now, and put an end to the sword show before his body took too much damage.

Though he could barely see through the downpour of blades, he could sense the young Sage straight ahead, waiting for him to strike. And strike he would.

Lakrymos infused his eidolon with a massive amount of energy and lunged forward, aiming straight for Bastion’s chest, but when he made contact, it was obvious that it wasn’t the boy. Instead he had stabbed a mound of stone, roughly the same shape and size as Bastion, and when his blade ripped it apart, he could sense a great deal of energy falling from the center of the makeshift statue, as if it had been dumped from a bucket like water.

A blip on
Lakrymos’ internal radar sounded off and he spun around, but the real Bastion was already there, plunging a steel dagger through his cheek, and using the little strength he had left in his young body to force it downward. Lakrymos howled and shoved Bastion away instinctively, grabbing his face and feeling all of its tears and disfigurements. The sword shower ended, and he glared at the young Sage in rage.

Bastion was barely able to stand, and it was apparent he had used nearly all of his energy creatin
g the storm of swords and the decoy. He had such a small amount of energy left that Lakyrmos hadn’t even been able to sense his approach.

Lakrymos
ripped off his shirt and began tying it around his face.

“Do you think you’ve won?”
Lakrymos asked, and Bastion simply smiled.

“Nope,” Bastion said. “But I needed a little break from all of that manifesting.”

“A break that will be short lived,” Lakrymos said as he sprinted forward with his blade tight in hand. Before his eyes, Bastion witnessed the stick transforming, becoming a silver, jagged sword, as wide as his head. But he didn’t have time to study it further.

Bastion felt his feet hum as he infused a bit of energy into them, and then he took off, running away from his mentor’s fatal attacks. From
the grunt he heard from Lakrymos, he knew that it was the right move.

Lakrymos
was definitely faster, but it wasn’t always about speed. Bastion just had to stay on his toes, switching tactics on the fly as the moment arose, knowing that one wrong move would be his last. He would use a burst of speed to twist in order to receive only a shallow cut instead of being all-out stabbed. Then he would infuse his muscles with power and take a swipe to the forearm, knowing that Lakrymos had decided at that moment to switch to speed over power. Of course the blade still cut, and it still hurt, but it wasn’t even close to the damage it would have been if Lakrymos had just stuck with raw strength.

Once his mentor realized his mistake and switch
ed back to strength over speed, Bastion would counter, dodging more blows and running away as fast as he could, continuing the deadly game of cat and mouse. He just had to buy time and hope for no interference. If he could do that, he had a chance.

I can do this
, Bastion thought to himself as he used a pillar to take the brunt of one of Lakrymos’ attacks—a strike that he wasn’t able to dodge. Bastion did a back flip in the air as the blade barely missed the tip of his nose and another pillar caught his feet so that he was able to stay high up in the air. Lakrymos tore through the pillar and continued his assault, and Bastion sent a wave of swords once again through the room from top to bottom—this time catching the Old Sage off guard. He shouted in agony as a sword tore down his back from shoulder to hip, but it only made him more furious. Bastion kept running.

Summoning manifestations is tiring,
Bastion thought as he breathed rhythmically.
But as long as I can take breaks in-between, I’ll be okay. I can do this. I can beat him!

Bastion heard a small explosion go off, and he glanced behind him for a second.
Lakrymos had summoned his black Sage robe, increasing all of his basic abilities several times over. No more playtime. The game was about to end, one way or another.

Lakrymos
navigated through the rain of swords, dodging even the shallow cuts now, and creating afterimages in his wake. Bastion’s eyes widened in horror.

He must realize that there are less swords this time.
Bastion took a deep breath and ran to one of the side walls, beginning to run up it. Lakrymos followed close behind with a killer’s look in his eyes, and Bastion back flipped off, knowing what he had to endure next. It all rode on this.

Lakrymos
halted his run up the wall in mid-stride and jumped off with one foot to swipe at Bastion’s upside down body, still in the middle of a backflip. Bastion grit his teeth and summoned while Lakrymos slashed at the young Sage’s stomach, almost ripping through it to the other side.

Bastion screamed but he kept performing the summon, and as
Lakrymos drew closer, a gigantic spike shot up from the ground, slamming into Lakrymos’ chest and sending him upwards and into the ceiling. Bastion fell to the floor crying, trying to stop shaking and doing his best to prevent his body from going into shock. He fought the urge to heal himself or put his hands to his stomach. Instead he placed them to the ground, forcing more energy into the crevices of the stone, making it travel up along the wall and to the ceiling. He made sure that the tip of the spike began to melt into the ceiling, pinning Lakrymos even further into the stone.

Lakrymos
growled and tried to speak, but only a small trickle of blood came from his lips. He tried to calm down and give himself time to gather strength, so that he would be able to free himself from his makeshift prison.

He knows that he could still win.
Bastion forced himself to his feet with that thought, concentrating on his wound while he stared up at his mentor.
He might be calm now, and that’s not where I need him to be. I need him mad.

Bastion’s wound still wasn’t completely closed, but he didn’t care. He fell back to his knees and slammed his hands into the ground. Immediately
, a miniature downpour of swords came down from the ceiling, slamming into and through Lakrymos’ head.

His mentor didn’t even have time to scream.

Bastion forced himself to watch, making sure that the deed was done, but he wasn’t sure. He remembered the stories from James—how Lakrymos and Orchid could still receive other bodies as long as Ephai was alive, but again, he wasn’t sure.