Chapter 53: Ten Spears

Chapter 53: Chapter 53: Ten Spears

The ten masked figures spread across the flagstones without a word.

Three came straight at him, spearheads forming a tight triangle. Two swept wide around his left. The remaining five fanned out behind them, already drifting toward every gap he might use to escape.

’They’ve drilled this.’

The front three would force him back.

Against a man who only knew how to retreat, it would have worked.

Jason stepped forward instead.

His right foot cracked against the stone.

Piercing Thunder detonated down his legs, and the world tunneled into a blur. The three leading spears stabbed at the spot where he had been standing. He was already between them, shoulders turned sideways, points passing within an inch of his ribs.

The butt of the Stoneborn Spear drove into the first mask’s stomach.

Before the man could fold, the shaft rotated in Jason’s palm and cracked against the second man’s wrist. The weapon swung wide.

The third thrust came from above.

Clang!

Steel met stone. The impact drove him back half a step, but flame was already climbing the shaft, Crimson Blaze gathering at the tip and compressing into a single, narrow point.

He thrust.

A streak of fire crossed the gap. The third man twisted aside, but the flame scraped across his chest and forced him back, smoking.

Jason didn’t chase.

His Perception had already caught the two flankers closing from the left, their spears crossing, one aimed at his throat, the other at his knee.

He jumped.

Sun Shift flared beneath his boots in a sharp burst, lifting him clean over the crossing blades. At the top of the arc he turned his hips and brought the spear down in a wide arc.

The shaft slammed across one man’s shoulder, and the mask staggered.

Jason landed beside him and drove an elbow into his chest.

Then the other seven arrived.

---

A forest of spearheads closed around him.

He inhaled.

The flame on his weapon vanished. For an instant the Stoneborn Spear looked like nothing at all, a plain dark shaft in a tired hand.

Then lightning crawled from his fingers to the tip.

The first spear thrust. Jason parried it wide to the outside. The second came right behind it, and he let the shaft slide along the enemy’s weapon, stepped inside its reach, and drove a short thrust into the man’s breastplate.

Crack!

The armor buckled. The mask went backward and didn’t get up.

A third spear swept toward his neck. He ducked beneath it. A fourth stabbed for his back, and he went sideways on a thread of lightning, the point missing him by a hair while its owner stumbled from the force of his own strike.

’There.’

His spearhead flashed red.

One thrust. One explosion of fire.

The masked man was hurled across the stones and slammed into a fallen pillar.

Eight left.

Jason let out a slow breath.

Lightning drained quickly. Compressed fire drained faster.

’Don’t waste it.’

The eight had noticed too.

They stopped charging.

---

They closed into a ring instead.

One man advanced while the others held their distance, spearheads trained on his chest, his back, his legs. Every time his attention shifted, another figure slid into the opening.

They weren’t trying to beat him anymore.

They were trying to wear him out.

Jason took a step back. A spear followed. He deflected it. Another came from the right and he turned it aside.

Every parry cost a little more than the last.

He retreated across the flagstones, step by step, and felt the cold edge of stone behind him. A row of the faceless statues stood at his back, their planted spears like a fence.

’They’re driving me into the wall.’

He glanced at the statues.

And smiled.

The next thrust came straight for his heart.

Instead of deflecting it, he stepped into it. The point passed beside his ribs, tearing through his shirt and cutting a thin line across his skin. His left hand closed around the shaft.

His right hand drove the Stoneborn Spear into the man’s armor.

The masked figure stumbled.

Jason hauled the captured weapon sideways.

The man behind its owner had already committed to his own thrust, and his spear drove into his comrade’s shaft. The two weapons tangled, locked for half a breath, both men dragged off balance.

That was all he needed.

He stamped his boot.

Lightning rolled outward in a shallow ring. Both men lost their footing, and the formation buckled. Another figure lunged to cover the gap, exactly as he’d expected.

Jason released the captured spear and pivoted.

His weapon swept low, taking the advancing man’s ankle. Before he could hit the ground, the shaft reversed and struck his chest, and he went down.

Three had fallen in rapid succession.

Five left.

---

He allowed himself one glance at his own body.

The cut across his ribs was shallow. His arms had started to burn, and his breathing sounded loud in his own ears. The essence in his Core had thinned noticeably, a good third of it gone.

Then the pressure in the air shifted.

The two at the front, the Peaks, stepped forward. The others stepped back to flank them, and as they moved, their spears began to hum. A low, resonant note vibrated up through the stone, one weapon feeding off another, red energy crawling along all five shafts and braiding together.

’They’re linking.’

The five separated into a loose circle around him. The first spear came down in a heavy overhead strike. The second swept horizontally. The third thrust at his abdomen. The fourth and fifth waited for him to dodge.

There was no gap.

Jason lowered his center of gravity.

Fire swept up the Stoneborn Spear, burning at the tip until the metal glowed nearly white, and lightning coiled around the flame in sharp blue arcs that snapped through the air.

He didn’t try to block all four attacks.

He attacked the space between them.

His spear shot forward and struck the first weapon just beneath its head, knocking the downward strike aside. His wrist turned, the shaft slid beneath the horizontal sweep, and he stepped into the narrow gap between the second and third attackers.

Lightning carried him through.

The third spear grazed his side.

Pain flashed across his face.

He ignored it.

The Stoneborn Spear drove into the ground.

"Burn."

Flame erupted from the stone beneath them, not in a single explosion, but racing outward in four branching lines. Masks leapt back. The braided red energy snapped like a cut rope.

The formation broke.