Chapter 75. Strongest Knight in the World, with Two Women Standing Beside Him

Chapter 75: 75. Strongest Knight in the World, with Two Women Standing Beside Him

I closed my eyes, and I did what I’d done in the gully the night before.

I let a small, steady thread of Aether run out of my chest and down my arms.

But this time... I didn’t hold back. I let the warmth pour into the clasp of their hands, and I felt them answer, like two strings vibrating in sympathy with a third.

[Bond Resonance: Active.]

[Consumption: High.]

The panel was a footnote... What happened next was something else entirely.

It started in my chest. I felt a flicker, like a second heartbeat, thumping in time with my own.

Then a third.

Two other hearts were beating inside me, one quick and bright, one slow and cool, each with its own steady rhythm.

I felt Alicia’s breath, the quick, sharp pull of a girl who had fought for an hour and still wasn’t tired.

I felt Laura’s long and measured, like a metronome.

I felt the muscles in their legs, the ache in their arms, and the particular tension in their shoulders where Corvane had hit them.

It wasn’t like reading their minds... It was like having their bodies laid out in front of me, like a map I’d drawn myself.

And the Aether... was going into them.

I could feel it... It poured out of me in a bright, warm flood and flowed through the Bond into Alicia and Laura, and it didn’t come out.

It sank into their muscles and their bones and their blood.

Laura’s Valkyrie’s Grace rose to meet it with a cold silver tide.

Alicia’s Shared Knight’s Blessing answered with a deep golden surge.

The three streams twined around each other... tight and strong, and fused into a single bright current that ran through all three of us at once.

I opened my eyes.

Alicia’s whole body was glowing, faintly, from the inside. It wasn’t a halo or an aura.

It was something deeper, a warm light under the skin, as if she’d swallowed the sun. She looked down at her hands with wide, startled eyes.

Laura’s armor had begun to hum, and her face was set in an expression of fierce astonishment.

"Roland..." Alicia breathed. "What did you... do?"

"Don’t talk," I said. "Hit him."

She hit him.

I’d never seen anyone move like that, and I’d been watching knights fight for weeks. Alicia crossed the distance to Corvane in the time it took me to blink.

There was no flash of light, no streak of power, and no trail of Aether. She was simply there, her blade a blur of silver, driving at his shoulder with a speed that made the air pop.

Every step she took shook the road. The wind of her passing flattened the grass for yards around.

Corvane parried... I saw it.

He lifted his sword, and his crystal flared, and he got a good, clean block on her strike.

But it didn’t work.

He was expecting a stream of Aether to pour into his crystal, and nothing came. Her sword was only steel.

Her speed was only muscle, and her strength... only bone.

All that glorious power was sealed away inside her body, where the crystal couldn’t taste it, and the great dark jewel on his chest flickered and dimmed like a lamp in a drafty room.

Her blade struck his block with a force that made his boots slide backward on the stones.

"What...?" he said.

It was the first time his voice had sounded anything other than calm.

Laura came in from the right. She swung her sword in a long flat arc, and it landed with a weight I’d never seen from her before.

It wasn’t a precise stroke, not a clever feint or a tidy parry.

It was a plain, honest blow, hammered with every pound of her armored body behind it, and when it hit Corvane’s sword, the whole blade rang like a bell.

He grunted... even his arm shook. A line of fine cracks ran up the face of his vambrace.

"I can’t... feel them," Corvane said, in a strange, disbelieving voice. "The Aether... it’s not..."

"Left!" I shouted.

I didn’t use my voice. And I wasn’t sure I’d even opened my mouth.

I just thought it... hard, and the word went down the bond like a stone dropped in a well.

Alicia was already moving. She slid to the left, a hairbreadth ahead of his counterstroke.

"Low!" I thought, and Laura’s blade swept down at his shin.

"Now!"

Alicia’s sword came around and crashed into his pauldron.

It was the most extraordinary feeling of my life... I wasn’t fighting.

It’s more like what I was seeing.

Combat Instinct was a golden web in my mind, and every filament of it ran through the two women beside me.

I watched Corvane’s defense like a map, a shifting grid of weak points and strong ones, and as I read them, I sent the word to Alicia or Laura, and they moved before the thought was finished.

There was no lag... not even a hesitation.

We moved like a single creature with six arms and three swords.

I realized, with a dim sense of wonder, that they could hear me. Not words, exactly...

More like a pressure, a direction, and a shape. But they understood.

Alicia grinned in the middle of a lunge, and Laura let out a startled breath, and the two of them slid into a rhythm so perfect that it seemed to have been choreographed.

The cost, though... was terrible.

I could feel my lust draining away in a hot, bright rush, like water pouring out of a cracked jug.

Every second of the Resonance cost me a little more. The panel flickered at the edge of my sight, and I didn’t look at it, because I knew what it said.

I’d gone from sixty-two percent to about fifty... and the number kept falling.

’Hurry up,’ I thought, at both of them. ’I can’t hold this for long.’

’We know,’ said Laura’s voice in my head, tight and focused.

’Working on it,’ said Alicia.

Corvane was an extraordinary fighter. I’ll say that for him.

Even without the crystal, even with two furious women hammering at him from either side, he managed to hold his ground for almost a minute.

His sword wove a tight net of defense, and he moved from guard to guard with the practiced grace of a man who had been a killer for most of his life.

But he was losing, and he knew it.

Alicia was the first to break through. She came in from the left on a long diagonal and threw her whole weight into a rising slash that hit his left shoulder at exactly the right angle.

The pauldron cracked. A long, ragged crack ran down the metal, and the ring-and-notch emblem peeled away from the steel in a curl of black paint, like bark falling from a tree.

"Right leg!" I called.

Laura dropped low and swept her blade along the back of his thigh. It cut through the leather ties that held his armor in place, and the plate shifted.

He staggered, half a step off balance.

That half step was what I’d been waiting for.

I went in from the front, with no Aether at all... I couldn’t have used it if I’d wanted to.

My reserves were nearly spent, and every ounce of what remained was pouring into the Resonance.

I had a sword and a pair of shaky legs and a rib that felt like it was full of broken glass. But Combat Instinct was still running... and in the golden map, I saw it.

There was a gap in his armor.

It was a tiny one. When he’d raised his sword to meet Laura’s strike, his left arm had lifted, and the joint beneath the pauldron had opened by about a finger’s width.

A narrow strip of dark mail showed through the plates, with a seam at the edge where two pieces of metal met.

Nobody would have noticed it... It looked like nothing.

I drove the Kingsteel straight into it.

The point went in with a short, gritty crunch. I felt it bite through the mail and bury itself in something soft.

Corvane let out a sharp, hissing gasp, and I felt the whole length of his body go rigid. Hot blood ran down the blade and over my knuckles.

He wrenched himself backward, tearing free of the sword, and stumbled across the road with one hand pressed to his side.

For the first time since he’d dropped off the cliff, he was breathing hard... I heard it... a rough, wet rasp through the slit of his helmet.

"Impo...ssible...!" he muttered.

"Ohh~! "It’s very possible, alright," said Alicia, and drove the hilt of her sword into his gut. "And that’s why..."

"My boyfriend is going to be the strongest knight with us... standing by his side!"