1.7 – Trial of Destiny V

In the pale blue light of the braziers and framed by the darkness above, the Clay Sentinel’s spear remained held high for what felt like an eternity. Then it fell like silent death. Rika pushed off the ground with her shield as best she could. She didn’t have the leverage she needed, and her left hip and elbow screamed at her after she’d fallen on them. She rolled over her injured side, leaving her arming sword behind. The move was just a hair too slow.

The spearhead ripped through what remained of her shirt. It opened the flesh on her side, just below her chest, and ground against her ribs. She let out a pained half-gasp, half-scream. On her belly now and awkwardly half on top of her shield, she scrambled to her knees as best she could. The other sentinel was still in position. For all she knew, a spear was coming to skewer her through the back that instant.

In a stumbling, scrambling panic, she hauled herself mostly to her feet. A spear slammed into the stone just inches away. She finally lost her control and let out a string of curses in a terrified and pain-fueled litany as her last drops of defiance evaporated. After another staggered half-run to create any amount of space she could, she turned, bringing up her shield for all the meager protection it offered.

To say she was in a bad spot was an understatement. It hurt to breathe. She’d broken ribs before in training, and that glancing hit had cracked one at a minimum. Blood flowed down her side, soaking into her shirt. Her left elbow still had that odd mix of numbness and pain from where she’d fallen on it, and her left hip just fucking hurt. Her chest heaved, and her blood pounded in her ears. Worst of all, she was unarmed. Her sword lay where she’d left it, on the far side of two advancing Clay Sentinels.

Get the sword. That was her only option. Without it, she was dead. Probably dead regardless, but at least with a weapon, she’d have a ghost of a chance. She broke left. No fancy footwork, no deliberate maneuvers. She ran at a full sprint, perpendicular to the constructs’ advance. They were slow enough that she could circle around.

Her hip, her side, and her ribs all screamed at her in agony-filled protest. She gritted her teeth against the pain, ignored the pounding in her skull, and pushed her legs with all the power of her two Might. When this was over, she’d better get a good amount of Resilience for all the punishment she’d taken.

A thrown spear slammed into the ground nearby. Within arm’s length.

“Fuck!” She was done caring. There was nobody here to impress, nobody to put a brave face on for. Besides, she’d learned since entering the trial that giving voice to her fear and pain was cathartic. If that’s what it would take to get through this, she could just pretend later that it had never happened. It was her father who insisted on keeping a stoic bearing, on putting up a strong front. But her father wasn’t fucking here. She was, and she’d deal with this madness how she saw fit.

Finally, against the protest of her mind and body alike, she made it around the constructs. She stooped, scooping up her arming sword, and took just a breath’s time to let its weight in her hand provide a small measure of comfort. Turning back to the sentinels, she took stock of her situation. The closer of the two advanced in that steady, inexorable death march they’d been using the entire fight. The other was almost to its thrown spear. They’d separated for now. She might have a chance to inflict some damage.

With a groan that sounded far too much like a whimper for her liking, she pushed herself forward once more. The phrase she’d used through all of this repeated in her mind like a mantra. The only way forward was through.

She spun away from another downward thrust of the sentinel’s spear. Far less gracefully than at the start of the fight, but she’d take it. Any move that didn’t end with her impaled was a good one. She readied her sword and took aim at the sentinel’s wrist.

Strike: 12 seconds

Her arming sword bit into the lifelike tendons right where the sentinel’s arm met its hand. Hope so sweet broke over her she could nearly cry—the sentinel released its grip on the spear, letting it fall to the stones with a heavy thud. Its fingers hung limp, straining to flex as though it tried to form a fist, but couldn’t.

Rika risked a glance over her shoulder. The other construct had retrieved its spear and lumbered its way back over. She turned back just in time to catch a shield to the face. She hit the ground, landing almost flat on her back. The air rushed out of her, and she struggled to inhale against the pain in her ribs and the sharp absence of anything in her chest. The closer of the two sentinels took a step, then raised its foot.

Whether it was her meager stats, the rush of battle, or just pure will to live, she somehow made it back to her feet and got out of the way in time. The carved sandal foot came down, and stones paving the chamber floor cracked under the impact. At that same instant, Strike’s countdown finished.

She sliced through the thick tendon at the back of the sentinel’s ankle. Its knee buckled, and it looked for a moment as though it would fall. Instead, it shifted. Far too human-like for a mere statue, it put most of its weight on the one uninjured leg. Sill, the sentinel shifted, or at least began to. Although she hadn’t completely crippled it, she’d come close. The sentinel struggled to turn, to get oriented so it could slam her with its shield again. She’d be damned if she let it. Again, Rika pushed herself to her current, massively diminished limits.

Strike: 4 seconds

Rather than wait, she hacked away at the statue’s injured leg. She was desperately aware that her back was now to its approaching partner, but she couldn’t lose this opportunity. Strike ticked down to one, and something in the statue’s leg gave way. Its knee buckled, and then it pitched forward.

The clay sentinel hit the stone floor with a crash. Stone cracked under its weight. Rika turned, for just an instant, to check on the other. It was nearly close enough to strike, its spear at the ready. But it was still far enough. She turned back to the fallen sentinel. Even now, it was struggling with one good arm and one good leg to push itself back up.

She leaped onto its back.

Running across the statue’s masterpiece of a torso, detailed with the contours of a well-muscled athlete, she charged for the sentinel’s neck. When she reached it, she took aim at the point where its “spine” met the base of its skull. The lifelike details were far too good—making it easy to find the exact spot she needed to hit.

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Grasping her arming sword with both hands, she drove the blade down and activated Strike, putting the full weight of both her body and her two points of Might into the attack. The sword’s edge bit deep, deeper than any attack she’d landed so far. The sentinel shuddered beneath her, then went still.

Rika wrenched her blade free, then pointed it at the oncoming sentinel in all her fury and agony. “You’re next,” she snarled against the pain that suffused each of her limbs and throbbed at the base of her skull.

The sentinel answered with a leaping thrust of its spear.

Rika hopped off her fallen foe. She managed to avoid the thrust, and let her breath out in a relieved huff as she did. Even if she’d blocked that, it likely would have been the end of her.

Strike: 2 seconds

She hacked away at the back of the sentinel’s hand in the moments she had before it drew back for another thrust. Mostly, she took aim at where the tendons and delicate bones that worked its fingers would be. As she’d learned with the previous one, though constructs these foes may be, they shared the same weakness as the bodies they were carved to resemble.