Chapter 33: Out of Tricks

Scar was moving quickly, but I was faster still. I caught him on the edge of an enhanced gravitational field, and the weight pressed down on him, dropping him to his knees. It didn’t have as much effect as it did against Maurifus, though, and already, Scar was pushing himself back up to his feet. I wouldn’t have long.

I snatched up the fallen orc archer’s bow and pulled an arrow out of the quiver, then nocked it and aimed at Scar.

Now wasn’t the time for mercy. He’d killed Ticks. How many other of his brothers had he killed?

I glanced back through the woods, looking for Ticks’ body. He had tried to help me in the end. I had no idea what it was like to have a brother—I had been an only child, and at that, I was pretty sure I was an accident—but this had to be close. He’d hated me, and we’d fought, but in the end he’d still done the right thing.

I drew the bow back. Sure, I could have used my spear, but Ticks had made the right call. It wasn’t just about combat proficiency. It was about making it look like Scar had been killed by orcs. He still had friends here, and if they found out that an Atoning had murdered Scar, they’d take it out on me. Yeah, Scar was in the wrong, but I couldn’t trust justice to be done properly. If it was obvious I killed him, I might be hanging from the gallows tomorrow.

So I had to use the orc bow.

I loosed the arrow at point-blank range, but it bounced off Scar’s cuirass. The man laughed. He pushed forward, hoisting his foot up and struggling through my gravity well like he was fighting back against the most powerful wind storm of his life. I wouldn’t get another shot at this.

With my enhanced Focus, everything slowed down.

Scar wore a helmet like mine, with eye protection and an exposed mouth. I could try to hit him in the eye, but I was only a novice archer, and I couldn’t get it through the eye holes of the helmet. Maybe I could hit him in the mouth, but again, these were orc arrows. They were bent and wobbly. Even if they had been regular arrows, I just wasn’t that good.

But I had another idea. I needed to pierce his armour. I scrambled back to the fallen orc, pulled my homemade siphon out of my kit bag, and begged the fallen orc to produce a Presence. I was so close to three points. If I could just get one more, I could resonate [Archery] and pierce Scar’s armour that way.

We weren’t in a labyrinth so there was no guarantee of a Presence. I just had to hope. All the while, Scar was pushing himself closer to the edge of my gravity well. If he got free, it was over.

I tightened my jaw and clenched my teeth together. Please, I thought. I’d never had the best luck, but…maybe just this once. Just this once, things could go my way. I’d already seen two of my friends die today.

Besides, Scar deserved this. If there was any good in the universe, it would come help me right now, right? It could help me set things right. It could help me kill him.

A chunk of the orc’s chest disintegrated and the runes of my makeshift siphon flared, but nothing happened. After a few seconds, the runes faded. No Presence.

A coldness washed over me. I knew the world didn’t work like that. I wanted to kick myself for thinking I’d just win. Because I was right and Scar wasn’t.

It didn’t matter.

“What’s that?” Scar sneered, his words straining. It was like he was trying to yell at me through a blizzard. “Out of tricks, soulstealer?”

I had to be more clever about this. The world wasn’t nice, and it wasn’t fair, but I still had a choice. I could start to set things right, and I didn’t need divine assistance to do it.

I lifted up the largest rock I could find—a fist sized pebble nestled into the roots of a tree—then tossed it into my gravity well, aiming well above Scar’s head. The rock plummeted, striking him in the helmet and knocking him onto his back. It bought me a little more time, but he was already pushing himself up.

I held the orc’s arrow in my hand and weighed it. They were far too heavy at their tips than our arrows, but at the moment, it worked to my advantage. I aimed up, pointing my arrow toward the tree branches above my gravity well. About three quarters of the way up the trees’ heights, perhaps three storeys above the ground, the boughs stopped drooping under the effect of my Skill.

That was as high as I could shoot if I wanted to catch the arrow in the gravity well.

I aimed for the very top of the well, then loosed the arrow. It wobbled through the air, until it entered the field of enhanced gravity, where it nosed down abruptly, streaking toward Scar. The arrow changed course, straightening out, the rusty poison-crusted arrowhead racing down until it hit Scar with a thud.

The arrow pierced his breastplate with a clang that resounded like a gunshot, and it made my ears ring. A moment later, my gravitational field fell, returning to its normal strength. Scar writhed and grasped at the empty air. He sucked in breaths with pursed lips, and with each gulp of air, he made a gurgling noise.

For a moment, I wanted to turn and run, but I couldn’t let him live. There was still a chance a healer found him and saved him, and he’d tell them what happened. Grimacing, I stepped over, pressed my boot onto his chest, and aimed my arrow at his face.

“No!” Scar gurgled. “No, I’ll—”

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

I let the arrow fly into his eye. This close, it was impossible to miss. His head snapped back, and he fell still.

I staggered back, falling away from Scar’s body, then tossed the orc’s bow back onto the creature. My body was exhausted from the fight, and my mind was empty from using all my Presence, and there was a dead body of another human that I’d just killed. I didn’t think it was possible to feel colder, and a clammy sweat clung to my hands, mixing with the black blood of orcs. My heart didn’t even feel like it was working properly.

But I wasn’t out of the woods yet—literally or figuratively. I pulled the orc’s tattered rags down across the hole in its chest that my siphon had disintegrated. Someone else would try to harvest there, fail, and think the hole came from his own siphon.

Then, there was Scar. I dragged him closer to the orc, close enough that it would have been potentially possible for the orc’s arrow to pierce through his chest if he’d been hit at the right angle.

Then I used my siphon on him. Yeah, it would be obvious if anyone looked, but Dupes’ bodies were burned with their clothes on. They would take his armour off, but they wouldn’t notice that a chunk of his chest had disintegrated.