Underland - Chapter 33: Bones of Steel

Swords clashed and Marianne’s weapon broke first.

Her bone blade, crafted from her own harvested forearm, cracked above the pommel as it parried Lord Bethor’s strike. The shattered edge of her weapon went flying and bounced off a steel wall. Marianne barely had the time to take a step back to avoid a strike to the throat and manifest a new sword from her bloodied forearm; the fourth since the beginning of the training session.

The process was starting to take a toll on her. Although she had been fed on a steady diet of calcium and nutrients before the fight, osteomancy couldn’t violate the laws of conservation of mass. The bones had to come from somewhere, and now she was drawing material from her own ribs.

“Use the environment,” Lord Bethor admonished her as he chased her through the metal maze. His armor’s heavy, steady footsteps echoed across the steel walls, his stance showing no weakness. “Strike from unpredictable directions.”

He’s toying with me, Marianne realized. She was giving her all, wasting not even a single breath, while the Dark Lord could afford to chat. His physical might eclipsed hers by a colossal amount, to the point that she often dropped her weapon when their blades connected. While her hand remained strong, her bone blades instead cracked or shattered.

And to add insult to injury, Lord Bethor was beating Marianne with her family’s own rapier.

Unlike his student’s aggressive, fast-paced style, the Dark Lord favored a slow and methodical approach to swordsmanship. His defense was impeccable, his movements calculated and deliberate, his thrusts mighty enough to pierce through steel. Marianne felt like she was facing a glacier, an impenetrable block of ice creeping in on her inch by inch. And unlike his pet machine, the Lord Bethor shrugged off illusions before they could take hold.

At least he has the grace not to hold back his punches, Marianne thought. Some of his strikes could have easily killed her had they connected. The noblewoman had managed to survive for now, but she couldn’t afford to let the Dark Lord push her back further. She had grown familiar enough with the maze to know that he was slowly forcing her towards the closed exit, where she would find herself with her back against a steel door.

Deciding on an aggressive strategy, Marianne gritted her teeth and lunged at the weak spot in her foe’s helmet. Her enhanced senses gave her a perfect vision of the battlefield. She could hear Lord Bethor’s muscles contracting, sense his—her—rapier push air, see the slight inflections in his armor indicating which way he would move next. She could even observe the changes of ambient temperature from the light’s reflection in the air.

Lord Bethor’s weapon moved to match her own, and Marianne ignored the pain as she called upon the Blood. One of her ribs vanished as a second bone sword burst out of her wrist, shooting a spurt of blood as it came out. Grabbing the new weapon with her free hand, Marianne struck from below by surprise. She moved so fast that even her enhanced eye struggled to keep up with the strike.

She thought Lord Bethor would parry her first sword and leave himself open to the second.

Instead, Marianne noticed the slight inflection of his feet as he adjusted his stance and she instinctively stepped to the left. The motion saved her life, as Lord Bethor forewent defense for a surprise lunge aimed at her stomach. The tip of the Reynard family’s rapier grazed against Marianne’s shirt, cutting a thin line across the cloth but failing to reach her skin.

Why? Marianne thought angrily as she found herself stepping back again. Why can’t I hit him? My senses and reflexes have never been sharper!

“Your swordsmanship matches mine in finesse and you have experience in all basic styles,” Lord Bethor scolded her. “Your weakness lies not in your lack of experience, but in your lack of imagination. You rely on speed, skill, and strength to overwhelm your opponents, yet inevitably you will face foes who are faster than humanly possible, stronger than you, or skilled enough to predict your attacks.”

He raised the rapier at her in a stance that Marianne found chillingly familiar. In a blink of an eye, the crimson knight before her vanished, replaced with a handsome noble with long black hair and piercing blue eyes.

“Now die, vile woman,” Jérôme said.

Marianne’s heart skipped a beat, and the shock almost cost the noblewoman her life. Her fiancé’s ghost lunged at her so fast that even her enhanced eyes struggled to keep up; the Reynard’s rapier turned into a blurring flash of steel hungry for her blood.

Acting entirely on reflexes, Marianne raised both her swords in a cross formation and pushed Jérôme’s sword towards the ceiling. The inhuman strength behind the blow almost tossed her backward, and the tip of the blade cut through her left cheek even as she deflected it. Marianne’s blood dripped on the ground with a thunderous sound.

But though the ploy and the pain unsettled her for a second, the noblewoman quickly regained her composure. This is not Jérôme, she thought, and even if he were… I should not hold back.

However, although her defense didn’t collapse, Lord Bethor proved relentless. He unleashed a flurry of blows and forced Marianne back. From the echo of their blades, she realized he had pushed her into the dead-end leading to the exit.

“Poetic,” he said with Jérôme’s voice, his words as sharp as his blows, “you will perish by the same sword you killed me for.”

I can’t maintain an effective defense against him, the noblewoman thought as she remembered Bertrand’s lessons. Like most of Marianne’s fencing teachers, he had put emphasis on controlling the blade, timing, and distance to maintain an equilibrium between attack and defense. She had been taught to anticipate angles of attack and control her opponent’s center, waiting for a gap in the defense to launch a counterattack.

But Lord Bethor’s stance had no weakness. Trying to defend was only buying her time with no progress.

“You’re wrong,” Marianne said, her eyes squinting dangerously.

“About what?” the ghost asked. “You didn’t slay me?”

The false Jérôme lunged at her again as if expecting her to back down again.

“I didn’t fight you for the sword, Jérôme.”

Instead Marianne surprised him with an aggressive flurry of blows. Wrong-footed, the Dark Lord found himself on the defensive for the first time in the training.

“I fought you for myself.”

Memories flashed before her eyes with each clash of their weapons. Once happy memories of ballroom dancing in Saklas, of drinking tea alone with her fiancé in the gardens. Once Marianne had looked at these moments with maiden-like innocence. She had always seen Jérôme through the prism of nostalgia.

But now?

Now, she could see the smugness and ambition walking side by side with the pleasantries and the kindness. Valdemar’s words had recontextualized many hints that Marianne had done her best to ignore.

“I would have been happy to be a dutiful wife, if only you had let me be myself,” Marianne said bitterly what she had thought deep down for years. “Was that too high of a price to ask?”

Use the unpredictable, the noblewoman thought as she attacked again and again with both blades; she dropped all attempts at defense to fully focus on offense. Dominate the fighting space to keep the initiative.

It was a dangerous strategy as she left herself exposed to a counterattack. The moment her assault weakened and Lord Bethor regained the initiative, he would strike back with lethal force.

The moment came quickly.

“Was my life worth your freedom?” the false Jérôme replied angrily.

The words hurt more than any sword, but Marianne’s resolve remained strong as steel.

The Dark Lord regained his footing and raised his rapier to parry her right blade. Instead of holding her weapon tight, Marianne loosened her grip on it. Lord Bethor’s parry disarmed her, her first bone sword flying above her head.

But unlike last time, the blade remained intact.

“I paid no price,” Marianne said angrily as she quickly grabbed her weapon in midair while Lord Bethor was busy parrying her second blade. “You preferred to throw your life away rather than let me follow my dream!”

Swiftly recovering her first sword, she struck from the upper right in a diagonal motion. This time, Lord Bethor had no choice but to take a step back to dodge. The first time he had done so in the entire training.

A familiar, pleased smirk appeared on the false Jérôme’s face. “Now, we are getting somewhe—”

Without wasting any time, Marianne called upon the Blood. A bone needle erupted from her forehead, using her own skull as fuel and piercing through her skin. It was thin, but sharp as a scalpel and fast as a bullet.

The false Jérôme blinked in surprise, his rapier deftly deflecting the needle in midair… and allowing Marianne enough time to close the distance between them, both swords raised in a scissor motion. Blood dripped from her forehead where the needle had erupted, but it didn’t impair her aim.

Jérôme’s neck started to bleed before the blades even connected. His face twisted into an expression of horror and fear, the same he wore on that fateful day.

Marianne gritted her teeth as she mentally relived this horrible experience again… but struck all the same. Jérôme was dead, and trying to keep his ghost alive in her thoughts and emotions wouldn’t bring him back.

Her swords moved to behead her former fiancé.

Her blades never reached their target.

An invisible force restrained her hands as the blades were within an inch of the neck.

“An innovative tactic,” Lord Bethor congratulated her as he dropped the illusion. Marianne’s dead fiancé vanished, replaced with a knight in crimson armor. “I did not expect the needle.”

“You suggested that I strike from unexpected directions,” Marianne reminded him as he released the spell holding her, allowing the noblewoman to lower her swords…

Before swiftly raising them back and parrying Lord Bethor’s sneak attack.

“Good,” he said, the tip of their swords testing each other. “A true battle only ends when your foe is well and truly destroyed. Even disarmed or surrendering, an enemy can prove dangerous. Never lower your guard, for where strength fails, treachery often triumphs.”

Only then did Lord Bethor lower his blade for real. “Tell me what you have learned today, Marianne.”

“To prevail, I must have fear and confusion on my side,” Marianne replied. “You attacked my resolve to weaken my arm. This is why you used my own rapier against me and then cast your cruel illusion.”

Watching her family’s weapon used against her had unbalanced her mind and left it open to further deceit.

Though she only saw his eyes past the helmet, Marianne could tell that Lord Bethor was pleased with her answer from his posture. “Students focus on technical skills, but the masters understand that a body is like any sword; only as strong as the will that moves it. Breaking someone’s resolve is the same as shattering their spine, and sometimes far easier. Whenever possible, Marianne, you must study your prey, probe their emotional weaknesses with words and illusions, and then engage them. No mind is a perfect fortress.”

“Not even yours?” Marianne asked as she cast a healing spell on her face to close her wounds.

“No wise warrior believes themselves perfect,” the Dark Lord replied with surprising humility. His helmet shimmered in the light of the metal maze, transforming into Jérôme’s face. “A few days ago, you would have faltered upon seeing this man’s face. What changed?”

Marianne examined her late fiancé’s face. He was exactly like her memories, perfectly recreated from them. A part of her wanted to apologize to him for taking his life… and another to slap him for foolishly throwing it away in the first place.

“I have been reevaluating my relationship with Jérôme,” Marianne admitted. “I will never be at peace with his death, but… a friend told me he was looking down on me, and the thought has been gnawing at my mind like a worm in a root.”

“Do you believe him?”

I don’t know, Marianne wanted to reply. That would have been the easy answer, the noncommittal one. But Valdemar’s words had opened her eyes. She still believed Jérôme had loved her in his own way… but never as an equal.

“Whether he was correct or not, in the end I fought Jérôme for myself,” Marianne whispered as she looked at her ancestor’s rapier. “Not for this weapon. It was just an excuse I told myself. I did it for the sake of my pride and who I wanted to be. I did it for me. And even if the consequences were painful to me, I don’t regret standing up for myself.”

Lord Bethor listened in silence as his glamour spell vanished. His black and red eyes looked at Marianne through the slit in his helmet, his gaze indecipherable. Marianne felt him judge her thoughts and actions, like her father did when he banished her. She stood strong and met his gaze, refusing to avert it.

Finally, the Dark Lord held the Reynard rapier with both hands and presented it to Marianne. “Take it.”

Marianne blinked in surprise. “Lord Bethor, you said you would only return it at the end of our training.”

“I said I would give it to you when you prove yourself worthy of it; when you make it a force-multiplier rather than a crutch. Once, you saw this blade as the golden prize you sacrificed your old life for. It was the one thing that excused your crimes and successes, the measure of your self-value. But now, what do you see?”

Marianne looked at this weapon she had killed so many people with, this heirloom from generations of the Reynard family. Once she had revered it with almost religious importance, but now… now she saw it for what it was.

“A sword,” Marianne replied. “One that is important to me for what it represents and the martial values it embodies. But the sword doesn’t make the swordswoman strong. It is the swordswoman that makes the sword strong. All weapons will shine in my hands.”

Lord Bethor nodded respectfully, as Marianne reabsorbed her bone swords back into her body to recover the organic material. Then she grabbed her family rapier, finding that it felt lighter than ever. How good it feels to have it back… she thought. Like a missing arm grafted back on my body.

“Lord Bethor, if I may ask,” she said, suddenly emboldened. “What do you fight for? What pushed you to become what you are?”

The Dark Lord appraised her question with a calculating gaze. “And what am I?”

Marianne cleared her throat before answering. “Power.”

Lord Bethor crossed his arms, his eyes turning distant as if remembering a terrible memory. “Have you ever been burned, Marianne Reynard?”

“Briefly,” she admitted. “But never for long.”

“Be thankful then,” the Dark Lord said, his voice grave and haunting. “I have been wounded by countless things, but none of them ever felt as painful as being burned alive. Once they have taken hold of you, flames eat you alive. They spread through the skin and melt the flesh, boil your blood in your veins and dry your eyes. Beasts leave when they are satisfied with their meal, but a fire’s hunger knows no bounds.”

“You told Valdemar that you had your own baptism by dragonfire,” Marianne remembered with a deep frown. “Did you…”

Lord Bethor looked up at the ceiling, as if he could see something invisible Marianne’s enhanced eyes couldn’t perceive. “Long ago, I was an arrogant battle mage who believed himself invincible. I had defeated other mages, derros, and monsters aplenty. Becoming a dragonslayer sounded like the next step of my military career. The feat would shower me in glory. So I ignored the warnings of my superiors and ventured into forbidden tunnels known for leading to a dragon’s lair. The cavern’s floor was littered with the bones of all the would-be dragonslayers who had preceded me, but I paid them no mind.”

Marianne listened in silence. She had heard tales of famed dragonslayers, but she had always wondered how many had perished before one could triumph. The history books did not record the names of losers.

“We find the Strangers terrifying because we do not understand them… and dragons scare us because we know exactly what they are,” Lord Bethor said. “We humans have deluded ourselves into thinking we stood at the apex of the food chain of this stone shell of a world, when we are but an intermediary chainlink. The moment the dragon’s head emerged from the cavern, the instant I first laid my eyes on it, I understood the simple truth: I was prey, and it was a predator.”

To hear a Dark Lord say that left Marianne unsettled. They were the benchmark of strength in the empire; mages so powerful that they could control an entire Domain unchallenged. To have one admit weakness shook her to the core.

“The beast answered my spells with fire so hot that none of my wards could stop it,” Lord Bethor said. “My nerves were set ablaze, and the pain I felt that day has never left me. Nor the memory of my bones shattered as the beast casually swept me away. If I hadn’t fallen into an underground crack too difficult for a giant beast to access, I would have died. It took all of my magic to keep my soul anchored to my burnt husk of a body.”

Marianne’s own escape from Verney Castle now looked like child’s play. To survive without skin and flesh… she thought. Lord Bethor was alive, so he hadn’t embraced the cold apathy of undeath.

“Yet I knew that the dragon could have devoured me if it had made any effort,” Lord Bethor continued. “But you do not eat a flea biting your skin. You squash it and forget. That was its mistake. Though it took me three days of agony, I crawled my way back to civilization. But it wasn’t my survival instinct that allowed me to survive.”

His eyes brimmed with cold fury.

“It was hate, Marianne,” the Dark Lord whispered. “Not for the dragon, but for myself. For being weak. After that day, I swore never to feel so helpless again. I would elevate myself above even the gods and stand at the apex of the world… like that beast of legends.”

And now, the Dark Lord ruled his own world from atop a spire, looking down on the mortals toiling in his forges… Lord Bethor had surpassed his fear by becoming it. “What happened to the dragon?” Marianne dared to ask.

Lord Bethor scoffed. “I killed it,” he answered as if it were obvious, his voice echoing with quiet satisfaction. “I shattered its skull with my hands and showered myself in its blood. Then I raised this tower over the lair the animal once called home.”

Marianne shivered, as she remembered that Valdemar had mentioned seeing a dragon’s bones as being part of the tower’s heart. Had it been the first corpse added to the foundations, the Dark Lord’s greatest trophy?

“Take this as a lesson, Marianne Reynard,” the Dark Lord said. “Pain and fear are the fires that light the human will. One who has never suffered a defeat will not fight as hard as one who has experienced helplessness.”

“I know,” Marianne replied. She had had her own defeat when she had watched Bertrand turn into a monster, helpless to do anything. “That feeling will never leave me.”

“Then you are ready to learn my combat spells,” Lord Bethor declared. “You are middling in the Blood, correct, but you have a keen understanding of your body and a flexible mind. Osteomancy is perfect for you.”

He raised his left hand, his armor’s gauntlet turning into blood. A long, flexible chain of spine erupted from his wrist, covered in spikes. He swung it like a harsh taskmaster with a whip, cutting through the air.

“This is the Spine-Chain spell,” Lord Bethor said, before materializing a skull at the end of the chain. “And the Flail upgrade. The skull’s density is such that although it feels light, the impact will break stone and pierce through armor.”

To illustrate his point, he swung his weapon at a wall. The flail’s head bent the steel on impact, causing the entire room to shake.

“You have mastered the sword, but it cannot solve all problems,” the Dark Lord scolded Marianne. “A true warrior must use the appropriate weapon for each encounter. The spear when you need a greater reach, the flail when you need the power to shatter armor too thick for your enchanted rapier. Osteomancy can manifest all of them, and I shall teach you how.”

“But at what cost?” Marianne asked warily. “My body only has so much bone and calcium to draw from.”

“Do you think my body holds as much blood as a commoner?” Lord Bethor asked with a hint of disdain. “The Blood requires nutrients to work its spells, yes. But with magic, you can train your body to hold more than humanly possible.”

“Wouldn’t it make me heavier and slower?”

“I will teach you to alter your bones’ density and malleability. Though you may weigh more than others, by adjusting your mass you will move faster than they do.”

Lord Bethor let out a growl, and two enormous batlike wings erupted from the back of his armor. Marianne’s senses told her that they were made of hollowed bones bound by thin cartilage. The Dark Lord now looked like a demonic knight in an armor of blood.

A human-shaped dragon.

“Osteomancy can do more than manifest weapons and armors,” Lord Bethor said. “By manipulating your bone density and altering them in a specific way… you will even learn to fly.”

“I could fly?” Marianne blinked in shock. She knew some powerful mages could by lifting themselves up with telekinesis or by shapeshifting into beasts, but due to her own middling spellcasting, the noblewoman had long given up on achieving the same feat.

“If you train to.” Lord Bethor appraised her silently. “As a reward for your efforts, I shall let you pick your first choice of weapon to train with.”

Marianne’s thoughts turned to Bertrand and the beast he had become. If I could fly… she thought, trying to imagine herself chasing her old friend in the air. What would be the best weapon to save him?

“The chain,” Marianne said after some consideration. “To catch a friend.”