Interspirit

Felix was wild. His sword hissed and wheezed as it flew through the air with speed and force Kyrylo had never seen before. It flashed and clashed against each strike that Shychur tried to land, able to deflect each blow and yet recover fast enough to respond to the follow-up. All the while Felix was grinning like a madman, invoking a passion previously unknown.

Kyrylo was feeling better by the second, bolstered by what he was witnessing. He couldn’t tell if Felix was doing this as part of some sort of loyalty or guilt about protecting him or if he had also realized there was no real escape and they might as well go down swinging. He knew in his heart it was the latter but he decided to tell himself that his coworker felt moved enough to come save him.

But Kyrylo was still unarmed. His sword was across the arena and he felt he could probably take a run for it. He would have to take his eyes off of Shychur, something he was unwilling to do. No amount of distraction that Felix was providing would buy him safety. The Rat King was winning against Felix as it was taking everything just to defend against the attacks and Felix had no chance to retaliate. One wrong motion and he was dead in an instant.

That left his fists as the remaining option. He still had no idea how the spirit’s power within him worked, neither of them did apparently, and he couldn’t just will it into place. He heard a particularly nasty clang as Felix stopped another attack, his sword held across the metal palm of Shychur’s right arm. The back of the sword coughed out more smoke and sparks shot out as the blade slid along Shychur’s hand before the two both fell apart. Felix’s shoulders heaved as he picked his weapon back up, letting it twirl in his hands from the propulsion behind it but it was obvious what his state really was; time was almost up.

Kyrylo took off towards the side. He didn’t have an option other than his sword and if he could figure out where the overdrive feature was he might even be able to get off a counterattack. Nobody had ever shown it to him in training, never hinted at it. Wasn’t great that he only had seconds to figure it out.

Shychur roared and his tail lashed out, snapping into Kyrylo’s hip and sending him teetering before he collapsed to his side. The Rat King was barely bothered in his fight with Felix, able to freely wield his tail as an additional weapon to block Kyrylo. He nearly knocked Felix down as well, catching him with a back swipe that Felix only just dodged in the final seconds, landing awkwardly and trying his best to recover.

“Once so arrogant,” Shychur said, pausing to flex again for the crowd and basking in the roar that came back. “You insult me, you say your lives don’t matter. But here you are fighting, desperate. And I told you already I am the king of desperation. That is all we have down here. That is our everything. You think you can be more desperate than me?”

Felix tried to get in an attack but Shychur batted it away and punched, forcing Felix to hold his sword across his body to absorb the blow, sliding back from the force. Kyrylo took it as a chance to move again but the tail swished in front of him, coiling back and pointing at his face as if it could watch him. Given how little he knew about spirits it was possible the tail actually could see him.

“I don’t know,” Felix replied. His voice was strained, he was heaving in between sentences. But he was still smiling, undisturbed. “I’ve been pretty low in my life, man. You don’t know me. I could be desperate. I could know what that’s like.”

The sword hissed again and rocketed forwards. Shychur pushed it away but Kyrylo noted his foot stepped back as he did, tail retreating closer to the body. Kyrylo took the moment and dashed again for his blade. He scooped it up, juggling it for a second as adrenaline started to pump through his body. He did his best to settle it in his grip before he heard a rush of air over his head; the tail had narrowly missed.

Shychur had missed because Felix had picked up his onslaught, slashing again and again and trying to drive through the Rat King’s arm. Kyrylo noted that he always blocked with his robotic appendage, apparently aware of the capacity to cut through a spirit’s body that their weapons held. It was giving Felix something of an advantage and Kyrylo felt a strange flutter in his chest. Hope? Some sort of momentary aspiration that they could kill this thing, until it was quashed remembering they would never be able to get out from a labyrinth packed with spirits, ones who would be quite motivated to mob them.

Kyrylo tried to find where an overdrive feature would be, tapping along the sides of the grip, checking the box that housed the main blade for any kind of panel or switch. Nothing. It was sealed everywhere, heavily bolted into place. He didn’t have the time to keep messing with it so he abandoned the overdrive plan and sprinted back towards Shychur.

Another tail swipe sent Kyrylo diving to the ground, doing his best to spring back up in his ungraceful manner. He drew in close, eyeing Shychur’s free arm. While he wanted to try and finish this in a single blow he knew he likely wouldn’t be able to get that close or high and it would be better to chip away at the spirit and take advantage of their numbers. They could kill him eventually if they could just get him to his knees.

He could see the angle he needed to take, dropping his sword to his side. He would swipe up from below, trying to take off as much of Shychur’s arm as possible, keeping low to the ground to try and not be spotted.

As he approached his grip slipped a bit, palms sweaty. He was painfully aware of his heart in his chest, of a tingle down his throat as air burned its way through. He wanted this, wanted to see the Rat King felled under him. That had never been his idea of how this day would end or even what he imagined when he first stepped foot in the sewer.

And the strangest little feeling buzzed up his spine and tickled along the bottom of his brain. He tried to shove it away because this wasn’t what he really wanted, he wanted to be back in school and never have to think about spirits or the RIF or overdrive or a Rat King. He didn’t want this, he wasn’t enjoying it.

He was kind of enjoying it.

Kyrylo stomped down into the ground in front of him, stabilizing and pushing in to get enough force into his upswing, the tip of the blade scraping along the stone before shooting up. A smile tugged at the corner of his own mouth, mimicking Felix as his compatriot went for his own attack as a distraction.

Shychur suddenly shifted, bringing his metal claw across to catch Kyrylo’s sword. He threw out his elbow to deflect Felix’s attack then kept twisting, letting his tail whip around and smash into Felix’s skull with a sickening thud, sending his body careening across the arena, his weapon spinning away harmlessly, engine still sputtering.

Things became incredibly quiet around Kyrylo. One by one sounds came back. He could feel the beating of his own heart before he heard the blood in his ear with each pulse. Shychur’s breathing, heavy but slow as Kyrylo pulled away from the rat. The water all around them, cheering and murmurs from the spirits above.

“I told you,” Shychur said, his own smile returning as he sized up Kyrylo, “I know desperation. I am desperation. I am unwilling to lose.”

Kyrylo didn’t respond. He spit to his side and rolled his shoulder, trying to get the feeling back after Shychur had blunted his prior attack. Without the overdrive feature it had been too slow to break through, too weak to push him back. It needed to be lighter, faster. It needed to be heavier, forceful. He needed it to contradict, to ebb and flow on command like some impossible weapon.

But he had none of that. He only had this stupid piece of junk in his hands. And it had never failed like this before. It could always cut through a spirit before. Now it was bouncing off a wall.

Kyrylo grit his teeth. He would check on Felix afterwards. There would be an afterwards. He would make it through and out.

“To keep trying like this is admirable,” the Rat King continued. “It’s also pointless. You would have made an interesting follower of the downtrodden had you not been so cavalier.”

“In hindsight, your name being rat wasn’t that funny.” Kyrylo swung again but was easily deflected by Shychur, who seemed bored by the effort. It was a stark contrast to the relentless assault Felix had been able to output moments before.

Kyrylo squeezed tighter, came back again with two hands but he bounced back once more, Shychur pushing him aside like he was passing through a curtain. There had to be a way through.

This time felt a little faster. Maybe he was getting used to the weight in his hands, maybe he was so past exhaustion he couldn’t even feel the burn in his muscles anymore but the sword lifted up on command, nearly shooting too high as he misjudged the strength it would take to lift the usual weight. It was the same result, Shychur batting down another blow. He wasn’t even attempting to retaliate on Kyrylo and the young man picked up on the increased chanting going on around him, a growing swell of sound as the room sensed the impending execution.

The blade sprang up again in Kyrylo’s grasp, somehow lighter than the last time, moving even quicker as he slid across the metal of Shychur’s robotic arm then easily doubled back for a second swipe. A flicker of surprise passed over the Rat King’s face, though he still parried the blow.

Kyrylo came again and again, each time hastening his pace until he barely felt the sword at all. And Shychur began to shift, focusing a bit more, unperturbed by the flimsy nature of the attacks. It felt like they were hitting with even less force, doing nothing to break through the muscular defense the rat could put up. But the speed was incredible, like nothing Kyrylo had done before in practice. The blade danced as it clanged off Shychur’s arm, slashing down, swiping up, darting to the side then up above, keeping the spirit in place thanks to the ever present danger the weapon wielded were it to connect with actual flesh.

Kyrylo drew the weapon up high in one swing, grabbing on with a second hand again. This was the perfect moment with Shychur a fraction behind in reactions. He could see it in that split second, a space where he could get down a serious swing on the mechanical arm. He would do real damage to it if he could just turn on overdrive, if he were holding some absurd hammer or axe or something that weighed ten times as much. He wanted to bring the force of the whole universe down on Shychur and cut straight through.

The sword came down with increasing velocity, almost dragging Kyrylo with him as it picked up in pace and smashed into metal.

And broke through.

It cut into the prosthetic, slicing apart cables until it hit a central pipe, driving into it and coming to a stop as it could only cut so much. But the momentum continued, the sudden weight pulling the two of them down as the arm smashed into the ground, cracking it under the force. A small plume of dust shot up around the pair, silencing the audience.

Kyrylo couldn’t lift his own weapon. It wasn’t just deeply embedded in Shychur’s arm; it was too heavy to budge. And he cursed that because he could see the opening that the Rat King presented if only he could flip his blade around he could easily behead him and be done with this.

“It’s over.” It was Felix across the room. He had managed back onto his feet, one hand holding up his sword, the other cradling the side of his head. He winced when he spoke. “You can’t get out from it.”

Shychur locked eyes with Kyrylo. There was a seething hatred behind them, not entirely directed at Kyrylo but at the concept of losing itself. Kyrylo had seen it before, knew it quite well. He had broken other people just like this when lives weren’t on the line.

Then he felt Shychur’s tail coiling around his foot.