Chapter 21: The Brass Charge
Renhart Byron
The brass knuckle-chain crunched satisfyingly against the reinforced leather grip of my mace. Bone gave way beneath the impact—bovine skull, thankfully, not human.
The bull-man staggered, a guttural bellow tearing from its throat, thick ropes of saliva spraying. Before its massive, chain-wrapped hands could grab me, I followed through, pivoting on my lead foot, putting the weight of my shoulders and hips into an upward swing that caught it squarely under the jaw.
Another sickening crack. It dropped like a felled oak, the brass plates on its kilt clattering against the ochre sand.
For whatever reason my mind started to drift from the fight at hand.
Wogart farmer, I thought to myself. The term echoed sourly in my head, a bitter aftertaste to the kill. Retired Ascender? Hardly retired. Just… repurposed.
Escorting wide-eyed newbies through their first terrifying stumble into the Relictombs' maw. It wasn't glorious.
It earned sneers from the badge-flashing elites hauling shimmering accolades back to the Association. But the Sovereigns paid and they paid well.
Enough to keep the roof over my head, ale in my cup, and, crucially, my name off the draft rosters for the impending Dicathen crusade.
After Sehz-Clar… after the battlefields choked with mud and the screams that still echoed in the quiet hours… Vechor's pride could find other sons to bleed.
Barbarians or not, I'd had my fill of war.
Meeting a foster Vritra Blood from Sehz-Clar hadn't been on the docket. Not that I kept a bucket list anymore—survival was agenda enough. Iskander Briand.
The name meant little nowadays; Briand was a fading Highblood from the rival Dominion, from the yearned city of Aedelgard—the reason why the war between Vechor and Sehz-Clar started at all, a dispute between Sovereigns Kiros and Orlaeth for the city.
The kid himself? He didn't seem the vengeful type. Soft around the edges beneath the grey skin and unsettling power, prone to bizarre pronouncements about misfortune and hugging glowing marbles he called 'Mom'.
As long as I kept my mouth shut about Vechor, about the skirmishes along the Sehz-Clar border where Named Blood Byron earned its scars, I should avoid painting a target on my back.
Why take him on? The coin, naturally. The risk of an Highblood dying under my watch, however? That could cost more than coin. It could cost my head, even if I crawled out of this sandpit alive.
Stupid. Greedy. Exhausting.
Another bull surged from the swirling dust, targeting Yorick. Delilah reacted faster than thought, her flame-wreathed spear lancing out, not to kill, but to deflect the descending brass-knuckled fist aimed at her brother's head.
The distraction was enough. I stepped in, my own mace a dark blur, catching the beast mid-ribcage. I felt the satisfying snap through the haft, saw the creature stumble.
Yorick, pale but precise, finished it with a brutal thrust of his halberd into its exposed neck. Teamwork. Fragile, desperate, born of shared terror, but effective.
And Iskander? He was a golden storm in the heart of the herd. Obliterating them. Not just stop stopping to kill them. Annihilating. Fists wreathed in impossible light, explosions that vaporized brass and bone, healing gashes that would kill a normal man before the blood even hit the sand.
He used aether. The stuff the Relictombs were made of. The stuff whispered about in hushed, almost sacrilegious tones. The stuff the High Sovereign himself poured fortunes into researching, funding the Association, sending Ascenders on wild chases.
And this kid… this walking anomaly… was also apparently the protégé of Scythe Seris Vritra?
Seris Vritra, whose name was spoken with dread more than reverence in Vechor and awe and respect in Sehz-Clar, second only to Cadell Vritra himself in High Sovereign Agrona Vritra's shadowed hierarchy?
Seris Vritra from whose retainer I miraculously escaped during the assault of Fiachra. I wasn't even twenty back then and now I am alive only because of Retainer Uto aiming his bloodlust from the garrison of Fiachra to Retainer Cylrit.
Un-fucking-believable. It strained credulity past breaking.
"Merciful Vritra, just how many of these fucking cows are here?!" The roar tore from me, less prayer, more furious demand to an uncaring universe.
Rage, cold and familiar, flooded my veins, burning away the fatigue for a precious moment. I twisted, avoiding a clumsy grab from a wounded bull, and drove my mace heel-first into its sternum.
Bone buckled. Before it could roar, a swift, brutal overhead strike caved in its skull. Sand sprayed, hot blood splattered my boots.
"Delilah! Yorick! Don't distance yourselves!" My voice was a whip-crack, slicing through the din of bellows and clanging metal. They were drifting, drawn towards Iskander's destructive light show, forgetting the basics in the chaos. Survival meant cohesion.
"B-but Iskander—" Delilah started, eyes wide, still caught in the spectacle.
"The Highblood can take care of himself all too fucking well!" I bellowed, blocking a horn-sweep aimed at Yorick with a grunt, the impact jarring my shoulders. "My job right now is protecting you two! Move!"
Reluctantly, they fell back, forming a tighter triangle with me at the point. Another earth-shaking KA-BOOM from Iskander's direction, a wave of heat and blinding golden light washing over us, momentarily bleaching the world. Sand stung my eyes.
What in Sovereign Kiros' name is that lunatic thinking? Clearing the herd or burying us with it? He fought like a child granted godhood. All raw power, zero finesse.
That body… divine resilience coupled with obscene healing. But his tactics? Non-existent. Flailing, explosive, relying entirely on overwhelming force and recovery. Creative? Maybe. Reckless? Undeniably.
Aether… the foundation of the Relictombs… and he wielded it like a toddler with the power of the Sovereigns.
Delilah screamed a warning, her spear flashing out to intercept a bull charging Yorick's exposed flank. It bought me the half-second I needed. I dropped low, ignoring the protest in my knees, and swung my mace in a vicious arc at the creature's ankles.
Bone shattered. It crashed forward with a pained bellow. Yorick, seizing the moment with surprising ruthlessness, drove his halberd down like a stake, piercing the back of its thick neck. Efficiency born of terror.
"Byron!" Yorick's voice, sharp with fresh panic. "Above you!" I looked up. A massive bull, blood-flecked foam dripping from its jaws, had leapt onto the carcass of its fallen kin. Its chain-wrapped fists were clasped together, raised high for a skull-splitting hammer blow.
No time to dodge. Instinct took over. Mana surged through my runes, a familiar mana barrier flaring around me and my weapon as I raised it overhead. This is it. Crushed like a bug protecting kids for Sovereigns' coin. What a fucking epitaph.
THOOOOOM!
The impact drove me to my knees. Agony exploded through my arms, my spine, my teeth rattling in my skull. The light of my rune flickered violently, absorbing the monstrous force but transferring the shock. Sand compacted beneath me. I tasted copper. My vision swam.
"Attack it!" I rasped, the words ripped raw, my arms trembling, locked in a desperate struggle to hold the crushing weight at bay.
Delilah and Yorick didn't hesitate. They moved as one unit, driven by shared terror and the unspoken bond forged in this hellish arena. Delilah's flaming spear stabbed deep into the bull's side, aiming for kidneys or whatever organs lurked beneath muscle and fur.
Yorick hacked savagely at the back of its knee with his halberd blade. The beast roared, staggering, its focus broken. The immense pressure on my mace lessened fractionally. With a guttural cry of effort, I shoved upwards, rolling desperately sideways as the destabilized bull crashed down where I'd been pinned.
Sand filled my mouth, my nose. I scrambled, gasping, to my feet. Yorick and Delilah were already pressing the advantage, harrying the wounded giant. I joined them, channeling the white-hot fury of near-death into a final, brutal swing. My attack connected with the bull's temple. It dropped, finally still.
Why? Why am I still doing this? The hypocritical lie I told myself surfaced—the 'good heart' wogart farmer. Unlike the scum who saw newbies as loot piñatas or acceptable losses, I wanted them to survive. To learn. To maybe not become cynical husks like me.
But this? This was suicide by association. Risking my neck for coin and a sliver of tarnished pride… against this? I looked towards the epicenter of destruction. The dust was settling. Iskander stood amidst a charnel ground of glassed sand and scattered brass, panting, bloodied, but already healing.
That damnable golden marble flitted around him like an anxious firefly, mending gashes with pulses of light. He fought like a berserker fueled by starlight, a beautiful, terrifying freak of nature.
Crazy? Absolutely. Selfless? He bled for them, for us… maybe. Probably just crazy.
"Can you keep on?!" I barked, turning to the siblings. Delilah leaned on her spear, chest heaving, sweat plastering blonde hair to her temples, but her eyes still held a spark of manic energy.
"Yes! I'm just getting started!" A lie, bravado masking exhaustion. Yorick looked grey, his spectacles askew, hands trembling on his halberd.
"I—I think so." Barely. But willing.
I grimaced. Only a handful of bulls remained near us, isolated by Iskander's rampage. Across the arena, he was already carving into the stragglers dozens of meters away. We moved, a weary, bloodied unit, towards the last cluster near the tunnel entrance we'd entered.
My thoughts, treacherous, slithered towards Vechor. Towards Named Blood Byron. Towards the old man, my old man—Lord Byron, a regalia bearer, Obsidian Vault honoree, now a shriveled husk propped up by ambition and spite.
Eighty years of life hadn't softened him, just concentrated the venom. As the youngest son, I'd escaped the worst of his scheming to elevate our Blood to Highblood status—a near-impossible leap requiring feats that pleased the Sovereigns themselves.
Wars between Dominions, once the primary path, were fading, replaced by the looming Dicathen campaign. The ladder stopped at Named Blood. To climb higher demanded blood sacrifice on an altar of Agrona Vritra's design. My father's eyes, sharp as ever in his wrinkled face, saw Dicathen as that altar.
My fear wasn't death. It was the annoyance. The sheer, grinding tedium of being recalled from this gritty, honest—if suicidal—work to become a cog in his political machinations, shipped off to slaughter savages whose only crime was living on the wrong continent.
I didn't believe the propaganda. The Vritra didn't waste resources on philanthropy. This was conquest, pure and simple.
Give me the Relictombs' honest death traps and this deranged Highblood over noble butchery any day.
We closed on the last bull. It saw us coming, lowering its head, horns gleaming dully, chains rattling. Delilah braced, Yorick raised his halberd, I hefted my weapon, muscles screaming protest.
Before we could engage, a streak of gold shot past my ear—Iskander's will-o-wisp, launched like a miniature comet. It struck the bull squarely between the eyes with pinpoint accuracy.
Not an explosion this time, but a clean, lethal penetration. The beast stiffened, then collapsed, dead before it hit the sand. Efficient. Almost… elegant.
"It's… done…" Delilah gasped, the fight draining out of her. She sank to her knees, then slumped sideways onto the sand, chest heaving. Yorick followed, collapsing back-to-back with her, his halberd clattering from nerveless fingers. Utterly spent.
Iskander jogged over, dust and gore clinging to his grey skin, deep gashes already sealing shut as the golden wisp hovered near his shoulder. A bright, relieved smile split his face, incongruous amidst the carnage.
"You are well! I am so glad to see that!" He sounded genuinely pleased.
The contrast was jarring. The sheer, oblivious normalcy of his concern, after the apocalyptic display and the mountains of dead bulls, ignited the simmering tension in my gut.
The near-crushing, the deafening blasts, the constant terror for the kids… it boiled over. My runes flickered out. I planted my mace point-first into the sand with a thunk.
"Vritra's Horns," I snarled, my voice low, rough, and dripping with a fury that surprised even me. I took a step towards him, ignoring the exhaustion, the ache in my bones. "Were you trying to kill us too?"
The smile vanished from Iskander's face. His eyes, usually bright with manic energy or bizarre affection for his glowing marble, widened in genuine shock. His mouth opened, then closed. He looked… young.
Startled. Guilty? He glanced down at his hands, then at the devastation around us, then back at me. The raw power, the godlike resilience… momentarily eclipsed by the simple accusation of nearly killing his allies.
"Sorry…" he mumbled, the word small, almost lost in the vast silence of the arena. He scratched the back of his head, avoiding my gaze, the picture of a scolded child who'd accidentally set the barn on fire.
The wogart farmer, bone-tired and furious, had drawn blood. Of a sort. The absurdity of it all settled over me like the settling dust. We were alive. Against all odds, thanks largely to this walking calamity. But Sovereigns help us all if this was just the first act.
I spat blood-tinged sand onto the ochre earth and glared at the apologetic weapon of mass destruction who called himself a "superhero," whatever that meant.
———
The ochre sand, churned to mud by blood and violence, clung to my boots like a guilty conscience. Each step towards the far end of the colossal arena was heavy, not just with fatigue, but with the oppressive silence that had settled over us. A grim, welcome reprieve.
Bless the Vritra for small mercies—Delilah was slumped, her usual boundless energy drained to a weary shuffle, too tired to pester the Highblood with questions about Scythes or Retainers.
Iskander himself moved with a deceptive lightness, but his focus was entirely inward, lips occasionally moving soundlessly, his gaze fixed on the golden will-o'-wisp orbiting his head like a persistent, anxious firefly.
The sheer, unsettling weirdness of it should have grated more, but after watching him vaporize minotaurs and regrow limbs, it barely registered.
Exhaustion carved deep grooves in my awareness, leaving room only for the immediate: the ache in my shoulders from blocking that hammer blow, the gritty rasp of sand in my collar, the coppery taste of old blood in my mouth.
Yorick's voice, soft but cutting through the quiet like a knife, was a lifeline. "There. A portal." He pointed upwards, past the daunting tiers of empty, shadowed seating. High above the carnage we'd wrought, nestled in the gloom where the arena wall met the impossible void, a shimmering oval pulsed with familiar, cold light.
A Descension Chamber portal. The sight unclenched something tight in my chest. A month-long bender in the first tavern I could find, where the only monsters were hangovers and bad decisions.
"Ah, well," Delilah rasped, attempting a ghost of her usual cheer, "as a First Ascent goes, it was... pretty fun." She managed a weak grin.
"Sure!" Iskander chirped, instantly brightening, seemingly oblivious to the mountains of brass and bovine corpses cooling around us. "I had a lot of fun too!"
The golden wisp darted forward and thwacked him smartly on the back of the neck. "Ouch!" He rubbed the spot, shooting the light a mock-wounded look. Even his reprimands were bizarre.
I didn't grace the absurdity with a response. Just kept walking, boots crunching on sand and the occasional shard of bone. The portal beckoned, a promise of clean air and the comforting weight of sovereigns in my pouch. Get the wogarts out. Get paid.
Then Iskander stopped. "It means our roads divide here."
I halted, turning slowly. Sand gritted under my heel. "What kind of bullshit are you blabbing about now?" The words came out flat, drained of even the energy for proper annoyance. Couldn't he just leave?
He met my gaze, his expression unexpectedly serious beneath the drying gore. "It's better if I remain here. Seris asked me to stay... explore deeper... until I deem it necessary." He gestured vaguely at the vast, silent arena, the ominous tunnel mouths leading deeper into the tomb.
"Obviously, I can't drag you with me forever." He said it like it was a simple logistical issue, not a potential death sentence.
A flicker of cold pragmatism cut through the weariness. If Seris Vritra herself commanded it... that changed my destiny. Highblood Briand couldn't skin me for failing to return their scion if the Scythe of Sehz-Clar had countermanded the order.
"I need proof," I stated bluntly. "Proof you're alive. To show the Association. To... whoever needs to know." The logistics were a nightmare. How did you prove the continued existence of someone voluntarily staying in the Relictombs? Communication artifacts were notoriously unreliable across zones.
"That's even better, actually." Iskander shrugged, that unsettling nonchalance returning. "I don't really have anyone waiting for me out there. Apart from Seris... and Sevren, I guess..." He trailed off, a flicker of something unreadable in his eyes.
"What happened to your Bl—" Delilah started, her natural curiosity overcoming her exhaustion. Yorick, bless his cautious soul, clamped a hand over her mouth before she could finish.
Smart lad. Probing Highblood family tragedies in the Relictombs was a recipe for disaster. Never pry.
"I can sustain myself with aether," Iskander continued, seemingly unbothered by the interruption. He tapped his chest. "Don't worry about me. As for company..."
He smiled, a genuine, warm expression that looked utterly alien on his battle-grimed face as he glanced at the hovering wisp. "I still have my Mom."
The simplicity of it, the sheer, terrifying otherness, was almost profound. Sustained by cosmic energy, companioned by a ball of light containing a dragon's ghost. My world was contracts, coin, and avoiding conscription. His was... this.
"Let's get going," I said, my voice rougher than intended. I looked at Iskander Briand one last time—the grey skin, the intense eyes, the fading scars, the impossible power simmering beneath the surface, the bizarre affection for his luminous companion.
A walking anomaly. A weapon masquerading as a kid. A complication I was profoundly glad to be rid of. Yet...
"Thanks," I ground out, the word unfamiliar and awkward on my tongue. "For saving my ass back there." I jerked my head towards the carcass-strewn field.
"But," I added, the old cynicism reasserting itself with a familiar bite, "it's probably your fault we found ourselves hip-deep in brass-plated cows to begin with and whatever that thing was before."
A flicker of surprise, then a sheepish grin spread across his face. "I think I already apologized for that," he said, crossing his arms in a mock display of wounded pride.
A short, sharp bark of laughter escaped me—genuine, unexpected. "See you, Iskander." The lie tasted oddly neutral.
"See you," he echoed, his smile softening.
Delilah and Yorick mumbled their goodbyes, their expressions a mix of awe, exhaustion, and lingering concern. Then, without another word, I turned my back on the golden enigma and the silent, blood-soaked arena.
I ushered the two real wogarts towards the shimmering portal, towards the Descension Chamber, towards the mundane dangers of the upper levels.
The cool light of the portal enveloped us, washing away the ochre sand, the scent of blood and bull, and the unsettling presence of the aether-wielding Highblood.
Relief, profound and weary, washed over me. The job was done.