Jerimoth's jaw tightened behind the helt. He could feel it now, the heat in his chest that he hadn't felt in a long ti. This was getting personal…
He closed the distance.
The greatsword ca in low, sweeping for her legs. Judgnt leaped over it, using a burst from her wings to gain height, and hurled both halves of her broken spear down at him like javelins. Jerimoth batted one aside with the flat of his blade but the other caught the edge of his pauldron and punched through, burying itself two inches into his shoulder.
He didn't slow down.
He reached up, ripped the spear half out of his shoulder, and threw it aside. Blood welled from the wound and ran down his arm in a thin stream, soaking into the leather beneath his armor.
Judgnt was already descending. Without her spear she had nothing but her tentacles and her fists, and she chose the tentacles. Both whipped down at him like black lightning, one high, one low.
Jerimoth raised his greatsword and marked it weightless. The blade moved with impossible speed, intercepting the high tentacle with a ringing clash. The low one caught him across the ribs and the impact lifted him off his feet.
He twisted mid-air, boots finding the ground again, and slid backward through the rubble. His ribs scread. Sothing in there was cracked, maybe broken.
Judgnt's spear halves flew back to her hands, recalled by the tether of light that connected them to her will, and she was already charging.
Jerimoth planted his feet and swung.
This ti he didn't shift the weight. He swung the greatsword at its natural mass with everything his body had, and it caught Judgnt across her guard. Both spear halves buckled inward and the force drove her backward, her boots tearing twin furrows through the ground. A tentacle whipped around and dug into the earth behind her like an anchor, stopping her slide.
She coughed. More blood. Her arms were shaking.
She spread her bloody grin wider.
"Co on."
Jerimoth scread at her.
"Why won't you just run!?"
He was on her before the echo faded. The greatsword slamd down and she rolled sideways, the blade cratering the stone where she'd been. She ca up swinging, driving one spear half into the gap between his greaves and kneecap. The tip bit flesh and Jerimoth's leg almost gave out.
He answered by marking the greatsword and throwing it.
The blade went weightless, crossing the distance between them faster than she could track. It caught her across the torso and sent her cartwheeling through the air, limbs flailing, blood scattering like rain. She crashed into a slab of upturned stone and the slab cracked down the middle from the force of her body hitting it.
The greatsword returned to Jerimoth's hand before she stopped sliding.
Judgnt lay in the rubble. Her body wasn't moving.
Jerimoth stared at her, breathing hard, blood running down his arm and pooling inside his gauntlet. His shoulder throbbed. His ribs ground against each other with every breath.
Then, slowly, a hand reached up from the rubble and gripped the edge of the broken slab.
Judgnt pulled herself up.
One of her tentacles was hanging limp, barely twitching. The other coiled weakly behind her. Her left arm hung at a bad angle and her face was a mask of red. She was shaking from the tips of her fingers to the roots of her teeth.
She planted her feet.
"Is that…" She spat a mouthful of blood sideways. "Is that all?"
Jerimoth's hands were shaking too, but not from damage. The anger in his chest had turned cold and sharp and it sat behind his ribs like a blade.
He had known people like this. Not on the other side of a battlefield. On his side. People who smiled when they bled. People who laughed when they should have scread. People who threw themselves at death like it owed them sothing.
He had buried every single one of them.
"You're not brave," he said, and his voice ca out low, almost quiet. "You are not fierce. You are not admirable."
He stepped forward.
"You are wasteful."
The word hit harder than any of his strikes had.
Judgnt blinked. For the first ti, sothing other than that bloody grin crossed her face. Not hurt, exactly. Confusion, maybe. Like a dog that had been barked at in a language it didn't understand.
It lasted less than a second.
The grin ca back. Wider, sharper and even redder.
"Call whatever you want…"
She raised both halves of her broken spear despite the arm that clearly wasn't working right. The tentacle behind her coiled tight, straining, forcing itself back into function.
"I'm still standing."
Jerimoth gripped his greatsword with both hands.
"Not for long."
He rushed forward and the ground cracked beneath his boot.
Judgnt t him head on.
The spear of light and the greatsword collided and the sound was sothing beyond tal on tal. It was the sound of two people who had decided, for entirely different reasons, that retreat was not an option.
Jerimoth hamred her. Blow after blow, each one heavy enough to crater stone, each one carrying the weight of every soldier he had watched die with a smile. His greatsword moved in brutal arcs, not elegant, not tactical. Just force and fury.
And Judgnt took every hit.
She didn't block cleanly. She couldn't. Her tentacle caught what it could and her broken spear deflected the rest at ugly angles that sent shockwaves up her already ruined arms. But she kept swinging back. Every ti the greatsword drove her down, she ca back up with a counter. A slash to his forearm. A tentacle strike to his ribs. The blunt end of her spear jabbed into the wound on his shoulder.
Jerimoth grunted and caught her across the face with the flat of his blade.
She spun in the air and crashed to the ground.
Got up.
He swept her legs.
She hit the dirt face first.
Got up.
He slamd the poml of his greatsword into her sternum and she folded like paper, blood bursting from her lips.
Got up.
Each ti slower. Each ti shakier. Each ti with that sa impossible, infuriating, blood-soaked grin plastered across her ruined face.
Jerimoth was breathing so hard the air whistled through his visor. His shoulder wound had opened wider and his ribs sent a knife of pain through him with every swing.
He didn't understand her.
He had given her every chance. Every opening. Every reason to run. And she stood there, broken and bleeding and grinning like this was exactly where she wanted to be.
The Radiant Seraph circled overhead, its ivory wings catching the light. Even it seed to understand that its master was not interested in being saved.
Judgnt coughed, and this ti more blood ca out than air. She was swaying now. Her wings flickered at her back, sputtering like a candle in wind, barely holding their form.
She raised her spear anyway.
"Your turn," she said.
Jerimoth stared at her through the V of his visor. His grip on the greatsword was white-knuckled and trembling, and he couldn't tell anymore if it was from exhaustion or rage or sothing else entirely.
Sothing that, if he was being honest with himself, felt uncomfortably close to respect.
He shoved the feeling down.
"Fine," he said. "If death is what you're looking for, I'll be the one to give it to you. But know this."
He raised his blade.
"I'll hate you for it."
Judgnt's bloody grin didn't waver.
"Good."
They moved… however, in that mont a cold and vast aura suddenly washed upon the battlefield.
"Oh no… I can't have that, I don't want to get on Anike's bad side."
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