Reaching for another arrow, Kari found her quiver empty. Drawing her heavy-
bladed knife, she cut the bowstring with a high pitched snap. Jamming the handle of the knife into the carefully crafted metal socket at one end, she twisted sharply, locking it into place. Twirling her heavy-bladed spear over her head, she slashed at the nearest mutant.
Seconds later, she was surrounded and fighting off foe after foe with barely
enough time to breathe between them. Only those directly in her path bothered to attack her. Barely appearing to notice her at all, those that she could not reach began climbing down the other side of the wall.
Hopelessness weighed down on Kari once more. Despite the fact that any mutant that came within her reach died, many more were flowing past and down into the courtyard. Those she killed seemed less intent on fighting, and more intent on getting through. They only cared about getting over the wall.
Though Kari could hear Gabriel and Sam shouting to each other over the howls of the mutant hoard, the soldiers seemed to have all been killed, trampled, or thrown from the wall.
Wondering if killing the Apostle would break whatever control she held over
these things, Kari began searching for her between kills. With mutants pressing in on all sides, her world was very small, and she was unable to spare the attention to looking for things outside of the reach of her spear. The Apostle could have already walked past ten steps away and Kari would have never known it.
Taking a deep breath, she cleared her mind, reaching out with crippled senses.
Though creatures of darkness were supposed to have an affinity toward one another, she’d been born with that sense as good as blinded. Every now and then she could catch glimmers of the things her brothers could feel so easily, but she really had to concentrate, and the middle of a battle was a poor place for concentration. Still, she had to try.
As mutants began to flow past her lowered guard, they hardly even seemed to
notice she was there. Though they pushed, jostled, and bumped past her, some stepping on her tails, they seemed more intent on getting over the wall than on killing her.
Straining for all she was worth, Kari felt nothing. It was pointless. She couldn’t do it, and the Apostle would make it to safety through the Gate as Gabriel predicted.
Frustration and anger warred against each other in Kari’s heart. Her self-esteem had taken some pretty brutal hits of late, and her failure to sense the Apostle was not helping. Making one final, desperate effort, she found, to her surprise, that she could feel something like a dark stain on the fabric of reality creeping up the wall nearby.
Twirling her spear, Kari leapt onto the railing on the courtyard side of the wall, dashing to where the Apostle would appear. Fighting like a woman possessed, she cleared the wall top around her, washing the blade of her spear with blood of various colors.
As a black cloaked figure leapt over the railing, landing before her in a crouch, Kari grinned. Now it was time to end this. The Apostle had made a fool of her, and shown her the holes in her own identity. Even worse, she’d harmed countless innocent lives with her teachings and actions. She would pay with her life.
“The two tailed fox,” the Apostle’s mechanically distorted voice held surprise as she drew her black-bladed rapier. “I don’t know how you managed to follow me, but a dead fox follows no one.”
“And a dead wolf devours no sheep,” Kari spat as she threw herself at her enemy.
Crashing together, Kari and the Apostle began a duel like few that had ever been witnessed. Each was a master of her weapon, and knew the capabilities of her own body intimately. If there was an edge between them it lay with Kari due to a hair more speed and an eyelash more strength, however the Apostle made up for it with centuries more practice with her blade.
Flowing together, they attacked and defended as if they could see the other’s
movements a second before they were made. Their blades spat off showers of sparks as they clashed together almost constantly. To the casual observer they moved so fast that the human eye could not follow, seeming to blur from one stance to the next, from attack to parry, to deadlock.
The mutants flowing over the wall gave them a wide birth as they flitted around, striking, blocking, punching, kicking, and flipping over each other or off the railings for better position. Though they fought savage and dirty, pulling no figurative or literal punches, it was a beautiful and terrible thing to watch.
Seeming to have an infinite reservoir of strength, the Apostle never flinched, wavered, or slowed her relentless assault. Having never fought anyone so close to her own abilities before, Kari felt her stamina depleting rapidly. Despite the Apostle’s best efforts, Kari began pushing her onto the defensive more often. She could feel victory coming toward her inch by bloody inch.
Exhilaration burned in Kari’s breast like a red-hot iron as she swept the Apostle’s legs and slammed the butt of her spear down on her wrist hard enough to numb her hand.
Kicking the sword away Kari leveled the blade of her spear at the Apostle’s
throat. Victory was hers, and now the Apostle could never destroy another world ever again.
“Do you honestly believe that killing me will give you an identity of your own,”
the Apostle’s mechanically distorted voice reached Kari’s ears over the sounds of battle.
Kari froze. She could feel the Apostle’s touch on her mind, like a cold, dark hand rooting through her skull.
“What is it like to live your life so much for the benefit of others that you’ve completely forgotten about yourself? I can’t imagine. It’s left you so hollow I can see right through you.”
“Shut up,” Kari growled, driving her spear at the Apostle’s throat. In her outrage, Kari missed, her blade drawing sparks from the ground beside the Apostle’s head.
“Do you honestly believe that killing me will somehow create an identity for you?
You’ll be known as the slayer of the Apostle of Cain. Then what? Is that who you are?
Is that who you want to be? Will that define you?”
“Stop it,” Kari growled, raising her spear above her head to deliver the finishing blow. “I’ll kill you.”
“Revenge is what drives me. It’s the reason I do everything I do. It’s who I am, what I am, and all I want out of life. I know myself. Such a simple thing, yet you cannot say the same. Go ahead. Strike me down with all of your misplaced anger. Killing me will not give you an identity, not even if you took up my cloak and mask to continue my work after I am gone. You’d only be a shadow trying to copy the person who cast it.
You are nobody. You are no one. You will never be anything more than the protector of two men that need no protection.”
“No, ” Gabriel screamed behind her. “Stop! She has to live!”
Slamming into her back with enough force to stagger her, Gabriel tried to wrestle her to the ground, but she was far stronger than he was. With a minimal struggle, she threw him off, but she was too late.
“A gift to see you on your way into hell,” the Apostle said as her hand shot out to grip Kari’s leg tightly. “You can’t see it, but I can. I see what is in the deepest, forgotten recesses of your heart. Your true enemy has never been me. Oh no, your true enemy is none other than yourself. Now rot in your own living hell for eternity!”
Everything was swallowed in darkness, and Kari fell into it, spinning this way and that, in a world that no longer seemed to make sense. As she fell through nothingness, the Apostle’s laughter followed her.