Ninth Jump (Light of Terra DLC 1: Part 9)

The Herald and the Decapitator

            The room was filled with sparks and the roar of a chainsword, the occasional ting as the swords clashed in the darkness of ship. The glow of his tattoos, the sparks from the clash of our weapons, and the subtle glow of the chainsword were the only bits of light that either of us had to see the other… He didn’t need such things, however. Only I required the light.

            I parried each of his strikes, occasionally getting caught by the extension from the top of his cleaver that seemed to be placed just for the purpose of stabbing into his opponent’s shoulders, their arms… I couldn’t even see the purpose of my armor at this point as it did little to truly stop any of the injuries that he imposed on me. With every attack, he simply dipped out of the way of the chainsword, leaving tracks of torn metal and severed pipes in its wake whenever we got close to other objects.

            With a heavy grunt I brought the chainsword down with both hands, his blade turning to parry the attack. His two free hands came up to slam into my stomach at once and push me back, causing me to stumble in the process. The mandrake followed up with a sharp kick to my chest, sending me straight to the ground with a thud and a ding as I landed into a pile of pipes. By the time I recovered, his sword was coming around in a wide sweep.

            My free hand grabbed a pipe and brought it up to block the sword, the pipe being pushed close with the extension of his cleaver slowly pushing into my cheek. It was a sharp pain, the taste of decades-old blood (If there was such a thing) and metal filling my mouth and the giggles of the Mandrake in my ears. He leaned forward, pushing the pipe ever closer. With a quick twist of my body and a wild swipe of my chainsword, I knocked away his sword, barely managing to keep it from tearing a chunk out of my cheek in the process. On the return swing, I managed to glance his thigh with the chain, sending blood and flesh into the air in the process.

            I dropped the pipe and pushed myself forward, my arm coming up to slam my first into the part of his leg that I had just tore into. That earned me a rather high pitched, unearthly shriek as I forced him back with my shoulder. The mandrake simply hopped back, his leg obviously a hint more unstable after the injury, but he could still stand on it.

            “Well... At least I drew some blood…” I muttered, the warmth spreading from my cheek to my jaw reminding me that he had done the same… Not counting the other scratches and holes in me from before. “Since I may die here… Mind if I monologue?” I asked the creature with no real reason for doing so. He simply re-positioned his sword and showed his teeth, his featureless face spreading and then being replaced by a maw of teeth that could only be called spears. “I have killed more than you have in your millennia… In just over a century…”

            I started as he stepped forward, I parried and brought my sword around to keep him at bay with a quick swipe. “I am no hero…” I stepped up, bringing my sword around on a return strike, the mandrake ducking and bringing two of his arms out to slam into my gut. I brought my knee up to block the first one, the second managing to hit me with reduced force by denying him the full motion. “I am no king... no emperor…”

            He knocked my leg out of the way and brought his cleaver around, forcing me to drop back and roll away to get some distance. “I don’t even truly run the planet I helped colonize. I am simply a murderer. The one who single-handedly killed an entire planet with only his hands…” I stepped up and took a few wild swipes at the mandrake, the very slight hesitation that I felt slowly ebbing away. Even after a century, I still hesitated just a hint.

            My opponent dodged and parried, taking a step back as I continued forward. “Over seven billion people… I watched over seven billion people die… Every face…” Sparks filled the air as he parried another strike. “Every voice…” Another attack went off to the side as I continued forward, never giving him the chance to counter. I remembered back when I was careful… When death was something I hated… Something I avoided. “Every drop of blood that I shed!” My weapon caught his sword, the teeth digging into the metal of his sword as I pushed forward, willingly allowing the extension to dig into my shoulder just so that I could look him in the eye.

            “I killed every single person… Men… Women… Children… The old, the sick, the healthy, it didn’t fucking matter!” My free hand reached out as he tried to pull away, my fingers latching onto one of his wrists as another hand was wildly punching at my ribs. I grunted and gasped with every strike till I eventually pulled my sword away, metal splinters flying through the air as I tore it free. With a wild strike, I brought it down into one of his arms, blood and gore flying into the air as his limb was severed, his jaw opening wide in pain.

            The mandrake stumbled away, my hand releasing him so that he was free to do so. “Do you know why I continued the slaughter in the end? I didn’t do it because I liked it… I hated it… I despised my actions… Those screams imprinted on my very psyche…” With a cry of anger, he rushed forward, wildly swinging at me as I did my best to parry and deflect his blows until one caught me by surprise. The blade switched from one hand to another and went down toward my neck. Without thinking, I brought my left hand up to try and catch it… Terrible idea. It pushed through my arm, down to the elbow before the return sweep removed it from shoulder.

            With a voiceless cry, I fell back to the ground, blood gushing from my arm as I focused on simply staying conscious, the chill of shock hitting me as if death had finally came to collect its dues. The creature advanced, his sword coming up and then down like a guillotine. Fighting that pull to the end, I grabbed my chainsword and raised up as quickly as I could. I drove the weapon straight into his chest as his sword came into my other arm at an odd angle, the metal going through the shoulder into the bones, severing tendons and arteries as it went.

            He froze, blood and gore flying till we were both covered and my nerves were severed, releasing the trigger on the sword in the process. “I… I did it so I… So I could stop it. So I could reverse what I had started…” I sniffled, my face slowly going pale as I felt consciousness slowly drain from me. “And be the only one… to remember the atrocities that I committed… Th-The self-imposed torment a-and guilt… for Remorse…” The creatures eyes widened as if he had just learned who he had been hunting as his own life drained away from him. It was one of terror, but also a sense of pride. I let go of the sword’s hilt and simply leaned in to rest my head against the flat metal that protected the internals of the sword. Blood-coated or not.

            I could hear footsteps, I thought… Interesting… Wonder how long it would take for me to finish bleeding out. “Odd final thoughts… Jumping fucks everyone’s mind up…” I stated, my lips curling into a small smile. “Knowing myself… I am not dead yet…” My voice trailed off, the air exhaling slowly as everything went dark. No light at the end of the tunnel, no afterlife, not even waking up back home. Instead, I woke up back on the planet that I called my home for this universe with the green-haired woman, Lina, standing over me, apparently checking my vitals.

            All I could do was grin, a few warm tears running down my cheeks. Oddly enough… I felt… Better… Not physically, hell no… but, mentally… “Heh… I am a stubborn bastard…” Granted, when I spoke, Lina jumped about ten feet high and let out a scream of both surprise, joy, and maybe indicating that she was on a drug of some kind.