For a heartbeat I felt the Daedric blade gripping the faintly glowing Light of Dawn even as we both continued our attacks. The Light of Dawn had sunk its entire width into the unnatural substance of the Xivilai's greatsword, and if it had been made of a natural material the daedric blade would've been shattered into pieces. Instead, it felt as though the sword had gripped onto the Ayleid blade and the immense strength of the Xivilai allowed it to continue with its strike. Before I could react, change stance or even comprehend what had happened, my arms gave way and what started off as a parry soon left me standing wide open with only my right hand still gripping the ornate hilt.
It was impossible to determine who was more surprised, myself or the daedra. In the space of a second the fight had changed completely, and while the attack had left me wide open the way our blades had locked together somehow wrenched the daedric weapon from its owner's massive blue paws. The strange, inhuman look of shock that crossed it features was almost comical if it hadn't recovered faster than what I could and grabbed me firmly by the wrist.
I was in trouble and I knew it just as well as what the Daedra did. It had me by my sword hand, engulfing most of my forearm and my entire hand it its massive digits in a grip so tight that my vambrace began to buckle in the vicing pressure. Pain lanced through my entire arm lifted me up into the air as its other arm snaked out and gripped me around the throat.
Darkness began to creep into my vision, and I found myself gasping and kicking futilely against the enormous strength of the Xivilai that held me out at arms distance. I couldn't breathe; my throat was being slowly constricted and the hideous blue-red demon seemed to be delighting in the pain it was putting me in. Within seconds blood began pounding in my skull, my heartbeat seeming to echo through my mind with the strength of war drums and I knew that I had only seconds before I would blackout from my brain being cut off my both oxygen and blood. My right hand grasping the Light of Dawn was slowly being crushed, and my left hand was clawing futilely at the massive digits starving me of oxygen and constricting all blood flow to my head. Both of my legs, rather than kicking fruitlessly at the ground were slamming my boots into its bare chest but I might as well have tried to kick down the Jerral mountains for all the effect they were having.
Even other the pounding of blood in my veins I could hear Lariel's cackle as she urged the demon to crush my throat, and time seemed to slow down once more as my body was filled with adrenaline. As it had on other occasions, when my mortal, conscious self was no longer capable the vampire took over. The depths of Glenvar, the bottom of Lake Arrius and the caverns of the Mythic Dawn were occasions where the survival instincts of the Daedric Vampire within me took over. With my brain shutting down and being choked to death by a daedra I felt the Vampire take control, my muscles filling with unnatural power even as my eyes opened and stared right into its own inky orbs.
The daedra suddenly had a look of almost childlike confusion as it felt and saw the changes that suddenly filled my being. Mostly hidden behind my mask, hood and armour there was no visible signs of the raw power that surged through me and twisted my body. The Xivilai was suddenly filled with confusion, the grip around my throat allowing it to intimately feel how my body bunched and tensed and the bones and muscles of my face twisted to suit the vampire. It was not used to such resistance from its enemies, especially mortals and that uncertainty made it slow to react.
With my right hand still trapped, I dropped my left from where it had been clawing at the Xivilai's hand around my throat, and instead felt the leather and metal covering my chest. All fear, pain and every scrap of emotion had been lost from the Vampire taking over and instead it had been replaced by a cold, unthinking logic. I felt the strange hardness gripped tightly in my left hand, the strange tingling sensation that ran through my body as it began to shut down, and everything seemed to grow dark and quiet like a veil was being drawn down over the world. Time seemed to stretch into eternity as my left hand was brought down savagely and hammered into a solid blue arm as thick as my waist.
Instantly the grip around my throat and arm was gone, and the sights and sounds of the ruin rushed into my skull with a thunderclap of noise and sensation. The marble steps rushed up to meet me with an explosion of pain, but this was welcomed as I sucked in a deep lungful of air and felt the darkness slide away from my mind.
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Bellowing, the Xivilai scrabbled at its wounded right arm and I landed on my back right at its clawed feet. Through little more than instinct I had drawn my skinning dagger from its sheath and buried it to the hilt in the creature's bicep, leaving its entire right arm almost entirely nerveless and hanging limply. It was roaring now in pain and anger as it pulled the blade from where it had stuck in the meat and bone of its massive arm with a spurt of daedric ichor. I had managed to keep my grip on the Light of Dawn and with little more than a feeble swipe of the blade I swung it around in an arc of gleaming skymetal, feeling it sink home and making the cries of the Xivilai reach a higher note.
Like a mountain of muscle and daedric flesh, the towering brute suddenly fell sideways as its leg dropped out from under it. The cut had been sloppy but the sheer cutting edge of the Light of Dawn had meant that the Xivilai was now suddenly missing its leg from halfway down its shin.
The daedra slammed into the ground like an anvil falling from the sky, only narrowly missing me as I lay drunkenly on the moss covered marble. Its bellows were now pained and terrible, ripping through my ears into my brain as it kicked its spurting stump in the air in agony. After my experiences with Dremora I didn't expect such a wound to keep it down for long and I still had its fellow to contend with. Even winded and dazed from the fall I still managed to roll out of the way of a downwards attack from a shrieking battleaxe, feeling the floor under me tremble with the impact as the axe struck home.
Leaving the wounded Daedra where it had fallen I rolled groggily to my feet. I was still struggling to breathe from being winded on the floor, and my vision was still filled with floating black spots that seemed to taunt my eyesight with every movement. The second Xivilai was pressing home in its attack, tearing its axe free with both hands in a shower of marble chunks and dust before charging me with blinding rage.
I felt every impact of the creature's feet as it ran towards me, and I merely stood my ground, judging my next attack and preparing myself for it. There was no fighting its immense strength and power behind its muscles, and to try to block the axe would be nothing more than folly. Instead I waited, standing fast until the beast had committed itself into another wild swing of its axe before stepping in and deflecting with a light slice of the Light of Dawn.
Before it could react I had stepped lightly on the balls of my feet well within reach of the Xivilai and inside its guard. The screaming axe was lightly deflected out of the way as I had ensured that instead of trying to block it I had used the entire Light of Dawn to guide the axe away and to my right. This threw the creature off balance, making it lose its grip on the axe's haft as it sunk into the floor once more.
In an arc of gleaming silver, the Light of Dawn cut downwards in a strike that had once left an Orc moneylender in separate pieces from forehead to groin. The Xivilai, half the size again of a grown man grunted as the Light of Dawn cut deep into the centre of its chest. Its sternum was sliced in half, the blade continuing down through its stomach before cutting its hips in two and exiting between its muscular thighs.
There was no cry of pain, roar of anger or snarl of hatred from the Xivilai as it felt the blade slice through bone, skin and meat. For several seconds that seemed to stretch on for hours we stood there, nose to nose as it doubled over in pain, releasing its grip on the axe where it had imbedded itself into the marble floor to clutch at the thin line of ichor oozing down its chest and stomach. I could see myself reflected in its massive almond shaped eyes as they widened in the sudden realisation of pain and although it didn't know death as mortals did, it knew agony all too well.
I stepped back carefully, flicking the black bile-like blood from the glowing Light of Dawn as the Xivilai suddenly coughed up a wad of bubbling gore. Whether it truly realised it or not it was already dead. One of its legs buckled under it as I kicked at a bare ankle, forcing its leg to slide on marble made slippery from gore. Its balance gone, it seemed to unfold like the pages of a book, the contents of its body spill out through the massive gash that had split it in half from the chest down. Ropes of gashed intestine slithered across the floor like serpents and with a gurgling death rattle the Xivilai slumped into the mess of its own organs and died.
The first had regained most of its composure and was raising itself up despite its wounded arm to try to claw its way towards me. Badly wounded and bleeding out from the severed stump of a leg, there was nothing it could do to stop me from taking a few short paces, cutting its good hand off at the wrist before spearing it between the shoulder blades as I strode past.
LORD OF THE SEAS
The sea does not bow… it judges.
Julien Fronterra, had everything—fame, legacy, and a shot at immortality in the world of combat sports. But in his moment of triumph, his body betrayed him. As his vision faded and regret swallowed him whole, he made one final plea—to live again, to find his own people, to carve out a life worth more than just titles. The gods listened.
“A saga with mythic depth and tidal stakes.”
Chapters being posted 3-4 times a week: Wednesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays.
