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Last of The Fae Chapter 164: Oathbreaker
🕑 Added 2025-05-04 16:09:58 +0000 UTCSliding back across the scorched terrain, Thane slammed his staff into the earth with a thunderous crack. A stone pillar erupted in front of him, jagged and raw, rising just in time to intercept the twin chakrams that tore through the air like enchanted hellhounds.
But the stone barely stood for a breath. Heat lines rippled across its surface before the searing blades burst through in a shower of molten shards, slicing the barrier to ribbons.
Thane didn't flinch. Planting his heels, he spun his staff in a tight arc, conjuring a cyclone of force that bent the air into a vortex around him. The chakrams ricocheted off the defensive wind, veering off in twin streaks of blue flame.
But like cursed spirits, they returned.
The blades curved back, hunting their mark with tireless precision. As if alive, they swooped down again, glowing with an eerie sentience—relentless predators forged of flame and steel.
Still, Thane moved with poetry in his limbs.
He danced between the blades with breathtaking grace. His staff flowed like water in his hands, parrying each assault in sweeping strikes that deflected heat and steel with barely an inch to spare. His footwork was flawless, gliding across the ground that shifted subtly beneath him—guided by his magic, as if the earth itself obeyed his will.
The whirlwind battle lit up the field in flashes of blue fire and silver magic. The air shimmered from heat, the ground scorched with every near-miss.
But not even dragons are invincible.
Thane’s robes hung in tatters, scorched to ash at the shoulders. His bare chest was marked with fine cuts and singed flesh, blood glinting like ruby in the firelight. Yet his grin never once faltered. In fact, it widened—feral, exhilarated. Where the dragon roost had tested his raw strength, this was a test of art, finesse, and instinct.
And he was thriving.
‘Speaking of technique…’ Thane thought, his senses suddenly flaring with alarm.
A faint ripple in the air behind him. Subtle, yet undeniable. Heat distortion, mana displacement—an illusion evaporating like mist in the sun.
The Sworn had returned.
He emerged from thin air like a mirage, the shimmering cloak of his concealment dropping in waves. His dagger glinted in the firelight, wreathed in flickering sigils, and the heat shimmered around him as though reality itself rejected his presence.
In perfect synchrony, the twin chakrams shifted tactics. No more spirals. No feints.
They lunged like bullets—one from either side—closing in at blistering speed. And Thane stood between them, outnumbered three-to-one.
Thane’s eyes flicked rapidly between the Sworn and the twin chakrams hurtling toward him, each glowing like falling stars. It was only then that he fully appreciated the assassin’s coordination—every movement, every angle, perfectly executed to leave no room for retreat or error. He had been herded into a kill zone. A trap. And it had been done with surgical precision.
Impressive, Thane thought. In that instant, a strange admiration stirred in him. He found himself briefly wondering how someone like Dumbledore would fare against a killer this calculated. Would even the old warlock’s fabled cunning be enough? It was a question for another day.
Now was the time to act.
In one explosive motion, Thane slammed his heel into the ground, sending a tremor down the stone. A ridge of jagged earth erupted in front of him, intercepting the chakrams. They collided with the upheaved rock, carving molten furrows through it—but it bought him the fraction of a second he needed.
Simultaneously, Thane's staff plunged into the ground, roots coiling deep and fast to anchor it like a divine spear planted in the bones of the earth.
Using the embedded staff like a pole, Thane leaped, his body a blur of motion as he swung himself up and around in a perfect arc. The Sworn, already mid-lunge, struck nothing but ghosted air—his enchanted dagger slicing through a fading afterimage.
And then came the counterstrike.
Momentum and gravity met in a single devastating instant as Thane completed his arc and brought both feet crashing into the Sworn’s back with the weight of a falling comet.
CRACK.
The sickening crunch of ribs and spine folding under force echoed across the battlefield. The Sworn was flung forward like a ragdoll, skipping across the stone with trails of scorched air following his flight path.
Even as he struck the ground and tumbled violently, he managed to twist with inhuman agility, rolling onto his feet in a shaky crouch. But it was clear from the unnatural way his body moved that something was broken—and not just one something.
Thane landed in a low crouch, still gripping the shaft of his staff, eyes narrowed.
"You’re skilled,” he said, breathing steady despite the clash. “But you made one mistake.”
The Sworn lifted his head, blood trickling down the side of his mouth, yet his expression was unreadable as if the pain was registering.
"You locked the knowledge I desire behind your demise," Thane said, voice low and dangerous, his glowing eyes fixed on the battered form before him. "Now that you've realized you don't possess the means to kill me… has your position changed?"
"I am Sworn. My Oath is my life," the assassin replied with hollow finality, his tone still devoid of emotion. "In my death, you will find answers."
Thane tilted his head, a rueful smile tugging at the corner of his lips. There was something poetic in the assassin's loyalty—twisted, certainly, but not without merit. His mind raced, weighing the layers of meaning in the Sworn’s words. There was more to this than blind loyalty. The man wanted to die. Needed to die.
"Very well then," Thane murmured, raising his staff, mana coiling through the wood like a living serpent. "Let’s hope your death proves as enlightening as this fight has been... if not half as entertaining."
The Sworn gave a single, spasmodic twitch—his shattered limbs moving on sheer willpower alone—as he lurched forward, still trying to fulfill his contract despite the ruin of his body.
Tapping the ground with the heel of his foot, Thane released a pulse of mana deep into the earth. A shimmering ripple spread out from the point of impact like heat distorting the air, and in moments, the firm ground beneath them shifted. What had once been solid became unstable, a sprawling quagmire the size of a football field, the soil turning dark and wet like churned molasses.
The Sworn’s feet sank immediately, dragged down to the knees in seconds—but the assassin didn’t panic. In a blaze of reaction, the blue flames cloaking his body flared wildly, rising higher as he summoned his will to purify the ground beneath him. Heat poured off him in waves, trying to bake the sodden terrain back into solidity.
But Thane had been waiting for that.
The moment the Sworn committed his flames downward, the trap was sprung.
With a thunderous crack, the entire field erupted. From the depths of the mire, dozens—hundreds—of jagged stone spears tore free, transfigured from liquified earth into glittering spires of obsidian and steel-veined quartz. They surged upward in an instant, a forest of blades erupting all around the Sworn, aiming to pierce, shred, and entomb.
The assassin barely had time to twist his torso, avoiding a fatal strike to the heart—but he wasn’t fast enough to escape unscathed. A spike sliced clean through his left thigh, another drove into his shoulder, and a third grazed his ribs, tearing the armor from his side in a burst of blue fire.
Blood sprayed across the glistening spikes, hissing into steam where it met the still-burning stone. Despite the agony, the Sworn still silent, refusing or unable to scream.
And from above on a pillar of solid stone, Thane watched with an unreadable expression as the field settled into a brutal silence, the only sound the faint crackle of residual flame.
"I look forward to my answers," Thane spoke into the silence as he formed a final earthen spike in his hand and sent it flying down.
