The Vampire & Her Witch-Chapter 1390: An Emperor Falls (Part Two)
The elk came off the rock wall with the same explosive power that had carried it through the rapids, head low, antlers sweeping forward in a wide arc meant to catch anything in its path. The ground shuddered under the impact of its hooves, and the sound of its charge filled the hollow, echoing off the walls of rock and timber like the first notes of a war drum.
Owain moved into the angle of attack.
He didn’t move away, not entirely. Rather, he stepped just far enough off the line of the elk’s charge to prevent the sort of direct clash that defined the bull elk’s battles with others of its own kind.
Owain had slain enough demons to know that he couldn’t win in a contest of strength against something that had such an overwhelming advantage in size and strength, so he didn’t try. He had nothing to prove, and an attempt to take the charge head-on would reduce him to nothing more than a beast like the one he’d come to kill.
Instead, he slipped into the narrow space between the rightward sweep of antlers and the elk’s left shoulder. It was the most dangerous response possible and the only one that mattered, because every other direction put him further from the kill, and he had not come here to be cautious.
Fallen Claw spun in his hands as he gripped the blade with his left hand, using a strong block to deflect the attack and keep his blade between himself and the elk. It was risky, but it offered the best chance of getting past the antlers to threaten the beast itself, and for the most part, the technique worked.
One of the tines of the antlers still caught him. Not fully, not the bone-crushing impact of a direct hit, but one of the smaller tines on the bull’s rack struck his shoulder as the elk swept past. It was a glancing blow that Owain allowed to turn him sideways even as the antler tine tore through several layers of his quilted gambeson.
Pain flared in his arm, sharp and immediate, accompanied by a surge of power and fury that made him feel more alive than anything else could.
The elk had landed the first blow, but he was inside its reach now.
For a single, frozen moment, he was close enough to feel the heat radiating from the elk’s massive body and smell the animal musk and sweat and blood. The elk tried to pivot, to bring the rack around for another sweep, but its bulk worked against it in the confined space. Its hooves churned the soft ground, seeking purchase, and for a single heartbeat, it was vulnerable.
Mountain Breaker would have been poorly suited to this moment, but Fallen Claw was like a living thing in Owain’s hands, slicing through the air with all the speed and power that Owain could put into a powerful thrust as he pivoted from defense to attack.
Owain’s thrust was exactly the same as the one he would have used to target the gaps between the plates of a knight’s armor, driven not just by the powerful muscles in his arms, but the uncoiling of his entire body. His legs pushed off the ground, his waist turned, arms extended as every muscle, every bone, and every sinew in his body united behind the tip of his blade.
He aimed low on the chest, directly behind the elk’s front leg, and the point of Fallen Claw parted fur and flesh with equal ease as it slid between the ribs, seeking the massive beast’s heart with deadly accuracy.
-HHHHHHEEEEETTTT!- 𝑓𝘳𝘦𝑒𝑤𝑒𝘣𝘯ℴ𝘷𝘦𝓁.𝑐𝑜𝑚
The elk let out a bleat of shock and pain as Owain delivered a killing blow in a single strike. Its legs buckled, and pain flared through its body once again as the blade tore free from the wound when its massive bulk crashed to the ground.
-hhheeeeee-
-heee-
For a moment, the elk pawed at the earth, struggling to stand once again. To bring its rack of antlers to bear on the man who had hurt it. To take that man’s life in a final act of retribution. But it could barely draw breath, and no matter how much it pawed the earth, its hooves found no purchase on the soft ground to turn back to face the man who had killed it.
-heeeeeeeeeeee-
With a final, mournful cry, the beast fell silent, its final breath hanging like a frozen cloud of steam in the cold winter air until that too faded away.
Owain stood over the elk. Blood covered his hands and forearms and had splashed across his chest and face, mixing with the cold sweat of exertion. Fallen Claw hung at his side, the blade dark and wet. His breathing came hard but even, the controlled recovery of a man who trained for exactly this kind of sustained effort.
For a span of several heartbeats, nothing moved. Not the lords on the slopes, not the huntsmen at the edge of the hollow, not even the hounds, who had gone silent with the instinct of animals who recognized the moment that death walked among them.
This was the only honest moment of his day. The only moment when the calculations stopped, and the performances ended. It was the moment when Owain Lothian stood exactly where he was supposed to stand.
For a moment, he didn’t have to think about Jocelynn and the mess her plans had made of his efforts. He didn’t have to worry about the lords watching, the coronation in two days, or the hollow words of praise he would speak at his father’s funeral.
There was only the kill. And in the kill, something that felt, if not like peace, then like the nearest thing to it that Owain Lothian had known in a very long time.
But moments like this, as much as he wanted to savor them, were never long enough. One heartbeat, perhaps two, and then the hollow filled with noise again as the gathered lords, knights, and servants erupted in cheers and applause for the man who would soon become their next Marquis.
