A glitch in the program

by Lonepone

Dark Whispers Pt. 2

He slashes at me, and I can barely pull my blade up in time to block it. He follows it up with more attacks, and I can hardly defend myself. He pushes me back, and I have no choice but to retreat. He continues coming at me, attacking in looping blows, making it hard for me to block him. I finally sidestep one of his downward blows, and the tip of his blade gets lodged in the cement floor.

I go on the offensive. I swing my blade at him, double handed, hard as I can. He pulls his blade out of the ground, deflecting my hit. I continue trying to hit him with double handed blows, but he easily deflects all of them with flicks of his wrist. I switch it up, and I lunge forward and try to stab at him. His blade is pointed down and away from him, and it would take him to long to pull his up and block me. The tip of my sword continues forward, is almost to him, when suddenly, he just isn’t there. My momentum throws me forward, knocking me off balance. I push myself up off the ground, and turn in a circle, looking for where he went. He’s gone. Just simply, vanished.

His voice emanates from somewhere up in the rafters. “This is almost too easy when I can break all the rules of reality”. I look up, and he’s jumped down from the rafters, is falling, straight towards me, the razor sharp tip of his blade pointed directly at me. I have no time to physically move out of the way, out of reach from his blade. I take a few steps, and he lands directly in front of me. The cement cracks under his feet.

Of course, I have to take this opportunity. “So you’re the Hulk now? Able to jump from tall heights, land unharmed, and crack cement?”

And he replies. “Eeyup” He stands, and looks at me. “I could crush you in an instance, you know. I don’t see why you don’t just give up”. He smiles. I smile back at him. We stand there for a few moments, waiting to see who’ll make the first move. I look him over, then down at my feet. I’m standing in a pile of dirt. I dig my foot slightly into the pile, and wait for the right moment. He waits a few more moments, then jumps across the gap in between us. I kick the dirt up into his face. He falters, rubs his eye. I must’ve gotten some into his eyes, more than I was hoping for. I take a step forward. I have him. I kick him in the chest, knocking him to the ground, and put the tip of my blade to his throat.

“Who should give up now?” I ask with a smirk.

“You” He raises a hand, and I can feel something close around my throat. He raises his hand higher, and the force holding me by the neck lifts me higher. I hang there, while he gets up, and rubs the last little bits of dirt out of his eyes. “You’re obviously forgetting that I’m some kind of all powerful god, able to bend reality to my will” He looks at me for a moment. He laughs, low and quiet at first, but then high and loud. The laugh of the unstable. “We’re Vadering! See, I got you up in the air, my hand out as if I was strangling you, and you’re hanging there, hands around your throat”

I’m starting to black out from lack of oxygen. And that lack of oxygen gives me a wonderful idea. I focus on him, on Runner, focus on him being blown backwards, being bashed against the wall, of him being in my grip, not the other way around. I focus, and eventually something inside me snaps, releasing the energy. He flies back, hits the wall. There’s an audible snap that reverberates around the empty room. He hangs there in the air, still in my grip. He looks up at me, and smiles. It’s such a sickening smile, that I slam him hard against the ground. Repeatedly. He hangs there, broken, bleeding, still smiling.

“There you go. That all you got?”

I throw him back against the wall again, then the floor, and the wall again. I can’t believe he’s still breathing, much less conscious, after that.

I lift him into the air, where I’ll have a good aim at him, nothing in the way. I walk over to where I dropped my blade, and pick it up. I admire it’s edges, the sharpness, it’s colors. White, with red accents. I wonder what it would look like in crimson.

I throw the sword at him. The blade of it sinks into his gut, and stays there.

He looks down at the protrusion, then up at me. “Good job. I didn’t”- his head falls as he coughs. When he looks back up, his lips are red with blood -”I didn't know if you had it in you. But you do” I lower him to the ground, thinking he’s no longer a threat. He collapses onto his hands and knees, coughing, painting the cold, hard, cement floor red. The sword is still in his stomach.

He manages to get to his feet, and pulls the blade out. He winces slightly as the metal slides out of him. He walks up to me, his blade in one hand, mine in the other. “A little hint for you” He takes a step forward. “Never”- another step -”ever”- and another one -”throw away”- he’s standing right next to me now -”you’re only weapon”. He looks at me. I look at him. He hands me back my blade. We continue staring each other down.

And a shard of icy coldness inserts itself into my stomach. I look down, and his blade is lodged in me, up to the hilt. And yet, I feel no pain, not yet at least. I fall to my knees, and I can feel all my energy being sapped out of me. All I feel now is cold, mind numbing coldness. I can’t imagine how he handled it. I can feel my life slipping out of me, losing myself. I wrap my left hand, the one not holding my sword, around the hilt of his. I pull it out. And now I feel the pain of it.

I’m left with a gaping hole in my lower abdomen, very little energy, and a blood red sword in each hand. And the element of surprise. Runner is standing a ways away, back to me, thinking he just finished me off. I stand unsteadily on my two feet. I take one tentative step forward, then another. I walk up behind him. I can feel that in about one more minute, I’ll have lost too much blood to do anything.

“Surprise, motha-fucka” I say, And stab him from behind in the heart. I push the blade harder, until it sinks in as far as it will go. I let go of the blade, and then walk in front of him.

He looks up at me, down at the blade, and then back up at me. “How?” he asks. “I thought I killed you?”

“You did. But not fast enough. So I took you down with me” I’m seeing black spots now due to lack of blood. But there’s enough in me to see one last thing. Him pawing at the blade sticking out of his chest, before finally dying. My vision fades out.

Author's Note:

I have one last chapter involving Lyra, and then this story is done. I might add a tiny epilogue, though.