Zael hadn't exactly been drowning in options when it came to how he could retaliate, given that he had needed to impale himself on his opponent's sword to protect Rafael. Even so, when his skull cracked against the human's, he regretted his choice. Stars exploded across his vision, and despite having braced for impact, he created no opening for himself—he was at least as stunned as his opponent.
He had hoped that [Innate Toughness] would overcome the level difference, but apparently the enemy warrior had a similar skill at his disposal, or in an even worse case, Zael was fighting against someone not one elevation higher but two.
Both of them staggering backward, the human unsheathed his sword from Zael's shoulder. The fire-like sting of metal sliding through flesh felt as invigorating as it did painful, thanks to how intensely blood was suddenly pounding through his veins. He used the surge of energy to respond properly this time: in one smooth motion, he scooped up his dropped axe and spun into an attack, slashing the enormous two-handed weapon downward. Sparks flew as the human barely reacted in time, diverting the skill-empowered blow with his sword.
Not two elevations higher, then. Just tough. A tenth-elevation warrior would have parried that blow with time to spare.
Momentum carried Zael's weapon into the floor, and tile exploded as a small crater appeared beneath their feet. A random waiting room obviously wasn't meant to contain a fight between warriors of eighth and ninth elevation. Dust filled the air and muddied their vision, but Zael was already spinning, pivoting and extending the motion into a full-circle rotation to build up speed. He aimed on instinct, using intuition for how the human was most likely to move.
He guessed correctly, but the human still caught the black metal of Zael's axe on his blade. The sound that blew through the room deafened him and spawned a shockwave, blasting air all around and throwing up even more dust and debris. The human grunted and held firm, feet cracking tile as Zael bore down on him. The sword shook, and Zael's arms did too as he strained with all his might. But he failed to win the contest of strength.
Not bad, he couldn't help but acknowledge in the back of his mind. Few people could match him in that regard, even with a level advantage.
The swordsman heaved away Zael's axe, then peeled backward, forcing them to both disengage for a second. They breathed hard, appraising each other. Then Zael rushed in, feinted an attack from the left, and succeeded with the misdirection. He used the opening to kick the human in the stomach, activating a skill to empower the blow. Lord Barrow blasted through the brick wall separating the headquarters from the street, and Zael jumped through after him without the slightest hesitation.
In most circumstances, a full elevation could make a fight nearly insurmountable. Yet this human hadn't challenged just any eighth-elevation warrior, but the son of Mizar Keresi himself—Mizar Keresi, Primus of the First Blood, a demon Titled by the Primogenitor's Blood as Savage of the Wastes. This human might have spent all day spoiling for a fight, but the fundamental difference between him and Zael was that there hadn't been a moment in Zael's life where he hadn't been itching to spill blood.
Maybe if the worm had a Title, Zael would have been worried.
A fist to the stomach, manifesting as if from thin air, laid low his surging confidence. His breath left him in a gasp, defenses crumbling under the sheer power behind the strike.
What? How? Zael's kick had landed true; the human should have been grounded for at least a moment. Instead, Barrow had met Zael's pursuit with a punch to the gut.
Zael barely recovered in time, and the swordsman's blade carved a red line down his forearm for the lapse in judgment—Zael was lucky that was all he suffered. Two steps became five became ten as he retreated from a furious onslaught of sword slashes, so fast that he almost couldn't keep up. A weapon art. Each of those attacks had the power to cut straight through a limb if it landed. Zael grimly reminded himself that a full elevation was nothing to treat lightly, even if he had started the fight strong. Zael might be the more skilled fighter here, and be powerful for his level, but this wasn't a duel to approach with anything but complete focus.
At the end of the flurry, Zael prepared to activate one of his own weapon arts—
—but then the fight ended with three spoken words.
"[Zero Point Stasis]," Rafael said.
Power exploded behind Zael as if an archmage had detonated their mana core. The three emerald gems affixed within the bracelet on his wrist shattered, offering no resistance whatsoever. The furious fist of one of the gods themselves scooped Zael in a crushing grip—then squeezed with all the heavens' combined might.
He came to such a sudden stop it felt as if he'd teleported into a block of starmetal. Never in his life had he experienced such immediate and incontestable strength. The only memory that remotely compared was decades ago: one of his earliest training sessions, his father pinning him to the ground with a boot on the chest. A Titled's strength against a child's.
By instinct, Zael fought with everything he had. He activated [Shatter Bindings], his most effective spell-breaker skill, and strained so hard the blood vessels in his eyes must surely have burst. He might as well have dug his fingers into the earth and tried to haul the entire continent overhead. All the might he could muster slammed against the magic holding him in place and bounced off his target as if he'd thrown a ball of cotton against the towering walls of Ochreclast. The mana in the air didn't fluctuate in the slightest. Not so much as a wobble.
The fight left him, something that almost never happened to Zael. He hung there, frozen in place and balanced awkwardly, caught in a pivot-and-twist with his axe half-raised—the intended start of his own weapon art, a planned retaliation to the swordsman's frenzy. He was stunned, unable to form a complete thought, much less speak. Not that he could've if he wanted to.
What… what tier scroll had the Guildmaster of the humans just burned? A relic inscribed by the Sorceress herself? Zael knew he was only eighth elevation, and that even Titled on the weaker end could subdue him with little effort, but the sheer force of the spell suffocating him—it had to be magic much stronger than merely eleventh or twelfth elevation. He'd experienced spells like that before, and this didn't compare.
Shoes clicked steadily and rhythmically against cobblestone as Rafael walked up to insert himself between the two prior combatants. After sweeping his gaze up and down Lord Barrow, expression utterly unperturbed and even the dust covering his clothing and skin somehow not marring the pristine image of control he projected, Rafael made a noise in the back of his throat that could have meant any number of things.
He turned away from Barrow to face Zael. "My sincerest apologies, Lord Keresi. An area-of-effect scroll seemed most prudent given the circumstances. I didn't want to take any risks, seeing how I was struggling to track what was happening."
Zael, of course, said nothing. Because he couldn't so much as move his eyeballs to meet Rafael's gaze. All his frustration over the development couldn't manifest into even a twitch of his lips. That his heart remained beating within his chest at all was a blessing.
"I'm afraid I need to send for the City Guard, so that Lord Adventurer Barrow can be contained with minimal danger to the citizenry," Rafael continued. He looked around. "And city property," he added wryly. "The good news, my lord, is that I will no longer need to see to his appointment, and you were next on my schedule. It seems I won't have to make you wait."
Was he…
Was he jesting?
At a time like this?
Rafael nodded to himself, expression so unbothered that an outside observer might have assumed nothing at all was out of the ordinary. That this sort of thing happened several times a day. Once more, hard-soled shoes clicked against cobblestone as the demon turned and strode away, presumably to do as he'd said he would.
And thus, silence reigned.
In front of Zael, Barrow was stuck in much the same manner as he was. The human wore a look of cold focus, expression frozen in that moment when they'd still been trading blows. Whatever the man might have been thinking—or whatever skills he had activated or tried to activate—Zael would never know. Only that he'd found, and was continuing to find, as little success breaking free as Zael himself.
The street had emptied. It was a side passage on the flank of the building, not the main thoroughfare, and if anyone had been walking along it, they'd have fled the moment an orichalcum-rank warrior flew through the wall like a launched cannonball.
Sari was in his periphery, caught by the spell as well, her daggers drawn and face panicked—she'd never been able to keep calm in spars, much less the real thing. Zael could hardly remain placid either, but not in the sense that he panicked. He just got too excited sometimes. Panic was the fastest way to lose any fight. Rage and excitement could be used as a tool, if one that sometimes lacked a handle.
Seeing her sneaking in on the outskirts instantly stoked the fire that had faltered inside Zael. What did the idiot girl think she was doing? Even the most talented third-elevation rogue in existence couldn't scratch someone nearly three times her level. Not even Naia herself, and Sari wasn't a good fighter, much less a prodigy of such talent the world would never see her equal.
He only barely managed to rein in his temper by asking, could he have stood by and done nothing in her place? While his family was threatened? It didn't change the sheer stupidity on display, though. He would have words for her later.
Blood dripped from his shoulder to patter against the ground in regular plops. The wound wasn't serious, not for a warrior of the eighth elevation. By that rank, nothing short of a pulverized brain would kill him instantly. He risked bleeding out if left for hours on end, but not however long it would take Rafael to fetch the City Guard.
A minute passed. Then a second and third. He stewed in his thoughts.
Why bother with the scroll at all? he thought, annoyed. Zael could have handled this himself. Easily. The more time that ticked by as he, his sister, and the human stood motionless like statues, the more he worked himself into a small rage. What an unsatisfying fight. Rather than wasting untold amounts of gold burning a Titled-rank scroll, Rafael should have let Zael take care of the human. Did he think Zael had any chance of losing? A grave insult, and he intended to voice that grievance.
Then a few more minutes passed, and the anger smoldered. A vague embarrassment overtook him for the previous thoughts. In the same manner Zael had defended his ally without thinking, Rafael had also been obligated to act in any way he could—which meant a scroll, seeing how the administrator had less hope of raising a blade against an orichalcum-rank than even Sari did.
Zael wasn't sure how long he was frozen there, but probably less time than it felt like. The experience stretched on, and not just because the pain in his shoulder grew steadily as his battle-excitement sagged out of him and allowed the aches of reality to set in.
Eventually, Rafael returned with a swarm of guardsmen in tow. A mage in uniform robes wearing a green badge immediately set to work casting on Lord Barrow—presumably something to contain him when the scroll's effect ended.
"I sincerely apologize for leaving you in this state, Lord Keresi," Rafael said to Zael first and foremost. He inclined his head at Sari next. "And you as well, Lady Keresi. I simply judged it the safest, most expedient path forward. It shouldn't be more than a minute or two before I can release you."
At least Zael had an entertaining show as the event wrapped up: his eyes were pointed in the right direction to watch the mage cast spell after spell on the human warrior. Even if Barrow had magic-breaking skills, he wouldn't be able to contest an equal-rank mage having all the time in the world to layer and reinforce a dozen different disabling effects onto him. Doubly so because any of his defensive artifacts had surely shattered when trying to rebuff the magic holding him in place. Just as Zael's own had.
Finally, Rafael dismissed the scroll's effect. Zael almost lost his footing as he regained the ability to control his limbs.
Lord Barrow, for his part, dropped to his knees and immediately began ranting.
"—may have them fooled, but not me," he all but howled at Rafael, even as his arms were forced behind his back and manacles clamped around his wrists. "Only the gods know how a snake like you slithered to where you are. Guildmaster? Unbelievable! You arranged it, I know you did." His face went red then purple as he yelled. "Duke Caldimore is an honorable man. The whole city knows it—how did they forget? You used him! You fools are blind. By the gods, he's a demon! He never deserved to call himself Guildmaster to begin with! I don't give a damn if he once balanced the Heroes' ledgers!"
Rafael ignored the deranged human; by how little he reacted to the words, he didn't even seem to register what was being said. He instead addressed Zael while pulling out a vial of red liquid and offering it toward him. "For you, my lord."
"I have my own," Zael grunted, summoning a reserve from his inventory.
"I insist you allow the expense on my behalf," Rafael tried, but Zael had already uncorked and downed the one in his hand. The liquid tingled down his throat and settled in his stomach, and he felt its movement every inch of the way. The hole in his shoulder stitched back together with a sensation that made the skin on his scalp crawl and a shiver convulse his body. The feeling was neither painful nor pleasant—and certainly not unfamiliar. He'd taken worse injuries in training sessions. Still, rapid healing was a bizarre enough experience that even he couldn't be totally inured to it, despite how often he underwent it. Father himself probably hadn't gotten used to the sensation.
Rafael sighed and put away his potion. The human behind him continued growing louder in the meantime, despite being manhandled by the guard and slowly forced away. The words coming from his mouth devolved into insults with little coherency—but scathing and hateful enough that Zael's grip tightened on his axe, and he moved to swerve around Rafael.
Rafael intercepted him with a smooth step sideways. "Lord Barrow is in custody, so no further action is required, Lord Keresi." Quieter, he added, "Moreover, there is no victory against men like him more thorough than simply refusing to acknowledge his insanity."
"No victory more thorough?" Zael repeated flatly. "Try leaving a dozen of his teeth decorating the cobblestone. I think you'll change your mind."
Rafael weighed that statement, then conceded with an entertained smile. "Perhaps so. Nevertheless, he is in the custody of the guard and no longer able to retaliate. Please do not assault him. It would be beneath us."
Zael grunted. He also didn't agree with that sentiment—that it would be 'beneath them.' But humans—and Rafael, apparently—had differing views from demons on how and when violence was appropriate.
He might have pushed the point, but the human had already been dragged out of earshot. Zael glanced at Sari to confirm she was fine, then looked back at Rafael. He adjusted his torn clothing, rolling his shoulder to verify the pain was gone.
"Well, then." Zael's eyes narrowed at the other man. "You're awfully calm about all of this."