“Aw, even now, Hedin and Hegni are being big, mean, grumpy-pants to each other! Isn’t it sad, Dina?”
“So sad, Vena! If they just put their differences aside, they might be able to catch up with us; at least enough to lick our toes!”
One giggled while the other guffawed. Hegni and Hedin knew the girls were taunting them, but they showed no reaction. After a short pause, they spoke without turning to look the other in the eye.
“Hegni.”
“What?”
“It sounds like Ottar won.”
The cheers of adventurers could be heard behind them from Central Park. Warlord had given everything and earned the city’s praise.
“…I know.”
Hegni cut loose his anger and disgust, and cast his gaze downward.
“Everywhere, the fires of life are burning.”
The blood of the einherjar fueled their fierce cries, and Heith’s healers risked their lives to provide support. Tsubaki’s sword, Mia’s fists—nothing was being held in reserve, and the city screamed with a desire to repay the veterans who had laid down their lives.
It would all be for naught if these two prideful, stubborn, infuriating elves could not cast aside their differences now. And so, with one short meeting of their eyes, the elves of light and dark slipped the shackles of their respective oaths.
““Hmph!!””
The two sprang forward. Their paths crossed. Hegni took Vena, and Hedin faced Dina.
Up until now, it had been the other way around: Dina and Hegni, the two melee fighters, and Hedin and Vena, the two mages. From now on, they would swap targets.
But this change in tactics only caused the corners of the evil twins’ mouths to creep up, like the opening of a carnivorous plant, as though the pair had fallen right into their trap.
““Silly Billys!””
“Did you think you could take me down with magic just because I’m weak to it?”
“Did you think you could humiliate me in close combat just because I’m bad at it?”
““Sorry, boys, but that’s not going to happen!!””
Dina, holding her stilettos, flickered, and Vena with her magic sword, flared.
Just as he reached optimal range for his spell, Hedin’s eyes widened in shock. Despite the shortness of his chant, the siren’s blade moved faster still, tearing the rhomphaia from his grasp.
Just as he entered cutting distance, Hegni was dumbstruck. Vena swung her magic sword while swiftly chanting a magic circle, unleashing a hailstorm of fire.
““You call that teamwork? How pathetic!””
““Grhhh…?!””
In close combat, there was nothing Hedin could do. He was by no means poor with the blade, but he lacked the punch and power of Dáinsleif.
At long range, Hegni was strapped for options. He possessed magic, but nothing with the range and casting proficiency of Hildsleif.
With the curse enhancing their specialties, the twins were able to draw both elven adventurers into their own private arenas and overwhelm them.
The attempt to strike at the girls’ weaknesses had failed, and in addition, the boys had been stripped of their swords, Victim Abyss and Dizaria.
“Dialv Dis!”
The twins had them in check, and their destructive magic was about to end the game. Ten magic circles appeared overhead and summoned ten pillars of hellfire, trapping Hegni and Hedin in a hurricane of destruction. Even their superior evasive maneuvers could not protect them from the blast waves that came at them from every angle.
And then…
““Now you’re ours!””
At that very moment Vena, Hedin, Hegni, and Dina lay on a perfectly straight line, in that order. The two men were completely surrounded. To the sisters, it was the perfect arrangement. To Hegni and Hedin, it was the worst. As they crawled to their feet, Vena began to chant, and Dina rushed forward.
“In paradise, the heretics face fire; let errors and perversions both be cleans’d; and in a thousand tombs those sinners burn! Let the sixth garden open! Let the ninth song howl!”
The third and final spell of Vena Dis. Incineration. It annihilated anything in her line of sight that she considered heretical, and it was impossible to dodge. It was a rare spell that could burn her foes to ash while leaving her sister Dina completely unharmed.
You’re a feisty one, Hedin! But it’s too late now; my spells are faster than yours! Why don’t the two of you just cry in our arms already?!
The range of her spell easily surpassed twenty meders, so it didn’t matter how hard Hedin scowled; there was nothing he could do to reach her in time.
Vena wanted nothing more than to burn to ash the white elf who was so repulsed by her.
Dina wanted nothing more than to tear to shreds the dark elf who was so disgusted by her.
And so, having returned to their formation so that each received the target she desired, the sisters were ecstatic. Vena prepared her final magic circle, while Dina rushed forward to skewer her love in the heart.
“…?”
But just as the magic circle opened like a devil’s eyelid, Vena noticed it.
Hedin was acting strangely. He stood side-on, blocking the contents of his left hand from view, like a fencer about to lunge. Did he plan to throw his weapon? But wait…he lost his rhomphaia—when did he retrieve it?
A fraction of a second passed as those questions flew through her head, and in the end, Hedin revealed the answer.
“I never thought this day would come,” he said.
“………”
In his hand, he held a cursed black sword. It was not his own weapon, but Hegni’s: Victim Abyss.
At the same time, Dina’s eyes went wide as plates as Hegni pulled out the Hildsleif’s rhomphaia, Dizaria.
It had all been on purpose, including the very moment the two elves had their weapons flung from their grip. A mind-numbingly simple bluff that allowed Hedin and Hegni to change swords.
“Sip and slurp, you rotten sword. Victim Abyss!”
Hegni’s trusty sword was a curse weapon, able to extend its reach at the cost of the wielder’s stamina. Hedin was never one to hold back, and so he allowed the sword to drink of all his stamina, pouring it all into a single thrust.
The resulting blade reached fifty meders in length.
“Gh…”
The thrust, like a vacuum wave of invisible energy, piercing at first Vena’s magic circle, and then her breast.
Before she even worked out what had happened, a line of blood ran down her lip. Then, the moment she realized that Hedin’s and Hegni’s teamwork was responsible for her demise, an explosion engulfed her.
An Ignis Fatuus. The inevitable result of a spell that had gone out of control. Seeing her sister consumed by blossoms of fire, Dina turned and screamed.
“Vena?!”
Hedin’s attack had been carried out with perfect and diabolical timing—planned from the very beginning to lure Vena into using her spell, and dooming her in the process.
“Hediiin!!”