Chapter 942: Hollow Faith
Sir Tommin barely noticed the moment that Jalal and Kurtz stormed into the plaza to attack the Templars who had been providing him with support during the battle.
He was locked in a contest of strength and will with the Crimson Knight, the haft of her darksteel axe pressed firmly against the crossguard of his holy light blade, and their helms pressed together, visor to visor, as he stared into her crimson eyes through the narrow slits in his helm.
"What has Owain done to my family?" Tommin asked as the blade in his hand began to flicker and pulse with the fear and anxiety that clawed at his heart. "Tell me, demon!"
"Where do ye think he found tha Nightweaver Venom ta poison yer family with?" Sybyll taunted as she dug her heels into the ground, pressing forward against Sir Tommin hard enough to force him to take half a step back as she exploited the single greatest gap in the armor around his heart.
"Yer lord bought tha venom from a vampire," Sybyll taunted him. At the same time, as soon as Tommin pressed back against her, she yielded entirely, sweeping the butt end of her axe low between Tommin’s legs and twisting to the side as she scooped him off the ground. The strength of her blood surged as the light of Tommin’s blade faltered, and she used every extra bit of that strength to toss the armored templar like a log, flipping him end-over-end and dropping him solidly on his back three paces away from her.
Tommin crashed onto the cobblestones in a clatter of armor, barely maintaining his grip on his sword as he coughed and sputtered from the force of the impact. Desperately, he rolled to the side, scrambling through the snow just in time to avoid the powerful, overhand blow of Sybyll’s axe that cleaved through the cobblestones and deep into the soil below.
-CLANG!- -CRUNCH!-
Tommin had only managed to rise to one knee before Sybyll’s axe slammed into his glowing blade again, but this time, as soon as she’d battered the blade out of her way, she followed up with a powerful kick to the center of Tommin’s breastplate, tearing through the emblem of a Holy Sword upon his chest as her armored boot caved in a portion of the the Templar’s armor.
"Yer about ta die, Sir Tommin," Sybyll said as she stalked toward the struggling knight. "Ye’ll die and yer wife an’ child will be left ta tha ’demons’ ta take care of," she said with a dark smile behind the grinning skull of her visor.
"Do ye’ want me ta save them?" Sybyll asked, holding herself back as she waited for the battered Templar to regain his footing. She could feel the cracks in his emotional armor growing even greater than the ones in his physical armor, and she pressed forward with her verbal attacks even more relentlessly than she had with her axe.
"A vampire canna’ die from Owain’s poison," she pointed out. "Tonnis wouldn’a age another day, but I’d teach him fer ye, raise him up to be a true knight an’ champion o’ tha Vale of Mists," she offered.
"YOU KEEP HIS NAME OFF YOUR LIPS!" Tommin roared as the sword in his hand flared with the brightest light it had since the battle began. In a rush, he charged forward, swinging with the strength and fury of a madman as his vision narrowed, seeing nothing but the unholy figure of the Crimson Knight before him.
-CLANG!- CLANG!- CLANG!- CLANG!-
"YOU. LEAVE. THEM. ALONE!" Tommin shouted as he swung furiously at the wicked woman, abandoning all technique in order to batter her with pure, righteous fury.
For a moment, Sybyll gave ground, struggling to defend herself against the renewed assault as brilliant white light stabbed at her eyes through the holes in her visor. But even though the light was brighter, the faith that created it was far more brittle than it had been, and the pain that enveloped her face paled in comparison to what it had been when her fight began.
"Admit it, ’Sir’ Tommin," Sybyll mocked even as she gave ground. "Yer’ not fit ta be a father an ye’ need tha ’demons’ ta save yer wife an’ child. I’ll take ’good care’ of yer’ Rosie too," she added, wishing that the knight could see the practiced, lecherous expression on her face that had driven many a man mad with desire beneath the sheets. "Since ye’ can’a please her yerself anymore..."
"SHUT YOUR MOUTH, YOU DEMON!" Tommin roared, now completely oblivious to the escalating battle around him. Sarbil, one of the men who had inducted him into the Order of Holy Light and stood with him when he took his oaths as a Templar, was sputtering and dying not twenty paces away from him, and Tommin was completely oblivious as nothing mattered more to him than destroying the unholy woman in front of him.
-CLANG- -CLANG- -CRUNCH!-
Tommin’s swings had become wild and predictable, and Sybyll led him easily into an over-extended position before lashing out with the blade of her axe in a wide, sweeping cut that slammed into the center of his breastplate. Metal twisted and deformed, and were it not for the blessings of the High Priest who had supervised the armor’s construction, it would have torn in two under the strength of her blow.
-CLATTER- -CLATTER-
Tommin fell to the ground several paces away from Sybyll’s imposing figure, rolling over the cobbles before he finally came to a stop less than a dozen paces from the temple guard. A few men surged forward, ready to pull the battered knight into their ranks and defend him to the last man, only to falter and stay their hands when they felt the growing aura of menace radiating from the Crimson Knight as she stalked forward, dragging her heavy axe along the ground and filling the air with the sound of honed steel grinding against stone.
-THUMP- -THUMP- -THUMP- -THUMP- -THUMP-
The sound of dozens of booted feet marching into the plaza felt like the beating of a monstrous heart as Captain Ultrech’s soldiers arrived at last, signalling the arrival of an even more brutal phase of the assault on Hanrahan town.
"Yer out of time, Sir Tommin," Dame Sybyll said as she stopped her advance several paces short of reaching the wounded Templar as he struggled to regain his feet. "An’ so am I. Drop yer sword an’ surrender yer men an’ we will spare yer lives," she offered as she raised the blade of her axe up high.
"We. Will. Never. Surrender. To demons!" Tommin spat as he clung to the hilt of his sword, wedging the tip of the blade into the stones at his feet in order to pull himself back up. Slowly, painfully, struggling against the sharp pains of cracked and broken ribs in his chest, he forced his battered, protesting body to stand, raising the glowing Holy Light Blade before him in a low, defensive guard.
"If I fall, another will rise," Tommin promised as he prepared to make his final stand. "If they fall, another will take their place! So long as the sun rises in the east, the faithful will never submit to your evil," he swore.
"I will stop you here," he added as he took a slow, deliberate step forward. "You will not kill these men. You will not touch my family," he said as the blade in his hands glowed brighter and brighter as he wrapped his heart in layer after layer of the armor of faith. "The Holy Lord of Light will..."
"No, he won’t," Sybyll interrupted as an aura of darkness spilled from the blade of her axe, blanketing the entire plaza with the dark stillness of the grave, interrupting even the intense duels of Kurtz and Lord Jalal as the faint cries of thousands of mournful fallen soldiers filled the air.
Behind her visor, darkness flowed across the whites of Sybyll’s eyes, covering her crimson irises and flooding her vision with a layer of shadow as she stared deep into the Abyss that lay beyond the end of life.
"Kiss of the Void. Hollow Faith," Sybyll said in a voice that echoed from the infinite distance beyond the end of life, filling the courtyard with the sound of her pronouncement as she brought her ax down, unleashing a wave of darkness that enveloped the defiant Templar like an unholy shroud.
As much as Sybyll had wanted to crush Tommin with her own strength and drag his broken body back to Lady Ashlynn as a gift, she couldn’t delay any longer. She had come for more important things than a battle with a Templar, and the time had come to end this pointless battle.
Opposite her, the darkness that enveloped Tommin flickered and danced like the flame of a bonfire before the blazing light of his Holy Light Blade grew so bright that it snuffed out the darkness, banishing every trace of the haunting energy.
But the blade didn’t stop there. It grew brighter and brighter, blazing like the rising sun in Tommin’s hands. Only, for the first time since Tommin had laid hands on the weapon, its light wasn’t fueled by the strength of his devotion and faith... but by the aching, endless void where that faith had once been.
"AAAAAARRRRRRGGGG!" Tommin screamed as the Holy Light of his sword seared in his eyes. Smoke rose from his visor as flesh burned and blackened under the intensity of the light. For a moment, he could see nothing but pure, holy radiance, blotting out the world until the darkness crept in from the edges of his vision.
Two heartbeats later, the sword fell from his limp fingers, its light fading to nothing more than the bright glow of polished steel as it clattered off the cobblestones. For Tommin, it was the last thing he would ever see as the Holy Blade of Light deemed his faith hollow, unworthy, and punished him for his failings by stripping all the light of the world away from his eyes, leaving behind a blinded, hollowed-out husk of a man where a paragon of virtue once stood.
"Now," Sybyll said, pointing her ax at the horrified Temple Guard as the forces of her army filled the plaza behind her. "Will ye surrender? Or die?"