Arthur noticed something then, something that made his blood run cold. The attackers on the ships were not ordinary people. They moved with a fluidity that seemed like decades of training. They seemed to emit a distinct aura he could recognize from his experience of observing countless enemies both strong and weak. They were Illuminated, every one of them, and they were not just fighting; they were hunting.
He parried a strike from a Vestige of glass and sharp edges, its body made of shattered bottles and broken mirrors. The shards bit into his arm and left long, bleeding scratches. He ignored the pain and drove his shoulder into the creature, shattering it against a post.
Most of the summoned Vestiges were of the Forgotten class which was the lowest classification for a relic and vestige, putting it well below an illuminated of the Latent stage. Most unawakened people could also use one but they needed relics in order to do so.
The girl was at his side again, holding her whistle dagger, "There are too many," she said. Her voice was shaking. "We cannot hold them."
Arthur did not answer. He was watching the ships, watching the figures on their decks, watching the way they moved with the cold precision and competence. He was trying to keep up, and he could for now, but there were so many of them and he was just one man with one sword.
The crew was dying around him. One by one, they fell. A sailor impaled by a Vestige of rusted harpoons. Another dragged overboard by the drowning mass. A third crushed under the weight of the creature made of tar and rope. The deck was slick with their blood and the rain could not wash it away fast enough.
The girl threw her dagger at a Vestige of coral and bone that had crept up behind him. The blade struck the creature in the eye and it staggered back, shrieking. She had no other weapons, but she kept fighting, kept moving, kept refusing to die.
Arthur cut down another Vestige, and another, and another. Each one left a mark on him, a scratch, a burn, a bruise. The Illuminated on the ships watched and did nothing. They just waited, patient and cold, as if they had all the time in the world.
Then they boarded.
Planks slammed down across the gap between the ships, heavy wooden bridges that groaned under the weight of the attackers. The first wave of Illuminated crossed over, their weapons drawn, their eyes cold. The crew tried to fight but they were exhausted, wounded, terrified. They fell in moments.
Arthur met the first wave head on.
The first Illuminated of the Shenzhou showed themselves on the boarding planks, their forms silhouetted against the storm-torn sky, and Arthur felt his stomach drop as he recognized their bearing. They were not the rabble he had expected, these were trained fighters, mid-tier Awakened at least, with a few Latent stage Illuminated scattered among them like sharks circling wounded prey. Arthur bled from a dozen cuts and his arm was going numb, but this was nothing he could not handle, the space around him was too narrow and the ground was too unstable to properly use the Ninefold Dao sword style he had seen practiced in the academy yards, but he had studied it enough to imitate the basic forms, the flowing movements that mimicked water, the strikes that came from unexpected angles, and he found that it worked, the blade cutting through the first wave of attackers with surprising efficiency.
There was a saying, if the enemy fights with fire… fight with fire. He was not sure where he had heard that term but his suspicions said that Lucid had probably muttered these words.
The girl was at his back, her dagger flashing in the dim light as she stabbed at anyone who got too close to his blind spots, they were the only ones left fighting by now, the rest of the crew had either raised a white flag or were hiding in the wreckage of the lower decks, and Arthur could not blame them, the Vestiges were still swarming and the Illuminated kept coming, a tide of steel and faith that showed no sign of abating.
Then an attack came from above.
It was not a Vestige and it was not a sword strike, it was something far more powerful, a column of condensed energy that slammed into the deck between him and the girl and sent them both flying in opposite directions, Arthur hit the ground hard and rolled, his sword skittering away across the blood-slick planks, and when he looked up he saw the source of the attack descending from the sky like a judgment made flesh, this was an Enlightened, not a mere Awakened, and Arthur felt something fundamental shift in the air around them, the pressure of the man's presence pressing down on his chest like a physical weight.
"By the will of the broken contract," the Enlightened intoned, his voice carrying over the storm with unnatural clarity, "you shall be met with Tianqi's wrath."
Arthur was on one knee, his body screaming in protest as he gathered himself, the girl threw herself over him, her body shielding his from the next blow that never came, she was looking back at him with bloodshot eyes and a face that had lost all its earlier bravado.
"What are you doing?" she demanded in a broken tone. "Get up. Get up!"
Arthur pointed toward the end of the dock where a small boat bobbed in the churning water, a simple wooden vessel that might just carry them to safety if they could reach it in time.
"Go," he said. His voice was flat, carrying no emotion.
She looked at the boat, then back at him, then at the Enlightened who was approaching with measured steps, his sword held loosely in one hand, the man was clearly having fun, enjoying the desperation of his prey.
The girl's face twisted with indecision.
Arthur braced himself and stood up. The Enlightened in front of him moved, too fast to follow, and Arthur felt the impact of a kick to his ribs that sent him sprawling, he rolled and came up just in time to block a sword strike that would have taken his head, the force of it drove him back a step, then another, and he could hear the Enlightened laughing, a sound like grinding stones, they were playing with him, treating him like a toy.
"I am Ling Wei," the Enlightened announced, his voice carrying a formal cadence that seemed almost ceremonial, "agent of the Dao Mandate, and I will break your little boat as well, it is useless, all of it is useless, you should have surrendered when you had the chance."
Arthur blocked three more attacks in rapid succession, his sword moving in desperate arcs, but the Enlightened was too fast, too strong, and Arthur was tiring, his movements growing sloppy as exhaustion and blood loss began to take their toll, six Vestiges blocked his path to the girl, their forms writhing and shifting, and he knew that if he did not act soon, they would both die here.
She had seen her comrades die, had watched them fall one by one, and now she was being forced to flee while the last defender stood alone against an enemy he could not hope to defeat.
Arthur thought back to that moment in the Beta rift, when he had faced the Sky-Sundered Saint Lyssandra and lost, he had not had a chance then either, and this enemy was less powerful than her, Lyssandra was an Ascendant, this one was probably only an Innate ranked Enlightened, but the difference in power was still vast, an ocean he could not cross as a mere Awakened.
"Ling Wei," Arthur said, and his voice came out steady despite everything, "I will keep you occupied as long as I can, and then I will defeat you."
The Enlightened smiled. It was not a kind expression.
Arthur stood up fully and planted his feet on the unstable deck, he could barely keep up with Ling Wei's attacks, but he was doing it, he was holding the line, and he had to believe that the girl would make it to the boat and escape, if she did, then his death might mean something.
"I do not need Lucid for this," he muttered under his breath. "I will defeat you."
The girl ran, her damaged steps carrying her toward the edge of the ship, she stood at the end of the dock and looked back, seeing Arthur behind her fighting with everything he had, a lone man against an army, and she fell to her knees, unable to move, unable to look away.
"I cannot..." she whispered, her voice cracking under the weight of everything she had lost.
Something moved at the edge of the planks, a figure buried under debris that shifted and groaned, she saw a hand reach out, then a face, familiar and unknown at the same time.
"Aurelia," the voice said, soft and strained, "go... it's ok...."
She tried to search her memory for the name but nothing came back, it was blank, empty, like a room she had walked through a hundred times but could never quite remember the details of.
"There is no need to worry about us, go," the figure continued, "you have done enough for this town than it ever needed, you were just unlucky to be caught in the crossroads of an unwilling kingdom and an unwilling creator, you are gold Aurelia, and you shine like the gold you have always been."