Amazon Apocalypse 4 Rewrites: Chapter 72

Some new stuff here, some old stuff. Most of the fight with Cyra is the same, but it's happening in the final match rather than the semifinals.

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The walk home was awkward until we found somewhere quiet to undo the slime keeping Myrina stuck to my chest. Afterwards, we took off our armor, and I handed Doomblade’s gear off to Gobgob for her to work on before tomorrow’s fight. The armor hadn’t actually taken much of a beating in this battle, so all it needed was a good scrub. I expected Cyra to fight almost pure melee, so the same defensive enchantments I’d used against Myrina would work for her, too.

Defeating Myrina hadn’t been easy, but keeping her defeated was even harder. When Sakura and Bridget checked in on us hours later, they initially assumed she was celebrating her victory.

Sakura had stopped by the arena to place a hefty bet on Cyra, which naturally paid out. Her opponent had been a notable member of the Phantomfist Clan, but not someone we thought would give her trouble. With Cyra’s victory confirmed, I was certain to be facing her in the finals tomorrow. Knowing that, I put an early end to Myrina’s revelry.

“B-but our anniversary!” Myrina complained.

I snorted. “That isn’t for another eight months, Myrina. Besides, I’m worried the Samhain Clan has already tracked us down. We might be ambushed in the middle of the night. Your family is probably afraid of my Doomblade persona’s allegiances. Cyra offered me a ticket to join the Glacia branch, and since I refused, they probably think I made a deal with another family to screw them over if I win.”

Myrina scowled, then declared she’d guard me through the night. I trusted her to let me get my much-needed shuteye, so I’d be in top form for the fight the following day. I woke up a few times with her moving me, and once found myself inside a sack. Going to sleep while Myrina was awake was always a hectic prospect.

“No Samhain ambush?” I asked when I woke the next morning, pleasantly surprised.

“Well…” Myrina laughed, then waved her hand. “Oh, it’s not important. I hope you’re ready to kick my big sister’s ass.”

Not being attacked in the night by Samhain supporters was quite nice. The Samhain family was more noble than I expected if they placed their full trust in Cyra to win the tournament. I yawned, stretched, and realized that I did feel ready.

This getting more than an hour or two of sleep was still worthwhile.

I dressed, collected my now spotless armor from Gobgob at the shop, and made my way to the arena. Myrina would make her final appearance as Feisty Redhead in the waiting area with the other defeated competitors, so she walked with me. Sakura couldn't make it since she’d given Team Seraphim the day off to watch the match, but Bridget had taken time off to cheer me on, though she hadn’t seen the earlier matches.

She wasn’t the only one.

The audience had exploded in size for this final match. The stands were packed, with fans standing together shoulder to shoulder. Even the open space just in front of the magical shield protecting the audience was filled with eager onlookers. This was the final fight that would determine the tournament’s grand champion.

Cyra was already there when I arrived, slowly striding across the sands to the center of the arena. She waved to the crowd, and they roared in approval.

I was pleasantly surprised that I, too, entered the arena to cheering—though not nearly as loud as for Cyra. There was actually less booing than I’d expected. Despite the announcer’s best efforts to focus on the way I won my fights with deep pockets and expensive enchanted items, I had entered this tournament from the open brackets as an underdog. And while Feisty Redhead had claimed much of the dark horse spotlight, I was still an object of great intrigue thanks to how far I’d made it.

“On one side of the arena this morning, we have the infamous Doomblade! He relies heavily on enchanted items to make a mockery of skilled fighters who’ve trained for years to master unique skills and techniques… and though he hides behind his armor and refuses to disclose his identity to the public, he stands before us undefeated!” The announcer paused a moment, as though waiting for a chorus of boos.

Only a few came.

The announcer continued a moment later, his almost petulant tone brightening immensely. “And against him on the other side of the arena stands the beautiful, the fearsome, the indomitable Cyra Samhain! This unflappable warrior is the epitome of dedication. She is the result of tireless practice and grueling training, day after day and year after year! We gather here today to honor her hard work and watch her finally prove that skill is the true measure of a hero!”

Cyra and I both walked to the center of the arena. We could start as far apart as we wanted, but both of us intended to fight at close range.

“I think the announcer has a crush on you,” I said to Cyra.

Cyra’s lips drew tight in annoyance. “The announcers are always former competitors. He really doesn’t like your fighting style.”

“And you?” I asked curiously.

Cyra’s back was firm and her form picture-perfect as she assumed a neutral stance. Even when she spoke, her flawless posture didn’t budge. “I expect you to show me everything you have, and give me the best you’ve got.”

“Begin!” the referee shouted, marking the end of our conversation.

Cyra rushed me the instant the match began. There wasn’t a moment of hesitation in her actions as her sword flashed for my throat in a lightning-quick strike. Despite the speed of her strike, her charge gave me plenty of time to see the blow coming.

I easily dodged it. If I were fighting Myrina, I’d have feared that dodging the attack was a trap, but Cyra was a much more straightforward fighter than her sister. She didn’t trap or confuse her enemies; she wore them down with overwhelming technical skill and power until they couldn’t keep up.

Within moments, I knew that was the strategy she planned to use here. The throat slash transitioned into a backslash and lunge combination that didn’t let up the pressure. Her footwork was amazing, and each move picture perfect.

I blocked the slash, but the lunge required I block with my weapon or dodge. No doubt Cyra thought I was going to block, and she could then bind my sword with her own and disarm me—it was a move I’d seen her use on Myrina half-a-dozen times when they’d sparred on Themyscira. She’d used it several times on her opponents in the arena.

I wouldn’t be caught so easily, though.

Shifting my weight, I took the lunge on my armor to buy myself an opening to counter. My armor could shrug off her attacks, while I trusted hers wouldn’t survive mine. That was my best chance to win this battle.

She tried to replicate my feat, taking my strike as a glancing blow against her pauldron to turn the move into an even exchange of blows, but my sword cut deep a groove across her enchantments. It was clear my gear was much better than hers.

I breathed a sigh of relief.

I had hoped to keep the pressure up, but Cyra switched tactics instantly. Moments later, she was pressuring me again with a rain of sword strikes, and I didn’t have an opening to do more than defend.

Despite the flurry of attacks, Cyra found room not just to breathe, but to talk. “They told me this armor was the best money could buy. But it clearly isn’t as good as what you’re wearing.”

“I try,” I grunted out between parrying her slashes.

The next minute felt like an hour as Cyra whittled me down with her superior skill and experience. My sword proficiency shot up faster than it had in a long time. Not since I’d first started training with her had it increased so much at once. Despite how far I had come, it was clear I was not the swordswoman’s equal.

Pure skill with a sword was the domain of fighters like the one before me. Without my armor, I would already be out of the fight. I had vainly hoped Cyra would give me a chance to swing at her sword with my own, so I could break her weapon. Alas, I had no luck on that front either. Once she realized the differential in our gear meant I could break her weapon with my own, she’d switched to deflecting and dodging. She wouldn’t give me a single solid hit.

I would have to put everything I had into this fight. But first I had to target Cyra’s bag of holding. If she could easily re-equip herself, I’d be in trouble—despite my tricks. But if I could take that off the table, then things should go well for me.

I was so focused on keeping up with her that she caught me completely off-guard when she transitioned from fighting at sword’s length to jumping inside my guard for a grapple. She knocked my sword arm aside with her elbow and grabbed her blade in a half-grip, just as I’d seen her cousin do in the match before Myrina’s.

I thought I could best her strength with my own, now that I had her in my grip, so I tried to grab her arm. But I was shocked to see she was stronger than me. She was the first and probably the only person in the tournament who could overcome the enormous Strength boost my powered armor gave me—and that was just with her natural stats.

“I’m disappointed. Is this all you’ve got?” Cyra asked.

An instant later, her arm slipped free of my attempt to stop her, driving the tip of her sword at the gap in my armor where my helmet attached to my armor’s gorget. She was close, practically in my arms, when she shouldered my off arm aside with her elbow. Cyra was going for the throat and had already maneuvered herself out of the way of the explosive fire mana defense I’d crafted to counter this sort of thing.

She’d obviously watched my match with her cousin closely and was prepared for the counter.

If I’d had the opportunity, I might have sighed. Cyra was too strong for me to fight on an even playing field. From the start, I’d known I’d have to use my tricks if I wanted to win, but it had felt wrong to use them before trying to win the fight fair and square.

Now, it was clear I needed them.

I called forth my Acid of Amazonian Armor Erasure. With Cyra so close, it was impossible to miss. The item materialized in my hand, and with a flip of the wrist, the glass sphere that held the magical acid ruptured against her breastplate, coating Cyra’s armor and weapon. It immediately began eating away at both.

Simultaneously, using my other arm, I activated my lasso. With Cyra’s hands so close together on her sword as she tried to stab me, she couldn’t resist when I caught one of her arms in the magical binding. With a tug, I just barely jerked her arm aside far enough to pull the tip of her blade off-course. It was just a nudge, but that nudge was enough for the repulsion runes protecting the joints of my armor to shift her weapon away from its target.

The tides had turned, and now it was Cyra who struggled to get away from me while I tried to hold her tight. As I restrained her with one hand, the other grabbed her bag of holding at her hip.

“Damn perv!” Cyra growled as I squeezed her ass a bit more than necessary in my fumbling to tear the pouch free. She pulled her head back and slammed her helm into mine in a headbutt that left me reeling. Despite my best efforts, she forced her way out of my grip and put some distance between us—but not before I tore her bag of holding from her belt.

I tried to use the same trick I’d pulled on her cousin and reel her in with the lasso like a leash, but Cyra wasn’t surprised by the move.

First, she tried to cut the rope with a quick swipe of her sword, but the rope was not so easily cut. Her blade bounced off its metal strands, so Cyra changed tactics and gripped the rope and began to reel me in. The two of us played one-armed tug-of-war, and I was surprised to find myself slowly sliding across the sand in her direction.

I held on for a few moments, then switched directions. The effort she put into pulling the lasso out of my grip suddenly aided my charge. Suddenly flying at her, I leveled my sword at her like a lance. If it had hit, the match would have been over then and there.

But Cyra saw the attack coming and jumped atop my blade to avoid it. Heaving herself over my head, she let her arm dangle low enough that the rope around her wrist got caught around my helmet. The move forced me to drop the rope, and I had to twist around and roll to freedom.

We paused our frantic fight for a moment eyeing one another. Both the announcer and the audience roared, though most of the battle had to have been too fast for them to follow.

“I underestimated your tricks, Doomblade. But they won’t win you the fight.” Cyra narrowed her eyes at me.

I glanced at her sword and smirked. “We’ll see about that,” I taunted her by way of a reply.

The enchanted metal already sagged like it was made of wax and had been left out in the hot sun. My concoction, Acid of Amazonian Armor Erasure, was really a liquid host for a complex series of solvents that specialized at dissolving metal. Even I wasn’t entirely sure how it worked.

I’d bought most of the chemicals that went into the concoction from local alchemists. Most of my efforts had gone into identifying the perfect blend of acids and oxidizers, mixing them very carefully, and creating the dispersal mechanism.

I didn’t know how it worked; I just knew it would work.

When Cyra next swung her sword at me, midway through her swing she realized something was wrong. I didn’t bother to block or parry, taking the blow on my gauntlet. Cyra’s sword failed her and broke in two less than a foot beyond the hilt.

The proud Amazonian looked down at herself and realized most of her armor wasn’t far behind.

“Dammit!” Cyra cursed. With a grunt, she reached for her bag of holding to draw out another sword, only to find it missing.

“Looking for this?” I taunted as I held up her bag of holding, waving it at her.

I tucked the bag into an armored hip compartment and snapped it shut. Cyra would have a tough time getting it out of there without a weapon to attack me with.

Even with less than half a sword and rapidly deteriorating armor, Cyra stood firm. She took up a defensive pose, eyes focused even as her breastplate sagged and fell around her waist before dripping to the sand. This left her standing across from me in nothing more than the thin chest bindings Amazonian warriors favored.

“You’re a tricky foe, and I admit I underestimated you. But I cannot fail my clan!” Cyra rushed me again, attacking in a flurry of ferocious blows.

It took me a moment to realize what she was doing, and by the time I’d caught on, she’d nearly wrenched my sword from my hands.

If she took my blade from me, I’d be right back where I started. That was something I couldn’t allow, so I shoved Cyra aside and tossed my sword into a hip compartment I’d dimensionally expanded large enough to hold an extra shield or two. There was enough extra-dimensional space to plunge my sword into it. To the crowd it probably looked like I stabbed myself in the thigh… until my massive sword disappeared.

Both of us were now unarmed.

“Fists it is then,” Cyra said, balling her hands into fists and preparing for unarmed combat.

When she rushed me, I held up my shield to block her, but she hit me like a battering ram. Even without a weapon, Cyra was still powerful and deadly. And while I had trained to use a sword, I couldn’t say the same about unarmed combat. Luckily, I still had my shield.

She started by probing my defenses with a flurry of jabs, but despite my armor-boosted Strength and Agility stats, I couldn’t keep up with her. Even without armor or a weapon, she could still pound me into the dirt if I played her game.

But I wasn’t out of tricks yet. It was time to deploy the Sticky Slime of Amazonian Subjugation. This was my second batch, since I had to use the first batch on Myrina. With the testing done on that batch, I’d brought the price down from fifty thousand contribution points per each dose down to a mere thirty thousand. Each vial cost more than the average resident of Mucaria made in a lifetime.

I had to make this one vial count.

I left myself wide open in a trick that reminded me a lot of Myrina, and Cyra didn’t hesitate. She dove in for a chokehold, only to realize she’d fallen into my trap. In one hand, I activated the slime, while in the other, I activated a Mana Bomb.

I jumped clear as they both exploded, coating Cyra in a fountain of white goo. The slime hardened a second later. I’d avoided the worst of it, though I had to deploy another Mana Bomb to clean the mess off my hands, arms, and front of my armor.

Cyra was not so lucky—the dual explosions coated her from head to toe in slime.

Its grip on her was so strong that her mostly dissolved armor tore off her body as she twisted to escape, leaving her struggling against it in nothing but her underclothes.

If this was the Cyra I’d met back in Valkyrie’s Watch, this was the point where I’d declare victory. But she’d grown almost as much as I had. After a few seconds of pointless struggle, she realized physical might wouldn’t release her from the clingy white goo coating her. Only magic could do so.

She went still a moment, focusing. Dipping her head to the side, with a straining arm she reached out and tore a single strand of hair from her head. Holding the hair between her fingers, she mumbled a spell and blue light shone along its length. With a swipe, she flicked her wrist and cut the slime binding her arm in place.

I cursed, realizing the slime wasn’t going to be as effective as I hoped, even after disarming her. I knew she had a magical sword ability. Hell, I’d been with her when she picked it up. I had hoped it required a real sword.

Maybe this was some combination of abilities she’d figured out? Perhaps she’d picked up a new skill I didn’t know about. Whatever the case was, one thing was certain—Cyra wasn’t going down easily.

I couldn’t let her free herself, so I ran over and grabbed the end of the lasso I’d dropped earlier and yanked on it. It didn’t restrain her sword… err… her hair strand arm… but it pulled her at an awkward angle that made it harder for her to free herself.

“Surrender, Cyra,” I shouted. “I’m going to win!”

Cyra grit her teeth, expression firm. “You haven’t won yet, Doomblade.”

Reluctantly, I began my final offensive. Reaching into the pouch at my waist, I pulled out a fistful of inscribed monster cores before tossing them into the arena sand around Cyra.

Mana erupted from each core, gathering and swirling until monstrous shapes formed, all of them ghosts of ferocious beasts. I recognized many as the spectral bears, rabbits, and other woodland creatures Cyra and I had so easily bested in the Dragon Lodge entrance exam.

But that had been when Cyra could fight back. Here, she was practically helpless.

“Attack,” I ordered the monsters.

Cyra was forced to turn her attention from freeing herself to defending herself. All her thrashing as she twisted this way and that to avoid the spectral monsters undid much of the work she’d done cutting herself free of the sticky slime binding her in place.

It was a truly underhanded way to beat a skilled warrior like Cyra. When the boos came my way, I knew I deserved them.

“Would you look at that? Doomblade plans on kicking back while the noble and majestic Cyra Samhain is unfairly assaulted from all sides by specters, of all things! Trapped as she is, the young matriarch from the Samhain Clan is helpless! What an underhanded way to win,” the announcer chided from on high.

I pulled my sword back out of the extra-dimensional compartment in my thigh and buried it hilt down in the sand. Then I tied the lasso to the hilt to keep the rope taut and restrain Cyra’s movements.

“Give up!” I yelled.

This time, Cyra was too busy defending herself from gnashing teeth, swiping claws, and the sharp horns of extremely aggressive spectral horned rabbits to spare the time to reply.

“Give up!” I yelled again.

“I… swore… to win…” Cyra grunted from between gritted teeth.

Cyra let out a ferocious bellow, and powerfully lashed out in all directions with the glowing strand of her hair. One by one, the phantoms I’d summoned fell. They’d done serious damage to Cyra, but they hadn’t taken her out of the fight.

Able to focus on something other than defeating the phantoms, I watched as her muscles strained against the slime and the lasso that bound her. The slime hardened the more she struggled, locking her in place. Despite this, she grunted and pushed even harder.

I was shocked when the slime started cracking.

Cyra strained. Her muscles flexed and her body scrunched in on itself like a coiled spring. All at once, she let loose with a shout and tore the slime asunder. Magical or not, my carefully tailored creation was no match for the Amazonian’s fighting spirit.

This was it then. I was out of tricks. Doomblade was a powerful persona, but ultimately, Cyra wouldn’t be brought low by my creations, no matter how clever I thought they were.

“Is that… all you’ve got?” Cyra said, gasping as she leaned over with her hands on her knees. She was half naked and wielded a strand of her own hair. But despite all that, she still struck a figure that could strike fear into the hearts of lesser warriors.

I wouldn’t have it any other way.

With something between a laugh and a sigh. I pulled my sword out of the ground and tossed it in her direction.

“G-giving up?” Cyra asked.

“Not at all. But you’re going to need the sword.” I nodded toward the weapon.

“Another trick?” Cyra glanced at the sword warily.

“I promised you a wedding duel, Cyra. It wouldn’t be much of one if you couldn't fight back. I’m putting the tricks aside.” I turned to face the crowd, to where I knew the announcer who disliked me so much was seated. “As for you good people… I’ve got a surprise for you. I’m not actually a warrior.”

I activated my Multipurpose Glyphs and triggered my armor to disassemble itself. Pieces of my armor flew from me, and I guided it into a neat pile with my telekinesis. I dropped just over two feet to strike the ground. The sand was squishier underfoot than I thought it’d be, and I realized this was the first time I’d felt it without two tons of steel around me.

Now that I was viewing the arena through my eyes instead of cameras, everything seemed much brighter. The crowd’s shouting was louder, and the announcer’s voice blared in my ear.

“What a momentous turn of events! Doomblade has taken off his armor! Is he giving up? Does he have some other trick up his sleeve? Or is he looking to go out like a man and get choked out by some amazing Amazonian thighs? If the latter, I have a smidge of respect for the man…” He paused, and I don’t think we were meant to hear when he muttered. “Respect, hell… I envy him, if that’s the case.”

But none of that mattered. My world narrowed to one woman’s reaction in particular. She was the only one who mattered.

“C-Carter?” Cyra asked, face clouding with confusion.

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