Chương 14: Banks of Red Roses

Cormac let the music of the world that Róise's fórsa manipulated pick him up with joy as he watched her work. She darted in quick - Ger was still out front and in his defiant challenge position when she kicked out his right knee. The big man howled, trying to strike her with random haymakers as he collapsed, but she darted away as if they were playing tag. Róise's fórsa nature was Life, but born in the third ring she had found a place to take on a rare elevation to her base gifts.

While Cormac had been swindling tourists on corners to spill their coins from unknowing hands, Róise had spent her nights hidden in the rafters of the local tavern looking for quality marks. There she had become inundated with a type of Life fórsa she had never heard of before. As far as either Róise or Cormac knew, she was the only Folksong Adept in the Third Ring. The first combat style she developed from this evolution had been Banks of Red Roses.

On the banks of red roses my love and I sat down And he pulled out his charm flute and played his lass a tune. In the middle of the tune well the bonny lassie cried,"Ara Johnny, lovely Johnny would you leave me?" It was a jaunty tune, perfect for the beer hall she had picked it up in, and it fit perfectly for the pace of combat. Sliding away from Ger, she threw some fast jabs at Liam, who had collected himself enough to get his hands up to protect his face.

Róise's fists slammed into his forearms, but each punch was flooded with Folksong fórsa. Liam was a Water Nature Jetty Adept, and Róise could feel that his forms were flooding his muscles with stone-like toughness drawn from his adept class, but it wasn't enough. Banks of Red Roses enhanced her speed and strength, but it also used its Life fórsa nature to disrupt solid surfaces, like a tiny green shoot of grass breaking through cobblestone.

Her punches shattered his left forearm and sent his right flying back, allowing her to kick him hard in the stomach, sending him reeling backwards. Oh, when I was a young man I heard my father say, That he'd rather see me dead And buried in the clay, Sooner than be married To any runaway, By the lovely sweet Banks of the Roses. The content of the song wasn't important, but the connection Róise made to it was.

This was a boisterous tune sung with joy among friends, and often good friends in a beer hall end the night in a brawl. That is how the song mapped to her fórsa - a brawler's song, even though the content was - in most versions at least - lighthearted. The only time the content mattered was when it mattered to Róise. Having taken the two Firsts out of the fight for at least a few seconds, Róise focused on the only real threat here: Aodh the Second.

He was right that he was just an earned Second, meaning that he was at the bottom of a new tier of power, rather than starting out life there. It was certainly true that in a fight a skilled Second could defeat an untrained Third, but the Third would give him a run for his money, just in terms of natural power. However Róise had not lived as long as she had through as much as she had by taking any threat lightly - however unlikely it was to defeat her.

She traded blows with Aodh evenly, her moment of surprise spent as he'd taken the time to ready his own defenses. She was overpowering him, but he didn't show an ounce of pain as her blows rocked him back. Both Liam and Ger were Water nature, but Aodh had always been more unusual - probably why he's gotten to the next level of advancement and they hadn't. He was an Earth Nature Salt Adept - a distasteful combination akin to the always-shunned Blight fórsa specialists.

A Salt Adept with a Water nature was very different - that was a natural combination, often cultivated by chefs and sailors in the icier region of the southeast quarter. To salt the earth was literally as it said - it halted growth, and killed the very nature it was rooted in. Cormac had never heard of any Earth Salt Adept who made it any further than Second Ring. Aodh made good use of this power - managing to meet every other punch with counter-jabs.

As he did, his fórsa tainted Róise's, locking it to the current level of power in the area it struck. This served two purposes: one, it drained her fórsa by not allowing her to move it away from that attack point. Skilled fighters didn't keep their fórsa running at full blast across their whole body - they moved concentrations of it to where it would be most useful. Otherwise they would be exhausted within seconds. Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

The other purpose it held was that Róise wouldn't be able to channel fórsa any higher either - if he jabbed her left wrist when she hadn't filled it with fórsa she would be blocked from concentrating it any higher there or even past it to her left hand. Cormac frowned. This wasn't insurmountable for Róise - she had beaten Aodh one on one multiple times before. But now Ger and Liam were both struggling back to their feet. In seconds they would flank her.

He had no doubt she would come out the victor, but it would be much more effective if it looked easy. These three on her own would bloody her up a bit for sure. Helping her wouldn't be exactly fair, but they had learned the ship didn't count his power as interfering. Cormac had realized long ago the only thing better than a fair-won fight was a fight where no one could tell you were cheating. He slid into his forms without thought.

Cormac was the only person he'd ever heard of with his fórsa nature - in fact most academics thought it didn't exist, except as a joke. Fórsa natures were fundamental elements of the Tír - Life, Water, Earth, Fire, Mind - things like that. When you moved into Adept, it would be more believable to have a quirky specialization, but even then Cormac's was exceedingly rare. It made studying to improve it almost impossible - probably the reason Cormac wasn't an Adept yet.

No one seemed to believe Luck was a fundamental element of the universe. Cormac's forms were a mental detachment to the world. Water might dance along to the flow of energy, but Luck was found mostly where you weren't looking for it. If there were anyone who knew anything about Luck fórsa, they could have identified how those forms manifested on his body - a hazy look of a daydream, the thoughtless patter of fingers drummed on the air, a slow nod to a rhythm no one else could hear.

His power was also very dependent on the environment. Cormac had learned that luck was a field - there were places where it was strong and those where it was weak. He could weave the fórsa either way, but what he was capable of drastically increased in strong luck areas. Right now it was on the low side, but that was fine for his purposes. In his mind he spun strings and attached them to Róise's body, to him golden threads shimmering with power, but invisible to anyone else.

They tightened and loosened in ways that would benefit her most - if she were going to punch, but Aodh would have blocked, the string on her wrists held her back for one instant to throw off Aodh's timing. If she had a clear shot it would pull her fist just slightly higher to hit an area that would cause even more damage. Satisfied with that, he turned his attention to her three opponents. His threads darkened as he attached them, now purple-black ropes on each man.

Bad luck operated the same as the assistance he'd given Róise, but opposite. It would nudge each man to do worse than they would have otherwise. Cormac relaxed. That was as much as he could do in such a short time in a low-luck area, but it would be enough. Róise leapt and kicked Ger in the head, spinning around on landing to hammer the top of Liam's skull with the heel of her other foot. Each man was bloody now, but any observer would think they still had plenty of fight left in them.

Unfortunately for them, Banks of Red Roses had two different endings, depending on how maudlin the singers wanted to be. It was now that Róise switched to the one no one on this ship had ever seen her do before. Well, they walked and they talked til they came unto a cave Where Johnny all the day had been digging up a grave, Where Johnny all the day had been digging up a grave For to leave his lassie low among the roses.

Thin blades of light blue fórsa formed in her fists, the points oriented down in a stabbing direction. This surge of fórsa broke through the blocks Aodh's Salt Adept skills had created with the raw power of the Third Ring. With a lithe dance she stabbed each man in the chest over and over, like a baker pounding dough. Somehow their blocks were just too slow, their evasions moving just not far enough, as only Cormac could see how his purple-black threads held them back. Róise moved to the final verse.

Then he pulled out a pen knife, it was both long and sharp, And he plunged it right into his own dear Mary's heart. And he plunged it right into his own dear Mary's heart And he left her lying low among the roses. Aodh, Ger and Liam each fell to their knees, dark blood pouring to the wood below their feet. Everyone watching tried to pretend they didn't see the ship's deck slurp some of it up, like a kitten with spilled milk.

Róise dismissed the blades and walked much more casually than Cormac knew she felt over to her captain. Turning slightly to the remainder of the crew she said loudly "We're gonna need some more deckhands, captain."