Darlington's voice echoed in Gareth's mind, smooth and calculating.
"How do you like it?" He paused. "The power of malice."
He watched Gareth's form the way he stood, the way he breathed, the way the darkness seemed to cling to him like a second skin.
"It's strong in you." His voice was almost approving. "And not even a sizable amount. But still your body is controlling it very well."
Gareth responded to him, his voice flat, almost dismissive.
"And why do you care?" He looked at the blood-soaked spear in his hand, turning it over, inspecting the edge. "Oh god."
He looked up not at the sky, but at the presence that filled his mind.
"It's not as if the power belongs to you." A pause. "This power comes from Arondight."
Darlington kept quiet.
The silence stretched between them heavy, charged, dangerous. Then he spoke, his voice colder than before.
"You have a bad attitude." A pause. "Watch your back."
As Gareth heard him, he turned back immediately.
His body spun his eyes scanning, his instincts screaming, his will reacting. He saw about a hundred arrows that were fired at him a volley of steel and wood, screaming through the air, descending like a rain of death.
He fell down.
His body dropped allowing there to be a gap between him and the arrows, sliding across the blood-soaked deck, feeling the wood grate against his back. The arrows passed over him, thudding into the bodies of the fallen, quivering with the force of their impact.
Before he could get up, Darlington spoke again.
"Go after the commander of this entire fleet." His voice was sharp, urgent, absolute. "Kill him. And take that girl."
Gareth said, his voice calm, almost conversational.
"I would if I could find an opening."
Darlington's voice hardened.
"Then sacrifice yourself in the pursuit of him." A pause. "Once we get that girl, I'm sure of it we can win this battle."
Gareth was quiet for a moment.
Then he spoke, his voice slow, deliberate, certain.
"Then I have to carve a path."
He looked at the navy fleet that surrounded him the ships as large as mountains, the men as numerous as the waves, the enemy that stretched to every horizon.
"And if we kill everyone here..." His voice hardened. "...we will have access to him."
He smiled.
"And what's to say we cannot kill everyone that is here?"
For the first time in a while, a feeling of being self-proud filled him.
It was like the entire world was with him. A feeling that he was not used to. No rather, it was not that he was used to it, but the fact that it was the first time he had experienced it.
Malice had already changed the foundation of his thinking fundamentally.
He was no longer the same man who had fought the Romans, who had carried Lancelot through the storm, who had accepted the cold embrace of death. He was something more. Something greater. Something that had been reborn in the darkness of Arondight.
He looked at the navy fleet.
He raised his spear.
And he charged.
Gareth ran toward the enemy.
The navy fleet surrounded him.
And the sea roared.