Ash moved first, right arm swinging.
I raised my left hand, put my weight on the same leg. Ash’s blow never came. She twisted mid blow, and I defended against nothing. Ash moved towards my right. I tried to correct, but I was a beat too late. She was already inside my guard. Her palm took me in the shoulder and turned me a quarter-circle, and I staggered two steps sideways with all the majesty of a startled hen.
She could have pressed the advantage before I recovered. Instead, she waited. "Your footwork is terrible," she said.
"My footwork has never been relevant."
"It's relevant now."
That was true. It had never needed to be. Nothing that had ever come within my reach had lived long enough for footwork to matter, until now.
She came again. I had commanded battles across three horizons at once. I had held the positions of forty legions in my head and moved them like fingers. None of that lived here. The Cerberus and the Great Elk had been dangerous, but they were simple beasts in the end. The Phoenix had been worse still, and it had been holding itself back. Ash was formidable, and she held back nothing. She had sworn that to me not long ago, in a chamber of crystal, and she was keeping her word now.
By the time I understood what her shoulder was doing, her shoulder had already done it. Her fist stopped a hair from my ribs and withdrew.
She was testing me. If I had any of the [Skills] and [Stats] I had once commanded, this testing would have been short.
I swung. She slipped it. I swung again, lower, a feint folded inside the blow. Ash took it apart without appearing to notice it had been one, caught my wrist, and let it go rather than capitalize on it, which she could have. The crowd had gone quiet. It had been quiet for some time.
They had jeered at tangled chains and a girl falling on her face. They were not laughing now. Some of them, at least, understood that they were watching something else entirely. The boy who had muttered for my blood was only staring wide-eyed now.
I had once known how every battle ended before it began. The opponent did not matter. Most would be swatted long before they could reach me. The few who reached me would end the moment they drew blood. I always knew the outcome. A victory, and usually a dull one.
I looked at Ash and I did not know. I did not know, and my heart was hammering, and there was sweat in the small of my back, and a strand of hair had come loose across my face, and I was-
I was enjoying myself.
"Is that the best you can do?" Ash asked. The Hero was grinning. It was not a Hero's grin at all.
"Do not regret this, Ash."
I settled into a different stance. My weight dropped low, my hands hung at my side. In the old world this had been called the [Silent Blade]. It was the stance my assassins had favored. Those who had passed through chambers no one should have reached and were gone before the body cooled. It was one of the rare few stances that leaned on nothing but itself. It did not care for [Stats]. It was all about patience and cunning, to deliver a single strike at the one moment a target believed itself safe. It could let a lesser thing kill what it had no right to touch.
It was different here, where Ash knew I was coming. It was still my best option. It annoyed me to use it. It was a weakling's stance, and twice beneath a Queen. Against Ash, I would be a fool not to use it.
We moved again. My footwork had not improved. The earth still dragged at my feet and Ash was still faster. But I no longer needed to strike her. I needed only to not be where her hands were, and that much I could manage. Her palm passed a finger's width from my jaw and met air. Her elbow grazed the place my shoulder had just left. I gave ground to her, always keeping myself a hair’s breadth from a blow that would have ended our bout.
The [Silent Blade] was not made for trading blows. It was made for one. Everything before that one was a lie told with the body. So I retreated, and let her think she had me running. Each blow came closer than the one before it, but none of them landed.
"Are you just going to run?" Ash asked. She was grinning.
She rushed forward and dropped low. Her leg swept the earth and took both of mine with it. The ground tilted and the world went sideways and I was falling. That was the moment.
I twisted into the fall. I gathered Essence into my heel, no more than the strike required. Enough to drop the Hero, but not enough to hurt her. I made sure of that. My body finished its turn and I drove my heel into the back of her neck.
It connected, but something about it was odd, and then we both struck the earth. I lay there half a breath. Then I pushed myself up. My ribs and my legs ached, but I rose, because the blow had landed clean, and a clean blow from the [Silent Blade] ended things. I turned to the Hero, to where she ought to have been lying senseless.
Ash was sitting up. One hand was pressed to the back of her neck, rubbing it. "Ow," she said.
I stared at her. The strike should have dropped her. I had given nothing away, I was certain of it. On anyone else in this building save perhaps the Inker, that strike would have been the end of the fight before they knew they had been struck.
Ah. That was why the impact had felt off. In the last fraction before my heel found her, she had turned her neck into it, had she?
"That almost got me," Ash said. She rolled her neck and winced. "Almost." She looked up, and there was something rueful in her face. "I knew there was something strange about the way you were fighting. Good thing my hunch was right."
"You know this style then."
Ash got to her feet. "I’ve protected other people from it. Was always wondering when I’d have to defend myself from it." She brushed the dirt from her arm. She rolled her shoulders. "It was still just a hunch though. You hid it pretty well."
I’d failed because of a hero’s hunch. I waited for the frustration. I had been beaten, and worse, I had been read. The frustration should have come. It did not. A smile found me instead. Perhaps a single strike might have ended things, but it would have left something inside of me hollow. No wonder this was the Hero who finally killed me.
"I hope you're not done yet," Ash said. She settled back into her stance. The grin had come back.
I rolled my shoulders. The [Silent Blade] had failed me. Very well. I set my feet wide, squared my shoulders, and let my weight settle forward. This was the [Haunting Giant]. It was a brute's posture. It was beneath me thrice over. I took it anyway. The gaps in our bodies were clear, but enough Essence would bridge that gap. I was sure.
The Ember Core hummed and I poured Essence through my limbs until the air bent with it. I might not have her skill, but raw force could open doors skill never could. If there was enough of it. I felt the bracers shiver, and pulled back some of the Essence. Ash answered. Her presence rose to meet mine, until the ground beneath her feet shattered. My own feet had sunk into the earth. I was aware, distantly, that every other fight in every other ring had stopped.
It is a strange thing, to be honored by the strikes that are beating you.
We collided. The ground left us first.
“Stop!”
The Inker was between us. I had not seen the Elf enter the ring at all. One moment we were charging, and the next she stood in the gap between us with one hand raised toward each of us. She had caught our fists -one in each hand- and her arms trembled with the holding. Her Crest blazed.
"How," she breathed, and it was not meant for either of us, "how in the world do you both have this much-" She caught herself. Her jaw set. When she spoke again her voice was cold. "You are allowed to spar," she said, "you are not allowed to destroy the ring."
Ash and I looked at each other, and then we looked beneath it.The entire ring had sunk in on itself, and the sinking had spread past its edges. A few moments more, and it might have been a small crater instead.
I glanced outside the arena, and saw the humans staring at us. Some of them had fallen over. Whether that was from the weight of Essence or the taste of it, I could not say. The demonbloods stared too. They might have stared less openly, but the fear was the same.
My gaze found Edda among them. Her eyes had gone wide, wider than I had ever seen them. Then it returned, all at once, back to its normal flatness. I almost thought I saw her shifting mark bleed red. I looked away before she could see that I had seen.
I forced my Essence back into the Ember Core. Ash straightened and rolled her shoulders. She met my gaze. “Good spar,” she said.
I, Lysanthia, the strongest to have ever lived, had lost. Perhaps the loss had not been decided, but I could see the tide of our battle. Against anyone else in this arena, there would have been no tide to see. Only the sight of the shore moving away.
The anger did not come. Orzathiel came instead.
In the early centuries, he had challenged me, and challenged me often. The others had asked once, perhaps twice, and learned. Orzathiel never learned. He would come to the throne room and demand the right, and I would grant it, because a Queen who refuses challenges soon faces a different kind. The bouts always ended the same way. I had thought him a fool for them.
The last time, he had lowered his four swords mid-bout and hung his head. He never asked again. He had looked mournful then, and I had thought it was the look of a powerful demon finally accepting his place as the lesser, and disliking it.
I understood that look now, eight feet from a grinning Hero, with my ribs aching and my heart still loud. He had not been mourning his defeats. He had been mourning the moment he could no longer reach me at all. When his many false lives made no difference. He had sworn his loyalty to me on that day. I had thought it was because I had spared him his last life. I had spared it many times before. His loyalty tasted bitter now.
Ash was still looking at me. There was a weight to her gaze that hadn’t been there before. Perhaps I had shown too much, yet again. “You had the advantage,” I said. My voice was steady. “I will concede that much.”
Ash raised an eyebrow. I held up a hand before she could speak. “I was never a physical fighter,” I said. “My talents lie elsewhere. With marks permitted, the result would be…very different. For now, however, I will concede.”
Ash smiled. It did not match the ones I had come to know from her. “Maybe. I’d like to find out, someday. Just for the fun of it.” She stepped closer. Our hands brushed. There was no need for them to brush. The bracers still showed their red and green. That was good. I had not been thinking of them.
Orzathiel, you fool. You should have kept asking. I would not have minded the bouts, even knowing how every one of them would end. Still, it was not a bad feeling, to fight and not know the winner beforehand.
The murmuring began while Ash's hand was still warm against mine. Murmuring I had grown used to in this Academy. Whispers from people who spoke only when they thought I could not hear. This one felt different. This one had fear in it, and the fear was not aimed at me. Someone pointed somewhere behind us.
Ash and I turned. A figure sat alone in the high tiers, far enough that the white light thinned around her. There had been no one in the stands when we entered. Which meant she had arrived during the bout and I had felt nothing. Now, I could feel her gaze.
Even at this distance I could make out the shape of her. She was tall, her skin a deep red, with two horns that did not curve as mine did but pointed straight at the sky. Her arms were bare. On the left forearm, ink caught the light, and the ink was white. It was a Crest, its shape lost to the distance between us.
A half-demon with a white Sovereign, worn openly, in front of every eye in this Academy. She does not hide hers.
The Elf had gone very still. "When did she-" she whispered, and did not finish.
The figure rose. I felt her gaze sweep over me again. I was too far to tell, and yet I was sure. She turned and walked down a stair toward an open door, in no hurry at all, and was gone.
"Ilyasviel," someone said. It was a whisper that carried in the absolute silence. A deeper silence than the one our bout had made.
“She never comes here unless it’s a ranking match. Why was-”
"Shh!” someone hissed, as if the half-demon might reappear at the sound of her own name.
So that was Ilyasviel. I had known who she was even before someone had said her name. I turned from the door to the crowd. The demonbloods had been wary of me. Had been wary of me since I had first stepped into this Academy. What I saw now was fear, writ plainly across all of them. Even Edda.
Ash pressed closer to me. I had not asked her to. We both said nothing, though I suspected her thoughts had taken the same shape mine had. This Ilyasviel had come to watch us. I found myself wondering what she had come looking for.
It was the Elf who broke the stillness. She clapped twice and barked pairs back into their rings. Everyone pretended nothing had changed at all. They pretended poorly.
The Elf found us before the next bout began. "You," she said to Ash, "may use your marks from the next class onward. Your control is beyond question." Her gaze passed over me and her lips thinned. "The other one, I will continue to evaluate."
I had been evaluated by Gods. I allowed the small woman her small verdict.
Ash had chosen to stay and watch some of the other bouts. Now that I paid attention, I could see what had piqued her curiosity. Many of the humans were using combat stances I had not seen before. Or at least, was sure I had not seen before.
Every demonblood had been paired with a human. The Elf made a show of selecting pairs 'matched to each other's level,' and every match was lopsided in the same direction. After each one, her gaze found me. She was making sure I had noticed.
I heard the voice before I saw its owner. It was sharp, carrying across the hall.
“What’s the matter, demonblood? Think you can just hide from your turn?”
I turned. The voice belonged to a boy I did not recognize. He was tall, the tallest person in the entire arena. His lack of width gave him the appearance of something that might fall under the weight of a stiff breeze. He stood over Edda with his arms folded.
Edda stood with her back to one of the walls that bled into the stands above. Her arms were at her sides and her face was blank. Edda had not approached us. Ash had gone to her instead, and whatever brief conversation they had lasted only seconds before Ash returned with a shrug.
It was almost amusing to see this bully pick on someone with a trace of my kind, and yet ignore me standing here, just a few feet away. This boy had pointedly not met my gaze after my spar with Ash. People without true power always exposed themselves.
“Come on,” the boy said, stepping closer. “You haven’t fought anyone for an hour. Why are you even here? You going to run away? Must be nice for you, hiding with the rest of us you freak. You think nobody sees it? You think if you're quiet enough, we'll just forget what you are?"
The humans nearby leaned in. The demonbloods found other places to look -all but the frost haired girl from the earlier bout, who watched and did not blink. The Inker watched this all, ignoring the few spars still taking place. Ash and I met each other’s gaze for a moment.
Edda’s jaw tightened. She stepped back, or tried to. There was nowhere for her to go. “Of course she’s running,” a girl called out, loud enough for those nearby to hear. A few heads turned. “How typical. She’s too weak to-”
“She is not running.” My voice carried. I had not shouted. The arena quieted around me in the way it always did, because a Queen’s voice brooked nothing less.
The tall boy turned. He found me standing ten paces away, arms folded. Whatever he saw in my face made him take half a step back before he caught himself. “She is refusing you,” I said. “And you are lucky that she is. Because she is far stronger than you are, and if she were not holding herself back, you would know it.” I smirked. “She would beat you senseless.”
I did not, strictly speaking, know this to be true. I had no [Inspect]. I did not know what power her mark held, nor what class of mark the boy carried. Still, I was sure. I had watched the girl observe these bouts more thoughtfully and quietly than the others had, and few who boast hold power to match their volume. Besides, I had been curious about this girl’s strange mark.
Edda’s mouth slowly opened and closed. The boy’s face darkened as he spluttered. Some of the demonbloods gave me fearful glances. In the silence, I distinctly heard Edda groan.