by Sarah Lin
"Why would I agree to that?"
"Hmm, what meaningless prize would convince you to take such a stupid offer?" Tythes pretended to consider, then reached into the back of his pants, apparently to scratch. Just as Nauda curled her lip in disgust, he pulled his hand back out, revealing a pristine white piece of marble. "What about a Chasm Invitation? Your little friends seemed to be interested in those."
Nauda hesitated, looking for the trap within all the posturing. Was he really just a fool, using his House's wealth to humiliate others? It would be easy to believe, yet she always felt something slightly more sinister from him, just underneath the surface. His offer seemed to be real, and his smug confidence certainly was...
If she couldn't trust her allies when this much was on the line, who could she trust? Nauda straightened and stared directly back at him. "Then it's a bet. I'll collect the Invitation from you after the duel."
"Oh, I'm going to enjoy this!" Tythes gave a giddy little laugh, spun in a circle... and then flattened Nauda and Fiyu to the floor with an overwhelming flood of cantae.
Not prepared or braced, Nauda dropped immediately, and she felt her soulhome shudder. Tythes wandered off the next moment as if he'd forgotten them, taking the hat from a nearby official and placing it on his own head. Beside her, Fiyu released a small sigh and struggled to climb back into her seat.
Before Nauda had fully recovered from the sudden assault, another Authority stepped beside them. It was Tythes's supposed aunt, gazing down at them with sad eyes. When they focused on her, she gave them an unnecessarily low bow, considering that she outranked them by every possible standard.
"I apologize for this," she said softly. "House Crimson is... not what it once was."
"Can you not do something to stop your relative?" Fiyu asked. The older woman shook her head.
"I am the House's past, a foundation on which others should build. I... hope that you will not hate Tythes, despite his behavior. Please accept this as a small apology." The Authority handed them a small box, bowed again, and then departed as quietly as she came.
Though suspicious, Nauda decided that opening the box in this company was safer than opening it anywhere else. It proved completely ordinary, and inside, there was a powder... Nauda's eyes shot open as she realized what she was looking at. The powder was in fact a sublime spice, ground down to a fine form and refined by spiritual processes. Not only did it resonate with powerful cantae, it could easily be added to sublime foods to significantly increase their strength.
"Is it a trap?" Fiyu asked. Nauda handed the box to her, but though Fiyu tilted her head at it, she didn't seem able to sense anything other than its potency. It was a deeply wholesome gift, which just made Nauda more suspicious.
She couldn't understand if House Crimson was really so chaotic, but perhaps that was all a distraction. These antics gave them an excuse to have two Authorities present, more than any other House, with which they could... do what? As little as she trusted them, she couldn't come up with any kind of coherent plan for their presence here, so perhaps it really was just the whims of a powerful child.
Before anything else could go wrong, the sound of a ringing bell filled the chamber. Once everyone was silent, the Authority from the House of Coin rose to her feet. She stepped forward, sweeping her eyes across the audience with an expression of utter apathy, and spoke in a neutral tone.
"We have assembled here today to witness the duel between Esaire ai Armeau, hosted by the House of Burning Leaves, and Peanen of House Blacksilver. The duel will be until defeat, which I will judge as a neutral arbiter. If the House of Burning Leaves is victorious, they will be permitted to take their criminal from the city. If House Blacksilver is victorious, the Armeau family must answer for their vendetta and then be ejected from the city."
That seemed to be new, so Nauda perked up, wondering if Blacksilver negotiators had been at work, or if Theo himself had managed to push the terms. She wasn't sure, as there had been no sign of them since they arrived.
At that moment, the Authority rang her bell again, and the combatants entered from opposite sides. Esaire wore the same elegant clothes he always had, as well as his armament gloves and his new sword. Theo no longer looked shabby next to him, gleaming in his white cloak that didn't match the dark expression on his face. They stepped up into the arena, but remained silent.
"When the duel begins, this space will be sealed until its conclusion. Are both duelists fully prepared?"
Esaire snorted and looked away, but Theo shook his head. "Not yet. Nauda?"
She rose to her feet, letting everyone look at her, and then hurled her staff upward so that it spun end over end before landing in Theo's outstretched hand. It would have made more sense to just toss it over, but they'd practiced that move, and efficacy wasn't the point. Theo couldn't really use her staff... but Esaire spared a glance in her direction, a slightly troubled expression on his face.
"Now I'm ready." Theo gave a smirk that she would have thought was real if she didn't know him better, then spun her staff around rapidly before lowering it to his side.
Some in the audience sat forward with new interest, but the presiding Authority had barely even looked at anything that occurred. "If that is all, then we are prepared. The match begins now."
Chapter 40
At first they stood in complete silence, Theo still holding his staff ready. Esaire had yet to draw his sword or do anything with his glove armaments, simply staring at him. Eventually he raised his hands and placed them together in a gesture that would have been respectful if not for the rage in his eyes.
"This is no time for insults," Esaire said. "There is blood in our past and blood in our present. It ends now."
Theo had planned lines of his own, especially if Esaire had tried to push any kind of moral superiority. He'd also considered trying to bring up the attack at the quarry, to work against Esaire's position even if no one was ever prosecuted for it. But though the Armeau family might be planning other things, the man himself was focused on nothing but the fight.
Esaire drew his sword carefully, gracefully... and then he was already across the arena, his thrust a blinding silver flash.
The fight could very easily have ended in that moment, with Theo impaled through the chest. As it was, his speed was barely enough to leap aside. He didn't attempt to deflect the strike, knowing his opponent could tear right through him, and just put distance between them. Esaire whirled for a different strike, but Theo cast a bolt of gravitational torsion directly at his chest.
Before it could connect, a blue sphere of cantae lit up around Esaire. In a flash he was nearly on Theo again, a sweeping slash that threatened a shocking portion of the arena. Theo evaded it by reversing his gravity, then while he was in the air dropped several gravitational fields on top of his opponent.
Grunting, Esaire partially doubled over before he managed to straighten again, his cantae able to deal with even such multiplied gravity. But Theo came back down making a thrust with Nauda's staff and he barely blocked, moving sluggishly in the heavy gravity.
Nauda hadn't taught him how to use her binding ability, and it wouldn't have suited him in any case. But Theo was accustomed to fighting at high speeds from his first life, and he'd received staff training in his second, so he could easily merge the two and make himself appear like a real threat. Esaire had to play cautiously, anticipating a binding strike at any moment.
Under so much gravity, against a larger weapon, Esaire staggered backward until he switched to his cloak-like aura that nullified gravity. He did it faster than at the quarry, yet something about the switch... Theo leapt away and fired a few intentionally weakened torsion bolts, but Esaire blurred away from them. That speed... Theo had soulcrafted for more than he'd expected, but Esaire had surpassed even that.
Again keeping his distance, Theo repeatedly leapt away from his opponent, holding his staff back and instead firing more torsion bolts. As if he'd built his entire strategy around switching between those two
different tactics.
"Enough running!" Esaire leapt into another blindingly fast thrust.
When Theo dodged, he realized that it had never been intended to strike him, just herd him into a corner. He desperately fired several more torsion bolts, but Esaire switched to his spherical shield and began advancing, the bolts deflecting harmlessly. Theo took a step back, bringing Nauda's staff forward and again applying gravitational fields to his opponent.
He saw a glint in Esaire's eyes before cantae flooded from him.
In that moment, Esaire sprung his trap. He'd been feigning the need to switch between two different types of shields from the beginning and now leapt forward surrounded in a brilliant sapphire aura. Even with his new speed, Theo barely had time to feel the shield negate his gravity, then Esaire was bashing the staff out of his hands to prepare for the finishing blow.
Theo didn't even try to hold the staff: he let it drop and then cast two torsion bolts in swift succession, one from each hand.
This time, he didn't hold back, and the energy pierced through Esaire's defenses. Fiyu's bracers were better suited to his skills than the staff, if not a perfect match, so they helped him penetrate. His opponent grimaced and staggered, blood blossoming under his shirt... but then he lunged forward, his free hand reaching out. Cantae flowed from his glove, nearly striking Theo.
Only a fall directly upward saved him, taking him just barely over the strike. Theo hit the ceiling painfully hard, though the barrier prevented him from smashing through. Beneath, he saw Esaire grasp his injured shoulder, which was still bleeding profusely. Unfortunately, he was a Ruler-tier soulcrafter with a reinforced body, so even the gravitational torsion within his body wasn't enough to completely disable him.
Esaire shook off the injury and raised his sword toward Theo, waiting for him to drop. So he didn't. With his gravity still reversed, Theo stood up on the ceiling, staring down at his opponent and smiling. He was faking the expression, but he needed to goad Esaire into making a mistake.
From the ceiling, Theo began firing torsion bolts down at Esaire. Of course, Esaire easily shifted back and forth to evade them, so Theo began to weaken his bolts, using barely any of his cantae. It worked for a few steps, Esaire still dodging wildly, but his eyes shifted to track one bolt, then he stopped moving. Theo fired off a series of bolts, both weakened and serious, and Esaire dodged some and let others splatter uselessly off his aura.
"Useless. I'll come to you, then." Esaire leapt upwards, as fast as before, his sword drawing a line of sparks against the barrier.
While he dodged, Theo tried to apply as powerful a gravitational field as he could to Esaire, to no effect. He'd hoped that Esaire's ability would only be able to negate a certain amount of the effect, but either he'd been cautious, or as a Ruler his limits were far beyond the cantae Theo could manage.
Still, his ceiling position was superior and his opponent was still losing some blood, so Theo concentrated on dodging. To his surprise, Esaire managed to pull out even more speed, his body starting to sweat as he leapt and slashed with even greater ferocity. If Theo hadn't soulcrafted additional speed rooms, many of those strikes would easily have taken off a limb, but he could just manage to stay ahead of his opponent.
As Esaire dropped to the ground after another missed slash, something shifted in his posture... Theo wasn't even sure what he saw, his instincts just forced him to move before his conscious mind could decide.
An instant later, Esaire hurled his sword in a brilliant beam of cantae. The silver streak tore through the edge of Theo's coat and actually cracked the barrier, embedding the sword deep into the ceiling. Theo's eyes widened as he realized the intensity of that surprise attack... but Esaire had weakened his aura by throwing so much cantae into that strike, so Theo immediately struck with another bolt, this one to the head.
Esaire managed to duck aside, but the torsion effect grazed his arm, tearing his clothes and some of the skin beneath. He was injured in both arms now, so-
Something tore through the back of Theo's leg and cut across his shoulder.
He hit the ceiling and rolled across it, pushing himself away from whatever had struck him even before he understood. When he looked back, he saw that the sword hovered in the air, now covered in his blood. Below, Esaire smirked and swirled one hand, sending the sword in a similar circle. His other glove glowed with cantae, and Theo realized that he'd had another trap.
All that had saved him was the fact that his discipline had made him maintain his gravitational fields. If he'd fallen to the floor instead of the ceiling, Esaire would have instantly closed on him. Even now, he could feel blood pouring from his back leg and shoulder. Without his coat it might have cut through his spine, and his leg shot agony when he tried to stand.
Before he could move, Esaire sent the sword sailing at him again. Theo dodged aside, but a moment later Esaire's other hand reached out. Cantae grasped him and slammed him down to the floor, knocking the wind from him. Theo saw the sword slide into position above him, then it plummeted as Esaire dropped him back up, directly into the point.
Theo desperately threw all his gravitational fields at the sword, and though Esaire's cantae tried to control it, at ten times its normal weight, he stumbled in surprise. In the process, Theo ended his reversed gravity, dropping back to the ground instead of into the sword.
The movement disoriented both of them, but Esaire wasn't as familiar with suddenly changing gravity. Before he could recover, Theo cast another torsion bolt that grazed his hip, making him stagger back.
One of Esaire's hands swept down, and Theo rolled to the side before the sword stabbed down in the same movement. Esaire tried to swipe at him, but now that Theo understood how he controlled it, he could dodge easily enough.
Yet when he tried to stand from his roll, his injured leg refused to cooperate. Recognizing how little time he had, Theo instead reduced his gravity to a tiny fraction of normal and pushed himself into the air. It was only a strange approximation of flying, but it allowed him to float over the arena without putting any weight on his leg.
"Come on, show me what you can do!" Esaire began striking from a distance, sending the sword to slash with one hand and trying to catch him with the other.
If not for the injuries to both arms, Esaire could well have finished him then. Theo could just manage to stay ahead of his speed, but now both of them were bleeding and Esaire would soon figure out that he couldn't easily move from side to side.
Theo began casting torsion bolts, but Esaire batted them aside effortlessly with one glove while trying to move his sword for a killing strike. This was exactly what he'd been afraid of: each bolt cost him cantae, but his opponent's superior force could simply overpower each one.
Putting a hand to his back, Theo pretended to be holding the injury... while beginning to generate a singularity with that hand. If he could keep his opponent confident for long enough, he could build enough of the proper cantae to finish his technique.
Esaire leapt at him without hesitation and Theo instinctively hurled the half-formed singularity. That startled Esaire, who barely managed to twist aside in midair. Theo was nearly as surprised, so all he could do while maintaining his gravitational fields and the half-formed singularity was kick off the ground with one foot at nearly zero weight to put distance between them.
As soon as he could, Theo began to generate another singularity, this time with both hands. Esaire turned and smirked at it. "You think I'm going to give you time for that?"
The sword flashed from the side and Theo released the partial singularity toward it. Esaire cautiously swept his blade back, then returned it to his side as he began to advance. He swept the sword back and forth across the arena, drawing sparks against the floor.
"You can hold me back by throwing those, but you'll never build up enough strength to stop me."
Grimacing as if desperate, Theo released his next attempt at a singularity before Esaire could attack again, this one aimed at his opp
onent's legs. Esaire easily stepped aside, but the singularity energy hovered against the arena floor, nearly invisible.
Falling back, Theo tried to form a singularity over and over, each time forced to release the energy to defend himself. Esaire laughed as he pressed forward, and Theo really was near his limits. His soulhome was almost empty, and his concentration was stretched to the limit maintaining all the partial singularities glimmering around the room.
Abruptly Theo switched tactics, instead casting a series of torsion bolts at his opponent's legs. Esaire dodged them one after another, but Theo tried to draw on Fiyu's intense storms and hammer him backwards. Slowly his opponent took one step back, then another, his foot nearly falling into the partial singularity...
And then Esaire stepped around it and laughed. "You thought you could leave these as traps for me?" He gestured around the arena, his eyes flickering to the glimmering specks of darkness. "I would have thought you'd learned by now, I can see through such petty tricks. I know where each and every one of your traps are, and they're no threat to me."
"Let's find out." Theo turned his hands toward one another and then pulled every partial singularity in the room back toward himself.
Esaire's eyes widened as he realized the truth, but it was already too late: all of the singularity energy around the arena gathered together between Theo's hands. The sword flashed out, surrounded by silver cantae, intending to tear apart his technique before it could be released.
When it touched the darkness, cantae and sword were both consumed.
As the black hole swelled between his hands, Theo needed a moment to catch his breath, his mind still reeling from the effort required. It had come very close, but he'd formed the true singularity just before the sword reached him. Though Esaire still had his gloves on the other side of the arena, for the first time there was a flicker of fear in his eyes.
"Okay, that was a good trick, but-"
Theo didn't reply, just brought his hands together and tunneled the black hole directly into his opponent.