by Andrew Rowe
She was my friend. My rival. Perhaps something more than that.
Velas was the only person I’d ever met that could match me consistently in a fair fight.
And I was already half-naked and three-quarters dead on my feet.
I turned my gaze to meet hers. “Velas.”
She grinned brightly at me. “Been a while. You’ve looked better.”
Lydia moved to right behind Velas, then put a hand on her shoulder. “Sorcerous Armor.”
“Thanks, Red. But I won’t need it. He doesn’t seem to have much fight left in him.” Velas scanned the battlefield. “Shame. I was hoping for our last fight to be something special.”
I raised my still-sheathed sword to rest it against my shoulder. “Take Lydia away from here and I’ll give you the fight you want.”
Lydia shook her head. “Don’t. We can’t risk it. We’ll end him here together.”
Velas tilted her head to the side, seemingly considering my offer and ignoring Lydia entirely. “A real fight? You’ll use the sword?”
She’d always wanted me to fight her with the Sae’kes. I’d always refused, since there was too much of a risk of collateral or accidental damage.
I sucked in a ragged breath.
I had a choice to make.
If I refused to fight on Velas’ terms, there was a high likelihood she would kill me. I was already terribly injured, and my odds weren’t great against Velas even in the best of circumstances.
But if I chose to draw my sword against Velas, did that mean that every previous time I’d chosen to hold back had been a failure? Was I invalidating my philosophy by using a weapon I couldn’t control against a friend?
No, I decided. That sort of all or nothing thinking isn’t realistic. This choice doesn’t reflect on my past successes or failures. I have to decide for myself every time I step into battle what choices I’m going to make.
And today, I’m not fighting Velas.
I’m fighting against whatever is responsible for making this reshing test.
I steeled myself, then nodded to Velas. “I’ll give you the fight you want.”
A grin spread across Velas’ face. “Good. Very good.” She pointed toward the potion on the ground. “That a healing potion?”
I nodded slowly.
Velas pointed at me. “Don’t move.” Then she glanced at Lydia. “Lydia, get the potion.”
Lydia nodded and stepped closer, then bent down to reach for the potion.
Velas shifted, motion sorcery carrying her far faster than I could move. By the time I could process what had happened, she’d shoved the Heartlance through the center of Lydia’s back.
Lydia crumpled silently to the ground.
“No!” I ran forward to where Lydia had fallen, right beside the potion.
“Looks like Red is looking even redder than usual.” Velas stepped back, pulling the spear out of Lydia’s body and grinning. “You can’t possibly know how long I’ve been waiting to do that.”
I momentarily ignored Velas, flipping Lydia over. The spear had caught her right in the center of the back and burst through the front of her chest. She was covered in blood, and she didn’t look to be breathing.
I turned my gaze toward Velas. “Why? She was on your side!”
“Oh, Taelien. Darling. You’ve always missed such a simple fact. I was never on her side.” She raised the bloodstained spear, but not into a striking position. Instead, she simply leveled it and rested the end against the ground, chuckling softly. “And as much as I liked your little offer, it was almost as dishonest as mine. You’d never have fought me with your full strength if I’d taken her to safety. I know you better than that. You needed some real motivation.”
She grinned at me. “And nothing motivates like a bit of tragedy.”
I punched the ground, my fist digging into the earth. My aura threatened to swell around me, destroying everything nearby, but I restrained it.
“You’re going to pay for that.”
“Now that’s what I’ve been waiting to hear.” Velas swayed on her feet, laughing. “Go on, drink the potion. I won’t be satisfied if you’re not at your best.”
I grabbed the potion with my free hand.
Velas was right about one thing — the potion was my best chance of standing a fighting chance against her.
Even if the things in here were illusions, they’d demonstrated abilities comparable to the real people I knew. And I could not rely on an illusion to stop short of killing me.
But if the weapons here were real, and the people here were near-perfect copies of the real ones, that meant that there was a slim chance that the Lydia dying next to me was more than just a mere illusion.
There was a chance that she had her own consciousness. Her own memories. Her own beliefs. And if that was true, then the scenario was as real from her perspective as the danger was to mine.
And even if that chance was slim, I could not take the chance of letting her down any more than I already had.
I poured the remains of the healing potion on Lydia. The wound was stubborn, but I saw it begin to close.
The blur in the corner of my vision caught my attention before I could see if the potion would be enough to save her, and I barely moved my head before Velas’ spear moved through the place where it had been a moment before.
Even as it was, she drew a bright crimson line across my cheek.
She didn’t give me a moment to respond. She shifted the spear and slammed the shaft into my chest, releasing a blast of kinetic energy on impact. It hurled me backward, sending me skidding across the ruined ground.
Velas descended from the sky above me a moment later, her spear coming down. I rolled to the side, hurling the now-empty potion bottle at her as I tumbled.
Her spear jammed into the ground right where I’d been a moment before, and she smacked the potion bottle to the side without effort.
I hoped to counter while she pulled her spear out of the ground, but I didn’t even make it all the way to my feet in time. She was just too fast, even faster than I’d remembered.
Her spear shot toward me.
Body of Iron.
I felt a surge of euphoria as renewed strength flooded my veins. It did not, however, improve my speed.
I stumbled back and to the side. It wasn’t enough to avoid the attack completely, but it wasn’t meant to. Her spear impacted against my shoulder, rather than the center of my chest.
Ordinarily, that still would have been a horrible injury, maybe even a fatal one. But with Body of Iron active, I was tougher than most actual metals. An ordinary person with an ordinary weapon wouldn’t have hurt me in the slightest.
As it was, Velas was far from ordinary, and her weapon was enchanted. The tip of the Heartlance managed to inflict a shallow cut, but nothing else.
The defense worked just as I’d planned. In the moment of surprise at the ineffectiveness of her attack, I grabbed her spear with my off-hand, attempting to jerk it out of her hand.
Disarming her might have given me the advantage. She was, unfortunately, still much faster than I was. A blast of force carried her backward, tearing the Heartlance out of my grasp.
I was on my feet, at least. I lowered my still-sheathed sword into a combat stance.
“You made a terrible mistake by discarding that potion.” Velas twirled her spear, the motion a blur that I could barely follow. “Your speed is feeble and your strength is fading.”
“You,” I raised my sword above me, “have always talked too much.”
I whipped the sword down, commanding the lock on the scabbard to release. The scabbard flew forward with all the strength my reinforced body could muster.
She moved to the side easily, but I was far from done.
I stomped the ground, channeling stone mana.
Blades.
Dagger-like protrusions of stone burst from the ground beneath her.
Velas leapt into the air to avoid the spikes, then a burst of moti
on carried her higher still. She pointed her spear downward, aiming straight for my exposed chest.
I swung the unsheathed Sae’kes upward toward her. A wave of destructive force followed my swing, tearing through the sky.
Velas reacted quickly, blasting herself out of the trajectory of the destructive wave with a surge of kinetic force.
I waved my left hand. The destructive wave split apart into six separate projectiles, each of them flashing toward Velas at a different trajectory.
Velas’ eyes widened momentarily, then she blurred again, a shockwave blasting her back toward the ground.
She landed right in front of me, already in a lunge.
I blocked her first strike, barely.
The second came too fast, but it was a sloppy one. She glanced my already injured left arm, this time nearer to the shoulder.
I swung the Sae’kes toward her knees.
She parried easily, then surged forward with a burst of force and slammed an elbow into my face.
That was a mistake.
She hit hard enough that I could feel it, even with my Body of Iron active, but not hard enough to stop me from thinking.
Tighten.
I commanded the metal of the armor around her arm as soon as she made contact with me. If I’d had another moment, I might have reshaped more of her armor, but the contact was too brief.
And so, even as I stumbled backward with blood streaming from my face, she was falling backward and clutching her arm as the metal tightened and dug into her skin. I’d tightened the metal enough to cut off her circulation, but not enough to sever the arm outright.
She yelled an expletive, then switched her spear to her other hand.
I couldn’t afford to give her a moment to recover.
I came in with a two-handed strike, aiming for her spear. If I could make contact with the weapon for long enough, I hoped to be able to command it to fall to pieces.
Even with one usable arm, even with the agony of metal digging into her other arm, she was still faster than me.
Her spear lashed out in a perfect strike toward my ribs. I could see the glow of essence around it; she’d reinforced the strike with motion sorcery, giving it added force. Even with Body of Iron active, I didn’t think I could handle a hit like that. I tried to twist my own weapon to block, but my timing was off.
Something caused Velas to twist to the side. Her spear glanced across the side of my chest, making yet another cut, but she failed to pierce through me.
I swung again, but she blurred backward, landing a dozen feet away.
I didn’t stop swinging. With each slice, I projected a wave of destructive essence, hoping that she couldn’t avoid them while dealing with the pain from her injury.
She blurred to the side, but I focused on my projectiles, willing them to follow her. The destructive force answered my commands more readily than any other form of magic.
Velas hissed, then slammed the bottom of her spear into the ground.
I knew what that meant. I’d run out of time.
Golden lines flowed across the surface of the Heartlance, then flowed up her arms. It was a powerful speed-enhancing effect, one that I’d never properly learned to counter. She was faster than me even without it, and with it, I stood virtually no chance of hitting her again.
With the speed effect active, she dodged my remaining projectiles with ease, then jumped all the way to the top of the nearby gate. In a few more moments, she’d turned the Heartlance toward herself.
It took me a moment to realize she was cutting off the piece of armor that had been constricting her right arm.
She landed in front of me again a moment later, swinging too fast for me to follow.
I blocked what I could, but that meant very little.
In a matter of moments, I’d been hit more times than I could count. My Body of Iron decreased the impact of her blows, but they still broke skin and left bleeding wounds. If she’d been aiming for vital points, I’d have been killed outright.
I fell to my knees, my vision blurring. Blood poured from dozens of open wounds.
Velas raised her spear. “You’re pitiful.”
I wearily looked up at her, my vision failing to properly focus. I groaned, trying to maintain my grip on my sword. At that point, I could barely think.
I thought I sensed some movement off to my side, though. I couldn’t hear or see it from my angle, but I could feel metal slowly shifting nearby.
She lowered her spear to my chin. I couldn’t manage enough strength to even bat it away. “You’ve always been ruled by your fear. Even now, you’re still wasting the little power you have on holding back. And now you’re going to die a coward’s death, on your knees, surrounded by the bodies of the people you failed. It’s poetic, in a way.”
Velas was right and wrong.
I wasn’t even doing it consciously, but when wielding the Sae’kes, I always used a portion of my concentration on constraining the destructive aura around the blade.
If I didn’t, the aura extended further, tearing through the environment and disintegrating anything it touched. It was exactly the kind of damage that this scenario represented; people and objects torn to pieces by annihilating force.
Perhaps I could have gained an advantage if I’d decided earlier in the fight to let my sword’s power flow freely, cutting everything in sight. Maybe that would have been the wiser approach.
But I’d considered it too late. Even if I released my concentration at that point, I was too badly injured for that approach to work. She was clearly ready for it.
There was one more way I could think of that might reverse the course of the fight. One that I’d refused to consider for too long, since I knew the costs would be severe and permanent.
Rather than constraining the power of my sword or letting it loose, I could draw it into myself.
With the sword’s power fueling me, I’d be stronger than ever before.
“No.” I said aloud, but more to myself than to her.
“No?” Velas pressed her spear closer against my throat, drawing blood. “You’re denying that you’re holding back?”
“I’m refuting your argument.” I took a breath. It was difficult to speak without pressing the spear even deeper into my throat. “It would be easy to throw every bit of power I have into every battle. To just give in to my instincts and to ignore the consequences. To strike down my enemies with every bit of power I can muster. To kill without hesitation, with the knowledge that any enemy left alive could be a future threat.”
I turned my head upward to meet Velas’ eyes, allowing the metal of her spear to scrape across my throat as I moved. “That isn’t bravery. That isn’t strength. That would be allowing my fear of death, or my fear of failure, to push me into risking the deaths of others. If I’m ever going to use my full strength, it will be when I have no other way to protect someone else.”
Velas’ eyes narrowed at me. “You’re a fool. When you die, Lydia will be next — because you held back, all the way to the end.”
“No, I think not.” I smirked. “You’ve missed two critical things.”
She raised an eyebrow, seemingly amused. “Oh?”
I closed my eyes. “One.”
I felt the metal that was still pressed against my throat, and I willed it to break.
The true Heartlance possessed tremendous resistance to magic. This weapon was potent, but not a match for the real thing. It resisted my commands, but I’d been in contact with it for some time now. I understood its composition, and my metal sorcery had grown vastly stronger in the time since my last match against the real Velas.
Velas’ spear fell into three separate pieces.
To her credit, she reacted almost instantly, swinging the piece of the shaft that remained in her hands toward my face.
I couldn’t raise my sword quickly enough to defend myself. My strength was truly depleted, and I was no match for Velas in that state, even deprived of that weapon.
<
br /> All I said was, “Two.”
Then a hand came down on the top of Velas’ head. “Sleep.”
Velas’ eyes fluttered for a moment. She staggered and her swing missed.
“Sleep.” The voice behind Velas repeated, more insistent.
Velas collapsed to the ground, her eyes shut.
I released my Body of Iron spell.
With a grunt, I released my grip on my sword and turned toward my rescuer.
Lydia stared down at me, one hand still pressed against the wound on her chest. She was even paler than usual and unsteady on her feet. After a moment of narrowing her eyes at me, she knelt down. “When did you realize I was conscious?”
“I sensed some movement a few moments ago. At first, I wasn’t certain what it was,” I admitted. “But Velas missed one of her swings without an obvious reason, and I realized when I was down on the ground that it might have been one of your wind spells.”
Lydia grunted, sitting and putting a hand on Velas’ head. “Sleep.” She sighed. “Sorry that it took me so long to assist you. I was gathering up enough strength to teleport behind her and knock her out before she could react. Even then, I don’t know if I would have succeeded if you hadn’t broken the Heartlance.”
“I’m impressed you managed that at all. I can see you’ve been practicing silent spellcasting.”
Lydia nodded. “Hartigan emphasized that my incantations are often too long and complex to be practical in combat. As such, I’ve been training myself to use shorter ones, or merely using gestures or thoughts like Jonan. I still prefer incantations to aid my focus, but this was a time for subtlety.” She paused, still watching Velas’ body. “Velas has a habit of shrugging off my spells quickly. Can you bind her more thoroughly?”
I pushed myself forward awkwardly, nearly falling over in the process, and put a hand on Velas’ armor. “Reshape.”
I fused the joints in her armor, removing the points of articulation. When she woke up, she’d be encased in immobile metal.