Dee Lear sat at a long desk, pawing through parchment with their pale hands. Lanterns hummed, a blueish glow painted against the dark abyss just beyond the windows. The desk was lined with silver, filigree running down into patterns on the floor, tracing up the walls, like someone had spilled quicksilver. It hung like a stretched star against the dark cobalt which composed the floors and walls. 

Their eyes, grey with flecks of deep black, flickered between documents and journals, shining behind their round glasses. Medical writings and textbooks, theories. Propped against the desk beside them, a long wooden cane--smooth, featureless. 

They leaned back in their chair, looping loose locks of white hair into their ponytail, weaving hair around the glasses chain. Lantern light danced over the flames. Dee absently rolled a small ball of shimmering light between their fingers. 

A dusty manuscript of parchment bound by ancient leather took the space of the desk in front of them, bordered by newer documents like flowers lining a casket. They flicked the ball of light in the air, and it hovered above them. Blue glyphs appeared on the manuscript, around a central image: a hunched over creature, with a tall hat and a long mask, tubes from beak to cheekbone. Bones adorned its robed form, hung in strands. Spindly hands emerged from gaps in the thick tarp, one holding a long pipe, the other a twin-pronged spear. A demon, or the closest you could come to the idea of one. Something old, something bored--and the bored things were the worst ones. 

The nuclear option. The Rat Catcher.

A door creaked open, and a set of quiet footsteps. Two taps against the wall.

Dee spun around in their chair, and there stood Hana in her green cloak with her stark white hair. She held a long wooden cane in her hand, tapping it against the doorframe with a slight grin.

Ah, she’s here. 

They sighed with a tired smile and rose, grabbing their cane and slamming the book shut, dust fleeing the inside of the pages.

Outside was a simple terrace, with silver-lined stairs running along the wall of the tower they exited from, glittering gently under the starry sky. The two climbed, circling the width of the building twice. At the zenith of the tower was a grass-lined plaza, bordered with lanterns.

She and Dee took their positions on opposite ends of the metal mesa.

A thin solar wind blew between the two. Dee conjured a ball of light in their palm and cast it to the sky. It spread in a dome, like wine in water, and a dome of blue was born. She conjured another, and a small sun took its place in the sky, just like where he had taught them--in a sunny plaza, lined with lanterns. 

Dee settled their cane on their hip, hand three-quarters up, right hand drifting to the last quarter. Hana brushed her cloak aside, mirroring the motion.

Silence. The nothingness of the astral sea, gentle solar breezes drifting between the two. Hana’s face was all lines, and she always blinked twice. Dee always blinked slowly. 

Metal sung, silver flashed under a conjured sun and blades met for just a fraction of a second, glancing off each other and finding a home in their sheath once again.

“With alacrity,” the two said, and the duel commenced. 

The solar wind hummed again. Blades flashed, and the force sent cloaks billowing and hair rustling. Dee’s glasses chain rattled by their ear before another strike came in, the force of the cut extending beyond them with a rattling boom. 

A flame danced within Dee’s sheath before it was unleashed, the strike meeting hers before light lept from the blade, catching hers. With a pirouette, she stepped back, swiping the air, launching the flame as if a beetle on a spoon before splitting the arc in twain with her blade. 

Dee took a single step back and snapped their fingers on their free hand; a door appeared, and they pushed through it on their back. With whistling air and the tug of the astral plane, Dee passed through a dimensional door behind her back, blade poised for a stab. 

In the blink of an eye, her foot shot up above her head and slammed down on the blade, digging it into the stones. 

“So,” she said. Dee’s eyes, once focused on the tip of their blade, and now the cobblestones, met hers. “What did you wanna talk about?”

“Delilah, again.” Dee’s foot slid along the ground, kicking up the rubble from the sword meeting stone. With a hum, six stones turned into glowing fireflies.

“Should’ve figured. Had a lot of time to guess, sailing here.” Her foot pushed off the blade as the fireflies turned into streams of light, tearing through the air. She bounded into a backflip. A flash of light conjured a dagger in her hands, and not a moment later it whistled through the air. “Nothing working, still?”

Dee tilted their head and the small blade passed quietly by them. “Nothing, Hana. Bond-breakers, antimagics, surface magics, ritual medicine, hell, even Argus is stumped.” 

“What about those magic scissors you borrowed from the University?”

A firebolt whipped under her arms. “Nothing.”

“I dunno what you want me to do.”

“Figure I just needed someone to… talk to.” An arc of lighting erupted from her blade. Dee caught it with theirs, gripping the handle with two hands, slamming it into the ground before the electricity even made its way down the length of the blade. Images of those… books shot to the forefront of their mind. The Rat Catcher. The nuclear option.

“I’m a good talker. Shitty doctor, though.” Hana danced to the side, blade poised, cloak painting a verdant swath against a blue sky, caressed with orange as the sun began to set.

Air whooshed by Dee as they slid along the ground towards her, slamming their blade into hers. “I know. But…”

“But what?”
What if I disappeared? They wanted to ask. What if I made a deal that would cost me everything? “Nothing.”

With a puff of mist, she split into three. Two illusory copies slid along the ground in a kaleidoscope of green cloaks. “You’re hiding something,” said three Hanas in unison. 

“Always am.” Dee snapped a small pea between their fingers, and the two copies vanished. The air warbled as they cast an arc of wind toward the real one. 

“Fair enough.” She split the gust with steel. Silence passed between the two, only the singing of metal and the slinging of spells could be heard, of cast and dispelled magic, of roaring and sputtering wind. “She’s gonna be the death of you, Dee, I’m telling you.” Stars trailed her form as she teleported mere inches from Dee, who met her blade with theirs, and her stomach with a kick, a gale roaring around their foot and casting her back several feet. 

“I’d die for any of my patients, and you know that.” Dee rushed about half the distance before sheathing the sword, casting two further blades of wind before following with a long lunging slash. “The heart of a mercenary just doesn’t fit my ribcage.” 

“Like the heart of a doctor doesn’t fit mine.” Metal clashed as their blade met hers, horizontal to vertical, a cross of steel dividing the two swordfighters. Hana’s eyes were wide, teal and alert. She always took after him more. 

“Who’d’a thought we’d turn out so different?” She asked. 

The edges of their blades were permanently sharp. Sparks flew with each breath as the blades grinded against each other in minute increments.“He did. He knew all along.” Dee never did have the… apathy he possessed. The dispassionate drive.

Sparks once more as their locked blades broke free of one another, and Dee conjured a ball of flame in their spare hand, as did Hana, mirroring the motion. With a movement akin to presenting a gift, the two rose their arms, slamming the growing orbs of fire into each other. Fire mixed and roared some feet off the ground.

Dee took a step back, twirling the sword into a reversed grip and went for something like a punch, to split the fireball, to detonate it.

Hana thought the same. Two reversed blades met in the core of a handheld sun.

Heat roared, fire passing over Dee, ash clinging to their glasses and caking their hair. They raised their hand to block the light, and behind the roaring flames, they could see Hana doing the same.

The flames settled. Dee brushed their cinder-pocked overcoat, and Hana billowed her battle-marked cloak.

Eyes locked, teal to grey. Mirroring each other, like they once did in that grass-lined plaza, under his watchful eye, they sheathed their blades. There was a sadness painted on Dee’s face, a darkness Hana saw. And with hers, solidarity. A promise, that no matter what they chose, no matter what they were hiding, she would be there to duel, just like they always had. 

“With alacrity,” they both said. 

Swords became canes again as the artificial sun dissolved into an artificial sky, leaving nothing but starlight.