His braid trailed across the ground like so many feet of rope. It snaked around the child’s feet as he circled them, worth four of their arms in thickness. We wore a thick cloak, capped with massive feathers. His face was taut leather, stretched over an aged skull. His piercing eyes glared at them from behind his round glasses, eyelids split with vertical scars, imitating crosshairs.
In his gloved hands he held a long cane, just like the one gripped shakily by the waist of the child. Their hand hovered over the end, gray eyes trained on the child, who he towered over.
Lanterns flickered around the cobblestone plaza, each held aloft between two short metal poles, swaying in the solar wind. The asteroid had turned away from the sun, and only starlight complimented the lanternlight, leaving a warm glow and not much else.
Stray strands of white hair escaped the nest they were tied into around the child’s horns, swaying gently in front of their eyes. They counted the flutters like a pendulum.
A leaf tumbled. Metal sung. The child drew the sword within the cane. The incoming blade struck flat against theirs, making the sword ring and knocking them back, losing their footing and meeting the stone floor. In a split second, the grinding sound of a blade sheathing, and a wooden cane at their throat.
“You will gain nothing by trying to deflect an attack with strength.” His voice was low, smooth, but beneath it laid a rough edge, like torn paper. An old voice, run ragged by smoking and screaming, but mellowed by age. “Meet the blade at an angle.”
“I know.” The child scoffed, rising again. “You’re just…”
“Too fast? At an unpredictable angle?’ He knelt down to meet the child in the eye, as much as they didn’t want to. “Do you think an enemy, who wishes to claim your life, will give you any quarter?”
Metal sung, and a blade was caught by a calloused hand.
He held the edge of the child’s sword with a bloodied palm, mere inches from his throat. “Good.” He pushed the blade back, and the child skittered along the ground, pirouetting into a ready stance. “Just winning is all that matters.” He shook blood off his hand, splattering against the cobblestones. The child held the sword out to their side, poised. He stared at them. “Come on, now. Win.” There was a near imperceptible tightening of the hand holding his sheathed sword.
The child’s eyes narrowed, before they broke into a dead sprint at their master. For a beat, his eyes opened wide before narrowing again. He scoffed.
He drew his sword, and went for a deep stab. The child ducked under the lunge, deflecting it with their blade, before jumping into a twirl, wind surrounding their form and disturbing his stance. Their master blinked, for just a moment, then…
They were behind him, blade wedged in his braid, just beside his throat. The child panted, steel touching the thick skin of their master’s neck. They had won.
“Good.” He vanished into a puff of mist, and the child stumbled. Then, he emerged from the wherever, jabbing them in the stomach with the blunt of the cane before grabbing the child by the neck and slamming them into the cobblestones, head tumbling into the grass lining the plaza. “But you let your guard down.” He swiped his cane, and the scabbard clattered onto the ground, revealing the blade.
The child struggled against his hand while the sword gleamed in the lanternlight, as if to prove a point. “You are improving, however.” He let them go, gasping for breath. “Though you fail to consider the extent of the opponent’s capabilities.”
They grumbled in frustration, rubbing their throat. “But my swordplay–”
“Does not exist in a vacuum. In this world, none will challenge you on the merit of their sword alone. Nor will they challenge you with honor.” He collected his scabbard, sheathing his blade. “Honor is for fools, and for servants of arrogant gods. Come. You are hungry.”
***
He was sitting at a desk, sipping coffee, aged pallor given a slight colour by candlelight. The room was dark, cozy, with a burgundy rug and the walls lined with hefty bookshelves, packed dense with books new and old. His back was turned to the door, thoroughly engrossed in some dusty tome, braid trailing down to the floor. She drew her sword three rooms ago so he didn’t have the chance to hear the grinding metal.
The air warbled, ever so faintly. She glided across the room, lighter than the air itself, and she became solid just above him, blade already in a downward motion.
With a stamp of his foot and the roaring of wind, his chair shot out from under him. Her vision went white as the wooden back slammed into her jaw, the law of inertia forcibly altering her schedule.
Before she even had the chance to hit the ground (or, indeed, understand what was happening), he kicked the chair forward and connected with her stomach. Air escaped her lungs as she was flung into the open doorway, air rushing past her as if to remind her what she had just lost. Her back met the edge of the doorframe, and she slumped to the floor.
Her vision steadily realigned, each image rolling, like tuning an astrolabe. “You held on to your sword, at the very least,” he said, the sound muffled as her ears rang. Her head rolled. “It means you can fight. There is some merit in that. And, at the very least, your ribs did not break my chair.”
After her vision finally realigned, she forced her jaw to follow suit. He didn’t even bother to use his sword, she mused, humiliated. “How?”
“The window is closed. There is no wind in this room.” It was then she noticed the candles on his desk, some extinguished, some with bent wicks, all once lit. He turned his glare to her. “Clever, but sloppy.”
She sighed. “Do you ever let your guard down?”
He did not dignify the question with a response, instead setting the chair down and planting himself in it again. “It was an ambush that would have slain a lesser warrior. Rather cleanly, might I add.”
Her eyes narrowed. “But?”
“But this is a world with very little lesser warriors.” He winced ever-so-slightly, and she could see the pain return to the scars over his eyes. “My children will not just be the slayers of lesser warriors.”
“And to slay greater warriors?”
“Is to be opportunistic.”
Her fingers twitched as he glared at her. “Noted.”
The light of the candles was extinguished, flames launched towards the back of his head in slight incandescent streaks, the force turning pages on the still open book. He turned, dashing the flames with his hand, air bending around it. In that moment he was turned, she swiped low at the back of his knee. He rose his foot and stomped on the blade, jamming it into the wooden floor. “Clever.”
Frustration crept onto her face. She bit down whatever was about to come out of either her eyes or her mouth.
He pulled a pipe out of his jacket and lit a small fire on his thumb, going through the process she had seen so many times before. The thought occurred to her to make the flame massive, to burn his face. Perhaps overgrow the herbs in the pipe, strangle him.
He blew out a thick smoke that smelled of pomegranates and carrion. “You are doing well, Hana. Both you and Dee.”
“But we aren't good enough.”
“Not yet. But you will be.”
***
Dee and Hana stood in the lantern-lined plaza, opposite him. Three cloaks billowed in the solar wind, one blue, one green, one grey and feathered.
Silence between the three. Dee and Hana were much older now. Hana’s face had revealed just how angular it would become, and Dee bore round glasses echoing their master’s, with the addition of light gold chains connecting to their earrings. The pair’s eyes said to him everything he needed to know–everything they were here for.
He leaned forward, ever so slightly, tilting the scabbard at his hip.
Two blades flashed, one blade met both. Before the sparks touched the ground, steel was nested in scabbards again.
“With alacrity,” the three said.
A flash of metal signaled Hana’s blade meeting his. She pressed on, striking repeatedly. With ease, he met each strike with his own blade, metal sliding down metal.
Behind him, he felt a tug as space broke down, and Dee emerged. He gestured a finger, and a dagger wove out of his cloak and through the air, meeting the oncoming strike. He struck in a circle around him, sword carving the air. Hana took a step back, while Dee called lightning into their sword and deflected in a manner so smooth the electricity moved into their master’s blade.
He set his hand on the steel, and as if pulling a leech free, gripped the lightning like a wiggling snake and tossed the incandescent light in Dee’s direction, who had no choice but to catch the lightning with their blade and guide it to the ground.
Hana struck with a wide cleave, which he barely caught with his blade. She followed with wind roaring beneath her feet, and two additional cleaves as she took to the air. The final strike of the assault was a downward slice, which he caught, her foot on his forearm. She kicked free, splitting into three illusions.
A grinding of metal, and Dee ripped their sword free from the ground, tossing rubble and dust in his direction. He vanished into a puff of mist as the gravel glowed and erupted into flames.
Above them, he emerged. With a twitch of their hand, Dee conjured a door behind them and pressed against it on their back, fleeing into nothing, then slammed it with a similar motion. His blade made a powerful thunk as it struck wood.
Two illusory and one real Hana struck at once. He ducked and met the three swords over his head. He slammed his free palm into the ground and left a small ember, before becoming a blur and vanishing beneath the illusions’ blades, moments before the ember became wildfire, exploding with fury. The two illusions vanished, dispelled by the flame, while Hana herself narrowly avoided the blast.
As soon as the blur reappeared, a door creaked open, and so emerged Dee with a lunging stab. Wind roared beneath the master’s feet and he rose, blocking the strike with his blade. In one fluid motion, he swiped his feet. Dee’s vision turned white for a moment as the kick connected. They lost their footing, falling back into the grass, glass shattering as they fell onto a lantern, shimmering fluid spilling free onto the cobblestones. They swiped their feet out in a swift recovery, and on their feet again before the glass embedded in their back had a chance to be felt. Oil snaked after their hand as they stood, pooling in their palm.
A strike met Hana, then another, then another. She pressed back on her heel, deflecting a strike and pirouetting back, casting a blade of wind, which broke over his sword. He sheathed his blade and took a wide-legged stance, staring her in the eyes.
In a single moment, combat went silent. Wind fluttered. Heartbeats rang and cloaks fluttered. In one movement, he controlled the flow.
Dee and Hana’s eyes met. Magic thrummed in Dee’s hand. She nodded.
She struck, and in the blink of an eye his blade shot forth, casting her blade away with ease. He followed by carving a cross in the air with two strikes, the first parried, the second struck her blade to its fullest, casting her back, digging her feet into the cobblestones.
He followed with a lunge, blade drawn back, wind rushing along the tip of his blade in visible streaks, like dashing a sled through snow. Hana smiled, just a touch. The air shifted, and she was pulled through reality–and where she once stood, now was Dee, swiping their hand and scattering lantern oil. Producing but a single spark from their palm, the oil erupted into an arc of roaring bluish flame. He blinked, for a moment, and Dee saw their chance. They gripped the wooden handle, palm against the end, and with a practiced move struck their blade up, slicing a line up his chest, a swath of crimson spraying into the air and lightning arcing into the wound. They carried it into their vertical momentum, setting their foot on his bent knee and rocketed upward, rolling over his shoulder.
Hana emerged from the leftover flame, in a lunge mirroring his blade poised for his chest.
Dee exhaled, standing behind his momentarily paralyzed form, and thrusted the blade inward.
Blades bookended his heart, blood leaking into his feathered cloak. He smiled, dropping his cane, metal and wood clattering onto the cobblestones. “Very good.” He closed his eyes. “I have lost.”
Dee and Hana pulled their blades from the fleshy sheathe they’d found temporary home in. After the fact, Dee set a hand on the wounds, magic flowing from their hand and into the skin, suturing the wound at the deepest level, muscle and sinew stitching itself together.
Hana laughed a tired laugh, allowing herself to slump down onto the cobblestones.
“That enough for you?” Dee asked, poking him lightly with the blade as if to remind him who was healing and what they could do.
“I would say so.” After the wounds had begun to close, he rose, away from Dee’s rather medical touch. “I would say you are good enough, now.” With a sigh, he pulled the pipe out of his jacket, lit it, and took as long a draw as he could. With pomegranate and carrion billowing in the air, he remarked: “Slayers of better warriors, you must be hungry.”
***
It had been years since then.
Fire burned, roaring high from spilled lantern fuel. Wood groaned and cracked. Embers and smoke choked the air, thick and black, and so too did magic. The tangy taste and blackish specks of ruinous blades. The petrichor smell of wind and lightning. Scorch marks of dimensional doors, long-since evaporated mists of illusions, the ringing in the ears of psychic powers. Banners and heraldry disintegrated thread by thread, rafters snapping and falling, revealing the roof, pock-marked by meteor holes.
Two sets of eyes shed evaporating tears as two blades rested deep in one heart. Upon his face was a contented smile–a proud smile.
With two gouts of crimson, he slumped to the floor, smile still plastered upon his aged face as the life left his eyes.