12 Miles Below

My opponent angled his weapon, taking a defensive stance from the Tetsu school of combat. The posture radiated stability, nobility, and an unyielding will. It complimented his relic armor nicely, fitting. The flat metal blade he held reflected a glint of light off the edge, promising an invisible wall of steel that could hold off any foe.

A wall I fully intended to crush under my heel.

I mirrored a response with the far more aloof stance of the Makiskeru combat arts. This had me constantly bouncing on the tips of my feet, sword moving lazily through the air like flakes of ice in the wind. Ready to launch in any direction at any moment, from treacherous angles.

This style was a favorite of mine, though not something I could execute for long, requiring too much effort to be effective for long. An exhausting style that had been developed specifically for knights with pure unpredictable aggression as the core theme. But in armor, stamina had no meaning.

Some people find only adrenaline in fights. A terrifying brutality of life and death descends down into the mind, usually surrounded by the white promise of ice, ever searching for the smallest of holes to slip a shiv in between bones. My little brother was one such person.

Others felt only grim resolution, a reality that must be faced with no other option than to fight and possibly die. Father fit here.

For myself, I felt music. Like a chorus whispering in the back of my mind, grains of sand spinning wildly down in a waterfall, the noise ending as a crashing cacophony the moment my blades came within reach. Each grain a possible action, a possible counter. In the center of a fight, I felt most at home.

“Match. Set.” The soldier nearby announced, raising a hand up. Teenar was among a recent hire of soldiers, a great ten for one deal that I’d gone a length to recruit under my banner. The other nine soldiers that had defected with him surrounded the courtyard, watching the match intently, all wearing the Winterscar uniform. This was the first time they would see their sworn liege fight.

My list of sparring partners was in short supply. Keith trained with me in the morning, and as admirable as he tried, combat simply was not his calling. Certainly, he could hold his own against the rank and file. He had been trained by Father after all, his skills were a cut above the rest by sheer discipline and repetition. He knew all the steps and fundamentals. They didn’t sing to him the same way they did to me.

The soldiers here had trained all their lives. Some could stand and offer an excellent fight - outside of armor. None of these soldiers had training with relic armor, so even if Keith loaned Journey out for a few hours, the fights I would get wouldn't draw out the best of my skills. They would need more time to train as knights first before they could challenge anyone.

So I had to be resourceful.

It started as curiosity at first among the soldiers. That turned to excitement when they heard and saw the distinguished elite knight walk onto the field, invited onto the House grounds for a friendly sparring match.

One of the five knights hand picked by the clan lord to be among his bodyguards.

A celebrity. Denmar Ironreach. The same knight that had stood at my side a few weeks ago as we escaped the underground.

It was an excellent opportunity to engrave allegiance further into my budding army. A demonstration that they had made the right choice in signing up to this new, untested house.

The first match had sealed that impression. These next few matches will be for my own practice. I needed to see the full depth of my new abilities.

“Fight!” The soldier yelled out, taking quick steps out of the way.

Ironreach remained steady, unyielding. Waiting for me to make the first attack. He had quickly changed his mannerisms after the first bout a few minutes ago. Now, I could tell, he was taking me at full value.

I wasn't the youth he had met and protected a few weeks ago underground. I was a knight retainer, the head of a House, and the inheritor to Tenisent Winterscar's teachings. He'd forgotten that for a moment and paid the price. Now, he wasn't going to make the same mistake twice.

The field expanded as my focus narrowed. The sound began to hum in my mind. The dance was well known and the steps predictable. Only my feet and arms were too slow to keep up with my mind.

Winterscar had removed some of that limitation, the relic armor giving me infinite stamina to draw upon.

Keith’s soul-fractal technique had removed the rest, granting me speed as quick as thought.

I darted forward. Dust flowed behind my steps, scattered up by the speed the armor reached. In a second I was already on him.

Ironreach reacted, taking a step back and sweeping his longsword down in anticipation for a possible barrage of attacks. A dozen different ideas flew through my mind, not in words, more in concepts that I implicitly understood.

I ignored the correct solutions and dove into his guard firsthand. Here, I aimed to test my ability to overwhelm a perfect counter defense. Like a crashing tide, I struck.

He moved into it, expertly reacting with the exact steps required, his blade lightly deflecting my attack, leaving my side exposed. Ironreach was an elite, among the best knights the clan had. His easygoing manner made people forget that. His counter to my opening attack had been perfect. Exactly the optimal move to detooth my opening strike.

He never got a chance to follow through with his retaliation.

Instead, he’d been forced to abandon the attack lest he take far too many hits. The Makiskeru style's weaknesses became strengths as the sheer speed I moved eliminated all possible exploits. The wind rippled around me, trailing behind my strikes at first. Then it devolved into an undirected mess as multiple strikes wove through in opposite directions, crashing like waves against him.

Ironreach held by sheer technique and intuition, minimizing his movements, taking quick steps backwards to keep enough distance to work with. I didn’t let up, continuing the barrage, repositioning with each set, left to right and back again.

In the time he could strike at me once, I could strike at him twice in combinations that Ironreach had never seen an opponent deliver.

It took four more seconds before his defense faltered, at which point he instantly struck back on pure reflex. I easily dodged that attack, watching it sail past my vision, as the rest of Winterscar obeyed my commands and swept past, one leg striking out low to throw him off balance.

He jumped over the sweep.

There was no other option he could have done. High up in the air, his longsword was already sweeping down to parry my followup thrust. Time moved slowly in my mind.

My steel weapon clashed with his own, rang out, then finally snapped in half. I bolted forward, right hand throwing the battered hilt at his face as his body continued to sail through the air.

His hand sweeped, battering away the thrown weapon with a backhanded slap. His attention misplaced and unaware of the true danger.

I reached out with a hand and closed around his ankles, fast as a praying strike. His boot firmly in my grip, inertia still pushing his torso backwards from the escaping leap, I had full control over him now. The match was over, all that remained was the follow through.

Winterscar’s inner muscles moved, the strength to twist and slam an entire relic armor well within its abilities. The shock of being pulled out of the air, and slammed down into the ground passed through him, stunning him for that one single critical second with a heavy grunt. My foot found Ironreach’s sword hand, stomping down and pinning it in place, while my left hand drew out my reserve knife, unerringly diving down and striking at the segments between throat and chest. His armor’s shields flared up, easily freezing the strike from my unpowered knife.

“M-match!” The solider yelled out.

It had taken only twelve seconds in total, a set of movements from both of us that came out so quick non-warriors would need to rewatch on video at a quarter of the speed to see what truly had happened in those scant seconds.

“Talen’s fortress, what in the purple hell happened to you?” Ironreach’s voice spoke from his prone position. I tilted my head cordially, standing back up, sheathing the dagger and giving him a hand up. He took it gratefully, grunting back on his feet. “A couple days ago you’d just gotten into that armor! Has your father been giving you secret lessons this whole time?”

“Something of the kind.” I answered back, keeping the card to my chest.

Tenisent Winterscar had been a monster in combat. The youngest knight to ever earn the title of First Blade, not since Yesero of the red mist who was said to rival Lord Atius in combat.

It was within reason to expect Father’s inheritors would take and improve where he ended. I let him make his own theories.

I wasn’t quite sure if my new abilities would allow me to defeat Father at the height of his skills. While he was quick, the defining trait had been his uncanny ability to predict his opponents. I’d fought hundreds of spars with him, I knew what set him apart. Speed alone wouldn’t have been enough. No, for that, I needed to continue honing my new skill.

Ironreach patted down his armor, tossing away non-existent dust. Then, he examined his own disposable sword, checking the integrity. Dents had already formed, the tell tell signs of failure crackling through the scrap metal. He’d need to discard and draw a new one soon. The next bout would certainly see it snapped in half at the wrong moments.

“Never seen anyone outright grab an ankle in midair like that. Tsuya save me, where did you get that idea? Who even thinks they have enough time to snatch someone from midair like that? Seriously, I can’t wrap my head around it.”

“It was a test to the limits of my speed. My mind has always been faster than my body. I can see what I need to do, and yet my body doesn’t react as quickly as I wished it could. It has always been my bottleneck. With Winterscar equipped, I believe I’ve found a method of bridging that gap.”

He nodded at that. “Heard about the older knights moving faster and faster the longer they connect with their armor. Never paid it much attention myself, supposed to be something that takes years to master. So how in the purple hell did you figure out a way to speed that up? Pun intended of course.”

“Unless the clan lord orders me to reveal the technique, House Winterscar will hold onto it. Thank you.”

Ironreach laughed, patting my shoulder. “Spoken like the head of a house. You’re picking it all up way too fast. If I were the Ironreach magnate, I’d be worried all right. Probably keep this between you and me though, little lady. Word gets out they’ll think you’re using me as practice for a gamble at the First Blade. Which, I’m starting to think you might well be doing.” He laughed, a hearty thing, giving away his blade to the attendant next to him, where it would be ferried away and melted down to be reformed. Ironreach wasn’t in any positions of power among his house other than being the current owner of the Ironreach prime armor. A position he had earned the same way Father had - sheer skill.

I hummed, considering the idea of First Blade. “I’m not quite sure the positon warrants the effort. I don’t need easier access to the ears of the Clan Lord.”

My ties to Atius were already closer than anyone could guess. Given what Atius had told me of the sphere he now kept locked and hidden away within his estate. I had a choice to make. One that I had never stopped thinking of in quiet moments of reflection.

Don’t feel compelled to accept. The clan lord had said. You aren’t the only one. Perhaps a few decades from now, another inheritor will appear.

Do not make a choice purely for duty. The sphere may be someone else’s destiny, after all. Time has a way with events, lass. Everything always happens eventually when it needs to.

Ironreach nodded, recalling himself the events that happened underground. “Suppose you don’t. So, just training for training’s sake then?”

“Preparing for the future.” I said. “Hard times are always coming. We all sharpen what skills are the most worthwhile to offer the clan, while we still have the time to.”

“Talen hears and accepts those words.” Ironreach said solemnly, understanding exactly what I was alluding to. “For the clan.”

“For the clan.” I responded.

My elusive brother had also been working deep in the hidden corners of the estate, doing his part in his own way. Likely sulking in his sanctum even now, as he hadn’t been sighted all day. Last time it was safe to ask questions on his project, Keith had told me he was trying to uncover the secrets of the Occult weapons. Secrets that were not made to be uncovered with any ease.

He hadn’t seemed very happy or excited so it was a fair guess that the project was taking time. Or he was brooding about the order to halt all research into the Occult. Atius’s own fractal pictures had yet to be delivered, likely due to the level of secrecy required. That left Keith with only the occult blade to continue work on.

“Ready for another match then? Feels fresh to fight you, good training against a Feather. Right spooked me seeing how fast they moved” Ironreach grabbed two fresh blades from an approaching soldier, passing one to me as the soldier bowed and took distance away. I took the dull flat blade, giving it a whirl and listening to the sound it made. Unsharpened metal, shaped like a sword, no hilt besides the naked steel. Crucible swords they were called. Made to be disposable training weapons for knights. The relic armor gauntlets didn’t need an intricate or comfortable hilt after all.

To clash blades with the speed and strength of relic armor would break down unpowered Occult weapons. Those were too valuable to use in training. And turning them on for a fight could be dangerous if the armors failed to shield against a hit for any reason. Such an error could cost a knight his arm, ending his career. Thus, crucible swords became part of the culture, and woven into the duels.

“I don’t believe my speed is at the same level as the Feather we encountered. Not yet.”

Ironreach shrugged at that, taking a few steps back and taking a defensive stance once more. “Maybe. Until then, you’re all I have that I can train against. My ego’s a small price to pay in exchange for being able to survive against one of those things. Let’s go little lady.”

The new blade remained silent in my hands once the movements had stopped, but even in that silence I could hear the faint echoes of the music starting once more. “As you wish.” I said, feet taking position. “I would be pleased to continue honing my skills.”

What I was honing wasn’t my connection to my armor. The technique for speed was only the surface advantage the soul-fractal offered.

My little brother was a genius. His craftly little mind could crack into puzzles and enigmas that hundreds of people before him failed at. There was no doubt in my mind the Occult blade secrets would soon be teased out one way or another. If there was anyone up for the task, it would be him.

When he gained the soul sight, he used the skill like a scholar would, an additional tool to be used. Weighing and calculating at all times. Studying the objects and items around him. He didn’t realize the true potential of just what he had discovered.

The soul-sight itself would become the greatest weapon the world has ever seen.

Next chapter - Interlude - Kidra, part 2

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