The Extra's Rise

I wake before the lair. I walk the circle. I drink from the deep basin. I stop at three old places and close my eyes. I do not ask the dead for permission. I do not ask the living for blessing. I ask myself if I am ready to be hated for a good reason.

'Yes.'

Arthur arrives with damp hair and eyes like clear ice. He bows and says nothing. He feels the shape of the air and knows it is not the same as yesterday.

"Today we spar without nets," I tell him. I keep my voice even. No drama. "Valeria will not cover your heart. Erebus will not give you a second life. If you set the Pond, I will cross it. If you show me your back, I will take it. If you stop seeing me, I will put my hand through your chest."

His jaw tightens, then loosens. The light in his eyes brightens. He nods once.

Luna stands with her hands clasped, golden light tucked close like a candle cupped against wind. She does not speak. She will not help him until I stop. That is the trust she pays me in.

We begin.

He opens with God Flash because it is the shortest line to the truth. Pure speed tears a frame out of the world. He is there, then here, then on my left with Valeria's edge already falling. I meet it with an open palm and nothing else. I don't slap it away. I stop it. The shock in his arm tells him how far the road still is. He uses the shock—turns it into a pivot, drives his knee for my hip, plants his foot and short-punches the breath where my throat would be if I were a person who had one like his.

I sway a finger. The knee misses by nothing. The punch brushes hair.

'Good,' I think. 'You're not wasting anger.'

He drops Hollow Eclipse hard and honest. It is not pretty. It isn't supposed to be. I let it touch my sleeve and I send the weight under us into the floor. The floor groans once and holds. He hears the groan and doesn't chase it. He knows a trap when it whispers.

He plants Valeria's tip. The Pond rises in a low ring, glass-still. I step into it, and for a breath my push turns to warm water against his chest instead of pain. He takes the breath. He closes the Pond on his own. He chooses movement over shelter. That is the right choice today.

He calls the Wings. Grey pages open over his shoulders. The world remembers it is allowed to be closer than it looks. He jumps from a near spot to a nearer one and is suddenly on my right, behind my guard from a normal fighter's point of view. I am not normal. I turn my head; his cut passes in front of my eyes like a ribbon of rain; I taste the iron in it and nod inside.

He strings the CQC chain without naming it. One hook draws my hand by a hair; the stomp twists the pull of the floor; the knee appears from a place people do not name; the palm flick resets the drive; the one-inch bite sends a pain-line up my sternum I choose not to respect; the zero-inch feint makes my shadow roll its eyes.

I stop being gentle.

I step in and shorten distance from safe to sharp. I put my fist on a line that ends at his heart and then take half the distance away. The body knows the math. His eyes widen—only for a blink—and clear again. He moves his chest half a hand; the fist passes where he was and tells him what would have come next. He keeps his feet under him. He keeps his breath. He keeps his mouth shut. Good boy.

Valeria flares across his ribs anyway, as if she could carry him through the gap by will alone. I break her edge with two fingers and a twist at the flat. She reforms and tries again. Loyal thing. I could love her too if I let myself.

Erebus feels the temperature of the room shift and brings up the soft version of his Domain—no corpses, no theft, just bone-script ribs and a low song that tries to make the wild sit. I let him finish the first line and then I walk through it. The Choir falters, not because it is weak, but because this is my home and I choose what sings the loudest. He bows his head and retracts the lattice with neat hands. Wise king.

Arthur sees his nets fall away. He does not reach for them again. He reaches inside instead.

He moves cleaner now. Less spice, more bread. He makes the air rustle less. He stops aiming at where he wants to be and starts aiming at what I am doing now. He lets go of the part of him that wants to show me a new trick and works with the old tools until they are sharp enough to shave hair. That is what I wanted.

I give him three openings that would tempt him any other day. He takes none. He takes the fourth, the ugly one, the one that wins fights and makes no good stories. He jams my wrist with the heel of his hand and uses the jam to slide past me. He could have cut. He chooses to hit my back with a short palm that sets up the next cut. He has stopped counting wins and started counting entries. I like this boy.

I hit him.

Not to punish. To show him the cliff.

I throw a straight backfist at his jaw without the usual tell. I let it arrive when he believes he is safe. He sways late and pays for it with blood. The red line at the edge of his mouth looks good on him. He smiles through it. Men like him keep score with strange coins.

He takes two steps back, sets the Pond again, and this time he does not watch it. He uses the ring to erase a tail flick I throw to make him blink. He doesn't blink. He steps. This is how tools should be used.

He loads Stellar Cascade, but not to herd me this time—to slow my hands. He drops three "stars" on my wrists and one at my ankle. They don't hurt. They don't need to. They change the rhythm of what my body likes to do next. He shaves a breath off the beat. He tries to step into that cut beat.

I cut the rhythm back.

We meet in simple things. Fist. Blade. Breath. Step. The room feels small and clean and bright. Luna's light shakes in her hands and then steadies again. She is brave. She trusts me to stop before the end. I hate that I am making her practice this kind of trust.

'Forgive me,' I say to her where a dragon prays.

Arthur's eyes are clear now. No panic. No begging anger. He is here. Finally. He forgot the ceiling. He forgot the shelf. He forgot "mid Radiant" and remembered only "now." That is the door. I push it open for him by trying to close it on his fingers.

I put my fist on his sternum with a short, ugly shot. He throws a zero-inch bite into my knuckle at the same time. It hurts exactly as much as it should. We both adjust our faces by the same small amount. We both learn. It is almost fun.

I show him my tail—not as a whip, as a line. I draw the only safe step in the room. He takes it because he isn't stupid. Then I remove the step and put a palm on his face from a breath he didn't know he had. His inner ear rings. He almost falls. He does not. He plants Valeria's tip. The Pond blooms wide and calm.

I walk across the water.

He closes the Pond with a hiss and brings up the Wings. The Grey pages open wide. The room moves. He is beside me without the world drawing the line in between. He swings not for my neck, not for my heart, but for the place in the shoulder where power starts. That is a smart cut. I let it land on scale that isn't there, because I am not there either.

He breathes out. I hear the swear under his breath and smile. He does not quit.

He reaches deeper. Mythweaver writes a small note in the margin of the fight: this claw passes where I was. The lair tolerates the note. He steps through that sentence and lands a short punch high on my ribs. It doesn't harm me. It makes me admit I liked how he got there. I pay him by letting the next shot graze my coat.

He tastes that and pushes.

He is at the door again. This time he does not look at the handle. He walks through.

The air around him feels thin and bright and heavy all at once. Not rank. Not title. Presence. He stops forcing his pieces to line up. They do it on their own. He is sword and step and breath and boy and father and friend and fury in one thing. The room agrees for a heartbeat that he belongs at this table.

He raises Valeria. The Grey hums low. I know what he is going to do by the way the hair on my arms lifts.

World's Edge.

He doesn't call it. He makes it. A thin ring of cut forms in the air. It is not loud. It is not proud. It is just there, the way a knife is just there when you pull it. He brings it down with no flourish.

I meet it as I must—palm up, old law in my wrist, lair under my feet. It stops a hair from the thing a cut does. He breathes out a sound that is not defeat and not victory. He learned something only that ring could teach.

I could end the lesson here. It would be a clean end. I promised myself something worse.

I decide to take him to the brink.

I do not say it out loud. I do not announce the blow. I step through his guard and draw a knuckle back for the heart. He reads the line too late because he is human and I am not. The Meridian is not on him. Valeria surges into place on her own—sweet, loyal fire—tries to be his breastplate. I break her edge because I can. Erebus lifts a ward as thin as paper and as brave as a standard in bad wind. I walk through it because I must.

I do not hit at full weight. I put as much death in the strike as a man can meet and live if he is ready to cross. I mean to stop if he cannot.

His eyes go very wide and then very calm. He accepts the line. He chooses to be here for it. He plants his foot. He sets the Pond and then shuts it off so he doesn't hide. He raises Valeria for no reason but to have her with him. He meets the blow with his chest and the last clean piece of breath he has left.

The room hums once.

Black plum blossoms appear in the air.

They are not a trick. They are not mine. They fall across the space between us as if distance is a word that lost its meaning. They strike my cheek with soft weight, and the lair rings like glass struck by a spoon. The knuckle I drew for his heart lands open, my palm on his sternum, not a blow but a touch. I freeze it there.

I have not seen these blossoms in an age. The last time I felt them, a boy with gold hair and dusk-red eyes laughed at me for waiting politely for time to grant me a mercy I had not earned.

I do not look away from Arthur. I do not let him think I was distracted. I owe him that respect. I smile anyway, because old dragons have the right to smile at ghosts.

'Julius,' I think, and the thought tastes like good ache. 'You were right.'

The blossoms drift down like quiet rain. The lair holds its breath with me.

And then the world waits for what comes next.