She reached the top of the eighth flight and into a different section of the tower. There was a floor, at last, the walls pressed in tighter, and everything overall looked a bit younger. The lighting was also scarcer, coming entirely from a handful of braziers containing some slowly burning liquid.
The way up continued via a spiral staircase set in the middle of the floor. She hurried up without fear of ambush; she had a pretty good idea of where Avanon would be found. There were two more staircases, each in a tighter space than the last.
The last one emerged into the youngest part of the entire tower. And this was it. This was the spot that the man had prepared. Symbols were faintly visible in the flickering brazier light, lining the walls all the way up to the roof. There were supposedly different ways of doing what the Exile was doing, and he was choosing to make do with marks.
There was a final set of stairs, this one made of stone and set in one of the walls. The gust coming from above made it clear that it led to the roof. But even with the flames there was plenty of darkness to hide a person.
“Come out,” she demanded. He knew where she was anyway.
“You have come a long way, Warden,” came the reply, echoing with no origin point within the confining architecture. “You can come a little longer still.”
He was waiting for her, in some dark recess, behind some corner, ready to strike out the moment she stepped into his range.
Saketa walked slowly, cautiously, across the floor, her awareness strained to its fullest. Nothing happened, save for a small explosion down below.
“Come, Ghost of Kalero, come,” he went on. “I have long imagined meeting one of you. It is time I spilled some blood, in the name of the Old Exile. The casting out of-”
“You are no Ancient,” she replied. “You never set foot in the Valley of Vartana. You have no real part in a millennia-old grudge. Where were you when Kalero was finally assaulted, for once? Hiding, playing petty games of power over young, vulnerable people.”
She continued moving, heading for one of the walls and the marks Avanon had drawn on it.
“You cling to a regurgitated, confused mess of hatred, passed on down by your mentor, down a long, long line of equally inadequate people, getting more unrecognisable and pointless with each generation. You do it all so you can pretend you have been wronged.”
She stopped at one of the burning braziers.
“But you are just a spiteful toddler. And look at you now: Hiding in the dark as an adult arrives to take you to task.”
She put the tip of Nara’s sword up against the side of the metal bowl.
“How am I doing?” she asked with calm mockery. “How is my analysis, Avanon, bearer of false anger? And how will you fare with your preparations stripped away?”
She flicked the brazier up into the wall. The contents spilled all over the marks of power, setting them ablaze.
He came at her from behind, with a cry of rage and lashing tendrils. Saketa turned an instant before he landed from above, and a lance of pure, distilled death reached her. Nara’s sword disrupted it, but the next one came at an arc immediately after, and the third came low, at her legs.
Saketa didn’t swing; she couldn’t spare the time. She angled the blade with an economy of movement as she’d been trained to do, meeting the attacks and letting them break against Nara’s will on their own.
The second one dissipated, going from purple to an afterimage in a split second. The third did as well, as did the fourth, and the fifth. Her vision filled up with ghostly streaks, and the man at the other end of it all was barely more than a silhouette.
She was surviving for the moment, but he had energies to spare and her arms would tire, or she would make some tiny mistake; a gap for him to slip a tendril through. She went on the attack, moving not swiftly but steadily, and Avanon retreated.
He shifted to a single, steady beam; a more raw attack that crackled loudly and illuminated the walls with its dreadful glow. Still Nara’s sword held out, and the beam split apart on its tip. He tried shifting it about, aiming at different parts of her body, but she moved the sword in parallel. The beam continued to split, emitting an ear-piercing sound of destruction wherever its parts struck.
He gave it up, and Saketa rushed at him even as she prepared a wave. She stopped as she managed to draw it out, and thrust her hand out. Avanon darted to the side with inhuman speed, and she blew out a wall with a terrific crash.
As she came at him he switched from funnelling energies to holding them in place. The beam became a straight length that fit into his grip: A sword.
So, he knew that trick.
The energy blade emitted a deep hum of power, and as Saketa rushed him and struck, the Exile struck back.
Their blades met, and their auras did as well. Their power, pitched one against the other, lanced out randomly, tearing and burning rock, wood and plastics. His face was visible in momentary flashes; a ghoulish, degraded visage, twisted with hate.
Their blades met a second time, and sparks flew from above and below, accompanied by flecks of debris. They fenced their way around the floor, making an almighty racket as the side-spills of power tore holes in the floor and the walls. The magenta-purple blade came close to her face a couple of times and she felt its hum against her skin, threatening to tear it apart.
He was so strong, and so fast. She had only encountered the like once before, in the skies above Kalero. And unlike that occasion, this foe had effectively limitless energies to draw upon, making him mightier than he otherwise could ever have been.
It took everything, everything, her body and spirit possessed to stand against Avanon in that burning, shattered, violet-tinted room high above the city. But her body and spirit both proved worthy of the challenge. She did stand. She did beat off the energy blade. And as she came to understand his fighting style, she pushed him back.
She parried yet another attack and smoothly turned the contact into a strike back. Her blade ran across the collar of his armour, a couple of inches or so below his chin. The edge left a groove behind, but she couldn’t tell if there was an actual wound.
Her footwork suddenly caught in some of the damage to the floorboards. Avanon seized upon it, did a quick sidestep, and slashed down. She put up a high guard and caught his blade down near the crossguard of Nara’s sword, but he still managed to push down a bit.
Even through the raging fever of battle, instinct, and utter determination to see this man dead, even though all of that, the energy blade still managed to extract a scream from her as it touched her back.
The pain, the searing pain of nerves being ripped apart, let her turn the blades aside, and she slashed him across the torso. It cut another groove into the armour, and possibly the man himself.
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He did retreat back, with his blade held out defensively, as Saketa got her foot loose. The haze started forming; the start of the tunnel that could take him to another part of the tower, or far, far away if he chose.
“No,” Saketa said through her teeth as she walked towards him.
She was bleeding. But all her limbs worked. Her spine was intact. That was all she needed, for now. And just as his energies were preventing her from Shifting, she sent her will out and prevented him from Tunnelling.
The haze faded away, and the Exile remained where he was, almost up to the wall. She thought he might switch back to the tendrils, and closed the distance at a run before he could risk it.
He hopped up and backwards, onto the flight of stone stairs leading up. Saketa followed, keeping the pressure up, giving him no time to pull any tricks.
Avanon kept on retreating. He had an elevated position, but he’d been hit twice to her one time, and cared more about surviving than she did. Their blades clashed and debris fell from the ceiling. Their blades clashed and the wall next to them blew out, sending bricks flying out into the night sky.
He reached the top and tried to make his stand there. He slashed down at her twice more, and when that failed he cut at the stairs themselves. The energy blade went through the rock like nothing, and threatened to bring the weakened structure down entirely. But it also gave her the opening to thrust Nara’s sword into his right foot, and with that he continued falling back.
They were now at the top. It was a small floor; a viewing platform of some sort, mostly enclosed by a bell-shaped structure that only had two walls. The other two sides opened to the sky. The floor was torn up by their energies, but Avanon ignored it and so did Saketa.
He attacked her with wild, desperate swings, grunting with each one. She danced around them, and around him, seeking the moment to strike. She thought she had it, but he caught her blade on his, forced both wide, and drove his elbow into her face. She thought something snapped, her brain rattled in its container, and it might have been simple luck that she managed to stop his follow-up attack.
Their energies met once again, in a great, thunderous blast of sparks and destruction, and the very top of the Tower of Kanato shattered and collapsed.
Saketa darted away from her opponent, throwing all else aside to draw on speed. Heavy stone blocks and smaller, broken pieces rained down, moving almost lazily to her perception. She reached the outer edge of the viewing platform, before the cloud of pieces came down.
Still, something hit her. She didn’t know what it was, or even where it struck, but something knocked her down. Momentum landed her up against the guard rail, head-first.
She lay there, unmoving, as her body refused to cooperate. For a moment her defences were fully down. This might be it. She might die here, on top of this tower, without seeing her task through.
And in this place of power, this place that Avanon had perverted, her dark moment allowed the veil to part. They came for her once more, out of the deep, dizzying magenta that suddenly enveloped everything. They came to cut and bite and rip, feeding on her pain and despair.
Her arm found it in itself to swing, and one of the shapes sprang back with a keening noise of pain. The others weren’t so easily frightened, and they closed in from every side.
She was, once more, back on the bridge of that warship above Kalero. Back to her failure.
But no. That had been another war, in another place. And this time she came armed with a certain acceptance. The bridge consoles and chairs faded away, replaced with the half-destroyed roof. A limb slithered around her leg, but she yanked it free before the thing got a grip. The contact left bleeding scratches in its wake, but she paid that no heed and struck out again.
They tried to rush her, but she brought her body under control and rose. She slashed about, severing forms that had no business existing, and sending their components back where they belonged.
The haze faded away, and the veil was intact once more. It was just her. Just her and Avanon, above the lightless city and below the light-filled sky.
The Exile was battered and bleeding, with a crook in his spine. But he was on his feet, and gathered his strength for yet another assault.
It came as a beam; a raw blast of desperation and hate. Nara’s blade stopped it as before. But though the weapon was as strong as ever, Saketa was less so. She felt the death in the energies that were being dissipated within reach of her. They might rip her apart, sword or no, and she wavered on her feet.
Avanon’s face was just barely visible through it all, a lined, pallid, sneering mask. His beam went to the sides, up into the sky, and tore through the stone and wood beneath their feet.
Saketa let go of all else, and for a moment she drew on nothing but sheer, raw strength. Then she kicked the block of stone at her feet. It flew across the roof and hit Avanon in the gut. The wind went completely out of him, the beam stopped, and Saketa leapt.
She cleared the gaping holes in the roof, and the piles of shattered stone, and landed before the Exile.
He tried to fall back, and he tried to bring his power to bear again. But Saketa’s swing was quicker, and she cut through his outstretched hand. The man screamed, and she slashed across his chest, and now the sword bit deeply. He fell with his back up against the railing, and the blow meant for his head came down on the side of his neck instead.
Blood sprayed out, and he fell down in a sitting position.
“NO!” he shrieked, and still he tried to draw on power. “NO!”
She stabbed him through the throat, and used the lodged blade to fling him away from the railing and prostrate before her. Then she cut through his head, and Avanon, the Vartana Exile in his own mind, was dead.
Saketa put one hand on the railing and allowed herself three breaths. Three deep inhalations.
She wanted to savour this moment; the end of her long hunt. She wanted to look out over the city, and the now visible fleet, and reflect on what this all meant. But danger had not ended. Not to herself, and, most importantly, not to others.
So she pictured the tower’s ground floor in her mind and Shifted.
The entrance was heavily damaged; burnt, blasted and smoking. Authority soldiers lay about, some shot, some shredded by explosives, and some actually broken but alive and groaning. Fredrak and Losan were positioned up on the stairs, for overlapping fields of fire. Vanaka waited in ambush with her stick, but a bleeding cut on her head showed that she had been active.
“Come!” she said to her comrades.
Once again Saketa sent her will out and commanded weapons to be silent. It was a lot to demand of her depleted strength, but for the moment she managed it. And she marched on, over the blood and the bodies and the glowing hot rock. The two armoured soldiers in the mini-tunnel tried to shoot her, but got nothing for their efforts.
Saketa held her sword out with a straight arm, aiming it at them like a giant, deadly finger.
“Leave,” she ordered them.
They tried to work their weapons for a couple of seconds more, but she did not slow her stride, and they started shrinking back.
“Leave,” she told them again. “And drop your guns.”
They emerged from the tower, where two more soldiers waited. Losan and Fredrak ran to catch up, and aimed their huge rifles at the men.
Saketa did not raise her voice. She did not have the energy for it. But menace could be a simple matter of tone and posture, and she faced them down as she would one of the great predators of Kalero.
“Leave,” she said a third time, and glared into the unseen eyes of one of the soldiers. “And leave your guns. Or you will have me to deal with.”
No doubt many things came together to make it happen, but they did drop their guns on the ground, and then ran for it, towards some other entrance into the grounds.
“Saketa,” Vanaka said once they were out of sight. “You look… are you…”
Upon taking stock, Saketa realised her nose was bleeding heavily, the cut on her back was seeping blood down her leg, and her body was overall collecting the dues she’d just incurred.
“I will live,” she said. “Do not worry.”
“And the target?” Fredrak asked.
Saketa ran her finger along the flat of the blade, collecting blood, then smeared it on her face.
“Dead.”
She pointed upwards.
“We need to leave, before someone up there thinks to open fire on this tower.”
“Or someone down here thinks to call in reinforcements,” Losan pointed out.
“Yes. I-”
Saketa sensed danger. Instinct, just instinct, caused her to push her palm up into the sky. The heavy cannon blast came down from the fleet and met her wave just above the tower. The shot burst apart in every direction save down, illuminating a large section of the city for a moment, and rattling absolutely everything.
“SHIT!” Vanaka shouted. “Yes, let’s go!”
“Vanaka…” Saketa said, and sheathed her sword.
The girl turned to look at her with wide eyes.
“Carry me.”
The very last of her strength was now going into simply staying conscious. Vanaka wasted no time and scooped Saketa up in her arms. Then they ran.