Odd as it was to think, I might actually prefer when Samuel decided to angrily rant like the degenerate tryhard he was over the silent treatment.

Turns out all it took to make a guy go from exasperatingly annoying to somewhat scary was to cover him in armor, put him on top of a rampaging dragon, and have him shut up.

Though to be fair, it was mostly the rampaging dragon part.

I dove out of the way as another building was reduced to a pile of broken wood and stone under the claw of Samuel’s ‘partner’.

I’d have made a joke about our roles being reversed since I was the one supposed to be attacking the city, but I doubted Samuel would have cared even if we weren’t totally focused on killing each other. But I didn’t have time, since not only was the red dragon still hot on my heels but Samuel had been conjuring Spirits to make those stone snakes and was having them ambush me from odd angles over – and in some cases, through – other buildings.

One of them burst out of a gap in the buildings and did its best to block off any escape routes I could use. A quick Trace of a Zanpakuto shooting out and spearing the minion through its head took care of that and let me slip away down a side street to avoid getting pinned in by the lizard hot on my heels.

Samuel’s dragon let out another roar of frustration as I pulled away again, which I shared to some degree. I wasn’t running away from the strangely silent Rider because I needed to or because I wanted to. No, as planned I was keeping him occupied while the Varden’s attack force retreated off the walls now that there was no chance of Samuel ambushing Arya while she opened the way for the actual attack. Because the last thing Nasuada or any of the other leaders wanted was to risk trapping dozens of men on the walls if something happened to me. And for once I agreed with them.

So that left me playing the world’s most destructive game of tag while I waited for the signal that everyone was clear.

Another rock snake appeared overhead just as I heard Samuel finally shout something. A single word in the Ancient Language that caused the buildings in front of me to explode like a mine had gone off, blocking the street. A quick glance over my shoulder let me see the dragon lunging for me, animalistic joy reflected in its eyes, its prey finally cornered where it could get its claws on it.

So I chose the path of least resistance and dove through the window of a building that hadn’t been destroyed just yet. Wood and glass shattered around me and there were a few cut off screams from the second floor – dammit there were people hiding in here.

The rest of the wall exploded behind me as the dragon swiped a good part of it away.

No time to worry about them right now. The best thing I could do was move the fight as quickly as possible.

I spotted another window on the other side of the house, a flurry of projected swords tore through that easily enough and let me escape to the other side of the building as a rush of dragonfire filled the building behind me.

As I rolled to my feet and turned to run I caught a glimpse of the retreating dragon. Samuel apparently didn’t want to risk getting caught in the debris if they tried to follow me directly and were going around. And thankfully while the insides were pretty trashed, there weren’t any big fires left behind in the house.

The people hiding inside were probably safe for now, at least from the whole building burning down. That was good.

What wasn’t so good was the fact I still couldn’t find a decently open area to properly fight Samuel in.

Like I’d already discovered, the streets were too cramped and made me have to keep an eye out for attacks from all angles. Going into the air was a slightly better option but not by much. My skywalk spell wasn’t true flight and I wasn’t about to bet the fight on how I could maintain that spell while fighting a dragon in its home territory.

I needed something like a park or courtyard.

If it wasn’t guaranteed to be swarming with more people I’d have risked heading towards the soldier’s garrison buildings. Those were practically guaranteed to have a wide open space for training, but fighting a Dragon Rider pair, a few dozen soldiers, and whatever magicians happened to be in the area by myself sounded like I was trying to get myself killed.

I would just need to keep looking until – there! A space for an open air market! Thanks to the siege the place had obviously been shut down, but that actually worked in my favor. One or two wooden carts wouldn’t mean much to a dragon anyway so the space being cleared out just gave me more room to move around.

And not a moment too soon, because Samuel’s dragon crashed into the middle of the space even as the cobblestone roads reformed into walls at the same time, turning the place into a makeshift arena.

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Which was fine by me.

“You know most girls actually don’t like the whole silent stalker routine. It’s creepy. The constant trying to kill me thing isn’t very flattering either.” I sniped at the Rider.

To my surprise, he actually did something other than order his dragon to attack me or cast a spell.

Samuel ripped off his helmet and gave me a look of pure loathing.

“You ruined EVERYTHING!”

I gave him a winning smile and twirled the swords in my hands. “Well I have to be doing something right then. Though what does ‘everything’ mean right now? Between the fake execution, your personal power trip, and your tyrannical boss I’ve been poking my nose into a lot of stuff lately.”

“I was supposed to rule this stupid Empire once Galbatorix was done! I was going to make sure that these stupid fucking peasants could actually do somthing with their worthless lives.” Samuel ranted. “But after everything you did, he doesn’t trust me to hold up my end of the bargain! And you want to know the worst thing?!”

I shrugged, not really interested but happy to let him waste time if it meant Arya could slip in and out while he was complaining.

“He has my goddamn Name! And he used it to put a leash on me, even worse than the one that emo Murtaugh has. You hear that?! Thanks to you I’m now a fucking slave!”

I shrugged again. “What did you want an apology? Did you think that you were somehow immune from the insane control freak because you were special or something? Newsflash, all he cares about is if you were useful to him. Obviously he would leash you like the rest of his tools if you gave him an excuse.”

Samuel’s face went almost as red as his dragon’s scales and I openly scoffed at him. He really did think that the man that destroyed the biggest peacekeeping force in the land, slaughtered an entire race, used everyone around him like tools, and enslaved people using near-unbreakable magical vows would change for him because of his ‘specialness’.

“Well, no one ever said you were smart.”

“I am going to enjoy killing you.” He growled and shoved his helmet back on his head.

“Heh, that’s my line.”

At an unseen signal his dragon surged forward. I ducked under its opening bite and had to jump backwards to avoid the following claw swipe. A sudden feeling of danger washed over me and I instinctually raised Bakuya to cover my heart. A ball of lead smacked into the flat of the white blade and only then did the crack of a sonic boom hit me.

I looked incredulously at the Rider who still had a hand pointed at me, fist closed and thumb up from where he was holding the lead ball earlier.

Samuel made a fucking railgun with his magic. That was actually pretty damn impressive and overkill for practically anything but had to be so magically expensive to use that it circled back around to being stupid.

How many Eldunarí did he deplete just to fire that one shot?

I shoved that thought aside. Wasteful or not, that was a dangerous weapon I needed to be careful of.

The dragon lunged at me again, but this time instead of retreating, I used Haste to quickly get in even closer. Part of me was hoping Samuel forgot I could do this or failed to prepare but no such luck. Bakuya was stopped by his sword – another Rider’s Sword, I noticed – and Kanshou was actually grabbed by his other hand.

That startled me a bit until I remembered that one was a prosthetic since I cut off the real one in our first battle.

Fine, he could keep that one for now.

I released the black sword and cocked my arm back, another copy of Kanshou appearing in my hand to stab at Samuel’s legs. Cut the saddle straps and he would be busy trying to deal with undoing those while I could target–

“You think I didn’t prepare for that, you moron?” Samuel spat as he simply slid off the saddle. He’d been using magic to hold himself in place instead of actual straps. “You need new tricks. Too bad I’ll kill you before you can come up with any!”

Enemies that remembered tactics I used before were annoying, but I was nothing if not adaptable. Both versions of Kansou disappeared with a mental nudge and a lance appeared in my hand instead. Then I stabbed down anyway.

The unnamed D-rank Noble Phantasms wasn’t the best at breaking through magical defenses, but it didn’t need to be thanks to its anti-dragon properties. I had seen Saphira take some nasty wounds without complaining much, hell, I’d given this dragon some nasty cuts in our first fight and it barely flinched. Yet, the moment the lance’s tip pierced the red dragon, it gave a howl of absolute agony and began writhing around enough that both Samuel and I had to focus more on getting distance from the giant lizard than trying to kill each other.

Samuel started shouting at the poor thing to ignore the lance still stuck in its back and attack me, but I guess the pain and fear of something that was literally its bane made it so it couldn’t hear him. That didn’t mean I didn’t feel guilty watching it twist and turn, snapping at its back trying to get at the lance until it ended up crashing into a building and getting buried in the resulting rubble.

That dragon really deserved more than it got.

I made a vow right there. Samuel didn’t get to walk away this time…even if I needed to take a few risks.

“My body is made of stars…”

Samuel’s head snapped to me at the sound of my chant. “What, are you doing poetry now?”

“Unquenchable is my spirit…”

With each line more mana welled up inside me, straining my barely healed injuries. But it would be worth it if it let me put this poor excuse of a person down.

I used Haste to close the distance again and slashed at the Rider. He tried to block but the sword I used wasn’t Kanshou or Bakuya. It was a Noble Phantasm that made every blow unstoppable.

Instead of taking it head on, Samuel dove out of the way at the last second. Unstoppable didn’t mean it would always hit afterall. It could still be deflected or dodged.

“Unconquerable is my soul…”

A rock snake launched itself at me from the edges of the marketplace. As expected, Samuel hadn’t just stopped using them because I was out in the open. I suspected he had a few more hiding out of sight waiting to be brought in when I was distracted.

I traced a sword as tall as a building and shot it down so it skewered the snake’s head and pinned it to the ground.

“In these hands I hold the tapestry of heaven…”

A saber appeared in my hand long enough to deflect Samuel’s sword before the second slash cut halfway through the blade. Rider swords weren’t a joke, huh?

Bakuya appeared to deflect a stab and a rapier appeared in my off hand. Samuel moved to catch the thin blade like he did with Kanshou but thought better of it at the last second and dodged. Smart of him. The rapier would’ve cut through his rock hand like paper.

“With no known beginning,”

“And a forever uncertain end,”

Sparks and magic flew all around us as we circled the increasingly damaged marketplace. Neither one of us managed to land a solid hit beyond some superficial scrapes. Though Samuel actually came out better between the two of us.

He could heal his cuts with a simple spell. I couldn’t do the same and had to deal with a small trickle of blood and sweat occasionally dripping into my eye from a small cut on my forehead.

“The world will echo with my arrival,”

“No, that’s not poetry. It’s some kind of spell, isn’t it? That’s why you can do all this, you have a different magic system!” Points to him for figuring it out eventually, I guess. Better late than never. “Fine, you want to end this? Let’s see how you like a ball of pure plasma created by the strength of a hundred dragon hearts!”

My eyes widened at the sight of a small sun sitting in his prosthetic hand.

“Want to know the best part?! I couldn’t do this without burning myself no matter what I did! But thanks to you, that isn’t a problem any more, is it?!”

“So by my command…”

This was going to be close…