And so the morning sun streamed through the great cathedral-like windows of Universitas Dominorum Mentis, casting long shadows across the marble floors of the great halls. It stood like a monolith of dominance and power, where only the elite came to hone their minds and bodies. It was revered, feared, and whispered about throughout Chorasia, but no one was more feared within those halls than Talon Revas.
Talon stood at the edge of the university's grand hall, where the students come to network and plot, or push each other's limits. He watched below them, like a mezzanine predator surveying his domain. His sharp, crimson eyes scanned the room, absorbing every conversation, every whispered word, and every glance exchanged discreetly. Talon was known as a talented student, but those who were targeted by him knew he was an inside manipulator—from behind the curtains to the world outside.
Talon was a golden child of once-great and now-fallen lineage, dragging himself up from the depths on sheer force of will combined with unmatched skill. By the time he was 21, he had mastered ten styles of martial arts. The mere utterance of those styles—old-style Taekkyon, Taekwondo, Aikido, Muay Thai, Wing Chun, Jeet Kune Do, Systema, Kyokushin, Kapu Kuilua, and Kali Arnis—was spoken in hushed tones, with a note of awe and some amount of trepidation. Yet his power reached far beyond the horizon of hand-to-hand combat.
His character could be classified as a master manipulator and dominator who subjugates everyone to his will, utilizing other people's weaknesses and treating them like pawns in some game he knew so well.
Today, however, the game would be public. Here, there were cliques of students in this underground arena of the university, the secretive place where power wasn't expressed in books and grades but in raw force. It was locked beneath the spreading campus, unseen by prying professors's and administrators' eyes. Only the most ambitious and dangerous students knew its existence, and it was of that kind of place Talon thrived in.
He strode into the arena, a man with quite calm self-confidence and flowing black robes billowing behind him like the shadow of death itself. His opponent was already seated there: Serak Drevos, a brash student and arrogant ruthless newcomer, gaining fast a reputation for his ruthless tactics. He was one of those favored by his father, a proud member of the ruling class, who seemed to make him feel untouchable.
Talon, on the other hand, was much less fortunate. The family had fallen out of favor years earlier, and his father all but renounced him.
All that meant nothing to Talon. His fate was a rise to power, and tonight was just another step along the way to that destiny.
Serak strode into the arena, standing in the center of the ring, a smug smile playing on his lips. He casually flexed his biceps, the muscles rippling like coiled steel, and surveyed the crowd as if they were beneath him. They don’t know what they’re in for, he thought, his eyes gleaming with arrogance. With a flick of his wrist, he dismissed the other fighter as just another warm-up. ‘You really think you can take me down? How cute,’ he taunted, the disdain dripping from his voice as he leaned back, ready to showcase his power. "That was a lie. Talon knew better than that. This was no real battle; it required none of that baggage; it needed precision, skill, and the most hurtful strike.
Serak sneered at Talon. "You should have stayed where you belonged, Revas—behind the shadows. No one gives a rat's hindquarters for the son of a fallen house."
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Talon said nothing. He never spoke words that would not make his inferiors flee in a hurry, but rather took his stance, calm, centered, and unreadable. His dark hair framed his face as he fixed his attention, his mind already calculating Serak's weaknesses. The fight was over before it even began.
Talon stood motionless in the center of the arena, glacial eyes not moving a fraction as his opponent danced around him. It was strained in the air though, though the floor beneath their feet was clear, echoing the faint shuffling them there. He was a silent sentinal, watching and waiting till the first attack.
The opponent flashed a jab to hit Talon's jaw. Back he stepped, with his left foot slinking back into position for Taekkyon, and he flowed like water. The punch neared, and with a swift pivot on his heel, his torso twisting, Talon dodged the strike without breaking sweat. He countered back immediately. A Muay Thai roundhouse kick saw his shin snap sharp into the opponent's ribs so that he stumbled backward.
Talon didn't give his opponent a chance to catch breath and rushed forward. He hit the man with Wing Chun using an open palm with the pressure points of the chest. The blow surely would spoil the tempo of breathing of the man, but that was not enough from Talon. He seized the opponent's arm and twisted it with a strong Aikido joint twist, and the whole thing was done in one smooth motion as he threw him onto the ground.
He tried to rise, groaning with the agony; but Talon's foot crushed down on his chest, holding him fast to the floor. "You are too slow," he said, his voice without passion.
Not that it was a test of strength, but rather a display of mastery in several kinds of martial arts by Talon. He did it so well that each move seemed instinctive, his mind and body working as one.
He can change from Kyokushin karate's quick punches and powerful strikes to Jeet Kune Do's grappling techniques with a wink of an eye, where every strike is a conclusive motion to knock out an opponent with minimal effort and most impact.
This time he ran again. Talon followed the action once more. Jumping quickly before this man could get any kind of separation, he grasped the wrist with a slick Kali Arnis block and whirled his body to release an elbow strike to the man's temple, vicious. The opponent's eyes rolled back as he dropped to his knees. Talon glanced down at his opponent. His chest rose and fell in a steady rhythm, his face bearing an unreadable mask. Talon's eyes didn't leave the man's face as he leaned back, proclaiming it was all over. There was nothing to gloat over. His dominance was obvious; so too was the battle of flesh and blood versus that oftentimes far less visible battle: the minds.
His victory was complete, but he'd hardly broken a sweat as he stood and allowed Serak to hack his way across the floor before turning to make his way out into the stunned silence of the crowd.
-
That night, Talon retired to private quarters in one of the oldest buildings of the university. Quiet authority pervaded the room: shelves of ancient tomes on martial arts, philosophy, and manipulation techniques stood tastefully there. A lonely desk stood by the window; it was here that he used to sit methodically planning his next move. The room was very plain and might almost hide the complexity of the mind that occupied it.
Power wasn't measured by brawns. He knew that a long time ago. The ultimate mastery is subtle, foreshadowing, and how one can excel in the game of control over people and himself. He stands unrivaled in martial skills, but it is the manipulation of people and things that makes him a ruler of his world.
The silence was broken by a soft knock, which finally brought him out of his thoughts. He didn't need to turn-he knew who it was already. It was his servant, Irena. Once a person with her own ambitions and plans in life, she had been fettered to him for the techniques that had taken away the free will from her. Talon ran deep, and so had run with it, Irena.
She asked in a low, monotone voice, Where all life was gone. "You summoned me, master?".
Torn gazed down at the pages in front of him awhile, sipping his drink, studying her around the edge of his vision. The irony was lost on him in no sense: once so proud, yet now she is broken, kneeling before him without hesitation. An empty vessel attached to his every whim.
"Yes," he said finally, his voice smooth and unhurried. "I want to see the city. There is an undertone, the murmur, the subtle sway. I want to know better." His tone was as silky as the surface of still water, and yet beneath it churned a mind that was always calculating.
Irena bowed wordlessly, stepping out of the room as quietly as she had when she'd gone in. Once again alone, Talon's gaze drifted to the window; the city of Polis Theristria sprawled beneath the night sky. Lights twinkled like distant stars, and the potential reflected back at him—a world complex yet untapped.
The university was just the start—a very small corner of his dominion. Beyond the walls lay a city—a world full of possibility, ripe for him to extend his interests. He'd studied every inch of Polis Theristria—from its ruling elite to the shadows that lingered beneath the proper streets. It was a city of secrets, and Talon fed on secrets.
At the sight of the city, new plots and schemes were being formed in his mind. He waited. Power is not taken; it is constructed, brick by brick, till people hardly know that they are already under his heel. Sooner than later, his ambitions would go beyond the university, even beyond Chorasia. Talon Revas is a shooting star in a world of mortals. Yet he was the force enough to bend this world piece by piece toward him, till everything remained at his feet.