“Where did you get that sword?” I asked, and suddenly I was sweating, too hot in the cold pit. The sight had awakened something strange in me.

I was being held by the loose cloth collar of my leather armor, held up onto my toes and nearly off the edge of the cliffside. Nolan must have been quite strong to lift me like that. He had already drawn the blade in his other hand, and was bringing it up to my chest. He stopped, the question seeming to take him aback, and he looked at me like I was an idiot, like I’d just asked him what two plus two was. “This?” He looked at it with all the care of a kitchen utensil. “I found it. What is it to you?”

“You found it,” I repeated, grimacing as the words soured on my tongue, clenching my fists. “You found it.”

“Is it yours?” he asked. He laughed. “Wouldn’t that be fitting. I’ll carve my name into your flesh with your own blade. And after you stole my blade, no less. The heavens love a joke.”

“You found it,” I said again. My blood was pumping too fast, and it seemed the blood was staining my vision. I glared at him in a mist of red. “And you took it. Fucker. Piece of shit.”

“Are you going to cry about it?” Nolan asked.

“That sword belongs to my friend,” I said. “You stole it. Give it to me.”

There was no humor in him as he laughed. “Are you joking? Did you forget that you stole my blade? That you stained my honor, stained my…stained Leah’s honor? Do you think I care whose sword this is?”

“Now you have stained my honor as well,” I said, taking on a voice that wasn’t my own. I had an idea.

“We’ll see how far that gets you,” Nolan said, and he pointed the sword at me again. “Prepare yourself.”

The tip of the blade lit up, then a wave ran down the length, blue bands of lightning running across it in erratic patterns. Nolan brought it closer to me, and I could feel my hair begin to stand on end.

I refused to look away from his gaze. “I challenge you to a duel.”

Nolan blinked. “What did you say?”

“We have both suffered dishonor.” I said, doing my best impression of Cadoc. “I challenge you to a duel. Will you refuse?”

Nolan bit his lip. “Why would I duel you? What good does it do me?”

“Then you refuse,” I said. “Coward.”

Rage overtook his face, and Nolan thrust the sword at me with an exaggerated motion. I didn’t flinch. It was just an outburst. He wouldn’t do anything.

Besides, my rage was greater.

He stopped himself at the last second, the blade once again inches from me. There it stopped. He sneered again. “Fine.”

He released me, and I nearly fell over - if I had, I would surely have fallen from the edge, ending all of my posturing. But I didn’t. I kept my footing. Nolan took three paces back - I was still crowded into the corner. I straightened myself and pointed at Nolan.

“One-on-one,” I said. “Your archers will agree not to kill me if I win.”

“Why should I-“

“Fine!” one of the twins yelled. “We agree!” The other joined in.

Nolan said something under his breath, but I didn’t catch it. I was happy to see that his friends were not so loyal - I had guessed from the looks on their faces that they might agree to something like this. A gamble, but it was all I had.

Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.

Besides, Cadoc had made it extremely clear how seriously people took duels in that dimension.

“Let me collect my weapons,” I said, and I knelt to pick up the staff from where it had been lying on the ground, after I had collapsed. My drows still hung from my belt, as did my slingshot.

I did all of this automatically, looking on the scene like a fly on the wall. I could see myself move, talk, all of it, like it was someone else. I was somewhere else, screaming to be let back in, but at the same time it was me, and I was holding back my anger, assuring myself that I would have my time, that I only needed to wait.

“To the death,” Nolan said, and pointed over his shoulder with his thumb. “Jana will count us off. No ranged weapons or magic. No other conditions are necessary.”

“Agreed.” I thought he might ask for no ranged attacks. After all, he didn’t know I was nothing but a body-mage, and he could see the slingshot hanging from my belt. Not that I’d be able to use it from three feet away before being stabbed.

We took our stances. I had the obvious disadvantage, being the one likely to fall to my death, but I hardly even noticed that, consciously. I didn’t care. I had been ready to die only moments before. Now, I had something I needed to do, first.

I stuck my right hand into my pocket - I kept both pockets full, naturally, but I chose the right one this time for a reason. My left hand held the staff - tall, but surprisingly light, such that I could wield it one-handed. I crouched low, appearing ready to charge. Part of me was.

Nolan stood, sword in both hands, arms high. The blade ran parallel to his forehead, pointed at me in a slightly downward angle. His legs were slightly bent, and he kept his weight on his back foot.

“Three,” one of the twins shouted from behind Nolan. Nolan tightened his grip.

“Two!” I shifted my weight, right hand carefully placed in my pocket.

I cursed myself for having nearly given up, for letting the raging fire burn low in my heart.

When I had noticed the sword, I realized what the fire really was, all at once, and why I couldn’t stoke it, before. It was anger, but not a general anger. It was directed. It was hatred.

My hatred had been sealed away long before, but the seal was weak, leaking at the edges, and it wanted out.

“One!”

I burst forward, slipping the ring on my finger at the same moment. I’d be about an inch taller, but I wasn’t sure if Nolan would notice - and even if he did, I doubted he would know what that implied.

Ring on, I drew the drows, raised it over my head, and swung down with it in one fluid motion.

Nolan was a better swordsman than me.

He easily turned my attack away, redirecting it. Suddenly I was stumbling off to the side of him, and a bolt of lightning had snaked up from Amaia’s weapon and onto mine, running up to the grip, a shock shooting through me in an instant. The weapon hilt was not well insulated.

It was like when I was a kid and stuck a fork in an outlet. I locked up, and couldn’t let go.

Then Nolan kicked me, and I was sent off the cliff. Like that, it was over.

Or would have been over. I tumbled and rolled over nothing, coming to a stop some few feet away from him, laying as if on an invisible platform. When the feeling returned to my limbs, I stood.

“So that was your trick,” Nolan said. “A ring. And here I thought you might be a powerful mage. What next, fool?”

I fingered the ring where it wrapped around one digit. It could probably get me down safely, I had realized. The little bit of experimentation we had done suggested that. In theory, it should stop me about an inch above the ground - however far down that was. In practice, it might not, so it was extremely dangerous. But so was staying there with Nolan, of course.

I pointed at him.

“Fuck you.”

He laughed. “Is this your plan? Insult me to death? You’ll have to come back over here eventually,” he said. “Then what?”

“Fuck all of you,” I yelled. “Fuck you, Nolan. Fuck you, Ms. Hayes.” Nolan arched an eyebrow, opened his mouth, but I kept shouting. “Fuck you, Ryan. Fuck you, Tom.

“Fucking Tom!” I yelled, hoping he would appear again, that illusion, just so I could scream at his likeness. “I wish I’d never met you. I could have lived my life like a normal person, a normal, brainless NPC, perfectly fucking happy, oblivious, free.”

The fire was growing hotter. I clenched my teeth. “That’s what it is, Tom. That’s what’s been keeping me going this whole time. Not wanting to save you. Not hope. Not a dream of the future. Not anger at the world, the monsters, or fear of homelessness, not because I wanted to get home, not any of it.”

And he was there. It was surely just a stress-induced hallucination, but I saw him. Tom, standing in front of Nolan, staring at me. The look on his face was unreadable, even to me.

I strapped the staff to my back - the same spot I had held the mace, before. I grabbed a handful of nails with my other hand, and began sprinkling them over the steel rod of the drows, melting them and rotating the handle, coating the weapon.

Nolan laughed harder than ever. And so did Tom. “Are those nails?!” They both said, or didn’t. “You’re a body-mage? Unbelievable. And a babbling imbecile, too.

“Do you think that coating your weapon in nails will insulate you? Do you really think that will save you? You moron. How are you even still alive?”

“I’m alive because I fucking hate you, Tom!” I said, pointing my newly-coated drows. “Because you did this to me! All of it! My entire life has been nothing but pain and suffering because of you, Tom!” I wiped away hot tears, because I had to keep looking at him. “And you knew it. You knew it this entire time.” I swatted the sword in quick, violent gestures. “You fucked me, Tom, and I’m only still alive because I want to beat the shit out of you.”

I took out the staff again, felt that strange numbness again where I touched it. Staff in the left hand, drows in the right, I breathed deeply. Not to calm myself, but to give the fire more oxygen.

“Then come!” the two yelled, gesturing, a double image. “You challenged me, didn’t you? Enough talking. Fight me!”

“Gladly.”

I charged, and like all of my life, the move was an imitation. A carefully chosen copy.

I held the drows high, threatening another overhead swing. I could see the smile grow over Tom’s face - that same shit-eating grin that had haunted me ever since I had met him. He knew he would easily turn me aside again.

And he was right.

I ran at him, feet falling fast over empty air. I swung down, and his sword caught mine, predictably.

But I had already let go.

A moment of shock appeared on Tom’s face, Nolan’s face - and I’d never seen Tom shocked before. And scared.

He likely would have reacted in time anyway - he was a skilled swordsman, after all. But I ignited the nails coating the sword, as it was still in front of his face, trying to feed the staff as little magic as possible. Still it burst into reckless flames - it singed both of our eyebrows, but didn’t melt our flesh - and his surprise only deepened.

By then, my arms were wrapped around his torso.

My momentum carried us off the edge. Of course, that only meant that I rolled onto invisible ground. Sword sacrificed to the pit, Tom clung to me desperately, like I had always clung to him. He clung to me like I was the cliff.

“I always thought we would die together, Tom,” I said. Nolan was shouting something at me, but I wasn’t talking to him anymore. “Fuck you, Tom. I hate you.”

I slipped off the ring. We all tumbled down.