As the prophecy foretold, or so the saying once went upon the world where Nathan was born and raised, neither Saucer nor Nathan’s best efforts, nor those efforts combined, were enough to force Tanya to strive or sweat in her victories.
“You suck void with a sword,” she informed him calmly after their first two exchanges, in which he thought that he’d done a reasonably adequate job with trying to cut her. “Your footwork is all wrong, your balance is off, your muscles are wet noodles, your form is confused, and your intent isn’t there in your strikes.”
“You’re a danger to yourself and only yourself with knives,” she told him dismissively after she observed his meager skills in that domain. “I feel like you know that, even. You hold them like you know you’re gonna kill yourself before you kill anyone else. Like you know that you couldn’t outfight a child. Put those away, it hurts to see.”
“Your spear work is trying to be flashy for no fucking reason. What is that spinny shit? The twirly shit? Come on. You don’t need to do whatever that shit is,” she lectured him sternly. “Step in! Squat! Bring the butt of your spear down! That’s your fucking block! Now do it in one motion! Again!”
“I’m not gonna bother with your shieldwork,” she grumbled at him, glowering. “It’s shit, but teaching you how to properly use a shield would be pointless, you don’t benefit from it. The other weapon forms will be useful to you, but I gotta figure out more about how you can use Saucer as a shield before I can teach you. Anyway, one-handed sword and spear, but I don’t actually have one for you to use… alright, here. Hold this with your shield hand. Saucer, start off in sword mode. Now, you sorry excuse for a Millionborn fighter, show me a high parry!”
“Alright, take a break.”
Nathan sagged bonelessly down onto the rim of the fountain, drenched in sweat. You don’t have to tell me twice, he told her silently, but he was far too busy appreciating the beauty of not moving for a moment to say anything.
“I don’t want to seem ungrateful,” he said after taking a few breaths of blissful leisure, “but why are we doing this?”
“Were you not paying attention?” Tanya shot him a level look that promised to be a glare if she determined that the answer was not entirely, and had a hint of instantaneous lethality if the answer was no. “First off, I’m bored. When I’m bored, I start doing things to stop being bored. Which would be enough for me to run your ass ragged just for the fun of it, because you can’t stop me from doing it and I think it’s funny.”
“Except that you’d stop if I asked you to.” Nathan smiled at her instantaneous, ferocious glower. “So there has to be more reason to it than that, right?”
Her glower became a glare, pressing him down into the stone with a physical force that made his bones momentarily feel like they were creaking. It was the glare of a woman who’d been called on her shit when she’d pretended to be more of a jerk than she really was, which was a glare that Nathan had experienced a passingly strange number of times given that he primarily interacted with men and women who were far worse human beings than they pretended to be.
“You’re part of the delving group,” she said eventually, giving up the glare. “Might as well teach you a thing or two. Maybe you won’t die on us as fast as I thought you would.”
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“That’s kind of you,” he beamed.
“Besides, drilling a Millionborn should be good for some kind of bennies from the Fucker Around, and if I don’t get to drill you any other way…”
He cocked his head quizzically. “The ‘Fucker Around’ isn’t something I’ve heard before,” he said slowly, ignoring her latest sexual proposition as he’d ignored all of the others—though he hadn’t actually told her to stop, and she’d been sensible enough to keep it to jokes and ribaldry. “I thought I would get some language context from it, but I’m not?”
“Well, it’s just something I call the Demiurge.”
“I see.” His eyes narrowed as he took in certain physical indicators and processed them through the lens of his supernatural cultural communication awareness in combination with his practiced interpretation of body language. “You’re being evasive. But it’s okay if you don’t want to explain.”
“Good.” She smirked at him, a vicious and sudden motion of the face that promised a swift change in circumstance. “Up! Saucer, spear form. Do a long, razor-edged spiteleaf, like a Jihrazi twirl-spear if it married a Lethrenv stabstick and had a baby that was raised by Doto-Diti staff masters.”
To Nathan’s surprise, Saucer complied, shifting smoothly into something that was almost, but not entirely, like a familiar-feeling spear. The head of it was suitably and eye-openingly spiteful, a spiraling fractal of edges that made Nathan wonder what the actual fuck, as he might have put it, kind of plant would have a leaf that looked anything like that; and then once he spun it in his hands, the balance of it started to coalesce around his hands like an old friend.
It was a quarterstaff, but it wasn’t a quarterstaff. It was a fencing rapier, but it wasn’t one at all. And it was a spear like he’d dabbled with, but it was something else entirely, and it felt unutterably right in his hands.
“This feels fucking great,” he enthused, smiling as he parried Tanya’s completely predictable strike, a strike which had come with no warning whatsoever. “I have no idea what those weapons are, but I guess—”
He stepped to the side, brought Saucer’s butt down low, and parried another strike in the same motion as sweeping for her legs with a swipe that he didn’t struggle at all to keep control of. She actually moved in order to avoid it, something more genuine and pleased tugging at the corners of her smirk, and her next strike came in high.
I will dance, dance, dance, the thought came to him, unbidden, and he moved with it as though it were music. He cut at her hand to make her shift the strike to where he could more easily parry it, the act feeling as though it came naturally, as if he’d trained for years on that one response to that one strike, and he swayed to the side to avoid the twist of her followup.
“Disengage.”
Tanya’s command rang through the room, and he complied unhesitatingly. Stepping back, he felt it more than saw in any conscious manner as Saucer withdrew to wrap itself around his waist and shoulder, like a combination metal belt-and-bandolier.
“That was funny,” a low, throaty voice said from the mouth of the tent as Honeydew stepped out the door. “Like an Inspiration, but without a trigger. Like he could just… get one, like the universe just loves him that much.”
“Millionborn,” Tanya answered without inflection, eyes distant. “They’re bullshit. How are you feeling?”
“Like I want to dance,” the sorceress murmured huskily. “Like I want to move. Are you up for a proper warmup?”
The warrior smiled thinly, eyes dancing to belie the humorless expression. “Suppose I do have room on my card,” she allowed, and she took in a breath that seemed to reach all the way down into her feet. “Suppose I do.”