Nathan reached for the music that had taken over his sense of timing, that had driven him to move like liquid and strike like lightning. For the long minutes of the fight that ensued, he reached for the serenity, for the singing full clear emptiness and what was both a need and the ability to make his weapon dance, and to dance with it.
Parry, sidestep. The strike is coming in from above, lazy and full of threat, and you can’t deal with it. Trust in your partner, and attack.
He failed, but it had left something behind. Not something which he could put into numbers, not something he could describe even in a qualitative way; but something nonetheless, and he knew it was showing in his every movement.
Shit, he thought to himself absently, I’m not even breathing the same way. Deeper, and… differently, fuck if I know. That’s weird.
He had this time to ponder it, because his mind was racing ahead of his body. Honeydew’s magic was wrapped around and through him, as intimate as an EKG and far less fleeting, driving his blood to flow faster and his thoughts to outpace even Tanya’s own movements. Electricity was in the domain of the Fulminator, or so they’d told me; and so he sped in the grip of magic that crackled up and down every synapse and fiber.
And he could hear It in the distance, that sublime perfect moment of impossible grace. Too far in the distance to follow the beat of, too far to truly listen to. It retreated, ephemeral as the halting flutter of an internet connection on the border of strong enough and a murmured lie rendered in letters and bars; it fled as the galaxies wished they could, its vastness dwarfed only by its impossible speed.
Yet he could still study its passage. Study its passage, and remember; watch, and listen.
Walk through the fire and brimstone, it whispered to him in Honeydew’s voice from an infinite universe away and also from literally inside his tympanic bone. Legends never die, and no fire will burn you today.
It felt righteous. It felt good, it felt right to stand and fight together with her.
Even with the two of them, they were barely evenly matched against Tanya, if that. Though… for all that the warrior was holding back, so was her partner.
The room had become a swirling nexus of a thousand elemental energies, none of which Honeydew was permitting to touch either of them—nor did it touch the room itself, which was far more impressive. The water in the fountain ran on despite it all, and the firestorm surged around and through the trees tall and small, pink-blossomed and green-leafed alike. And she held back in more ways than just in exerting her control to make the ravenous flame and thundering ripples of turbulent air shatter not the serenity of the room; she held back within herself, not giving an inch of herself to the fire within her that craved pain and glory.
But the inferno blazed nonetheless, and form-flowing fractals of ice flew, shapestrong and vicious, hunting. And all of that magic, in its countless elements, beckoned him.
Come and be mighty. Let this power fill your muscles, fill your spirit. Let it root your feet and give them flight; now forwards, now spin to the side, your strike proclaims itself low but it whispers high and seeks like so.
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Tanya herself blazed with something that was as though mundanity itself had been given supernatural presence, a radiant disdain for magic and the paranormal that commanded the world without mercy. She blazed with unmagic, with the dirge whose brazen notes toll on such a timeline as to be beyond the understanding of even the longest-lived mortals, a dirge whose chorus is the final cold that can never be observed or experienced, for it postsages anything and everything capable of observation or experience. Ever shall all die, it reminded the very world itself. All together in nonexistence at the end. Thieves and beggars, Paladins and Gods, suns and universes; all things die.
She fought them both with nothing more than mundane strength and speed, with a degree of skill which made as if to mock the idea that the two of them could face her. Honeydew herself was, Nathan could tell, no slouch with the shield and spear she carried, the first made of reified stone and the other of entirely mundane ice, and both of them were enhanced. Largely in thought and perception, in reaction speed and fine control, yes; but that was no small thing, to go with the ravening elemental vortex.
Except that it was. The enhancements, the vortex, the shield, the spear, and Saucer; they were all, even together, nowhere near enough for a fair fight.
Tanya’s sword traced death through the air. Her unmagic unraveled past its hilt, but just as the sword refused to be unmade in such a manner, it refused to be moved by the elemental forces being thrown about the room. It sheared through them, instead, clashing gaily with Saucer as though the morphic weapon were no less mundane than the spear of ice which it smashed great sprays of chips out of with every connection. The warrior wielded it in two hands, every motion of it showcasing her strength and the worth of her practice, and with every such motion she attacked and defended herself simultaneously.
Nathan sprang forwards as her sword shattered Honeydew’s shield once again, crashing almost all the way through the haft of her spear as she deflected it in a two-handed grip. He intercepted the backstroke that would have torn through ribs and guts, catching it on the forked tines which Saucer’s edge shifted into, and he twisted to force Tanya back one step, then two. She put her strength against his, but he had already disengaged, knowing he couldn’t beat her in the clash; and then he was on the offensive.
A leaf floated down from the tree as he struck high with more speed than elegance, and she parried in perfect simplicity—her hands came up and she cut the strike to the side just below her wrists even as her point plunged towards his thigh. Honeydew slammed her shield downwards in a motion both determined and almost contemptuous, knocking the retaliation out of line, and Nathan twisted his wrists to bring Saucer back around—all of its weight had rushed behind his wrists in a heartbeat, and then back out, and Tanya swayed backwards as her breath fogged on its metal.
Her response seemed to float towards his gut, a threat he had to honor, but her sword drifted almost as if they’d planned it towards Honeydew’s side and cleaved through off-axis shield and hastily-transposed spear alike. The wind from Nathan’s lunge kissed the falling leaf, adding the gentlest of spirals to the sway of its side-to-side fall, and Honeydew dropped to the ground as the sword whistled above her head. She rocketed forwards into Tanya’s knees, motion aided by a gout of fire and an explosion of steam, and the remnants of her shield were glassy black knives; Tanya braced, and a ripple of denial slammed into the momentum of the charge and stole it even as she seemed to drift to the side, so much faster were their perceptions running.
She cut up, sword passing through the leaf’s spirals as it danced around her blade, a silent and blind partner to her steel. The sword flashed in slow motion, glinting hungrily as it pledged to introduce a new cleft to Nathan’s chin, and he parried it with barely enough force; Tanya transferred the momentum into a sweeping downwards cut into Honeydew, tracing a line of ecstatic red across her neck and shoulder as she brought her weapon back around to kiss the inside of Nathan’s knee with the promise of its flat.
The Millionborn froze his strike in midair, and the leaf settled with an air of serenity on the tip of the victor’s boot.
“Almost adequate,” she said with a rapturous smile. “Again.”