Wisdom knows that pain and victory go hand and hand.

- Old saying of the Daishinrin

Raziel wasn’t sure what would hit the ground first, the pit of his stomach or his jaw. There was an audible groan from the crowd. Raziel was sure that it wasn’t for his sake but he felt a surge of gratitude all the same. He didn’t care whether they wanted to see him fight Daichi or if they just wanted to see Daichi fight more. He just needed the fight to happen.

“Why?” Raziel asked. He thought it a reasonable question. The way Baromah’s head twitched back and the icy glare that Mori turned on him told him otherwise. But for the first time that day Hiro seemed to be paying attention to what was happening on the stage. He gave Raziel a covert thumbs up that no one in the crowd could have possibly missed.

“I do not have to explain myself to a child,” Mori said, his deep voice icy with disdain, not even bothering to look at Raziel.

“Yeah, I guess you’re right. Daichi looks really tired after all. I’d hate to make him look bad in front of all these people after those exhausting matches.” This wasn’t the first time Raziel’s mouth had gone off without checking in with his brain. This wasn’t even the first time it had happened today. But it was the first time he’d ever said something he shouldn’t have and felt a literal chill in the air as a response.

Mori’s eyes fell on Raziel and the sudden silence was palpable. Even the roar of the waterfall seemed to fade and the sunlight to dim. Mori’s eyes narrowed and that was more terrifying than if he’d stood and struck Raziel down with a bolt of lightning from the heavens.

Raziel was just about to come to the conclusion that he’d made a mistake when the silence broke.

Hiro snorted out a laugh. He’d been trying to hold it in but, the dam broken, the master let out a full cackle. Mori turned slowly to him and Hiro tamped down the noise for a few seconds before his self control failed and he laughed even harder.

“Fire and glory, your face,” he said. “Just let him fight the kid, Mori. We all know you love showing Daichi off.”

“Can’t you take something seriously for half a minute you immature, idiotic-“ Mori started but Hiro talked over him.

“Hey, I’m not the one that let a teenager get under my skin just because he called me on my bull-“

Baromah spoke for the first time and though both Mori and Hiro’s voices were getting heated and loud, his soft rumble stole their volume.

“Masters, is this necessary?”

Mori froze like he’d been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Hiro stopped talking as well, but his face was smug, like he’d been the one who pointed out that a hand was in the cookie jar in the first place.

Raziel snuck a glance at Daichi, and felt a twing of guilt for putting the student in the middle of this. Daichi glanced back and the look he gave seemed annoyed and embarrassed at the scene his master was causing.

“The young man has a point,” Baromah rumbled. “If he wishes to fight Daichi, there is no reason not to let him. And you have encouraged this with your little bet, Mori.”

“I never meant that to become something everyone attempted. It was an offhand joke,” Mori said.

“Oh? Is that why you brag about him every time you meet with another master?” Hiro asked, his tone pitched perfectly to carry the verbal nose tweak to the crowd.

“At least I have more than one student to brag about.“

“Masters. This is neither the time nor place,” Baromah murmured, attempting a gentle correction. Mori looked like he was about to choke on the bilious words that were obviously trying to force their way out of his mouth. Instead he swallowed them down and turned back to the stage. He looked at Raziel like something he wanted to scrape off of his shoe. There was literal, physical force in that gaze pressing Raziel back like a strong breeze. But Raziel held his ground and stared right back.

“Daichi. Fight him. Win.”

Daichi bowed and though the hood hid his face from most in the crowd and from Mori as well, Raziel could see the way his lips turned down in a frown.

Ichiro also bowed as though nothing at all out of the ordinary had happened. All the same, as the senior student beckoned Daichi and Raziel back to their positions, Raziel thought he could see something smoldering in Ichiro’s eyes, feel something rippling on the magic between them, just beneath the surface. Was he mad at them? Or at the masters?

But Raziel didn’t have time to think about that. He wasn’t fighting Ichiro. He was fighting Daichi.

Daichi stood across from him and would not meet Raziel’s gaze. The elf stared resolutely at the center of Raziel’s chest. His eyes were dull, nearly lifeless.

Raziel’s heart pounded against his rib cage. All the pain he’d felt in the last few months, the slow agony of recovering from his injuries, the loss he’d felt every time he remembered a small pale hand resting on his father’s book, and the fear that sank like teeth into his bones every time he tried to use magic, all of it bundled together in his chest, a mass of tangled emotions writhing and trying to drag him down. As Ichiro raised his hand, preparing to signal the start of the fight, Raziel closed his eyes.

Roland’s blocked punch and Keira’s explosion that had nearly caught Daichi had something in common. Both Roland and Keira had done something extraordinary to create the opening they needed to attack. Roland caught Daichi off guard. Keira lured him into a trap. Both had failed on their own. Raziel would just have to catch Daichi in a trap when he was off guard.

Raziel heard Ichiro’s hand slicing through the air. Raziel’s eyes snapped open and all the weight of the past fell away. For that instant, he felt the magic inside him flowing, time slowing. Pain came with it but it was distant, weaker. Something he could ignore, at least for a little while.

A fighting grin split his lips. Daichi’s eyes flicked up to meet Raziel’s, just for an instant. Ichiro shouted to begin. Raziel moved first.

He crossed the distance in an instant and struck. Daichi swept Raziel’s hand away, but Raziel was already moving into the next attack. Again and again, Raziel attacked, strike after strike. Daichi fought as he had against Keira’s barrage, nudging the attacks away, shifting just out of reach. From a distance Daichi’s performance had been spellbinding, precise and graceful as a dance. From up close it was something else entirely.

Missed punches and kicks cost nothing to watch. Throwing them, never feeling the shock of impact or true resistance was strangely exhausting and every time Daichi moved an arm or a leg, it shifted Raziel’s balance, making it harder to position for the next strike.

If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

But this was all a part of Raziel’s plan. There was a rhythm to a fight, something a person could only truly experience while taking part. Oh sure, one could see it from outside the like keeping time to a music by tapping a foot but it just simply wasn’t the same as pushing your own body to fit into that rhythm, coordinating your whole being into that whirling hurricane of motion. As you fought, you got used to the speed of your opponent, used it to plan, to think ahead. You found one another’s limits and the dance proceeded.

But Raziel wasn’t pushing himself to his limit.

He was moving fast to be sure. Nearly as fast as Keira had against Daichi. But it wasn’t as fast as he could be.

As they moved, Raziel saw that dullness sink deeper in Daichi’s eyes. Beneath his hood, where the audience couldn’t see, he hid his boredom. And that boredom infuriated Raziel. Raziel savored that fury, held it tightly in check, readying it. The pain from the magic was growing in his skin like a steadily worsening sunburn. He wouldn’t have very long.

Raziel let his body slow, let himself feel looser, more off balance all while the motions of his swings got bigger, wider, easier to predict. Daichi swept Raziel’s feet out from under him. Raziel fell backward, rolled back into a coiled crouch and knew it was his moment. He drew on his anger for strength, poured it into his body and launched himself at Daichi with all the power and speed he could muster.

Raziel was looking at the sky and couldn’t remember where he was or what he was doing. An elf stood over him and was asking him something but Raziel thought he must have been speaking Elvish because the words didn’t make any sense. Raziel just blinked at him and tried to remember what he’d been doing. It was important.

“Can you get up?” The elf asked very slowly and this time the words made sense. Everything crashed back into place in Raziel’s head and he sat up so fast that he nearly headbutted Ichiro. He wobbled but he got back to his feet and looked around for Daichi.

Raziel had taken a hit, he must have. How had it happened? He found Daichi standing just a few feet away. This time Daichi met his eyes. It wasn’t boredom in his eyes now. It was pity.

The questions evaporated from Raziel’s mind. Raziel nearly didn’t hear Ichiro speak, almost ran into the senior student as he started towards Daichi. Ichiro had to grab Raziel to stop him, force Raziel to look at him.

“Look at me now or I will end it here.”

Raziel closed his eyes for a second, made himself take a few deep breaths and looked at Ichiro. Ichiro looked him over for a second, checking for something, probably signs of a bad injury. Raziel felt it now, the twinge in his neck, the radiating bruise forming on his chin. But it was all distant, pushed back by a need to wipe the pity off Daichi’s face, to make the elf take him seriously. All thoughts of becoming Mori’s student were gone now. His whole world had narrowed to Daichi.

Ichiro finished checking him over and hesitated. There was something unreadable in his look. He seemed to be struggling with a decision. The older student looked at Daichi and then back to Raziel.

“You nearly had him,” Ichiro said, so quietly that only Raziel was able to hear. The words lit a fire in his chest, so bright that he nearly didn’t hear another word Ichiro said even though Ichiro spoke loud enough for the masters and the crowd to hear. “If you take another hit like that, the fight is over.”

Raziel nodded his understanding but didn’t look away from Daichi. Daichi didn’t return his gaze. The crowd had started yelling again. Raziel couldn’t make out much of it. He knew some of them were cheering for him, most for Daichi. A lot of them seemed to be booing him or just yelling for the fight to continue but he didn’t care about any of that. There was only room for his opponent in his mind.

Ichiro raised his hand as he had at the start of the fight. He brought it down between them and Raziel took off, nearly hitting Ichiro’s hand as he passed.

There was a moment of surprise in Daichi’s eyes when Raziel came at him. He hadn’t been expecting Raziel to be on the attack so soon after being knocked down. That small instant of surprise was like a finger hold in a wall Raziel was trying to climb. It put Daichi off his mental balance for just the tiniest second and Raziel pressed it.

He forced Daichi back, throwing attack after attack. All the while he knew he couldn’t last. He’d grabbed onto the magic instinctively, drawn hard on it and it had come when he’d wanted. He’d always been better at grasping that flowing energy in the heat of the moment, when he needed it the most. But the pain that came with it was gnawing at him and he’d soon be devoured.

But he wasn’t the only one fighting differently. Daichi was attacking back now. Raziel was fairly sure that Daichi was trying to use feints to create some space between them, to push Raziel back. The only problem was that Raziel didn’t have time to be cautious. He didn’t brush Daichi’s attacks away with the graceful motions Daichi used on him. He just barreled forward to overwhelm Daichi with an avalanche of fists.

And yet, it wasn’t enough. With every strike, Raziel felt Daichi coming closer to finding his rhythm, to matching his speed. Daichi was regaining his balance and if Raziel allowed that to happen he knew that he’d never be able to push Daichi this far again. He still just had to land one hit. Raziel hung onto that fact like a man clinging to the edge of a cliff, even as Daichi’s feints turned to real blows.

The tide rapidly turned against Raziel. Daichi struck him twice before Raziel was able to block. Both hits were glancing but Raziel saw Ichiro start to move to stop the fight with each. Raziel couldn’t let that happen.

Raziel met Daichi’s eyes. He expected pity there again, or the boredom. Something else rising up from being buried beneath the disinterest in this whole proceeding. Was it anger at being challenged? Frustration that Raziel wouldn’t acknowledge the gap between them? Raziel wanted to know what it was. Needed to know.

Daichi stepped in and slammed both of his palms against Raziel’s chest, forcing Raziel back. Raziel knew he couldn’t afford to fall back, he needed to be at the closest range possible. Roland and Keira had both used their magic to catch Daichi. He’d wanted to avoid that. Both because he knew it would hurt and because he was afraid his lack of control might hurt someone else. But Daichi’s strength was unquestionable. He could handle it.

Raziel poured his power into his right arm as he fell back, drawing power from the air around him, the cool breeze turning frigid at his mental touch. Light burst into being around his hand as some of the energy he’d gathered slipped from his grasp but he held onto the lion’s share of it. The crowd gasped as he turned the stumble Daichi had forced on him into a spin, winding his arm back like he was about to pitch a ball.

“Howling Burst!” Raziel shouted as he threw. The ball of brilliant blue energy lived up to its name, shrieking as it flew.

From so close, Daichi didn’t have time to dodge. But Daichi didn’t need to.

He caught it.

The ball of light crashed into Daichi’s hands and drove him backwards. He slid across the stage trying to stop the blast and Raziel could see the strain from his clenched teeth beneath his hood. Daichi slowed it just enough that he could change its direction. He shifted his hands beneath it and flung the orb upward. It flew up like a hailstone falling in reverse and detonated.

The blast turned the valley blue as the ball burst. The sound was like an echoing strike on an enormous drum. Everyone’s eyes were on it. Everyone’s but Raziel.

He’d drawn in more energy as Daichi struggled with the blast. The pain was searing now, like standing inches from a raging bonfire, but Raziel’s whole mind was bent to his purpose and pain wouldn’t stop him. He closed the distance and struck.

Daichi slipped under the attack and swept Raziel’s feet out from under him. Raziel fell and rolled backwards to get his feet under him.

Just like before, he thought. But there was no time to come up with a new plan. He wouldn’t get another chance.

If you fail, I’ll leave you behind.

Raziel uncoiled his body, rushing up at Daichi. With so much more magic in his system time seemed to ooze by. He knew what to expect this time. Daichi’s hand pulled back like a bowstring ready to snap forward. It was already pistoning downward towards Raziel’s chin. It was going to land before Raziel’s punch.

Past Daichi’s fist, beneath his hood, Raziel saw Daichi’s eyes. He saw that glimmer of emotion he’d sensed before wink out, like a dying candle and he saw pity rush in to fill it’s place, like darkness filling a room. That dying ember sparked something in Raziel.

He couldn’t land his punch first. He wasn’t fast enough.

Fine. He thought and surged forward into Daichi’s attack.

Pain exploded in Raziel’s head.

He was looking up at the sky, the world spinning around him. He could barely move with it. It wasn’t just his face that hurt, though that throbbing pain would have been enough to make him nauseous on its own. His whole body felt like he’d dove into a pool full of needles. But mixed in with all of that was one more pain. Raziel lifted his hand to his eyes.

His knuckles were torn.

Past his hand, Daichi seemed frozen in shock looking down at Raziel. His hood was thrown back off his face and there was a trickle of blood at the corner of his mouth.