Ortho’s hands clenched into fists, then unclenched again. It happened over and over, and it wasn’t voluntary. Wip slowly pushed himself up on the green floor, his palms and knees sizzling from the acid effect the floor was subject to. Heliotomas were rising up to head height throughout the spacious chamber, their green tentacles about to disconnect from their spawning pools. Luci was dancing on the spot.

“Mr. Wip,” she whimpered. “Please help me kill the monsters first. I really don’t want to do this alone.”

“Didn’t I tell you to leave?” Ortho growled at her.

“And you!” Luci said. “You need to stop this right now, mister. You have no idea what you’re about to do. Please, I’m begging you.”

“Oh, I know exactly what I’m doing.” Ortho slammed the bottom of his shield onto the ground. “Wip of… whatever tribe you’re from.”

Wip pushed himself up and cracked his neck. “Shyzan!” he answered enthusiastically.

Ortho narrowed his eyes and spoke low. “Wip of Shyzan.” With a huff, he raised his voice again. “You have insulted my name, insulted my honour, stolen my prey, and now you have attacked me. Again! If you pick a fight with a warrior of Huhl Hadem, you’ll fight by the customs of Huhl Hadem.”

Luci jabbed a shaky finger at the heliotomas. “This is a terrible idea, guys. I think they’re coming now.”

However, Ortho was too fixated on Wip to care, and Wip seemed to show the same enthusiasm as he. Wip stepped off the acidic green floor. If Ortho wasn’t mistaken, the burns on his face had cleared up a touch. With a giddy smile, Wip slammed a fist into his palm and lightning sparked across his hands.

“Wip Shyzan shall fight with honour!” he shouted.

Ortho wanted to hit him right there for that remark, but there were rules to follow. He wasn’t about to stoop so low as to start an honour-duel without at least doing the bare minimum that a warrior of Huhl Hadem should.

“I invoke the Law of Fragile Life,” Ortho announced. He slammed his shield three times on the ground.

Wip nodded also. “And I invoke the law of fighting!”

“That’s not a thing!”

Wip scratched at his collar. “It’s not?”

Luci waved her staff to try get their attention. “Guys, they’re actually coming now. Should I just deal with them myself?”

“I’ll explain to you what the Law of Fragile Life is,” Ortho growled, ignoring Luci.

Wip frowned at him. “I hope it’s not too complicated, because I’m not really good at remembering—woah!”

Wip leaned back just before Ortho’s shield whizzed past his head. His balance was shot, and Ortho wasn’t going to let him recover. He flowed enma into the wadis on his ankles and took off across the dungeon floor. Before Wip could straighten up again, Ortho leapt and lunged and him with a knee.

From his position leaning back, Wip twisted out the way. Ortho flew straight past him. As he flew, Wip’s hand just happened to be where Ortho’s face was. Electricity arced between Wip’s fingers.

Ortho gritted his teeth and raised his arms. Using the enhanced strength from his wadis, he guarded knocked Wip’s hand over his head just in time. Electricity zapped at the air just above Ortho’s head. The scent of burnt ozone that Wip’s lightning emitted overwhelmed the general rot of the dungeon.

Ortho landed on green floor. He had too much momentum behind him so he rolled once, then came to a stop on his knees. More enma flowed into his shin guards to keep their shielding up. Without that, the acid would have burnt his legs and feet.

Wip straightened his posture, then turned and raised his fists at Ortho. The look in his eyes was intense; he was well practiced in combat, Ortho decided.

Ortho let out a low growl. Though he hated Wip’s confidence, he was glad Wip wasn’t a pushover. It had been a long time since he’d had a proper fight. This was a chance to prove his worth, by crushing some dishonourable grupp like him.

Standing off to the side, bouncing on the balls of her feet, Luci was speaking to herself. “Okay, they’re fighting. They’re fighting. I guess I’m dealing with it!”

She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and the two glowing cores on her staff’s head began to glow more brightly. The long hair falling out of her beanie pulsed a dim silver, faded, and then light burst forth from it. The dungeon around Luci was lit so brightly that the greens and purples were all masked with an ethereal silver. When Luci opened her eyes, they shone like twin moons.

With a wave of her staff, threads of glowing enma poured out from the staff’s head and wrapped up a heap of heliotomas. She lifted them up and slammed them into a patch of green ground. Even her threads weren’t safe from the acid effect and they burnt away, but the heliotomas were also no more.

Ortho kept his shield orbiting around Wip, prepared for a strike. He scoffed at Wip. “So, you’re relying on the kid to do your fighting for you? What sort of a warrior are you?”

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A smile split Wip’s face. He didn’t take his eyes off Ortho. “How about we play a game? Whoever kills the most heliotomas while fighting wins?”

Ortho’s face morphed into a scowl. This was a fight sanctioned under thousands of years of Huhl Hadem custom. He had no intention of playing his stupid games. However, there was no honour in a fight. Before and after, yes, but when you lived your life killing creatures who defied the laws of nature, you learned to do what was necessary to win.

“Sure,” Ortho said. “You go first.”

Wip nodded. Lightning ran up his body and he sprinted to the side in a rush of wind, his backpack rattling ominously with his sudden movements. Ortho flicked his wrist, and his shield zoomed behind the heliotoma that Wip was charging towards. With a short flow of enma, flipped the shield upright and sent out a pulse.

The heliotoma was sent flying right at Wip. Undeterred, Wip threw a fist. The monster splatted into acidic goop that covered his body.

Ortho charged in again and swept for the legs, scraping across acidic floor with only his armour to protect him. Wip leapt up to dodge, but he’d fallen into Ortho’s trap. The shield circled back round and its edge smacked him hard in the chest. Wip went hurtling across the dungeon floor. Each scrape tore off a little bit more of his clothing.

“The Law of Fragile Life is a sacred law for settling disputes,” Ortho shouted at him. He flowed the bulk of his enma into his wadis and took off after Wip. “Disputes such as, who deserves to get their rear kicked in.”

Heliotomas charged Wip from the side as he tumbled, but Luci’s threads quested out for them and yanked them from his path. Luci raised them up then splatted them on the floor.

“The rules are simple,” Ortho screamed. He brought his shield back and connected it to his wrist. “One person invokes the Law of Fragile Life, and the other must compete with them to settle the dispute.” A heliotoma charged at him and he blasted it away with his shield. “It can only be rejected if three elders from each participating tribe say so, at any time before or during the competition.”

Lightning coursed along Wip’s body and he flipped over onto his feet. He slid across the floor on all fours. His collar was pulsing with red light. He was grinning wildly.

Ortho leapt at Wip then cut off enma to everything but his shield and helmet. “And it only ends when both parties agree to stop, or someone is dead!”

Seeing him approach, Wip pulled an afto from his backpack. Whatever he planned to do with it never occurred as a pulse from Ortho’s shield, multiplied by his speed, launched Wip across the dungeon like a bullet. He crashed against the opposite wall so hard that the dungeon shook.

Ortho tripped as his foot touched the floor. He’d taken off with so much force that he wasn’t able to move his legs fast enough to keep his footing. He rolled once, using his armour for protection against the alternating green and purple floor, and then decelerated using a steady pushing force from his shield. He came to a skidding halt.

Breathing heavy, he admired his handiwork. A crater had formed where Wip had struck, and he was planted there in the centre. He was bruised and battered, but still breathing. Somehow, he’d managed to hold onto his afto with one hand.

Pride swelled within Ortho’s chest. He rapped his knuckles on his helmet and let out a long, victorious howl. “I am Ortho of Nubah Kilebhi, the last of my tribe!” he bellowed. “I have defeated Wip of Shyzan according to the ancient laws of Huhl Hadem. Thus, he shall serve me to regain his honour.”

He lowered his head and preyed silently, for his tribe, or for what remained of it. Proof of one’s honour was everything. He wore it on his body: his helmet, his armour, his wadis. It was all he had now that his tribe was gone. Without honour, a warrior was nothing. And for pride to be gained, someone or something had to lose it.

Once his prayer was done, he turned to Luci. “Does his family have an elder? I need to know who to talk to so we can settle the cost of his retribution. Or do I have to deal with that grupp of a fence?”

There were always consequences after a duel, regardless of which of Huhl Hadem’s many complicated Laws began it. Demands were always made by the losing side: revenge duels, compensations to be paid with parts of monsters, weddings arranged and rearranged, and, more often than not, long meetings between the elders as they settled the consequences of the duel by attempting to claim and defend their rights over hunting grounds.

Ortho expected Luci to be lamenting Wip’s defeat, or at the very least she ought to have been furious with Ortho. That was how these things usually went in Huhl Hadem. But the girl’s reaction was strange even for a Sylexan. She glared at Wip with narrowed eyes.

Heliotomas charged for the unmoving man. If he wasn’t already dead, Ortho was sure this would end him. Ortho made a silent prayer so that Wip’s soul would move swiftly back into the enmastream.

“Does he seriously expect me to do everything?” Luci grumbled.

She pointed her staff at Wip and glowing threads burst out. They rushed across the square chamber and wrapped around the heliotomas that charged at Wip’s limp body. Then the heliotomas were flung up to the ceiling. They splatted there, dripping acid down onto the floor.

Ortho watched her casually kill the heliotomas in stunned silence. The scent of those threads was strange, though enma always did smell odd as it wasn’t a thing that could be smelled without the enhanced senses of the Nubah Kilebhi warriors. He could only describe it as soft light.

When she’d been spinning those threads, they were all Ortho could smell. From the intensity, he roughly converted it to around a level eighty enma spike, by Anypaxian count—in Huhl Hadem, that would have made her a Sara, a warrior of great honour whose duty it was to hunt those monsters nobody else could. It was honestly a shame that she was bad at using aftos.

“Mr. Wip, can you please stop playing?” Luci shouted. “I’m starting to get real heavy.”

With a grunt, Wip pried his head off the crushed-in wall. Ortho gritted his teeth. His hands clenched and unclenched involuntarily.

Wip looked up at Luci, his face charred from the acid. “Hey, Luci. How come you haven’t gone crazy from using the staff?”

“I’m only bound to two cores,” Luci shouted back. “Last time I was using three because I wanted to practice controlling them. Oh, but don’t worry. As you can see, I’m having no trouble splatting these monsters despite only using two. I can’t guarantee I won’t splat you, though, so please stay away and please hurry up with your fight before I fall flat on my face!”

“Aw, but I was just about to start using my aftos.”

“I thought you already were!” Luci shouted. “You ruined my dress with one.”

“Nah, those were the bad ones.”

Ortho couldn’t take it anymore. This man was just taunting him, taunting the entire Nubah Kilebhi tribe. He raised his voice. “Wip of Shyzan!”

Wip turned to him and raised an eyebrow that had been half burnt off by acid. “Yeah?”

Ortho lowered his chin and stared up at him through his helmet. “I will take my time crushing you.”

“Um, we can’t do that because Luci is getting mad,” Wip said. “I’m going to speed up a bit.”

Without warning, dozens of energy beams burst from Wip’s hand. They curled outwards, then turned and homed in on Ortho.